Consider the Harvard Business School. In second place for undergraduate training are the service academies, with 24 alums. The academies teach their graduates to make quick decisions. In combat, squad leaders don t have the luxury of consulting with headquarters. They are forced to make crucial quick decisions on their own.
Lives depend on it.
With many firms flattening their decisionmaking hierarchies, this has become a valuable skill in business. This is very characteristic of business. Businesses that do this well end up with higher performance. Kimsey observes this process in the company he helped build. At AOL, you see battalions of programmers who sit there and communicate with each other.