The Hindu Business Line : Bullet proof your choices

Managers can protect or bullet proof themselves against criticism of their decisions by adopting measures to counter every possible adverse outcome that can be visualised

Bullet proofing is a vivid metaphor: it is a technique for you, the manager, to protect yourself against the inevitable flak arising from your decisions. Just as you would wear the bullet proof vest before you step into the firing line, you could arm yourself with the possible fallback steps, explanations or other steps devised in advance. The protection we need is not just from the opponents of our decision — be they competition, other associates who might be affected or even colleagues. In fact many of the repercussions of an action are often not from a single human agency at all, but a confluence of external circumstances — such as Israel bombing Lebanon or the so-called allies of our present central government choosing to pull the rug. As a result, markets may slide, prices may rise or contracts and expected sales fail to materialise. PPA (potential problem analysis) referred to in the last instalment must wrestle with these kinds of situations.

Why do potential problems arise? Because few human problems, as we formulate them, are capable of being resolved entirely, root and branch. Every defined problem does have some solution, but almost every solution also has problems attached to it. This is similar to how physicians prescribing antibiotics nowadays also strongly advise you to take vitamins called probiotics. They counter the unwanted consequences of taking the medication and bullet proof your insides, so to speak, against the havoc caused by the drug.

Think of some significant organisational changes such as restructuring, changing working conditions, benefits or even a major change in appraisal systems for rewards and so on. In the first phase of potential problems analysis, you will obviously ask yourself what can go wrong with the implementation — `many a slip `twixt the cup and the lip', as the saying goes. A simple method is to brainstorm to ask all possible questions that might arise. Another is to list the people involved and categorise them as: those who will passively allow the decision to happen, those who would oppose it openly or otherwise, and those who would be wholeheartedly behind the idea and see that it is done. These are referred to as the "let, hinder, help" categories. You can tabulate them in three rows and further analyse what their expectations or objections/ difficulties might be. Against the `hinder' class in particular, preventive or pre-emptive steps might then be planned well in advance. As for those who help, it is often very useful to get them to work alongside as well as behind the scenes as influencers quietly changing perceptions and reducing anxiety levels. If any of them have a social or cultural status of being highly respected and trusted, so much the better.

A third, quantitative, approach is to look at costs; an exhaustive list (within available knowledge) of outcomes that might be in favour or against the proposed plan is made; then one puts a value in rupee terms of such eventuality. Take the case of a typical marketing decision. If the competition reduced prices suddenly in response to a big sales promotion effort or a new product launch by your company, the sales results might turn out to be much lower than expected. There would be an associated cost in reduced margins.

One could construct a table of expected outcomes and assign a probability number to each one. We then multiply each outcome by its probability of occurrence. We would then have what statisticians would describe as a payoff table. Of course it is not always possible to reduce outcomes to mutually exclusive events so that the sum total of the probabilities is one. If we could, then the value of the decision itself could be computed more rigorously by taking the total of the payoff table. However, that is really straying into another field altogether and is not necessarily an essential part of bullet proofing, which has much more to do with what action one can take to counter every possible adverse outcome that can be visualised. Monetary valuation is only a secondary matter at this point. More important issues under bullet proofing are: how bad will this particular outcome be? What can one do to mitigate its effects by managerial action? The latter includes effectively communicating the decision, being open to receiving feedback from all levels of the organisation and being clearly seen to make a sincere effort to allay fears and take account of genuine worries. At any rate the person implementing a major decision should not upset likely affected parties so much as to put their backs up, and make matters worse for himself.

(The writer, a former Director of IFMR, is a management consultant.)