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The best strategy for a company is to create attitudes on the part of its competitors that will cause them to restrain their competition. This "persuasion" depends on emotional and intuitive factors rather than analysis or deduction. Three activities in which emotional and intuitive factors are paramount are negotiation, mutual self-restraint or cooperation, and the inhibition of aggressive competitors.

Effective decision-making requires a distinct sequence of steps. The sequence includes identifying a generic or unique problem, defining the issues of the problem, determining the required specifications, deciding what is right rather than what is acceptable, building action into the decision, and using feedback which tests the validity.

A study at Texas Instruments (TI) revealed that a lack of minimal job competence and the resultant debilitating anxieties caused failures in problem solving. To reduce the anxiety of new employees so as to speed the achievement of a competence level, manufacturing managers at TI designed a special orientation program. The results were significant gains in learning time, quality production, and job attendance.

A detailed examination of the findings of a study focusing on executive decision making in six representative companies indicates that executives rank innovation, risk-taking, flexibility, and trust as important influences for effective decision making. Results of the investigation indicate, however, that during important decision-making meetings, executives dedicate themselves to "getting the job done," which results in a suppression of creativity and innovation. Recommended methods of breaking down barriers include certain types of questioning; playing back and analyzing tape recordings of meetings; and laboratory education and its various offshoots.

Three key concepts are fundamental to professional services, and serve as a guide to the buying or selling of these services. First, a professional service must make a direct contribution to the reduction of the uncertainties involved in managing a business. Second, a professional service must address a specific, substantive problem of the business purchasing the service. Third, a professional service can only be purchased meaningfully from someone who is capable of rendering the service.

The product life cycle measures the likelihood, character, and timing of competitive and market events. A product strategy that includes some sort of plan for a timed sequence of conditional moves provides an offensive rather than a reactive move. Most successful products pass through certain recognizable stages. Awareness of these stages affects decisions on marketing factors such as pricing, product identity, and sales and distribution networks. New uses and new customers extend the product life cycle. Planning in the early stages for product life extension helps to guide the direction of ongoing technical research in support of the product.

The growing pace of change demands that companies structure themselves to ensure that external and internal problems are both given sustained attention, instead of having managers oscillate from one group of problems to the other. Companies need management structures conducive to innovation. A new staff function, decision analysis, will help. Managers need to be broader-minded than their predecessors.

This sequel to Can You Analyze This Problem? (May-June 1965) describes the Kepner-Tregoe concepts and procedures for problem analysis. The main steps of a systematic approach to problem analysis include defining the problem, outlining the specifications, spotting the distinction, seeking the cause, and, if necessary, respecifying the problem. The use of a specification worksheet allows managers to draw a boundary around the problem and to limit the information needed for the problem's solution to only the relevant facts. In solving the problem of the case study, precise specification and careful problem analysis uncover a previously overlooked cause and prevent action which might have produced an even more serious problem.

The Kepner-Tregoe approach replaces hit-or-miss methods with a systematic method of problem solving and decision making. Managers who train in this concept of problem analysis often discover that their reasoning methods in handling problems and decisions are faulty. Readers test their own reasoning powers against the problems presented in a case history, based on an actual situation, and can then compare the results of their analysis with the solutions presented in a subsequent article, How to Analyze That Problem (July-August 1965). The main issues of the case involve questions concerning production, labor relations, and personnel.

A study testing the effectiveness of the traditional performance appraisal program involves the completion of questionnaires by and interviews with 92 employees of a large company. Half of the managers use a high participation approach and half use a low participation method to test the effects of participation on work performance. Tentative conclusions include: coaching should be a day-to-day, not a once-a-year activity; goal setting, not criticism, should be used to improve performance; and managers should hold separate appraisals for different purposes. Work planning-and-review discussions appear to be an effective approach to improving job performance.

Self-image is an important element in a manager's development. Personal growth is a direct result of an individual's changing self-concept. While growth does not occur in clear-cut logical steps, the process involves the following elements: self-examination, which lays the groundwork for insights and changes; the identification of self-expectations; changing to meet those expectations; self-direction; the broadening of perceptions; and self-realization. Growth is the evolvement of personal goals and the sense of venture in pursuing them.

