If no-decision managers do not make decisions, they must do something during their working day. The definition of ‘manager’ in the dictionaries does not give us any insight. There are too many action words used to describe what a manager is; words such as ‘organising’, ‘directing’, ‘controlling’ or ‘administering’. These words require an action preceded […]

If one can accept that no-decision managers exist in organisations never making decisions, the next hurdle to overcome is: “How on earth do they manage to survive in the long term?” Back to the eight no-decision managers that I worked with: four were fired, most probably because they were discovered as being no-decision managers. The […]

There is evidence that organisations do not tolerate no-decision managers at all. It seems that as soon as management discovers that they have a manager in their organisation, that does not make decisions, they are rapidly dismissed. Fifty percent of no-decision managers, I worked with were fired, I suspect, because their bosses discovered they were […]

Several Japanese colleagues have suggested to me that no-decision managers would thrive in companies which use the ‘Ringi’ decision-making process common in Japan, so I decided to compare this process with the characteristics of no-decision managers. (Note 1) I have worked in a Japanese company, but never in one that uses the Ringi process to […]

The toxic managers who never take decisions, whom I call ‘no-decision managers,’ have not yet been written about in the current management literature and no research has been done on them. They are invisible in organisations, except to their direct subordinates, yet they exist, destroying the departments they manage and de-motivating their subordinates. No-decision managers […]