Decisions, Decisions; the plague of poor management

A frequent question-- "when you go into a new company turn-around assignment I suppose you find lots of bad decisions have been made!"

No that's typically not the case; rather previous management didn't make any decisions--there was a backlog. An organization suffers more from the lack of decisions than from bad decisions. Why? With bad decisions at least you learn; you get feedback; you have a frame of reference; the middle managers in the organization at least have a direction. With no decisions little is learned; you get no feedback; you have no frame of reference; and middle managers have no idea what to do. The same thought applies to governmental bodies.

Why is that? Status quo is not so controversial. New governors/presidents can glide through adding a few friends, constituencies, allies; without rocking the boat. But virtually no company has ever existed for an extended period without a thorough reexamination of its policies and strategies, and an occasional shakeup. The same concern applies to governments, but not the same remedy. Any change is violently opposed by the embedded constituences and lobbyists/campaign funds.

Companies have the right and the means to fail. Governments, in the U.S. anyway, don't. But the methods that prevent failure aren't available. The U.S. Mexican border illegal immigration policy is not that difficult a problem to solve pragmatically; politically is another question. The simultaneous repelling of highly-educated foreign students back to their country of origin is not that dificult a problem to solve pragmatically; politically is another question. Even the U.S. health care and costs problem is fixable to some degree but each element of a solution has a strong opposing constituency; therefore politically it can't be fixed.