The Decision Making Spiral.
A good decision is one that advance us towards where we want to be.
The decision making process isn't a straight line.
It's a circle. More a spiral.
The end of our decision process is to take us back to where we started; albeit with the benefit of the information gathered, we have a more advanced understanding of our position in relation to where we want to be - our Widget.
(Which is really a better understanding of ourselves.)
Think of a coil - like as in a spring. Follow the coil one full rotation until it's back on the same plane as where you started - although further along the horizontal axis. That's the decision making path of inquiry.
Each decision builds on the one before it and is connected to it - as it will be to the ones after it.
When we circumvent the decision making process by using positional power, or instinct, or guesswork to get directly to where we want to be, we don't lay a coil of reasoning and learning behind us that we can build upon to spring us into our next decision. We just arrive at a place, with no understanding of how we got there except that we are the boss, or high enough up HR's wire diagram, or play tennis with someone who is.
No path for anyone else to follow us, therefore no possibility of Leadership. Or of Learning.
Our decision making process is like the rifling in a gun barrel; the Five Steps are the grooves that guide the bullet into a spin on its axis as it propels along the barrel of thought, thus stabilising its flight and therefore its accuracy towards its target.
Our Widget.
The Leader as Orchestra Conductor.
'The conductor, often referred to as the orchestra 'leader', does not play a musical instrument, nor sing an aria; He does not recite lines; he appears in no chorus or ballet. He does none of those things. Indeed, for want of the talents they require, he could not do any of those things. Yet he renders an indispensible service. He draws out the gifts of others; he coordinates, motivates, inspires; quietly and almost unnoticed, he makes the entire production happen. Such a picture of leadership should perhaps find an analogue in the administrative decision making processes..'
- Robert T. Kennedy 'Shared Responsibility in Ecclesial Decision Making'
The leader as conductor of an orchestra is an excellent metaphor that has been explored in many books.
James Jeffery, a journalist, recently wrote about his experience in conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Read these extracts and recognise in a conductor, the qualities of the authentic Leader in any field.
'When you’re conducting...part of what you’re having to do is process everything in as close to real time as you possibly can. You have to both process the now, what’s going on right when you’ve heard it; and the things that are constantly getting further in the past, making decisions whether there are things that need to be referred to, whether it’s something you can do the next time, whether it’s something you need to stop on, whether there’s a particular player or section that has a problem and if they need your attention visually while the music is still going on. And then you’re constantly aware of what is coming so you can be prepared to make the gestures that allow that music to happen.
'So there’s this almost field theory way of looking at time, where you don’t just exist in the now, you exist in the present, past and future simultaneously.
'It’s about creating an environment in which everybody feels not only that they can give their best but that they can take chances. Great things don’t happen without people really trying to take chances.
'Part of your job is to make it so that the musicians have the best chance collectively to engage with the music and to get better as a group as (well as) they possibly can — so you’re also kind of involved in cognitive psychology. What is it that allows people to do their best, how do they perceive information and take it in, what amount can you give things, what’s the best way to handle the group dynamic at any particular moment?
'What [orchestra members] respond to most is trust. I’ll be honest, none of [the orchestra members] trusted you at all. It had nothing to do with the way you were moving your arms, it was the terror in your eyes, the ‘Oh my God, what am I doing here?”....While we were instinctively able to follow your arm movements, we knew instinctively that you were not to be trusted.
'If you look back in history at the sort of figures conductors cut, you look at Bernstein, you look at (Herbert) von Karajan, walking around with cashmere jackets draped over their shoulders, walking in as if they owned, well, they did own the place. The way they walk into the rehearsal affects the way we start to play.
'The hardest thing for a conductor to do is to have the conviction of their beliefs, to tell 100 people in front of them, who know the music inside out, that their way is correct. That is why they have such thick skin, and why they’re paid so much more money, because they have to believe it, make us believe it, and make the audience believe it. And that’s what they’re there for, otherwise it’s a committee.
'In a sense, the complexities of conducting equal the complexities of communication between people....There’s a certain point at which you become like Wittgenstein — ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’ At the same time, Laurie Anderson quite correctly in her response to that says, ‘But can you point at it?’ So there is a sense in which you try to bring out the ineffable, but you’re not able to do it, so you just point at it.'
Be Yourself.
“Take that [rhythm] you’ve got in your foot and put it into your arm,” the maestro urges.'
