Judgment in Managerial Decision Making

Judgment in Managerial Decision Making

Causes of the poor decision

"The Bay of Pigs Invasion" called for the most vital decisions in the U.S. The consequences were widespread. Even today, they are still felt particularly in American-Cuban communities. The highest government officials made decisions that show us that U.S. is also far from perfect. They created a plan, which was not fully thought through and cost them dearly: global embarrassment. They led to the destruction of the communist threat, which was close to the shores, eventually making the government and CIA look incompetent (Craughwell & Phelps, 2008).

After prolonged considerations between Kennedy and his top advisors, he approved a covert invasion. Castro learnt of the threat. The invaders were extremely outnumbered. Lacking ammunition, air support and a route to escape, they surrendered while others died. Declassified documents of the CIA illuminate the flaws in decision-making that caused the failure. CIA top leaders blamed Kennedy for failing to authorize key air strikes. The wishful thinking relating to the possible uprising among the military and population of Cuba was faulted. Planners were guided by the assumption that the invaders would fade into the mountains in the form of guerilla operations (Blight & Kornbluh, 2007).

I feel that Kennedy's chief advisors were not willing to challenge the poor suggestions; perhaps they feared being victimized. For instance, Arthur Schlesinger, one of the presidential advisors brought critical objections to the invasion through a memorandum to the president. However, he suppressed his doubts towards the team meetings. In a private meeting, Robert Kennedy, the then attorney general reprimanded Schlesinger to support the decisions made by the president, to invade. Apart from Schlesinger, each member had serious concerns. However, they assumed that all members had approved the plan to invade; this led to the massive failure (Higgins, 2009).

The invasion failed: it made Kennedy appear inexperienced, weak, an indecisive. The Soviet leaders capitalized on the failures of the youthful U.S. president. A few months later, Soviet's premiere began constructing the Great Wall to separate West Berlin from East Berlin. A year later, Soviet's premier in collaboration with Cuba installed nuclear missiles on the Cuban island, a few miles from the U.S. This decision triggered the Missile Crisis in Cuba and many global leaders feared the possibility of a nuclear war (Blight & Kornbluh, 2007).

Focalism / focusing illusion played a part in this failure

As evidenced above, Kennedy's reign offers potent examples of the psychological theory about flawed focusing illusion (group decision-making). Because the group culture overruled the internal agreement, members became unrealistic. In this case, the products of focusing illusions played a part in the failure of the invasion. President Kennedy's poor decision-making practices led to insufficient solutions to the issues of the invasion. Because the president and his advisors limited their discussions to few alternative courses of action, they disregarded further consideration of alternatives, which could have been worthy to the course. The team ignored all viable solutions to issues, often overlooking better solutions. They failed to re-examine the original course of action, which had been preferred by the majority after the president learnt of drawbacks and risks they had not considered initially.