Friday, May 25, 2012

On the nature of decision-making

A colleague reminded me of this quote by Peter de Noronha:

The safest refuge when dealing with urgent, ticklish problems is sought in shirking responsibility, in gaining time by the formation of Committees, with the requisite Sub-Committees to tackle the problem. It is the well-known practice of Promise, Pause, Prepare, Postpone and end by letting things alone. But this cannot last for ever. Now the secret of these Committees is that they consist of a group of men, who individually can do nothing, but collectively can meet and decide that nothing can be done, whilst they know that the best Sub-Committees consist of three persons, two of whom are always absent!

Not exactly PDSA.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi, Paul! First of all, really enjoying reading your blog. You have such great insight into the latest happenings in the nursing world. I would love to profile you as one of our TOP 10 Nursing blogs. Any way to contact you directly to discuss further?? Looking forward to hearing from you! --Abbye Klamann

Paul Levy said...

I am on FB, Twitter, and G+. Happy to talk.

e-Patient Dave said...

One of our differences :) as bloggers is choice of subject like. You are more essayish; I, the marketing guy, would have titled this "Promise, Pause, Prepare, Postpone: how to stall by committee." :)

e-Patient Dave said...

Oy, I wish Blogger allowed fixing typos in comments, as WordPress does - of course I meant subject *line*, not like!