Cogito Ergo Sum - Or Maybe Not

Colin Quinn, the razor-sharp and wonderfully literate comedian, observes in Long Story Short, "You can't think your way out of everything."  He's referring to the decline of ancient Greece, despite the legacy of intellectual firepower in the tradition of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

21st-century managers and leaders may face the same challenge.  There's never enough time to reason through universal and complete solutions, and there's certainly never enough data to be fully confident in decisions.  Whether we are comfortable or not with those conditions, we still must  make correct decisions and take timely action.

One research study discovered that managers spend less than nine minutes each on over half the issues they face on a daily basis.  Another study found that line foremen tackled nearly six hundred activities in an eight-hour shift, under fifty seconds each.

So, the romantic (to an engineer) notion of a scientific, systematic, reflective manager has not become reality.  Every long-term successful leader or manager must engage in a constant flow of intuitive decisions, keeping a vision of a bigger picture and a desired end state in mind.  That's good news for the right-brainers, not so much for the left-brainers.

And, our world of supply chain management is no less hectic, complicated, or challenging than what happens in general business - and may be more so.

Hey, think about it.  You've got nine minutes.  Go!