- Sydney Symphony Orchestra Conductor David Robertson's advice to journalist and first time conductor, James Jeffrey
'I was telling my students about your little leadership habit,' Flight Lieutenant Waugh said when we caught up over lunch in the RAAF Base Point Cook Officers Mess. Kathy had been my Directing Staff or 'DS' during my Officer Training a few months earlier. I was intrigued. What did I, a newly-minted Air Force Officer, have to teach anyone about leadership?
'I told them about how you wrote down in your calendar when your Corporal said that she was having her hair done over the weekend so that you could remember to compliment her on it when you saw her on Monday.'
Something didn't feel right about that then, and it still doesn't.
The management books are full of 'fake it 'til you make it' advice to would-be leaders. Tips and tricks to look like you care about your people so that they will be motivated to work harder for you. I think I had been joking with Kathy about my calendar reminder, but I've been a bad boss so I've faked sincerity in other ways.
New and aspiring bosses get caught in the no man's land between remembering what they wished their boss had done for them, and not knowing how, or having the self-confidence, to do it for their workers. So we read the leadership books and do a bit of management by walking around, noting of people's children's names, and try to look interested during long winded responses to our rote 'How was your weekend?' questions.
It's hard.
As one of my bosses, the Abbot of New Norcia used to say to me:
Be yourself.
Take that steady rhythm of humanity in your heart, the wounds from so many bad bosses, your own fear that you recognise in our faces, the optimism and belief in the fundamental goodness in us all - including yourself - and put it into your baton.
Then lead us in playing each of our instruments in your original composition.
We Don't Need Another Leader.
Everyone is under pressure to be leading.
It's because we're not doing our job. We're not going where our boss wants us to go. We're not making her Widget to her satisfaction.
Our bosses don't know what to do about us not doing our jobs (ie they don't know how to do their jobs).
So the bosses train or recruit people whose job is to get us to do our jobs - ie do the boss's job for them.
We call those people 'Leaders', and call them getting us to do our jobs 'Leadership', because 'Leader' is sexier than 'Person who Gets Us To Do Our Jobs Because the Boss Can't.'
Then many of the 'leaders' don't do their jobs to the boss's satisfaction.
So they need someone to get them to do their jobs - ie a 'leader'.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Throw in some expensive 'Accountability' (compliance) to measure whether the leaders are effective or to find evidence to sack them.
Eventually, faster than we can chant 'We're totally committed to the highest standards of...'
We're working in a bureaucracy.
We don't need more Leaders.
We just need to do our jobs the way our boss wants them done.
Doing our jobs means making good decisions.
Most of us (including our bosses) don't know how to make good decisions.
It's a skill we need to learn and practise.
Transfer the Leadership Training budget into Good Decision Making Training.
Good decisions advance us towards where our boss wants us to be.
If, during our advance, we turn around and one person is following us:
Leader.
A Call for an Inquiry.
There's always Investigations Into What Went Wrong.
There should be Investigations Into What Went Right.
De-stigmatise 'Investigations' into simply a neutral process of gathering information.
Step 3: Assess the Information.
Verify Range to Target.
'Verify our range to target. One ping only.'
- Captain Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) The Hunt for Red October
Our decisions are like a submarine's sonar pings.
They announce our position in the world - to the world - and the world pings back its position in relation to us - and we learn more about our position in the world - and we learn more about the world.
About where we are.
About our range to target. (Our Widget.)
About any course adjustments we need to make to get there.
The accuracy of the information learned from a sonar ping relies upon the constant of the speed of sound through water.
The accuracy of the information learned from a decision relies upon the constant of the Five Steps to a Good Decision.
The more good decision making pings we make - the more we learn about our Widget, the world, and ourselves.
The Widget is at the Centre of the Picture.
'After the course, students also told fewer personal narratives and stories and instead worked to interpret the images using only the evidence before them. In physical examinations, it's important for clinicians to remove this type of bias..'
- Craig Klugman, Bioethicist and Medical Anthropologist
In an attempt to develop their observation skills, health care professionals were taught an art appreciation course modelled on one taught to children.
Participants were shown art works and asked:
- What do you see?
- What do you see that makes you think that?
- What more do you see?
The students who took the course discussed emotion less and made more medical observations, using more clinical language. They also noticed more about how their patients presented.
Step 4 of the Five Steps to Good Decision Making is Check for Bias.
