Welcome to a tutorial on the "three-dimensional" book review. Pay attention, don’t skim. And read the map now. What map? The next seven paragraphs.

This tutorial "contains" a full review. To make your processing easier, every long book extract appears in bolded purple. To make my instructional notes plainer, any extended passage in italics is about the logic and structure of this type of review, rather than the book itself.

In other words, italics means I’m describing the process, while regular text carries out the real-world demonstration, and bolded purple text is a simpler way to download from the book (it beats a sea of quotation marks). Sounds cluttered? Well, you won’t see many italicized parts; they are really meant for my fellow editors.

But what’s a three-dimensional review? It’s the only way to cover the needs of all three parties: (a) The author; (b) the reader of the review -- and potential book-buyer; and (c) the reviewer/editor, who’s entitled to his or her opinions as long as they do not obscure the basic message of the author.

The work of the author is conveyed in-depth. The potential purchaser of the book can call up examples of the prose and analysis. And the reviewer -- in this case, an "Exacting Editor" running the demo -- can make cast-iron points about clarity and practicality, who should buy, how to use, etc.

The book on the operating table is Why Decisions Fail: Avoiding the Blunders and Traps That Lead to Debacles (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc. 2002). It runs 332 pages and lists for $22.95 (kind of high for a softbound, no?) -- ISBN 1-57675-150-3. Online ordering via www.BKConnection.com or call 1-800-929-2929.

The author is Paul C. Nutt, a professor of Management Sciences and Public Policy and Management in the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University. He authored six earlier books on transformation, leadership, strategic management, planning, decision-making, and evaluation.

We’ll start with my trademark "book review in brief." The formatting logic can be found at www.ExactingEditor.com/Review3D.html -- yet the mode is almost self-explanatory. This being the web, the typical reader will want to get the highlights fast. Accommodate that desire…

Why Decisions Fail -- Reviewed in Brief

WRITING STYLE: Why Decisions Fail is crisp and businesslike, offset by a tendency to tweak the meanings of mundane words like concern, consideration and claim, and to misuse "tactics" throughout the entire book. Not quite conversational, but at the same time not academic or jargony -- although a bit of new jargon would beat revising so many simple words.

FRAMEWORK: Fifteen case-study "debacles" give way to complex tables of procedural advice on how to prevent big trouble. Included are the EuroDisney theme park (CEO Eisner chose France over Spain); the Denver International Airport; Ford's belated recall of the Pinto; and BeechNut's misrepresentation of its apple-juice product (compounded by selling 500,000 cases of its suddenly controversial inventory while it stalled the probe; the FDA ultimately got into the act, and company losses topped $25 million).

INTENDED AUDIENCE (drawn from the Preface): "The book is directed toward a practitioner audience of mid-level to upper-level managers in for-profit and nonprofit organizations, those who aspire to these positions, and others who serve these groups. Those in executive education and master's management programs, such as MEA, MHA, MPA, may also find this book useful."

THE BEST AUDIENCE (according to this reviewer): Anyone with a responsible role in an ambitious project with external stakeholders that has a deadline 12 or more months away. If your project's climax is closer than that, it's probably too late to head off the type of disaster profiled by Professor Nutt.

WHO WILL "ENJOY" THIS BOOK? Damage-controllers, defensive pessimists (a helpful term coined by author and Wellesley academic Julie K. Norem in 2001), Dilbert fans, and those who cherish Eisenhower's World War Two maxim: "Rely on planning, but never trust plans."

WHO NEEDS THIS BOOK BUT WILL NOT ENJOY IT? Visionaries. Heed Professor Nutt when he says: "Avoid using an idea as a direction. People are drawn to the idea -- either to support it or to resist it. Debates about what is needed get lost in debates over the merit of the idea... Hold back ideas until a thoughtful direction is set that indicates the desired result" (page 129).

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK: Reading the whole book in one or two sittings will risk brain-lock. Why? Because the quest for generic method is so dominated by the case studies. You’ll do better to (1) approach Why Decisions Fail as a collection of monographs or magazine articles; (2) pick the case study closest to your industry and/or current management duty; and (3) zero in on the related chapters.

JUSTIFIED AUTHOR BOAST: "The scope of the research effort that stands behind the recommendations is unprecedented," writes Nutt. "To draw conclusions, 400 decisions made by top managers in private, public, and nonprofit organizations across the United States, Canada and Europe were collected and analyzed over a period of 20 years."

If you came here just looking for a quick sum-up, you are done, and thanks for dropping by. Otherwise, next section -- the part that feels most like a traditional review. On the web, you can get away with such length, assuming you’ve served up the "in brief" version first.

