September 2012
Beginner to intermediate
208 pages
5h 33m
English
Content preview from Guide to Decision Making: Getting it More Right than WrongBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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Chapter 9
Decisionless decisions: the continuity trap
“We’ve travelled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.”
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Act 3
WHEN THE TELEPHONE FIRST ARRIVED AT FRESHFIELDS (now Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer), a law firm, it was lodged in the basement. Partners decreed that the newfangled device was for making appointments only. On no account was it to be used to discuss clients’ business. So the pressure for change had been accepted but the pressure for continuity remained strong. This is often the case, but if these conflicting pressures are well managed, firms can usually deal with threats and opportunities in a timely fashion, without becoming destabilised.
When the desire for continuity prevails over pressure for change, firms can end up “drifting idly towards eternity” and eventually die. In the 1950s, the United States led the world in steel production but lost out to Japan. Research in Motion, makers of the innovative BlackBerry device, took so long to produce a tablet computer that in 2011 the Wall Street Journal suggested the firm be renamed “Research in Slow Motion”. Sony might have had a happier history if it had cut production of its flat-screen televisions sooner than it did, or even exited the business altogether. Diageo would have done better if it had linked its Johnny Walker whisky to Formula 1 racing sooner, instead of persisting ...
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I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.