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.
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 Cruisers Club.
'If we become preoccupied with prescribing, recording and counting the ordinary, and defining procedures for doing those things, then there is little opportunity to even tolerate, let alone promote the extraordinary.'
- Associate Professor Stephen Cohen
We heard the Corporal Physical Training Instructor in the pre-dawn black before we saw him. Which is why we were chatting and shuffling because we thought he was waiting for us back at the gym from where we started our 5km run twenty minutes earlier. The routine was that the PTI told us to walk around the gym in a clockwise - or as we called it 'PT-wise' - direction for three laps accompanied by The B-52s' Roam - then sent us off to the other side of the airfield and back. Not this morning.
'Sirs! Stop!'
We fell silent and halted in front of the muscle bound shape of the Corporal. He didn't speak for a few seconds to allow the silence to betray our lack of panting and further incriminate us.
'Sirs, youse are the the last group.' We saw his head look back to where we had come from. 'Except for Ma'am - youse are the last.' 'Ma'am' was one of our Officers Training School course members who we had nicknamed 'Twenty One Forty' after the time it had taken her to run our initial 2.4km Physical Fitness Test (PFT) in our first week on Course. The pass time was 11 minutes.
The PTI put his hands on his hips and I could see his head slowly scanning us like a sideshow alley clown. 'I've caught youse out. I could make you turn around and do it again. But I'm not going to do that. Why not? Because the only people youse are letting down - are yourselves, Sirs. Because you're Cruisers. And you know what?'
'No, Corporal!' we said in unison. He was junior in rank to us but had our respect because he he could give us pushups and make us hold them mid push. ('That's not six inches Sir! I'll show you six inches!')
Another pause for dramatic effect. 'Because, Sirs, Cruisers...Are Losers!'
And thus the 1/90 Junior Officers Initial Course 'Cruisers Club' was born.
Our membership grew each morning as other Course members eased off their pace and fell back to join our shuffling chats. As long as we passed our fortnightly PFT, the Corporals surrendered and folded their muscular arms, shook their heads and let us Cruise. In the spirit of Cruising, we started a competition to see who could get as close to the 11 minute PFT 2.4km run pass time and thus not waste effort. The record was 10.59. We broadened our Club activities to stealing the Group Captain pennants from the Parade Ground and the senior course's bar fridge from their common room.
The Air Force taught me lots of things - the best of them unintentionally. Rules - many of them dumb and annoying and redundant for the majority of time when we weren't trying to kill an enemy and they weren't trying to kill us (for me that was all the time, thankfully) - can be catalysts for creativity, self-mocking, and fun. Otherwise 'accountability' mostly promotes mediocrity and compliance and not excellence and innovation.
The Corporal PFTs were right. We weren't accountable to their baselines. We were responsible for ourselves.
The inaugural members of the Cruisers Club conquered our self-letting-down and graduated from OTS with Distinctions, with one (not me) winning the Officer Qualities Prize. Twenty One Forty never caught up and was back coursed. She eventually passed and I understand overcame her inability to run fast to become a very good Nursing Officer.
The Cruisers Club had honoured the call of The B52s each morning before we shuffled off:
'Fly the great big sky see the great big sea
Kick through continents bustin' boundaries.'
How to Succeed Every Time.
'If you do something every day, its a system. If you're waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it's a goal...Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good everytime they apply their system. That's a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction.'
Good Decision Making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards where you want to be.
Integrity - doing what you said you were going to do.
Leaders with integrity apply a system of decision making that advances them towards their Widget, for the world to see, emulate, and learn from.
Leave the Idiot Work to the Idiots.
'Leave the idiot work to the idiots.'
A bishop's answer when asked to define Subsidiarity - so the story goes.
The blunt interpretation is proof that even the noblest values can be demeaned and misappropriated.
Subsidiarity is the principle that says a decision should be made at the lowest appropriate level.
Subsidiarity allows each person their dignity.
It is a principle of social justice that, while used by the Roman Catholic Church, is wrongly attributed to it (and therefore possibly ignored!) It predates the Church and has universal application to good decision making. Its universality is demonstrated in the fact that it is part of the Treaty on European Union.