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Why Decisions Fail:
Avoiding the Blunders and Traps That Lead to Debacles
by Paul C. Nutt (Berrett-Koehler, 332 pages, $22.95)

What makes this book soar are the case studies, several of the chapters, and the respect it shows for the psychological and "political" aspects of leadership. "The research spotlights decisions made by real people who experience real consequence for their actions."

But what does author Nutt mean by a "failed" decision? The fourth sentence (in the Preface) calls on 20 years of study to say "the key finding is startling -- decisions fail half the time." Does he mean that the decision itself was wrong, or that it was improperly executed?

This book never does distinguish between what change-management author Daryl Conner terms installation and realization. To "install" is to change the policy; to "realize" is to achieve the cultural and other desired effects of policy change. For more on this dichotomy, download the "Installation versus Realization" file from this menu.

Certain policy changes -- a tax reform bill, a Fed decision on interest rates -- are almost self-executing, but most are not. And of course no big "project" is. One of my clients, the Public Governance Institute (PGI), shorthands the gap as the What versus the How. The bulk of Why Decisions Fail points us back toward What as opposed to How. But Nutt’s analyses, because they treat "decision" as a long process, often end up describing the how of the what.

My guess is that Paul Nutt would shun the Conner-PGI dichotomy of What versus How. Fair enough, it’s his book. Yet this makes it hard to shape a model of intelligent change and how to deliver it. In fact, I kept wanting to treat each chapter as if it were a separate monograph. In the author's mind, they come together to build a methodology for decision-makers. But getting there is fitful and episodic.

If you’re looking for distilled lessons from Why Decisions Fail, you can almost pick any 50 pages at random, and find enough to enhance your executive perspective and toolkit. Chapter 11 seeks to bring all the lessons together, without links to the case studies, and the result is surprising. I'll explain that at the very end. Right now it's time to pay tribute to two outstanding chapters, and complain about word games.

When Damage-Control is Outrun By Damage

Chapter 4 shows this book at its worst and best. The worst is when simple words are redefined into something vaguely incoherent. The best is exemplified by two of the book's 15 case studies. One is Shell's dismantling of the Brent Spar oil-storage facility. This $1 billion 14,500-ton North Sea metal monster embroiled the company in a war with Greenpeace and then the European Union.

How to dispose of an obsolete oil rig[?]. Company officials decided to take advantage of an international law that allowed deep-seas disposal. Crude oil was removed from the storage tanks and internal pipe work, and each was flushed with seawater. The contaminated seawater was pumped into a tanker and carted away for disposal. Bouyancy tanks were rigged to prevent flooding in preparation for dumping at a deep-sea site in the North Sea.

Norway and Britain said fine, Shell announced the plan, and

Company officials were shocked at the response [as Greenpeace] activists flew to the spar by helicopter and boarded it… From the deck of the spar, with worldwide media coverage, Greenpeace spokespersons argued that that the planned sea dumping was environmentally irresponsible.

As in most of the case studies, author Nutt "leaves no perspective unseen." Even so, retracing the route to PR catastrophe reinforces my doubt that Shell could’ve placated Greenpeace. Top management did have environmental protection in the decision matrix, but not high enough.

The company spent three years and millions of dollars to evaluate disposal options… Deep-sea disposal was selected because it posed less environmental risk, had less expense, and would be easier to plan for than onshore dismantling… [But] it became apparent that some of Shell’s claims supporting the deep-sea options were optimistic [and governments] that had approved the plan backpedaled. Consumer boycotts…began. There were outbreaks of violence and threats to Shell employees… With the exception of Britain and Norway, all EU governments now backed Greenpeace’s position.

Remember those ‘90s commercial trying to reposition Shell as a green company that only incidentally sold something black? Well, this is how it all began. The company experienced a kind of slow-motion Stockholm Syndrome, taking on the values of the activist gang that made it a PR hostage. They'd never be blindsided in this manner again.

Second case study, still Chapter 4, is "The Waco Siege," a 51-day standoff in Texas that took over 80 lives, including those of 17 children and (at the start) four ATF agents trying to serve a search warrant. Nutt's is the tightest short analysis one could want of this mix of religious fanaticism and governmental jitters. Savor these two paragraphs:

Waco brought out the blame-mongers, as do all debacles. Committees were empanelled to investigate, the press called for scapegoats, zealots used the situation to push their causes, and opportunists wrote books. The Treasury Department, home of the ATF [Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau], issued a long report. The Justice Department did the same, focusing on the FBI's role. Congress investigated and issued a partisan response... Zealots exploited the situation to further their causes. NRA supporters claimed the Clinton Administration set up the situation to muster support for a total gun ban. ACLU supporters wanted to rein in out-of-control law enforcement officers prone to using deadly force and physical abuse, to stop entrapment, and to put limits on the rules of engagement...
     Defensive behavior from those who could be held accountable grew with the blame-mongering, An FBI spokesman claimed that agents were under orders, making actions taken at Waco beyond their control. Larry Potts, a senior FBI officer who was later demoted, scoffed at the notion of missed opportunities. Jack Zimmerman, a lawyer, testified that he had worked out a surrender plan with [cult leader David] Koresh. People on the scene said that the FBI was unwilling to wait "10 more days." The ATF report claimed they were not equipped to handle operations like Waco. Ignoring this, the ATF director was sacked and five others suspended. The director's successor, John Magaw, refused congressional requests for personnel records of all those involved with the Waco fiasco arguing that data was being sought indiscriminately, which was likely.

And then Why Decisions Fail updates some of the claims and denials, using evidence unearthed later. His after-action analysis of these Waco and Shell, and most of the other debacles, is comprehensive without being nitpicky. But now this review has to deliver some nitpicking.

It’s the Author’s Book, but It’s Still Our Dictionary

As indicated, Professor Nutt defines "decision" as a process rather than an event. Seems that a decision has "five stages." You collect info, set a direction "that indicates the desired result," search for ideas systematically, grade those ideas against the chosen direction, and "manage social and political barriers...during implementation." In another part of the book, he seems to begin the trail of "decision" with simple awareness that something new is going on.

Stretching the word "decision" over everything from awareness by a single stakeholder to managing "social and political barriers" is impossible to swallow. Change-implementation includes decisions, granted, but the decision (fundamentally, what to do; the core policy commitment) stands apart from the Implementation (how to do it).

Decision-making begins when a stakeholder notes a trend or event with sufficient importance to prompt a "consideration" or create a "concern." A consideration suggests an opportunity [and the resulting] "claim" identifies an "arena of action."

Everyone reading this knows more or less what opportunity, consideration, concern, claim and arena mean. But the author feels the need to redefine some of those words in relation to the rest. Later he makes "edict," "persuasion" and "intervention" part of the panoply, and manages to differentiate "comprehensive" from "complete" as adjectives. If you skim these parts of the book, you will soon be lost. If you take these sections seriously, you’ll acquire a new vocabulary. On it goes:

The claim points to an opportunity. The message is usually clear-cut -- let's put the opportunity to use... The difficulty here is to recognize relevant considerations. A decision-maker who listens selectively to claimants, based solely on their influence, can miss good ideas...

Translation of that last sentence: Don't let who you know influence too much what you hear. Later on, the author is ingenious at diagramming ways to avoid every trap he has defined. But this book unintentionally sets a few traps of its own by retooling common words. I can’t resist showing another example, from page 62:

A claim that stems from a consideration appears much like a claim prompted by a concern. Both call for action with an idea. A consideration-based claim hides little, but a concern-based claim often does, which can trap the unsuspecting decision-maker. The claim-concern link is often murky because concerns stem from a need. A stakeholder who sees a trend or event as posing a personal or organizational concern folds in a host of unspoken beliefs and aspirations to make a judgment about the need for action. The conclusion drawn becomes the claim [and a] claimant may not understand the connection. For example, a sales manager loses patience with a series of fouled-up orders that have delayed delivery (the concerns) and calls attention to logistical failures in distribution (the claim). The claim says nothing about the fouled-up orders, so little is revealed about motivations... If you buy into a claim without understanding its motivating concerns, you can misdirect effort.

I read pages 61-62 five times. Rarely have so many simple words been redefined or reassembled to complicate three root points; (a) Concerns are bad -- half-hidden, selfish, or just too narrow in an operational sense; (b) Considerations are good, as they acknowledge a pertinent business reality; and (c) a claim can be either good or bad, realistic/pertinent or skewed/personalized.

These linguistic loop-de-loops lasso us elsewhere, for example this book’s strange use of the word "tactics." Page 45 tries to define it: "A tactic indicates how managers go about uncovering the things that are called for in a given stage." No, it doesn’t. I opted to rely on tactical override every time I saw the word "tactic." You'll have to do so often, if you come out of the management or political realms, or even if you like to play Scrabble.

And, if your business is editing the manuscript rather than critiquing the book, here’s the take-away: Fight to stop your author-client from reinventing the wheel. Putting a new spin on a conventional word or phrase can sometimes be refreshing. But relentless tweaking suggests the project has too many grad students performing free labor, or intuitive thinkers (NT) exploring cerebral hyperspace. I mean, what other types would go along with so many redefinitions?

Time for the next-to-last section, and the book’s finest hour.

The Financial Nature of the Public-Sector Beast

Most chapter titles in Why Decisions Fail start with one word: "Traps." And Chapter 9's title is the shortest: "Ethical Traps." Lots of things are different about this chapter. Main one is that Paul Nutt departs from his severely analytic mode. He begins by sketching "ethical issues" more widely than you or I would, all the way down to "fair treatment" for a lone FedEx driver.

