Assignment “Thirteen Days”

“Thirteen Days” presents a situation where decisions need to be

made. This movie describes how the President of the United States of
America John Kennedy dealt with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Really, there
are many decisions made in this movie by the government of the USA,
especially by the President Kennedy.

The movie showed us how the good decision making process could
save the world. But there were also some decision making traps.
1) Anchoring Trap, which said about the unequal weight given to
the first idea. We can find this trap in the situation which happened with the
generals. Their first idea was to start the invasion. They were sure that the
best idea to solve the problem on Cuba was invasion of Cuba. The
generals wanted the war, they believed it was the best choice for the
country, but the President had another idea.
2) Status Quo Trap. Due to the big importance of invasion of
Cuba given by the generals as the answer for the behavior of Soviet Union,
there was one more decision making trap made by the generals. They
believed that the war would solve the situation on Cuba as it happened
before during the time of World War II. They believed that John Kennedy
would copy the behavior of his father and would use the weapon against
the enemy. That’s why they decided to shoot the ship without the
permission of the President.
3) Confirming Evidence Trap is about the generals and their
decision to deal with the war too. They were trying to search for
preconceptions which could show that war was the only way to go. They
wanted to make sure that the airliner was shot on Cuba while he was trying
to take some pictures of the rockets. Here is one more example. There was
a scene where we could see some Russian ships approaching towards
Cuba, the officials were discussing whether to approach or not. Then a
submarine was discovered by radar and it acted like an evidence to clear
their discussion. The president ordered the captain of the US warship to
attack the submarine. However, moments later it seemed that the Russian
ships were turning back. So in that situation the decision made by US
government was not appropriate at all.
4) Framing trap. It is very important to understand what kind of
language is used to describe and explain the ideas. The generals put their
ideas in the frame of war. They believed that there was no way for
negotiations, they had to solve the problem on Cuba using the weapon.
That was a trap.
 Advocacy and Inquiry. During the whole movie we can see that
most of the meetings had inquiry rather than advocacy. Most of them had
effective debates. But there was the scene where Bobby Kennedy had got
the concept of the “quarantine” from the defense secretary, which can be
considered as advocacy, because everyone’s opinion was not evaluated.

As we know, inquiry is a good and helpful way to make decisions.

Let’s look at some examples of the practices of inquiry in decision
making.
1. Multiple Alternatives. From the very first meeting scene we have
seen the President and his team considering more and more options.
President Kennedy considered alternatives while making his final
decisions. John Kennedy gave a chance to everyone to speak before
he made a decision. He looked at the idea in relation of other ideas
and possibilities.
2. Assumption testing. When the Russian ships were moving towards
Cuba in spite of the blockade, John Kennedy told the captain to
attack the submarine protecting it. This order could have been a test
of the assumptions whether the ships would follow the rules or not.
Also let’s look at taking decisions on air strikes on the first meeting,
where they also tested the assumptions made by the defense chiefs.
3. Dissent and Debate which happened so many times during the
movie. There was Debate during congress meeting as the President
asked for the support of the congress for his decisions. The
government discussed the way of solving the situation on Cuba. The
president did not make up any decision without proper dissent and
debate. Even the President and his assistants were debating a lot till
the time they found the right solution.

“Thirteen Days” is the movie where you can learn a lot about the
group decision making process.