'Subsidiarity' stems from the Latin subsidies, which means 'help, assistance'. And here, as with all good ideas, is where it goes wrong.
The person who is interested in power, practices subsidiarity by choosing what power to delegate to those below him in the hierarchy. To him, subsidiarity is throwing crumbs from the decision making table. This apparent act of generosity and power sharing upon which most organisations operate has its sinister side. The person receiving the crumbs becomes dependent on the person throwing them.
The other version of where subsidiarity comes from is subsidiaries, which means 'of or belonging to the reserves'. In the Roman army, the reserves waited in the rear in case the front line army needed them to overcome a superior enemy. The reserve army did not initiate action, it waited to be called up. It strengthened, reinforced and perfected an act already begun.
In good decision making, subsidiarity presumes that a person should be left to make their own decisions - even 'wrong' ones - without interference from a superior authority. That 'superior' authority can be in a family, a community, an organisation, a state, or the world.
A person will concede part of their individuality as part of their membership of one of those groups. They may also concede some of their decision making authority. But only to the extent necessary to benefit the whole, from which they benefit.
If the authority that the person has conceded as part of their membership of the group is exercised 'beyond the necessary', then the group begins to destruct. The reason is that the person is unable to exercise the talents that they have brought to the group. As the group can only define itself by its works - the sum of each person's talents - then the loss of part of those talents means that the group is not able to function.
In short - subsidiarity requires that each person has as much autonomy and responsibility as possible, and as much control or intervention by a higher authority as necessary.
Individual initiative should only be limited where it is absolutely unavoidable.
The benefit of subsidiary to the higher authority is that it can focus with greater freedom and energy and effectiveness to tasks belonging to it, and to which it alone can accomplish.
Ironically, subsidiarity is one of the reasons to have a higher authority. Such authority exists to create the space to enable people to discover their potential. If the higher authority moves into that space then it contradicts its reason for being. If the boss starts interfering - for well meaning or other reasons - in the decisions and actions of the workers, the boss isn't doing his job.
The higher authority assists by removing obstacles to the person that the person can't remove themselves, or that are otherwise more effectively removed by the higher authority so that the person can focus on their core business.
A Leader practises subsidiarity when they create the space; when they define the purpose and invite the right person to stretch their potential towards it; when they equip the person with the tools that they need to leverage their talents, when they affirm without intervention, when they retreat...
Sadly, it is a perversion of subsidiarity that is most commonly practised. It is that a worker starts as an empty vessel - a human resource. The worker is loaded with information and authority and power by the boss to the extent that the boss feels necessary. The boss adds or removes that cargo as he thinks fit. The boss sets that vessel adrift, attached to a rope.
In short - the worker's power only exists in as much as it has been given to him by the boss. This is what most people mean by 'delegation'.
A healthy organisation recruits people who have existing talents that the organisation needs. It then lets them get on with the job. The boss's job is to remove the obstacles.
And stay out of the way.
Challenge Them Into the Future.
Dr Fiona Wood, AM is one of the world's leading plastic surgeons who specialises in burns patients. Earlier this year she was interviewed about what she had learned from her surgical research and practice about Good Decision Making and Leadership.
She started where all Leadership and Good Decision Making begins - the Widget - or 'purpose' as Dr Wood described it:
'I think decision making is something that you have to really take on - I was almost going to say a level of aggression - but a level of purpose might be a better term. Because you have to make a decision. There is someone in front of you that needs your help - you have to make a decision.
Dr Wood acknowledged that decision making is cumulative - that each decision informs the next:
'That decision may not be right – you have to take that. You have to understand that the decision you've made, the action you've taken, has led to then making the next decision. Sometimes it will be right, sometimes wrong. You've just got do deal with it with a level of purpose. And so you bring to the table all your experience - the knowledge that brought you to that point. And it's a question really of visualising the outcome.'
Her Widget focus is paramount in her thinking, and relies on the systems that have been developed to support it:
'I see this individual....If you meet me as a professional you're having a bad day. So they are damaged, and now I want to use everything in my power, in our systems that we work in, in our systems and the knowledge that is out there to make their path to the outcome the very best it can be.'
Even though in each operation she is focussed on the person before her on that day, she maintains her disciplined focus on a more strategic Widget. Each patient illuminates the path to her Widget, yet in such a way that nether the immediate needs of her patient, or the longer term Widget journey is compromised:
'And the outcome that I've visualised for many, many years is scarless healing. We've changed the goalpost. We've inched doggedly there...are we there all the time? Absolutely not. But we're making progress. So it's visualising that outcome and making every play such that you can move it closer to that outcome day by day. And it's learning. It's always taking the blinkers off and learning so that whatever the decisions you've made today, you make sure that you make better ones tomorrow. And that has been actually an entrenched coping strategy to make sure that you critically analyse the work of today to make sure that tomorrow is better.'
Dr Wood's focus does not mean that she is blind to other new information that can serve her Widget:
'I see people out there that do nanotechnology, or genetics or all sorts of different things - psychology, neuroscience and they've got parts of my jigsaw. I need to get parts of that jigsaw and bring it in to play here. And therefore you have to make decisions on lots of different levels. But when you pare that all away you look at the person in front of you, you've got to get the removal of the dead tissue without them bleeding out such that you can repair them the best you can with today's technology such that you set them up for the best outcome.'
Her Widget focus allows her to quickly engage a surgical team with the needs of each patient:
'I teach my guys: As you walk in you make sure you connect with everybody in the room and if there's people you've never seen before you write everything on the board that you're going to do. You should not be making the decisions while you're doing it. You should have visualised it - you go in knowing what you're going to do and knowing your escape routes. So all of that has to be in your mind. And you have to see the landscape. What is it that you've got to work with in terms of your human resources - and engage them. Make sure they understand what you're trying to do and feel the passion - feel that for that period of time the only focus is for that individual. And that's a really important part of the whole. Engaging everyone.'
Dr Wood explained how the path towards the Widget is a meandering one, and that we should not measure our progress on the result of one decision alone:
'The outcomes have got to get better every day. And it's not linear. I don't live in an environment where every day that passes your chance of survival increases. It's not linear - it's a roller coaster. The waves of infection come relentlessly over, unless we've completely sealed - the person weakens and weakens and weakens. A third of the patients who don't survive will survive somewhere around three months. And they're hard days.'
Dr Wood affirmed Step 1: Step Back as being important in good decision making:
'We have this concept that 'Oh, it's macho to keep going'. But it isn't macho to keep going if your performance falls away. And so for a long, long time I've been very aware of people around me and trying to work out who needs to be rotated out...and so it's having that awareness and as I've got older, I don't stay in and so part of it is rotating yourself out, so that it becomes acceptable....
Dr Wood's ideas on leadership are consistent with Creating the Space and Defining the Purpose and inviting people into that space and using the focus on the Purpose as vehicles to reach their potential:
'I think leadership…Vision...is really interesting. Because I believe that everybody can dream. I think leadership is giving people permission to dream. Because I think if you take the time to listen to people you'd be amazed at what they dream. And then you encompass that dream into a vision.'
Yet always the laser Widget focus:
'I saw a child in 1985 and it changed my life. I thought 'That child is so badly injured from a cup of coffee?' We've got to be able to do better. I've carried that photograph around with me for a long time.'
Dr Wood addressed the potential for conflict between Widget focus and learning where we are in relation to our Widget, and the need to get the day-to-day work done. She described the importance of being disciplined in routine and preparation in order to be creative:
'What we want to be is innovative problem solvers but we want to generate outcomes on a regular basis. In every field of endeavour that is a conflict - on the surface of it. But when you start to dig a little bit deeper… I indicated that it is not appropriate to be making decisions about where you cut when it's right there in front of you. You've made those decisions previously. You've visualised. you've gone to the table - whatever table it is - with your outcome in mind and understanding the opportunities you've got to get there. So there’s an element of planning almost on the run all the time. It's getting into the habit.'
She affirmed the idea that good decision making is being confident enough about what you know, to be attentively curious about what you don't:
'What is it that I bring to the table? What's my experience? What's my knowledge? The lawyers do it all the time with precedent, looking back at old cases. Get into the habit that it's always ticking over. Questioning the landscape. And I think underpinning that is a fundamental belief that today is not as good as it gets. Not in that you criticise today. It's not bad. It's the best it can be - today.'
