Decision-Making Process Quotes

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

You can call anyyne here or call me. We have no formal chain of command.

As a new member (of Parliament) you will also be instructed in the details of what is expected from you as a backbencher…. It will be made clear to you that your role in the decision-making process is to raise your hand when you are told to and to occupy your seat in the house when it is required.

Play within the system. Be a decision maker.

Never make a decision until you have to.

Yes, Ronald Reagan did sleep through cabinet meetings—and deservedly so. They were incredibly tedious. I know; I was there.

My priority is having the ability to be creative and to come up with the right decisions and not be fettered. If there are a lot of people involved in decision making, it can become frustrating.

Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.

They [the Persians] are accustomed to deliberate on matters of the highest moment when warm with wine; but whatever they in this situation may determine is again proposed to them on the morrow, in their cooler moments, by the person in whose house they had before assembled. If at this time also it meet their approbation, it is executed; otherwise it is rejected. Whatever also they discuss when sober, is always a second time examined after they have been drinking.

A person sometimes can't make a decision unless they know what decision to make.

Talent is a gift, but our character is a choice. Talent is natural ability, our gift from God, but we have the power to determine our character. That power rests on a foundation consisting of the choices we make in life. And those choices almost always dictate the amount of trust others have in us, and to what level of leadership we rise.

A monk's extraordinary patience can be a hindrance to desperate decision-making.

If you don't make mistakes you can't make decisions.

The classical theory of omniscient rationality is strikingly simple and beautiful.

I think the idea that in a riddle there are two answers or two doors and that you have to pick the right one is almost sort of delightful to kids who are making so many choices every day and who often don't know for a while if they've made the right one. It's not as if you make a choice and then *ding* you have some sense of "oh, this is perfect and I'm happy" - it's never that simple.

If an important decision is to be made, they [the Persians] discuss the question when they are drunk, and the following day the master of the house where the discussion was held submits their decision for reconsideration when they are sober. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not, it is abandoned. Conversely, any decision they make when they are sober, is reconsidered afterwards when they are drunk.

I would say it would be worth it if, in fact, it would - if you could demonstrate that that would be the case and that the results and ramifications around the world wouldn't lead to more problems and more people dying. It's a very complex issue, and that's why I think we need to decide it.

The first EDSer to see a snake kills it. At GM, first thing you do is organize a committee on snakes. Then you bring in a consultant who knows a lot about snakes. Third thing you do is talk about it for a year.

For most politicians, facts lead to conclusions. For George W. Bush, conclusions lead to facts.

As a company gets big, the information that informs decision-making gets massive. Depending upon the prism through which you view the business, your perspective will vary. If two people are in charge, this variance will cause conflict and delay.

The next thing to be said about what long-range planning is not, is that it does not deal with future decisions. It deals with the futurity of present decisions. Decisions exist only in the present. The question that faces the long-range planner is not what we should do tomorrow.

Before making a decision, ask inside for guidance. Be patient and await an answer. Act only when you feel calm and certain.

Making the bureaucracy accountable to the President in any comprehensive and enduring way is impossible. Making it alert to his preferences is possible in those cases where Presidents put loyal and competent subordinates in charge of making decisions.

We live in a culture that's been hijacked by the management consultant ethos. We want everything boiled down to a Power Point slide. We want metrics and 'show me the numbers.' That runs counter to the immensely complex nature of so many social, economic and political problems. You cannot devise an algorithm to fix them.

Americans have a right to know what is being done in their name…. These cables tell the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions.