Timely Access to Reliable Information.
According to Richard Janssen, Commercial Director of SMIT Salvage, the greatest challenge in any salvage operation is gaining timely access to reliable information. “Until we get people on board to assess the condition of the vessel itself, it is difficult to get an accurate picture of what we are dealing with,” he says. “The stability calculations we receive from the class of the vessel, combined with analysis from our own team, can make a big difference in how we approach salvage operations.”
The first job of a leader is to define reality.
The Experts.
One of the most important uses to which authority is put in organization is to bring about specialization in the work of making decisions, so that each decision is made at the point in the organization where it can be made most expertly.
Administrative Behavior - Herbert A. Simon
Before a boss can ensure that each decision is made where it can be made expertly, the boss must know who the experts are.
The Problem with Genius.
The problem with genius is it can look like stupidity.
And vice-versa.
The Shopping Mall.
The manager of the kebab store in the shopping mall stands at the end of the counter full of customers.
He looks down along the line of transactions between his staff and each customer.
Observing.
The manager of the fashion store in the shopping mall stands outside the front entrance with microphone and earpiece headset.
She watches the ebb and flow of customers entering and browsing and her staff moving about the busy store.
Observing.
She speaks to her staff through their earpieces, coaching, suggesting, reminding, complimenting.
A leader defines and holds the space.
Confused.
When the positional power boss gets it wrong, people rarely blame the boss.
We attribute it to the position.
As if the position got it wrong.
But we can’t have that. We can’t reconcile the dissonance.
After all, we - by our deference - are who gives the position its power.
Are we therefore wrong instead?
We’re confused.
Meanwhile, the positional power boss has moved on.
Still in power.
Trip Hazard.
You think you’ve got it all together.
Then you trip and fall.
Literally.
Instantly - everything is uncertain.
With the Luxury.
She makes decision after decision after decision that leads her - and others - where they want to be.
Unnoticed. Uncommented upon.
One day she makes a ‘bad’ decision.
Everybody notices and judges and characterises her by that one decision.
From the luxury and privilege and perspective of the vantage point where she had led them.
Chaos Theory.
The bad boss uses positional power to make (or avoid) decisions on the fly.
The bad boss creates chaos.
The bad boss then uses their positional power to make (or avoid) decisions addressing the chaos.
The bad boss doesn’t mind if their decisions reduce the chaos because chaos is the natural state of things and justifies why the have the boss power to fix it.
The bad boss privately laments the lack of good people to prevent or fix the chaos.
The bad boss-created chaos reinforces the bad boss’s belief that only they can run the organisation.
Play It Loud.
I bought my first car at uni for a few hundred dollars.
Installed a stereo and put the speakers inside wine casks I placed on the back shelf.
I played music loudly and never had any problems with the mechanics.
It was only on the rare times I didn’t turn on the tape deck that the engine ever made ominous sounds.
A bad boss thinks they’re good because nobody tells them otherwise.
Their bombastic manner and dominating ego drown out any sounds of dissent.
It takes an organisational break down for the problems to be addressed.
Often long after the bad boss has gone.
Correction.
I spent my first year out of Law School having my words red penned by the senior partner.
I had thought I was a good writer until that year.
So had most of my school teachers, lecturers, tutors, and examiners.
But the partner had skin in the game.
My words went out to clients under his firm’s name.
‘A good Lawyer,’ the partner had told me, ‘Can write a good letter and get on with people.’
The slashes and scribbles of red pen became less as the year progressed.
But right until I was admitted as a legal practitioner, he was correcting my work.
Spending time making me a better lawyer and communicator.
‘Don’t lose your confidence when the partners critique your work,’ a senior lawyer at one of our professional development sessions counselled us during that year. ‘If your principal had someone checking their drafts, they’d make as many corrections if not more.’
‘All of the current practitioners reckon we would never have been accepted into Law School if we had to apply when your cohort did,’ the partner had said to me in my first week.
I hung on to this wisdom each time my letters came back, slashed.
Years after that remarkable eduction, I was asked to check another person’s work.
I took the time to make corrections and suggest improvements.
A week later I was called in by the boss.
‘She has complained that you’re bullying her,’ the boss said.
The Lump of Coal.
Most meetings are like the boss pulling out a lump of coal.
Shifting it from hand to hand.
‘I’ve got this lump of coal,’ the boss says.
Maybe tossing it back and forth between one or two favoured sets of hands.
Back and forth.
Juggle for a bit.
Maybe one of the favoured tosses it to less favoured hands - just to show they can.
Pass, juggle, pass.
Meeting ends.
One or two rise and wonder how they will power the furnaces of creativity without that lump of coal.
One laments that the lump will never become a diamond.
One Decision.
A ship’s captain plots a course from port to port.
An airline pilot lodges a flight plan from origin to destination.
A racing car driver starts and ends at the same place on a circuit.
One decision: How do I get from where I am to where I want to be?
All the hundreds of thousands of micro-decisions from port to port, origin to destination, start to finish - are made easier because of the one decision:
Where do I want to get to.
The New Virtues.
Bad bosses do not want us to be virtuous.
It’s too difficult for them.
Instead they set up and endorse ‘new’ virtues for us to aspire to, and for them to reward and thus retain our loyalty.
Complying with the new virtues - attending meetings, agreeing with the boss, calling out breaches of the virtues - are much more visible to the bad boss and easier for them to measure and affirm than authentic Virtues.
We are duped into confusing virtuous behaviour with the virtue.
We are duped into kneeling before the boss as we knelt before God.
Cuts Both Ways.
An organisation can only do what it does because of the acts and omissions of the silent majority of its people.
The acts and omissions of a silent majority of an organisations’ people allow it to do what it does.
The Beached Boss.
Someone makes an allegation against the bad boss.
The boss who has ruled by positional power and presided over meetings of compliant, almost mute workers.
The boss who has, until now, imposed their will on events.
Then the allegation, followed by an investigation with interviews of workers.
The bad boss flounders like a beached whale in the shallows of their superficial relationships.
Perhaps one sycophant forlornly and tokenly splashes words of reassurance over the carcass.
The rest of the workers keep their distance and watch on - disengaged.
Like they always have.
Your Future.
“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.” - William Gibson
Someone somewhere in your organisation has already resolved an issue that you’ve yet to encounter.
Your future - answering that question or solving that problem - is already here.
Who in you organisation has the job of evenly distributing it?