'Fear of failures' inhibits managers' decision making

JAKARTA (JP): Fear of risks and demotion may hamper managers' ability to make decisions, psychologists concluded yesterday.

In a seminar on psychological processes in managerial decision making here yesterday, Thomas D. Gilovich of Cornell University, United States, and University of Indonesia professor Yaumil Agoes Achir said that managers should not let past failures inhibit them.

"Managers need to take risks (despite past failures), and so they should not fear losing their positions," Gilovich was quoted by Antara as saying.

Naturally everybody feared demotion, he said. In reality, everybody made mistakes when planning for the future.

He said that, to handle possible failure, "managers should not be either overly pessimistic or optimistic with their plans".

He said future managers would have to make harder decisions, given increasingly complex problems. "Managers need to have integrity (to make appropriate decisions)," he said.

Yaumil, also an assistant to the state minister of population, said future challenges could be met by managers who were firm and willing to take risks.

"They have to be creative, smart, and have vision," she said. "They have to be able to make appropriate and intelligent decisions in facing their business problems. They can do it if they, among other things, have access to information."

She said that managers had to realize the danger of misinformation. And that managers had to learn the attitudes, motivations, interests and expectations of people who helped them make decisions.

Another speaker, Cacuk Sudarijanto, the former president of state-owned telecommunications company Perumtel (now PT Telkom), said fear of demotion was inseparable from a person's natural inclination to defend the "status quo".

"Many of us are afraid of change, and tend to just play it safe," he said.

But, "comprehensive and superior leaders must have strong vision, integrity and loyalty toward their ideals and toward competitive work ethics," he said.

He said a good decision was one based on ethics. "It is not enough for a person to make a decision only because he feels good about it."

The seminar was held by the State Administration Institute in cooperation with the Persada Indonesia University. (swe)