We can't Assess the Information (Step 3) before us if we don't see it.
We can't share it with others and seek their advice if we don't have an objective language that doesn't contaminate the information with our personal anecdotes and opinions.
We can't assess its relevance to our Widget if we're distracted by a bias.
Good Decision Making requires us to have the technical skills and self-awareness to remove ourselves from the frame and put the Widget at the centre of the picture.
Good Decision Making in one word: Look.
The President Gives a Lesson on the Five Steps.
'Today the United States, together with our allies and partners, has reached a historic understanding with Iran which, if fully implemented, will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. As President and Commander in Chief I have no greater responsibility than the security of the American people. And I am convinced that if this framework leads to a final comprehensive deal it will make our country, our allies, and our world safer.'
- President Barack Obama announcing the Iran Nuclear Agreement.
President Obama begins a twenty minute explanation of a major decision by reminding his bosses - the American people - and the rest of the world, of his Widget:
'The security of the American people.'
He is saying 'There are many Widgets that may not be served by my decision and therefore as many critics of it. So when you're evaluating my decision and its criticisms, remember my Widget that you elected me to serve.'
He proceeds to explain to the American people and the world - his good decision making.
He's the most powerful person on earth - and yet unlike many lesser bosses - he doesn't rely on his positional power to get what he wants done.
He shows his working out. 'You may not agree with my decision,' he is saying, 'but at least you can see how I arrived at it.'
Most importantly the President is saying:
'I am going to share with you all the information that I have. I trust you - everyone from the Wall Street Banker to the farmer in Oregon - to be smart enough to see how I reasoned my way to this decision - as if you had been sitting alongside me at every table along the negotiating pathway to my decision.' That's a profound statement of both self-confidence and trust.
President Obama addresses four of the Five Steps to a Good Decision.
(We shouldn't expect any decision maker - particularly the President of the United States - to reveal her Step 1. To do so would risk undermining the purpose of the First Step: to allow the decision maker to purge themselves of emotions that may detract from her ability to address the decision on its merits. 'I ranted to the First Lady about how stubborn the Iranian leaders were and how political and pig-headed Congress is, and then had a couple of stiff drinks before watching a couple of episodes of West Wing followed by ten laps of the White House pool and several covert cigarettes in the Rose Garden while the Secret Service kept a look out. Then I went back to work making my decision.')
Step 2: Define the Issue. (Also the first job of a leader: Define reality.)
'By the time I took office, Iran was operating thousands of centrifuges, which can produce the materials for a nuclear bomb. And Iran was concealing a covert nuclear facility.'
In other words - 'My Widget, the security of the American people - wasn't being made.'
Step 3: Assess the Information.
'Because of our diplomatic efforts, the world stood with us, and we were joined at the negotiating table by the world's major powers: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China as well as the European Union.'
In other words 'I won't bore you with all the technical details in this speech, however other nations have looked at the same information that we did - and come to the same conclusions.'
Step 4: Check for Bias.
'In [my] conversations [with Congress], I will underscore that the issues at stake here are bigger than politics. These are matters of war and peace. And they should be evaluated based on the facts, and what is ultimately best for the American people and for our national security.'
In other words 'I'm not doing this for my own ego or glory or to ensure my place in history. What better way to prove this than for me to argue my case before Congress and teach Congress the same lesson of objectivity.' (We teach best what we most need to learn. If we want to ensure we're not being biased, teach someone else how to rid themselves of bias.)
Step 5: Give a Hearing.
'Given the importance of this issue, I have instructed my negotiators to fully brief Congress and the American people on the substance the deal. And I welcome a robust debate in the weeks and months to come.'
In other words 'Let me know if you've got anything to add to my thinking and the many decisions that still need to be made.'
President Obama began by defining reality. He concludes as all good leaders do - by saying Thank You.
'And most of all, on behalf of our nation, I want to express my thanks to our tireless — and I mean tireless — Secretary of State John Kerry and our entire negotiating team. They have worked so hard to make this progress. They represent the best tradition of American diplomacy.'
A Complicated Web of Events and Conditions.
The New Yorker published an article describing how prosecutors of a high profile defendant in New York made a wrong decision about a key piece of evidence. Instead of firing the lawyers responsible as expected, the District Attorney decided to inquire into the organisational errors that had led to the mistake.
She knew the lawyers were skilled professionals. She knew that they had not intended to make the error. 'What factors, she wondered, had caused competent people to make bad choices?'
The DA introduced a procedure well known to the health care and air transport industries where objective searches for causes of error take precedence over blame and personal liability.
What emerged was a 'complicated web of events and conditions'. It was 'a classic organisational error: a series of small slip-ups that cascaded into an important mistake'.
The DA concluded that 'even in a busy office like hers, she needed to create a step in which everyone could pause during certain complex or high-profile cases and have someone else take a fresh look at the evidence.'
Mistakes are treated as inevitable in decision making as successes and thus there needs to be the capacity for dealing with, and learning from them in a blame-free environment.
Another study of errors in prosecutions culminated in several jurisdictions agreeing to each doing a systems analysis of a high-profile criminal justice failure.
'In every case, the horrendous legal accident turned out to have multiple causes embedded in the legal system. There was no single bad actor. '
One case convened a group of more than thirty people representing every agency that had made contact with a repeat offender. It was discovered that 'in almost every incident, the people who made decisions about the boy had not seen his larger pattern of violent behavior because they did not have access to his complete records, or did not see them.'
In another involving a police officer who had committed multiple acts of professional misconduct, the review was able to 'identify seemingly minor perturbations—poor performance evaluations, excessive medical leaves, discourtesy complaints—as warning signs for early intervention.'
One participant in the studies said that 'the idea is to create a culture of learning from error—to look at what went wrong, what factored in the cases, and how to change the system so that doesn’t keep happening.'
As an expert adviser from air transport safety stated:
'I stressed the fact that, although it’s perfectly reasonable to be angry at a staff member who makes a mistake, you’re deluding yourself if you think simply firing someone gets to the underlying cause of the error in the first place.'
Decision Making Force Multipliers.
'The only real power a manager has is to call a meeting.'
- Anonymous
A decision maker needs at least one of five things if her decision is to achieve its intended result:
- Time
- Positional Power
- Expertise
- Information
- Luck
She improves the likelihood of success by increasing any of them.
She can compensate for deficiencies in any of them by increasing one of the others.
Find more time, earn a promotion, learn more skills, attend more meetings...carry more good luck charms.
Or she could become a manager.
A manager should only use her positional power to gather the right people around her and to harness their time, expertise and access to information as force multipliers of her own capacities - or deficiencies - in each.
Or she could engage a consultant to use his time and rely on her positional power to gather information and expertise, and present her with the results.
The decisions she makes are the product of her hard work and skill in selecting, supporting - and getting out of the way of - those people as they do their work on her behalf. Phew. That's the labour of management.
Given the unique skills, trust and self-confidence this approach demands of a manager, any wonder that so many rely solely on their positional power - and the exclusive access it gives them to information - as the basis for their decision making.
The Decision Black Box Data Recorder.
A decision crashes to earth shortly after execution.
Shredded, mangled and smouldering plans and assumptions, and splintered egos lie strewn across the impact area, that is soon roped off with yellow and black tape marked with 'MISTAKE: DO NOT CROSS.'
Expectations - customers, clients, staff, connecting decision-makers - wait in vain to greet the decision at its scheduled outcome, then demand answers as to What Went Wrong and Who To Blame.
Connecting decisions are delayed across the decision making network, each spreading its own ripples of disruption.
Similar models of decisions are postponed or cancelled for fear that they share a fatal defect.
News of the failure affirms the procrastinators, cynics and equivocators' Fear of Trying. They celebrate by smugly busying themselves drafting agenda items for another meeting to discuss meeting formats.
What happened?
A naive inquirer ducks under the 'MISTAKE' tape and picks her way past the debris of opinions, conjecture, conspiracies, myths, recriminations, and folklore scattered for as far as rumour and fear can exaggerate.
She's searching for the Decision Making Black Box.
Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards where you want to be.
The Process of Inquiry - the Five Steps to a Good Decision - is the 'Black Box' Data Flight Recorder equivalent in decision making.
In the aftermath of a decision, the decision maker can review each of the Five Steps that led to the decision, identify any element that may have contributed to the decision not having the expected outcome, and learn from it.
Did Step 1 allow enough time for the decision maker to purge herself of emotions that may have contaminated her decision?
Did Step 2 accurately identify what the issue was - usually by finding a specific source of power to make the decision - or was the decision maker distracted by 'topics' or personality politics?
Did Step 3 gather, verify and inquire into enough relevant information?
Did Step 4 diligently and soberly seek out any biases that may have influenced the decision maker away from acting in the best interests of her Widget?
Did Step 5 identify all the people who might be affected by the decision and allow them to be heard on what the decision should be?
If the decision maker has the Five Steps she can review and learn from about why the decision didn't achieve the outcome she hoped for, then that knowledge can be applied to the next decision to make it more effective.
If, on the other hand, the decision is made like 45% of decisions are - by gut instinct or positional power, then there is no process of inquiry - no 'black box' - to learn from.
It should be routine for decision makers to review the decision making process to find out what can be learned from them and done differently next time, even when the decision did achieve the intended outcome.
It's Good Decision Making - a process that can reviewed and improved, and therefore advance us towards where we want to be.
When We Ask.
'Life is not a straight line. Life is a zig-zag.'
- Maira Kalman
I was 13 and Widgetless.
I glanced at the Daily Bulletin pinned askew to our classroom noticeboard as I was leaving for lunch. I stopped to read the anonymous poem:
When we ask:
'Why am I?'
'What am I to become and be?'
'What is the meaning of my life?'
Then we are exploring
The region of our experience
Where God may be found.
I re-read those lines once, and have never forgotten them.
It was okay to not know my Widget. Indeed, it was a good thing.
Not knowing - and knowing it - were the beginning of Knowing.
Next - were questions.
A deliberate process of inquiry that would lead me to knowing.
And Knowing.
The Widget.
Decision Laundering.
'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.
- The Gospel of Matthew
'If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.'
The Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco decided to install sprinklers timed to soak and therefore deter homeless people from sleeping in the entranceways to its Cathedral.
The Archdiocese apologised in an unsigned media release.
It explained that the sprinklers were the solution to the 'problem' of 'needles, faces and other dangerous items' that were left in the 'hidden doorways' to the Cathedral.
The idea came from the use of sprinklers in 'the Financial District' as a 'safety, security and cleanliness' measure.
The dangerous items left in the hidden doorways were a risk to 'students and elderly people' who regularly passed the locations 'on their way to school and mass every day.'
We've all attended the equivalent kind of The Meeting where it was decided to install the sprinklers. We know it goes something like this:
Chairperson: 'Let the Minutes show that the Archdiocese Interfaith Council recorded yet another successful year of helping many thousands of people through food, housing, shelter programs for people at risk including homeless mothers and families, and in countless other ways. Well done and God bless to all concerned. Now moving on to Item 19 on the Agenda: 'Dangerous Items Left in Cathedral Hidden Doorways'. We've read Bob's excellent Facilities Management Report on the problem. Bob?'
Bob: 'Thank you Archbishop. My staff spend hours each week cleaning up shi... sorry Archbishop - human excrement - needles, and refuse from the hidden doorways around the Cathedral. It's time consuming. It distracts them from tending to the gardens. There's risk a needle stick injury.'
Harry: 'We have duty of care.'
Bob: 'Yes! Duty of care.'
Frank: 'To them and the children and the elderly coming to mass.'
Joe: 'We had this problem when I was with the bank. We installed sprinklers that were on timers to spray the areas where people gathered. It worked. And quite cheap too. I know someone who did the job. I can get a quote. They're Catholic so they'll do us a good price.'
Someone needed to apply the Widget Thinking brakes.
What's our Widget, Archbishop? Eternal Life? And how do we make that again? Parable of the Good Samaritan any help? Didn't Jesus say something about if we love our neighbour we will find Eternal Life? Isn't that also the origin of our secular 'duty of care'?
The interrupter (I think they're called a Leader) needs the courage to persevere beyond the inward and outward eye-rolls around the table, and Frank's response that will begin with an irritated 'That's all very well, but...' and end with all eyes glaring at her.
It's the right versus right decisions that are the tough ones. Choosing between the well being of the homeless and the safety of children and the elderly. Choosing between People Are Our Most Important Asset and cashflow says we need to make some of them redundant. Choosing between openness and transparency (I think that used to be called 'honesty') and the risk both brings to The Brand.
St Benedict, whose writings influenced European governance, said to begin all work with a prayer. Remind ourselves of what we're here to do. What's our Widget? Thanks for that idea Joe - and while we appreciate your wisdom with our budget, a bank's Widget is different to the Church's Widget.
All organisations are guilty of what the decision makers in the Archdiocese of San Francisco did.
All organisations engage in Decision Laundering.
They exploit the distraction of a 'secondary' problem with a soft and attractive outer moral layer - the risk to children and the elderly mass goers - to harness the analytical skills of good workers away from the 'primary' hard core failure of difficult decision making - the plight of the homeless and drug addicted. The diligent workers fix the secondary 'problem' and feel good about themselves and the organisation. The knotty primary problem remains.
Another more common version of Decision Laundering is to engage workers' intellect and eagerness to problem solve for their boss - in fixing the fallout from the boss's bad primary decision. 'Hey Larry - we need your expertise to wordsmith a media release that puts this sprinkler business into context by honouring all the hard work that our volunteers do in our homeless shelters. We don't want to jeopardise the donations we need to keep them operating.'
The bad primary decision is laundered into a good one by the workers employing Good Decision Making in the secondary decision. The workers will loyally (and rightly) defend their secondary decision making and thus the organisation - allowing their bosses and their flawed primary decision to desert under the cover of the smokescreen of the secondary decision's integrity. Imagine Larry on the phone to the San Francisco Chronicle: 'We'd like to invite you to do an exclusive story to raise awareness of the plight of women in our refuge and the grave consequences for them if we don't make our fundraising target this year.' Good work, Larry. What sprinklers?
Good workers' decision making can be like the water efficiently and effectively cascading down the sides of St Mary's Cathedral like clockwork - cleansing it of the risk to health and safety - and with it, the evidence of the unfulfilled Widget - the path to Eternal Life.
The prime job of a leader is to remind the organisation to become more like the thing it says it wants to be. To say to the Archbishop - we need to put the poor ahead of mass attendance. To say to the CEO - our brand will survive our apology. To say to the boss - I disagree and here's why. Then to stick around to help deal with the aftermath of that dissent. This is very, very hard. Which is why real Leaders are rare.
It took two years after their installation and an investigative journalist's exposure for the Archdiocese to acknowledge its decision. It will be redeemed if what it learned advances the faithful towards Eternal Life. Meanwhile, the homeless people just used umbrellas and raincoats.
God must despair. His followers fouling the entrance to His Kingdom. Filthy with our hypocrisy and egos.
He may yet deploy sprinklers.
Crime and Punishment.
'The sole objective of the investigation of an accident or incident shall be the prevention of accidents and incidents. It is not the purpose of this activity to apportion blame or liability.'
- Clause 3.1 to Annex 13 to the International Convention on Civil Aviation
Vengeance. Retribution. Revenge.
Deterrence. Punishment. Justice.
Blame.
We have a powerful longing for these outcomes from decisions that follow errors.
Maybe its a carryover from our childhood. Parents. School. Discipline.
If there's an error and no-one gets publicly named and shamed, it's like an enthusiastic waiter has cleared our coffee cup from our table before we've drunk the last mouthful.
Perhaps we're trained in our thinking and expectations by stories from books, movies, and the news about the adversarial winner-loser criminal justice system that relish arrest, prosecution, trial,confession, admission, guilt, judgment, verdict, conviction, sentencing, penalty.
There are no blockbuster movies where the hero rises to her feet in the middle of an Administrative Appeals Tribunal hearing and shouts 'You can't handle procedural fairness and natural justice and correct or preferable decision making in the inquisitorial process!' It's Crime and Punishment that is the classic bestselling literary novel. Not Ultra Vires and Certiorari.
Listen for assumptions about blame and punishment lurking ominously just beneath the surface of the benign, dull, haze-grey drone of our organisational language. 'Accountability' doesn't mean 'We'll celebrate and reward you and eagerly learn from you when it all goes well.' We know it really means 'Don't you screw it up - or you'll pay for it.'
Laws that were designed as shields to protect people are brandished like swords and waved menacingly towards us. Or instead of serving as cobblestones meant to pave society's streets of mutual progress, laws are seized by an aggrieved person grasping for reasons for some calamity and prised loose from their intended legal context to be used as missiles to hurl and draw blood from anyone deemed at fault.
The inquisitorial system is so alien to our thinking compared to the adversarial one, and our Whodunnit expectation so strong that it must be managed. Watch and listen to Datuk Kok Soo Chon, the Investigator in Charge of the Malaysian Airlines MH370 disappearance, solemnly repeat word for word Clause 3.1 to Annex 13 of the ICAO Convention as part of his Interim Report on the investigation as he looks down the barrel of the camera at you and me. 'You'll not find blame here,' he's saying. 'We're not going to give you a head on a platter,' he's warning us in more austere bureaucratic language. 'There's nothing more to see here except lessons for a better future.'
To paraphrase Clause 3, the sole purpose of a good decision should be to make a better decision next time.
There's also a lot of learning between 'It fell' and 'I dropped it'.
We don't become who we are on the back of the shamed and fallen.
A Good Decision Takes as Long as A Good Decision Takes.
On 20 September 2013 two Qantas Airbus aircraft with a combined passenger load of more than 600, nearly collided 12km in the air almost above Adelaide.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) began an investigation that day. It said it would be finished by September 2014 - almost a year later. In November 2014 and already two months overdue, it updated the investigation status to be that the report would be made available to the public by January 2015.
On 5 March 2015, almost two and a half years after the incident, six months longer than the date it was first promised, and two months past the amended reporting date, ATSB Transport Safety Report Aviation Occurrence Investigation AO-2013-161 was published.
Meanwhile, hundreds of aircraft carrying thousands of passengers continued to fly the same routes each day in the control of the same systems and people and decision making doing the same things that failed on 20 September 2013 and nearly killed 600 people.
The more important the decision, the longer it should take.
Decision makers can be tempted to do the opposite: Important decisions must be made quickly. Urgently. Decisively. Get it done. Get it over with.
Not so for the ATSB. The risk that the undiagnosed errors in person and machine could be repeated with catastrophic results did not compel it to compromise its decision making process.
How long should a decision take? It should take as long as a good decision takes. How long do the Five Steps take?
The ATSB process was not initiated by a complainant. Decision makers resolving complaints are under pressure to decide quickly. Complaints policies impose response times. Complainants demand answers. Neither serves good decision making.
This is one of many examples where a clear Widget cuts through the complexity. Does speed, appeasing a demanding complainant, or meeting an artificial time constraint in a policy or self-imposed serve the Widget?
The ATSB had a clear Widget:
'The ATSB’s function is to improve safety and public confidence in the aviation, marine and rail modes of transport through excellence in: independent investigation of transport accidents and other safety occurrences; safety data recording, analysis and research; fostering safety awareness, knowledge and action.'
As each self-imposed deadline for the report approached, the ATSB would have asked itself: 'Will publication on the promised date serve our Widget? Which is more important: the integrity of our deadlines or of our findings and recommendations about aviation safety?' Appropriately the answer was the latter. Let's update the information on our website and continue inquiring with excellence.
Time constraints - 'Complaints will be resolved in x days' - should only be added to decision making processes if they serve the decision maker's Widget. 'Your decisions take too long' is not sufficient reason alone to impose deadlines. Better to manage expectations. Under promise and over deliver. Next time ATSB - promise us a report in two years and delight us by publishing it in one and a half.
A deadline may be appropriate to improve the turnaround time for a broken toaster under warranty. Yet it may compromise the careful analysis needed to understand the failure of a complex system.
Such as why two 240 tonne aircraft with advanced navigation aids and under air traffic control converged at a closing speed of one and half times the speed of sound 38,000 feet above the earth.
Or why that person did that thing.
Joe Defines Our Widget.
'All Australians share aspirations for economic security and an even more prosperous future — a better place for our children and the generations beyond.
But it is not enough that we share this aspiration. We need to make choices today to build a strong and resilient economy and lay the foundation for future prosperity.'
- 2015 Intergenerational Report: Australia in 2055
The Australian Government has been doing some Widget Thinking.
Yesterday its Treasurer The Honourable Joe Hockey published its five yearly Intergenerational Report which assesses 'the long-term sustainability of current Government policies and how changes to Australia’s population size and age profile may impact [sic] economic growth, workforce and public finances over the following 40 years.'
It begins by defining its Widget:
'All Australians share aspirations for economic security and an even more prosperous future — a better place for our children and the generations beyond.'
Bang.
Widget.
A big Widget.
Welcome aboard, Australian citizens. This is Joe speaking. Me and my successors will be your Captain on our journey to Economic Security and An Even More Prosperous Future. Our flight time is 40 years and the estimated arrival time is 2055. There will be some turbulence from the left wing during take off and weather at our destination in 40 years is sunny with the occasional rainbow and unicorn.
The Widget is reinforced in the Report with a solid foundation for good decision making:
'The term Australian Government is used when referring to the Government and the decisions and activities made by the Government on behalf of the [legal entity] of the Commonwealth of Australia.' (Emphasis added.)
The Government is - defined by its DECISIONS and by its ACTIONS - on behalf of the Commonwealth of Australia. If the government does not decide and act - it does not exist. Put more practically, the electors vote it out.
An organisation isn't what it says it's going to do. An organisation is defined by its workers' DECISIONS and their ACTIONS. An organisation does not exist if it does not decide and act.
Organisations are abstract constructs that come to life in the decisions made by their decision makers.
This is why decision making is the DNA of an organisation and why it needs to be good.
'The projections in this report are very unlikely to unfold over the next 40 years exactly as outlined. Things will happen that are not anticipated in the report’s assumptions, and government policy will change. The projections are not intended to be a prediction of the future as it will actually be, rather they are designed to capture some of the fundamental trends that will influence economic and budgetary outcomes should policies remain similar to current settings. They help to inform us about where there are opportunities to be seized, and where there are challenges to be overcome.'
The Report recognises that a good decision is one that advances us towards where we want to be. A decision is made from what we know now. The world's response to our making it will reveal more information that tells us new things about the world and our Widget that we will incorporate in our next decision.
The Report is the Government taking Step 5 of the Five Steps to a Good Decision.
It invites the Australian people to be heard. It is the Government saying:
'Here is the information that we have about the state of our country and which we will use to make decisions that will affect you, your children and your grandchildren. Please let us know what you think because you have the most at stake and you might teach us something that we missed and which will make us change our decisions.'
The Report says 'Here we are. Here's where we want to be. Here's how we think we'll get there.' To which Australians can in turn decide 'Yay' or 'Boo' or 'Meh' or 'Vote Labor' or 'I'm emigrating.'
Or as The Honourable Joe Hockey told Parliament when releasing the Report :
'This is the conversation that the nation wants to have and we are ready for it.'
That's a Good Question.
'The people who do ask a question have demonstrated to themselves that they have good enough judgement to be able to put something into the world that hasn't been said before. That's what makes it a good question. And that practice is something that we should learn and we should teach our kids and we should teach our colleagues how to do it.'
Good Decision Making in three words:
Be attentively curious.
Our Shelter Amidst the Chaos of Information.
'The best way to learn about normal structures and normal function I think is to study disordered functions and disordered structures. When one has spent that amount of time studying abnormalities one develops an enormously healthy respect for normal, an enormously healthy respect for how equilibrium is maintained.'
- Sherwin Nuland, Surgeon
Decision making is an act of creating certainty from chaos.
Buffeted by new information our compass spins and our map is ripped from our hands.
A good decision making process is a structure that shelters us from the push and pull of wild gusts of instinct and bias and the howling of opinions and creates a space for us to think.
We emerge with our decision beneath cloudless skies, a zephyr caressing our cheeks and clutching a new map with new terrain and a compass needle pointing steadily towards our Widget.
We step forth into the arc of a raindrop and the distant roll of thunder and our compass needle wobbles.
The Decision is Superior to the Decision Maker.
'The poem has an intelligence that the poet does not have.'
- Jane Hirshfield
A good decision is one that advances you towards where you want to be.
Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards where you want to be.
Decision making is an act of creation with its own Muse.
Decision makers who serve a process and engage with others along the way, summon forth ideas, creativity, options, perspectives, insights, wisdom and outcomes that were invisible when they were presented with the need to make a decision.
Good decision making has an intelligence that the decision maker does not have.
Often Decisions Break Things.
'Don't worry if you break it Darcey. I can put it back together because I designed this house actually.'
- Five year old Scarlett to her one year old sister Darcey.
Often decisions break things.
If our decision breaks something -
- or someone in our team's decision did
- and we or they made it using a deliberate process of inquiry -
(Instead of 'Hey! Look at me! Let me show you how high I am up HR's wire diagram!' or 'Eenie, meenie, miney, mo...' or 'I need to do something or we're all gonna DIE!')
- then we can inspect the wreckage and work out what happened.
Learning is behaviour modified by experience.
We will make a better decision next time.
We will advance closer towards where we want to be.