THE Cynic's Dictionary says a decision is "what a man makes when he cannot get anyone to serve on a committee".

A committee, on the other hand, is "a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled".

Some may recognise these not as jokes but as a true reflection of life in their workplace where decisions, if made at all, are made slowly and apparently in excruciating pain.

Even the best managers can have difficulty reaching decisions.

Bruce Chizen, president/CEO of the giant software company Adobe Systems, recently admitted he had delayed making changes to his executive team for nine months. As a result the business lost sales.

Behind his indecision - and I guess it applies to most of us - was a conflict between gut instinct and careful business logic.

We make instant emotional or intuitive judgments which may not tally with cold analysis - and may or may not be wrong. Getting the balance right can make the difference between success and failure. Master of Business Administration (MBA) courses spend a lot of time on the decision-making process, and much academic energy has gone into analysing how people make up their minds.

Anyone watching The Apprentice television series might have been startled by the off-hand way in which Sir Alan Sugar dismissed unsuccessful candidates. At times the decision to tell them "You're fired" seemed to be largely intuitive.

This may have been partly to do with the format of the programme, but there is no reason why intuition should not play a part in decisions, especially in a man with his track record

There is a perfectly good case to be made for occasionally deploying intuition and emotion.

They are best used as part of a logical process in which the rights and wrongs of the case are carefully weighed up.

But we cannot all be instinctive business geniuses.

Most of us must habitually take the safest road, looking at facts and subjecting them to careful scrutiny, but not necessarily leaving this process to committees.

I liked the cartoon that showed a man sitting at a computer and saying to a woman: "I've done the numbers and I will marry you."

We can only guess at her reply - but almost certainly it would have been emotional and intuitive.