Thingking : By the Boss or by His staff ?

Yet high-echelon executive decision making in the large corporation seldom exhibits evidence of very much careful thinking  The decision making process is generally assumed to involve a heavy input of judgement. The implication is that thinking is what guides judgment. Yet when we look st the criteria by which men are chosen for top positions, no one will deny that it is successful experience the predominates, not evidence of competent thinking  Men are systematically rotated into various assignments in order that they may get a "breadth of experience in all our operations" before elevated finally to the upper ranks.

This premium on experience is powerfully attested to by the authority accorded to men who in meeting "talk from experience" and by the devastating opprobrium implied by the observation, "That may bell right in theory, but . . . " Theory, " which is the Siamese twin of thought, " is held in low esteem. TO think your way through to a solution is to imply a failure of the legitimate way to get it, by experience and brute energy.