McCain & Palin

I thought i would follow up my entry the other day (The Art of Decision Making) with some more thoughts on the topic.  In particular I was listening to a podcast about John McCain and his selection of Sarah Palin for his Vice President running mate.  In McCain’s case, Sarah Palin was a selection that almost no one saw coming.  She has little experience and evidently the decision made by McCain was based on minimal research and appears driven by political requirements.

So what does someone’s decision making processes tell you about the person and your confidence in the person to do their job?

As discussed before there are a number of different decision making styles.   Some of which can be defined as – fact based decision making, gut feel decision making, and consensus decision making. 

Now people who rely solely on facts to make decisions, can be seen as diligent, thoughtful, analytical and so on.  They can also been seen as hiding behind the numbers, out of touch with the business, indecisive (if all the facts are not there) and more of manager than a leader. (An important distinction)

People who rely on gut feel can often be seen as in touch with the business, on top things, a leader with a clear vision.  However, gut feel decisions can also be seen as reckless, hopeful, and totalitarian.

Finally, people who rely on consensus for decision making can be seen as inclusive, seeking other points of view and team building however they can also be seen as indecisive, lacking leadership, and avoiding responsibility.

Of course no one leader displays just one of these traits however they will probably have a dominant trait.  For example, i am more of a gut feel decision maker with facts and consensus as secondary traits.  The real issue is how fast the decisions are made and the size of the decisions.

Firstly, most people want rapid decision making.  It doesnt matter what style you adopt, i believe that more often than not you need to make decisions fast.  Now this is where the gut feel approach has preference over the fact or consensus approach as you are able to sum up a situation and make a decision quickly.  If you adopt the other approaches, you are likely to end up in long decision making cycles and more likely, lots of very long decisions as all opinions are heard and considered.  Long term this is not good for a business.

Secondly, if the decision is large and important, then you probably need to lean towards fact based approach.  If the decision needs lots of peope to implement, then you may need to adopt a more consencus approach.  However most decisions dont fall into these categories and therefore a gut feel based approach is probably more appropriate. 

Thererfore looking at John McCain’s choice, you can not help but conclude that he has taken a gut feel based approach to a decisin that really should have been a little more fact based and consensus driven.  Given he is 72, do you really want someone with almost no experience a heart beat away from the most powerful job in the world?  And more importantly, if he takes this sort of decision making approach to the selection of a potential President, what approach will he take when it comes to financial, foreign policy and domestic policy issues?  Will they be based on gut feel to?