Then came the point of maximum dislocation for your reviewer: "Let's turn our attention to how ethical issues arose in a decision to build a light rail system for mass transit." What?!? Ethics are for pro-life versus pro-choice, or what's going on in Iraq, or corporate governance.

To my surprise, though, this ends up the best chapter -- for anyone whose focus is the public sector. Not because of the case study, but because of research that confirms an enduring pattern. From San Francisco 30 years ago, Nutt rehashes the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART), which went from a $720 million, 123-mile project to a 71-mile system that cost $1.6 billion to build. Over twice the outlay, for 42% fewer miles.

After the dust settled, $2 of subsidy were needed to create $1 of revenue [and the] costs of operating BART were twice as high as a bus system and 50% greater than using an automobile.

This example out of the way in two pages, Nutt goes hunting latter-day game. He turns his newly moralistic eye to light-rail systems.

Similarities with underground mass-transit debacles are everywhere... Plans call for developing underused and abandoned rail corridors to connect urbanites to downtown and to neighboring cities... But all pricey infrastructure projects pose ethical concerns.

Such projects seem ideal breeding grounds for confusion, self-delusion, collusion and -- when it comes to city operating budgets -- concussion and repercussion. Remember that "the connecting rail beds [have mostly] deteriorated from neglect and poor maintenance, and all have half-century-old technology unable to support today's high-speed trains. Stations have been lost to urban revival and sappy projects like convention centers..."

Train right-of-ways are far from where today's urban commuters live, requiring a commute to access them. A park-and-ride approach increases many commuters travel time and imposes parking hassles. This leads to low ridership, which drives up costs. Taxpayer subsidies are demanded. Sound familiar? The zealot's hype gets translated into tenuous assumptions, defensive evaluations, and a failure to even approach the dual goals of controlling commuting cost and reducing congestion… In 10 light-rail projects, ridership ranged from 15% to 72% of forecasts, and construction and operating costs were always underestimated. Construction costs averaged 50% about estimate and operating costs 100% above estimates. These same overly optimistic projections of cost are made over and over again [all this text is from page 203].

"Over and over again" -- and not just in subway or light-rail endeavors. Consider the space station, originally endorsed by President Reagan 20 years ago as an $8 billion project. Or nuclear reactors (even in the years before protest groups developed an unhealthy glow at the prospect of new ones). Or America’s prescription drug bill -- a year after passage the estimated long-term had ballooned by 50%. Or the "Big Dig" in Boston.

Over and over again. Confronting mounds of statistical evidence for fraud and hype, Nutt produces a primer (on government projects) that could in part be delivered from a pulpit. He ends up agreeing with Peter Drucker that "business ethics" are an absurd proposition, and that an organization can be no better than the individual ethics we bring to it. "People who suspend personal ethics and substitute the ethic to serve the organization are driven by self-indulgence, self-righteousness, self-protection and self-deception." There follows a page and a half on each of those four.

If you like excellent research (like the other chapters, this one cites many scholarly studies) on the way to strong judgment, this is a sterling chapter. For anyone in government still looking out for us taxpayers, it offers ways to be a hero -- 10 pages on that score. No one ever said doing something big, serving the public interest, and keeping costs in check was easy.

But this chapter defines disaster-prevention for any public-sector change-sponsor or change-agent -- if they are willing to see the thing whole, ask the tough questions -- "over and over again" -- and rejoice in the embarrassment they trigger. When that happens, as long as the embarrassment belongs to someone other than you, you are kicking over the right rocks.

For the Hard Core, a Set of Extracts

What macro conclusions has Paul C. Nutt reached after decades of analyzing the decision-making process in and out of government? Click here and prepare to be surprised, even reassured.

But we're out of space on this, the main document. So let me reprise my own conclusion on how to best use this detailed and lively book about real-world project-management, including as it does the social and political part of the terrain:

(1)      Approach Why Decisions Fail as a collection of monographs or magazine articles;

(2)      pick the case study closest to your industry and/or current management duty; and

(3)      and zero in on the related chapters.

This sample review and the surrounding instructional points took 3,700 words. Two questions if you made it this far. First, how could this "three-dimensional" format -- which looks out for the author, the would-be buyer, and the reviewer’s right to sound off -- be delivered in a way that is more concise without losing comprehensiveness?

          Send suggestions to FrankGregorsky@aol.com

And, should Ohio State U. academic Paul Nutt find this review, a proposal: I’d like to make a tape with you next time I have business in central Ohio. For a set of the rest of your books, I will take care of all the administrative details, transcript included.

© 2004, Gregorsky Editorial Services