If things in business were completely rational, all problems would be analyzed and solved by one person or brain having complete access to information from all over the organization. The decisions would be objective, well defined, and timely. Because people often design things according to a rational ideal, it is understandable that business executives would try to design decision-making systems in organizations as if there were one big brain at the top or center that could solve all problems. I exhort business people to consider how decisions are actually made, that in reality business decisions are not made instantly by one big brain or computer but by many little brains over time. I argue that by eliciting the opinions and ideas of other people, executives elicit their commitment and involvement as well.
As managers change their ways in response to the opportunities offered by computerization, simulation, linear programming, and the other valuable procedures stemming from recent developments in the quantitative sciences, we may lose sight of equally important contributions offered by recent findings in the behavioral sciences. If we do neglect this side, we can easily fall victim to the myth of the one big brain.
It is amazing how often one sees evidence of the assumption that all the heavy thinking in an organization can be left to some specialized group. This assumption not only lies behind the way theorists reason; it also affects the way managers act.
In fact, business decisions are not made in a few moments by one big brain, but by a lot of smaller brains. (Let it be understood I did not say “small” brains; rather, I am referring here to brains of human scale, and we all know that such brains often have great ability.) These brains, in dealing with business problems, must act in coordination with each other, often over a considerable period of time, usually in a situation that has ways of shifting one’s attention from one problem to another, and always in a situation in which an individual’s position in the total structure has great influence both on the work and thinking that he does and on the way his conclusions are received and used.
Unfortunately, planning is not so treated in many businesses-where the myth of the one big brain still denies the lower-level managers this part of their work.