A CEO approach to decision making

Forbes' article on Sun Microsystems' chairman Scott McNealy provides a peek at McNealy's approach to decision making:

When you make a decision, you have to, first of all, outline the problem. Then you have to consider the alternatives. You then have to be incredibly participative in the problem definition and problem proposal--get everybody's input--and then you have to decide quickly. You can't just grind it out and think about it and wait until it becomes explicitly obvious what the answer is.

I call it participative but not consensus. One thing I always told them is: Everybody shouldn't necessarily agree with your answer. And nobody should be surprised. I always said, "I'll be very upset if you don't know how people are going to react to your decision." So that forces them to go out and talk to a lot of people.