The "decision tree" is an analytical tool which helps business managers resolve uncertainties in making investment decisions. It clarifies the choices, risks, objectives, monetary gains, and information needs involved. Whether simple or complex in layout, the decision tree always combines action choices with different possible events or the results of action affected by uncontrollable circumstances. The decision-tree helps management to determine which alternative, at any particular point, yields the greatest monetary gain.

The ability to communicate and write well is invaluable to a top executive and is a major factor in determining his or her promotability. A checklist of the elements of good writing is a means for individuals and groups to improve their writing skills. The four basic criteria of the written performance inventory are readability, correctness, appropriateness, and thought. Tact, supporting detail, opinion, and attitude are critical to determine the appropriateness of upward communications. In downward communications, diplomacy, clarification of desires, and motivational aspects are more significant. The most important element of any written communication is its thought content.

A method to arrange priorities ranks objectives from the broad to the specific. Good objectives are consistent with the overall design of the enterprise and are realistic in terms of internal and external constraints. Consideration of the creative conception of a range of alternatives and the realistic effectiveness and cost of each is important in setting meaningful objectives. A clarification of objectives results in better planning, a better choice of alternatives, improved management development, and increased organizational effectiveness and efficiency.

Sales management training and development programs often fail to give a clear concept of what managing really is. Consequently, sales managers concentrate on the non-managing elements of their positions, rather than managing activities. The sales managers' effectiveness in getting results through sales personnel is essential to the marketing effort and significantly affects a company's profit and loss.

While demographic segmentation is a traditional way of analyzing markets, it is only one of many analytic methods. Segmentation analysis allows marketing executives to consider buyer attitudes, motivations, values, patterns of usage, aesthetic preferences, and degree of susceptibility. A discussion of ten markets for consumer and industrial products shows the effect of different modes of nondemographic segmentation and illustrates how segmentation analysis enlarges the scope and depth of a marketer's thinking to include the position of both new and established products. Segmentation analysis provides a significant analysis of the immense diversity of the market and offers an approach for evolving true marketing objectives.

Texas Instruments effectively linked remedial action to a study of employee problems which analyzed factors that either dissatisfied or motivated employees. Dissatisfiers are made up of such matters as pay, supplemental benefits, company policy and administration, behavior of supervision, and other factors peripheral to the actual work. Motivators include achievement level, recognition, responsibility, growth, and other factors of self-actualization.

Effective interviews optimize communication with a time constraint. Methods for planning and preparation, building a rapport, developing information, and following up are important constructions. The most important issue is realizing how one's biases and attitudes affect the collected information. Preparation should reinforce the purpose of the interview and should include a time limit and outline. The best tone is one of friendliness. The interviewer should guide information to the most productive channels. Questions should be free of sarcasm or obscure humor and should be able to fit a pattern that sharpens the focus of the interview. How to avoid or deal with silences, listen well, analyze data, and conclude the meeting are important skills.

A positive performance appraisal program begins by establishing as its focal point the improvement of performance in the job now held. Management inaugurates such a program in five steps. First, supervisors and employees agree on the job description and responsibilities. Second, the employees establish performance targets for each of their responsibilities for the forthcoming period. Third, the employees meet with their supervisors to discuss target programs. Fourth, they jointly establish check points for the evaluation of progress along with ways of measuring it. Fifth, supervisors and subordinates meet at the end of the period to discuss results. Hitting the target is not the sole measure of success.

Beliefs in the value of praise as a motivational tool, a reward, and a way to establish good relationships are inaccurate. Although praise may be a useful technique to keep human relationships on an even keel, it is questionable that praise serves as a motivational tool. To develop qualities of initiative, creativity, judgment, and problem-solving ability, dependence on "internal motivation" is necessary. By being honest about both positive and negative feelings and being empathetic and nonevaluative, listeners help establish a free, accepting, yet close relationship that will encourage independent judgment, effective decisions, and creative actions.