In using the problem-solving and situational approach, the manager has to ask himself: (1) Whether he has understood the situation by rigorously and repeatedly asking the following questions: What? When? How? Why? Who(m)? Where? How much (many)? and (2) Whether he has brought all his creative, logical, and critical thought processes to bear on the following stages of analysis: - Problem(s) - Criteria - Options - Decision/Recommendation - Action plan - Contingency plan. Moreover, he should guard himself against doing this thinking merely as a form-filling exercise. To sharpen his own thinking, it may be useful to discuss his thoughts with others and get them to share their understanding, analysis and suggestions with him. Finally, the manager must remember that decision-making is not an act of summarizing the views that he has elicited, but an act of synthesizing them into an integrated decision or recommendation and an integrated action plan. Decision-making is an iterative act, and one may remember the following philosophical lines of T.S. Eliot: What we call the beginning is often the end and to make an end is to make a beginning .