When we began our research, we expected to find that managers' predominant decision-making styles would change as they progressed through their careers. But the patterns that jumped right out of the data were even more sharply defined than we could have imagined. We found that decision-making profiles do a complete flip over the course of a career: That is, the decision style of a successful CEO is the opposite of a successful first-line supervisor's. In the leadership (or public) mode, we see a steady progression as managers move up in the ranks toward openness, diversity of opinion, and participative decision making, matched by a step-by-step drop in the more directive, command-oriented styles. In the thinking (or private) mode, we see a progression toward the maximizing styles—where an executive prefers to gather a lot of information and think things through—and, at the highest executive levels, an uptick in the styles favoring one course of action.
There's a logic as well as an interdependence to the way the two aspects of decision making evolve. As you move up the ladder, you move further and further away from where the action takes place, so it is easy to lose touch with what's really going on in the organization.
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