Dr Wood's approach to learning is to seek out feedback. She goes beyond a healthy belief in relying on the power of complaints to provide it. In fact, why wait for a complaint to inform you, and assume that if there is none that you are doing okay? She advocates declaring your understanding of your Widget to the world and inviting it to comment:
'As you've finished, as you've closed up and you walk away, you don't strut. You actually think 'Okay - given that same situation happens tomorrow, how could I have analysed it better, and then you go through the whole exercise again…the debrief. That's not specifically surgery, It's not specifically sport. It's part of exercising your mind. And the next step is doing that in public. Because that's when it starts getting exciting because there's absolutely no doubt we're in an environment where you need multiple minds to solve problems. And so you have to have that level of inquiry and sort of ticking over and then you connect. And you start to develop a language of innovation and visualisation. So you can push forward.'
Dr Wood shared her belief in the value of 'trauma' as a stimulus to growth, extending the literal trauma to her patients' longer term recovery and resilience, to a metaphor about character:
'I can track periods of my life where I went through post traumatic growth. And it wasn't painless. The hardest thing for me post Bali was that people wanted to know my name. Yet I recognised that as part of that I became stronger. And I became able to engage in this positive energy, in this positive good news stories. And I had my blinkers taken off such that i engaged with the community in a broader sense....How we can use energy that is so profoundly negative and turn that around - I think that's fascinating. It's tiring sometimes. And it's hard. But part of that post traumatic growth is having the infrastructure around you, having the people and connectivity around you that give you the ability to lead.'
She had some powerful advice to give on how to deal with criticism and how innovation challenges conventional thought about 'the way things are done':
'There's an element of inertia in practice. Whether that be clinical practice or business practice...This level of inertia is really quite an interesting animal. Because it's useful, but it's also a hindrance. We need to have a level of capacity to maintain things moving forward at a pace that can be managed. And equally, we have to have people testing out the front. And so I have engaged with surgical inertia up front and centre and I've had to make the decision not to engage in that negative energy but to continue to be driven by the positive outcome, collect the data, present the data. And as the things roll forward, the data will speak for itself. And so that inertia starts to be overcome. And I think that the challenge when you're in a situation with that level of inertia is to understand you've got a choice. You turn around and you fight it…and it's bigger than you. Or you stay out the front and you wait for them to catch up. And they get there.'
Yet always returning to the supremacy of the Widget - and the need for a leader to be clear about defining it to the team, regardless of how clear it is to her or how passionate she is about it:
'I had a really interesting lesson in leadership inadvertently in the early 90s. 1991 I hit the ground running. I was very focussed on time to healing. Every day in a burns unit is a day too long. I aggressively engaged in a skin culture programme....the social worker at the time who was a bit older than the rest of us came and said 'Stop!' I thought 'What do you mean, Stop? ‘Sit down. I need to talk to you. I've been asked to come and speak with you. Well you're too intimidating.’ (Give me a break! )‘We understand that what you're doing has got to be right. It's got to have some real benefit. But we don't know what it is. We can feel your passion. We have no idea how we can explain it to the parents, to the patients, to their relatives, to the new nurses when they come on. We're all at sea…’
Dr Wood learned the definition that a leader is someone who makes good decisions that others choose to follow:
'Leadership 101. No team - no leader. Done. The elastic was at breaking point and almost snapping behind me. And had I not had that energy that they all got caught up in, it would have snapped well and truly. So that's the point when I said 'Right. Everybody who's at this table is here for a reason. You've got to be able to be leaders in your own right....Passion on its own doesn't cut it. The communication bit has to be strong.'
A Leader retreats:
There is absolutely no point in me being so entrenched that as I get through my final kick, everything fades away. Succession is so important. It's not because I want to be remembered. It's because the people need treating! And they need to be treated better and better and better. So for me, it's delegation. But delegation with meaning. Empowerment in a real sense. I need to let them deliver. Such that I can get out of my head, get it on paper and challenge them into the future. But in a way that is not intrusive. Not imposing my surgical inertia on them. But allowing them to grow.
Dr Wood leads a team in Good Decision Making in life and death situations. It's not just theory to her. She is still able to use the language of 'dreams', 'visualisation', 'mistakes', 'passion', 'innovation' and 'personal growth' while literally operating at the leading edge of science.
If Dr Wood can save lives while still creating the space for these ideals that allow others to become who they are, then most workplaces have no excuse.
Opinion is Currency.
'We live in an era where opinion is currency.'
- Andy Miller
So many meetings are just people taking turns to kick their opinions furtherest around a cul-de-sac.
In my opinion.
One Leader is One Too Many.
'It is easy to derail an expert and ruin their performance. All that you have to do is force them to follow the rules.'
- Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning
We write the job advertisement.
An invitation.
Sparkling with carefully crafted words of seduction.
'Come! Work with us!'
'We want you to bring your best self and help us to be better!'
You accept the invitation.
'I offer my Best Self to you.'
We choose you. That Best Self.
Seduction becomes Induction.
Rules, policies, values, visions, missions, hierarchies, teams, codes, reviews.
We overwhelm You and turn You into Us. Into a Team Player.
Left!...Left!..Left, Right, Left!
Another job advertisement.
'We need Innovators!'
'We need Leaders!'
The Widget is the Salve, Balm and Lotion for Every Ill.
"Purpose and principle, clearly understood and articulated, and commonly shared, are the genetic code of any healthy organisation. To the degree that you hold purpose and principles in common among you, you can dispense with command and control. People will know how to behave in accordance with them, and they'll do it in thousands of unimaginable, creative ways. The organisation will become a vital, living set of beliefs." -
Dee Hock
CEO Emeritus, Visa International
Define your Widget!
Imagine whatever your employer produces is a car. What part do you contribute on the assembly line? What is your metaphorical nut, bolt, wheel, axel, driveshaft, transmission, piston, engine..?
Go and ask your boss. Say: 'Boss - what do you rely on me to do so that you can do your job?' (Be prepared for your boss not to answer straight away.)
Define your Widget!
Widget clarity is the answer to EVERYTHING!
Feeling disengaged? Instant re-engagement happens the moment you start thinking about what your Widget is.
Feeling disconnected from your boss? Say: 'Boss - what is it that you need from me to do your job?' Click! Connected!
Feeling unsupported by your staff? Say: 'Staff - I can't do my job (Widget) for my boss if you don't do yours (Widget) for me.' Wow. She's just like us!
Feeling bullied? Say: 'Boss, I'm finding it hard to make that Widget for you that you said you needed to make your Widget while Frank makes me sad by calling me names.' What? Frank's endangering my Widget?! Frank! Get in here!
Feeling underpaid? Say: 'Boss - here's what it takes for me to make this Widget for you that you need to make your Widget. I think that's worth a lot to you.' You're right. You are indispensable!
The only thing that you can be sure that you have in common with your boss, your staff, Frank, your boss's boss and that other team of strangers on the third floor who you're supposed to be cross-functional with - is the Widget.
It's the atmosphere you're all breathing, the language you're all speaking, the thing that's paying all your mortgages.
You don't have to get a consultant in to tell you that.
You don't have to hold hands with Frank at an off-site team building day and each share a secret to tell you that.
Find out what your Widget is.
Then make it.
For this boss.
Or another one.
If You're Happy And You Know It - Thank Your Boss.
One would assume that our boss - one of the biggest influences on our well being and happiness, and thus productivity, and thus their own well being and happiness and productivity, is applying the results of years of research, data, education, pedagogy, heuristics and science on how to get the best out of us.
After all - aren't we our boss's 'most important asset'?
She's done all that training, right? She's attended courses on everything - First Aid, Equal Opportunity, Work Health and Safety, Mental Well-being, iPads, Performance Management, Mediation and Meditation, Work-Life Balance, Difficult Conversations, Code of Conduct, Recycling, Train the Trainer, and of course, Good Decision Making.
She's got KPIs and budgets and 360 degree feedback and performance reviews and lists 'Teamwork' and 'People Person' and 'Leading High Performance Teams' on her LinkedIn page.
She's being measured and measuring within an inch or 2.54mm of her life.
It's all evidence based - isn't it? This whole management thing?...
(Psst....We have proof. She's making it up as she goes along. Every boss in the World is.)
A discussion paper released by researchers in Germany has found 'little research' anywhere in the World on how bosses affect the quality of the lives of their workers. Indeed, it claims its data and findings are the first of their kind.
It's okay. The research evidence supports what a good boss has worked out for themselves.
The evidence 'is consistent with the view that boss competence is central to employee well-being and thus to the behavior of labor markets'.
The paper cites 'growing evidence' that ‘happier’ workers are more productive. (In true researcher style, they took into account potential for bias in more cheerful employees reporting higher levels of job satisfaction and boss competence.)
The researchers write:
'Bosses are, in principle, special workers because they are in charge. They make a range of important organizational decisions. Therefore, it may be desirable not to view a boss as just another factor of production, or as altering only the quality of an employee’s input through greater marginal product in the production function. Instead, it may be appropriate to view a boss as being able to shape the nature of the organization itself.'
The workers surveyed showed that while most thought that their boss couldn't do the worker's job if the worker was absent, their bosses were good at being....bosses.
Employees enjoy their jobs far more where the supervisor is assessed as 'technically competent'.
Indeed, the data shows that the technical competence of the supervisor has double the effect on employee satisfaction than does the employee's wage.
The researchers conclude from the data that 'the quality of workers’ lives is higher if the supervisor is highly competent, in a technical sense, at his or her job.'
They acknowledge that the results are so intuitive as to be 'obvious'. But they argue that now we have proof that our boss can make us happy and therefore more productive, we need to do more research on how our boss can make us happy.
Perhaps it will show that a boss will be more likely to make us happy if she is happy.
And what might make our boss happy?
Probably us doing our job.
(Could it be that there's other stuff that bosses are making up as they go along?)
The Receptionist is a Leader.
''Decision'...or... 'Choice'?' Jonathon asked me.
'Same thing,' I said.
I was wrong.
''Choice' is selecting one of at least two options,' I later corrected myself to Jonathon. ''Decision' is the product of a good decision making process.'
I was happier with this distinction.
Until I read a 1980 article Shared Responsibility in Ecclesial Decision-Making by Robert T. Kennedy, a Canon Lawyer.
He calls decision-makers 'choice makers'.
The decision/choice maker chooses between two or more options presented by what Kennedy calls 'idea people' - creative people who who have contributed their ideas towards a decision making process that arrives at the choices that are presented to the decision maker.
This view of decision making dramatically and constructively shifts deep and unsatisfying assumptions about power that are the source of much of the tension in workplaces.
As Kennedy says:
‘To decide well, there is need for many, diverse talents. The rarity of finding all such talents in a single individual gives rise to the need for participation by many people. Influence and power, so far from being concentrated solely in the moment of choice, are diffused throughout all stages of the decision-making process. Responsibility for a decision does not rest solely with the choice-makers.’
'If the choice makers are choosing between two or more options presented by idea people – who really holds the power?'
‘Choice-makers are often held captive (for better or worse) by idea people.'
Kennedy's analysis flattens the hierarchy in organisations and communities between those who have authority to make decisions and the rest.
It also adds to our understanding of the role of the leader.
Kennedy says that what an organisation most needs from its leaders is 'facilitation of the decision making process'. The leader is responsible for identifying, drawing forward and coordinating the 'necessary gifts' among the team in service of the Widget.
Indeed, Kennedy says that 'A leader need not be a choice-maker, or data or idea person, or implementor or evaluator. The service of a leader is quite different and requires quite different talents.’
The Receptionist is a leader.
Kennedy also addresses the majority of disengaged workers who haunt our workplaces:
‘Irresponsible refusal to participate, moreover, is in its own way a form of sharing responsibility for a decision. We are responsible not only for what we do but also for what we refuse to do; withholding the contribution of our talent, therefore, creates responsibility in us for decisions poorly made because of our failure to participate.’
If we engage with the decision maker by applying our talents to the creation of choices that are presented to her, we are co-responsible for the decision - even if the 'choice' was not one that we presented. By adding our ideas to the options before the decision-maker, we have influenced her choice by allowing her to compare and contrast alternatives. She was only able to not choose our option because she had it as a comparison.
Kennedy's 'choice maker' analysis is also a powerful reminder to decision-makers and leaders that good decision making demands authentic relationships with the 'idea people' so that their gifts may be discerned and recruited to nourish the decision making process.
It's Not Working.
John is a manager who tosses a coin to decide half his decisions, only implements about two out of ten effectively anyway, and bases the majority on practices that are proven to fail.
John should be terminated.
Yet John is the average manager.
45% of managers use instinct to make decisions.
Only 15% of organisations can make and implement important decisions effectively.
Two of every three business decisions are based on failure prone practices.
95% of a typical workforce does not understand the organisation’s strategy.
90% of organisations fail to execute on strategies.
86% of executive teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy.
76% of Australian workers are disengaged from their jobs.
Australian bosses lose an average of three months per year productivity from each worker due to disengagement.
Australia ranks second last on productivity growth – ahead of Botswana.
Is the above average worker profile any wonder when John is her boss?
There is evidence that many organisations' priorities are not defined by productivity, customer or community service, share value or sales growth. They are defined by self-interest.
And yet...
Prescriptive decision making strategies [ie The Five Steps] in workplaces were more successful no matter what the urgency, importance, resource level, initial support, decision-maker level, industry sector or type of decision.
Want to be a 'high performing team'?
Teach and apply good decision making.
Broomsticks with Feedback.
'Being right is occasionally useful in bars but it's very useless in life. It just doesn't open avenues for learning.
[Hospitals] engage in serious errors. The nature of Lourdes is that they don't get better at miracles because they're not learning from their mistakes.
400 years ago everyone believed that broomsticks could fly. Then these views of the world bifurcate and we have broomsticks that still don't fly terribly well and Jumbos that fly rather well. Jumbo Jets are just broomsticks with feedback.'
A Leader's decisions create errors that teach and invite us (educate - educare - 'to draw out') to overtake her, and make different errors for others to learn from and overtake us.
Contempt for the mistakes of others and fear of making our own are why true Leaders are rare.
Words Matter.
'Rhetoric . . . is not a set of techniques to impress (oratory, eloquence), nor a means of manipulating the will and emotions of others (sophistry, advertising), but rather a way of liberating the freedom of others by showing them the truth in a form they can understand.’
- Stratford Caldecott
Ian and I were 14 year olds in our Air Force cadets Flight Drill Squad that competed in the inaugural Squadron Drill Competition.
Our 17 year old Cadet Flight Sergeant didn't know how to execute the drill movements in the sequence that we were to be judged on. Correct drill was whatever his drill instructor had taught him. So he carried on the tradition and made them up.
We came second.
The next year Ian convinced the Flight Commander to allow him to lead the Squad despite just being promoted to Cadet Corporal. 'I promise you we will win, Sir,' the 15 year old told our forty-something Flight Commander. 'I've got a plan.'
Ian found a forgotten copy of the AAP 5135.001 Manual of Drill and Ceremonial, cracked open the spine and studied every drill movement until he knew each command, cadence, timing, foot height, toe angle and the two-three pauses in between by rote.
He then made us copies to study and learn for ourselves.
Our squad of teenagers spent hours and hours practising responding to Ian's commands.
We spent hours and hours practising without his commands.
We won the next two years' competitions. Second the third year. And won the year after that.
(The year we ran second it was to a team led by an ex-cadet from our squad who Ian had trained.)
Cadets Ian had led or who had been trained by ones he'd trained led winning squads from other Flights over the next few years.
Ian taught me to go to primary sources of information.
I took for granted that good leaders are teachers who aren't afraid of their students knowing as much or more than they do.
I haven't had a need to execute a right form from the halt, to the halt at all since then.
I sometimes wonder if should have practised piano for all those hours.
We're the They.
'No us and them. Just us.'
- Fr Greg Boyle
It sounded like a good idea.
She scheduled dozens of meetings to personally present the draft new workplace agreement to every one of the hundreds of staff members.
'We think that these new conditions are reasonable,' she repeated to each audience. 'But the Union disagrees. They won't negotiate with us. They are holding up the process.'
'We think that the increase in pay is generous,' she declared. 'But the Union wants more money and we can't afford it and so They are stalling your pay rises.'
The Union represented the staff in the agreement negotiations. One in five of the people in each audience was a Union member.
We were the They.
The manager calls a meeting to get advice.
'We need to confidentially access some staff computer and mobile phone logs to find evidence of misconduct.'
The IT Manager says 'We can do it and They won't know'. The Lawyer says 'We have legal authority and They don't need to consent.' The HR Adviser says 'We have contracts and They have agreed We have that power.' The Compliance Manager says 'We'll record that They did not need to consent.' The Line Manager says 'Good idea and They should know that We monitor them.' The Personal Assistant takes Minutes about what We will do to They. We nod that We agree with what needs to be done about They.
We vacate our chairs without making eye contact with a different team of advisers coming to meet with the manager and he closes his Open Door door.
We return to our respective desks, and resume being They.
Advisers come and go from the manager's office closing the Open Door door.
Our spouses, work and social friends all wonder why we've changed to Gmail and have a new personal phone number and use it to text during business hours instead of email and don't update our Facebook and can't book the children's concert tickets online at 9am before they're sold out and don't come to Friday drinks with the boss as much and haven't re-nominated for the social committee and take a few more sick days and have asked the boss from our last job to be a referee.
The manager pays consultants to help him improve teamwork and morale.
'We'll run off-site trust games. They will love them. We'll put blindfolds on them and They will fall backwards and We'll catch them.'
Precision Ordinance onto a Target.
'All the departments are vital to make a jet fly off the carrier and put a piece of precision ordinance onto a target as per national tasking. Without one department- without Religious Ministries without the Legal department without the Reactor Department without Supply Department without hot water without cold water and steam for the catapults - none of it works.'
- Officer on the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz
Few organisations have the Widget clarity of the literal or figurative precision of ordinance striking its target.
Yet the military camouflages its Widget - 'Applying the maximum amount of violence permitted by law onto the enemy' behind 'Defending Australia and its national interests'.
If that more palatable language promotes the people and the government to provide the defence force with resources and recruits to to inflict violence on the enemy - then its Widget is served.
If Religious Ministries helps launch weapons platforms into the skies to drop explosives that shred property and flesh - then praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!
If 'People are our most important resource' increases the share price, then preach!
Without one department - none of it works.
The bombs don't hit targets.
The share value doesn't rise.
The Widget doesn't get made.
Be honest with yourself about the Widget that you choose to give your time and attention.
Words matter.
We Are Wide Open to Criticisms.
The Blue Angels is the United States Navy's flight demonstration squadron.
Its Widget is 'to showcase the pride and professionalism of the United States Navy and Marine Corps by inspiring a culture of excellence and service to country through flight demonstrations and community outreach.'
After every flight the team goes through a critical debriefing process which they consider is as important as the actual flight itself. They talk about what worked, what didn't, and 'no punches are pulled'.
'We are as wide open as can possibly be to criticisms. We want to become our own worst critics.'
The debriefing process takes twice as long as the flight took. 'Rank doesn't come into play.'
'We have a term that we use: 'Glad to be here''. It's a way of reminding themselves of the privilege of flying with the Blue Angels while their fellow pilots are doing night carrier landings in the Mediterranean Sea.
'We have two 'critiquers' on the ground that look at the manoeuvres and tell us their impressions basically.'
'We make these mistakes and we 'fess up to them and we do it every time we fly. It's an extremely important aspect of what we do. What we do after we've said it is 'I've made this mistake. I'll fix it. You always say you're going to fix it It leaves the rest of us with the feeling that you've recognised your mistake and you're going to take corrective action not to let it happen again. So it doesn't drop our confidence level in another person in the formation.'
'You gotta be able to learn each and every time you go flying because there's never been the perfect flight demonstration yet.'
Meet is Murder.
'We only get one life. Wasting someone’s time is the subtlest form of murder.'
You're a people person?
They're your most valuable resource?
You're a Leader?
Respect people's time.
Start on time.
Finish on time.
Make any interruption worth the 25 minutes they'll take to refocus.
Lead them by example to respect time.
Others'.
Theirs.
Thank you for your time. Sincerely.