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.

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.

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.'

- Seth Godin
 

Good Decision Making in three words:

Be attentively curious.

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.'

- Scott Adams.

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.

What I Learned From Invading Australia.

We were outgunned, outnumbered and surrounded.

We were attacking Australia.

We were winning.

'I need to lodge small groups of special forces soldiers at various points on the Australian coast,' the Kamarian Commander of 311 Raider Battalion briefed me. 'I want to hide them beneath the decks of fishing vessels that will drop them off without the vessels being intercepted by the Australians. Can I fly the Mussorian flag on them under International Law?'

'Yes Sir. It's called a 'Ruse of War. It's legitimate. Your only obligation is to lower the flag and raise our Kamarian flag if we are discovered and need to defend ourselves. Your biggest risk of interception is by fisheries inspection officers so don't display any fishing gear.' It was much more fun being legal adviser to the bad guys on military exercises.

Following the sabotage and destruction of military and civilian infrastructure across the north of Australia by unknown foreign military elements, the Australian government responded. It suspended the right of innocent passage. No vessel, including ours operating under false flags, could transit Australian terrotorial waters. The Commander asked me for my advice.

'Declare victory, Sir,' I said.

$13 Billion of trade that came through Australia's northern waters annually was halted.

Australia's response to the threat of three civilian fishing vessels and a handful of commandos had self-inflicted billions of dollars of damage to its economy. Much more than the weapons of the armed forces of the mythical tiny island state of Kamaria could ever have done.

The first job of a Leader is to Create the Space.

Boundaries should be liberating catalysts for creativity.

Be generous and discerning in the size of space you create for people - in agreements, rules, policies, practice.

Once you limit the horizon, you have to patrol it. You have to enforce it. You have to mend it. You have to justify it.

You will add to the $250 Billion Australia already spends each year on compliance.

You will constrain and restrict innovation and cause other unforeseen damage.

You can be sure that each person down the hierarchy will define the operating space even smaller for their people.

If someone exploits your generous boundaries - breaks a rule, abuses your trust -  be careful not to respond by drawing the lines in tighter. You'll catch more than the stray in your net.

If they breach the boundary again - don't shoot.

Instead, invite them to leave your space and create their own.

Invite them to be a Leader.

Come to the Edge.

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came
And he pushed
And they flew.

- Christopher Logue

A perk of being a lawyer is that you learn a little about a lot in the course of taking instructions from clients and asking questions about their work and lives that will help tailor the legal advice.

An airman explained to me about microfails. The way I remember it, every new aircraft type is put in a test laboratory and subjected to flexing and bending and other forces that replicate the stresses it will experience in flight. The airframe's responses are electronically measured and calibrated into units called 'micro fails'. When the airframe finally breaks, the engineers and designers know how many micro fails it took to do so and therefore its tolerance to the unpredictable forces of flight.

An airframe's life is calculated as being as long as it takes to suffer a certain number of micro fails. An aircraft that does a lot of high stress manoeuvres that result in G forces on it will suffer more micro fails in a flight than if it flew straight and level. It will therefore have a shorter life.

Instruments in the aircraft detect and record each micro fail. The engineers monitor the total and when it reaches certain amounts, they will replace parts of the airframe, and 'rewind' the micro fail measurement instrument to zero. 

MIcro fails are invisible. As the name suggests, they are tiny fractures of the integrity of the airframe that gradually degrade its strength until the point when one too many stressors adds the micro fail that breaks the aeroplane.

The airman who came to see me was alleging that the engineers were rewinding the micro fail measuring instruments to avoid having to ground the aircraft and put them into maintenance.

People have micro fails in response to forces around them in the workplace.

Missed promotion. Bang. A hundred micro fails.
Frustrating meeting. Shudder. Ten micro fails.
Brusque email written in haste. Ouch. Two micro fails.
A name forgotten. One micro fail. Catastrophic explosive decompression resulting in loss of a sense of proportion and humour and crash landing into stress leave.

Everyone has a unique total micro fail capacity before they break. A boss can rarely predict the stressor that will push the worker beyond their limit. It's not always the obvious less than perfect act of management. It might be an innocent misunderstanding. Crack.

Organisations wrongly assume that a new employee starts on zero (ignoring the legacy of their last job and their life in general) and assume to standardise the total micro fails for each employee by their contract, policies, pay and values.

People also wrongly assume that quitting a job and finding a new one will reset their micro fail metre to zero. There's almost always leftover fatigue that transfers to the new boss.

Organisations have various ways of doing the people maintenance that they again assume allows them to rewind the individual and collective worker micro fail meters to zero from time to time

Pay increases.
Leave.
Promotions.
Public praise.

Sometimes bosses just replace the people frames for new ones.

Worse, they introduce the equivalent of fraudulently rewinding the meter by running a professional development or team building day, introducing some new values of code of conduct, or emailing out inspiring and motivating words. 

After the butchers paper has been binned, the mandatory training has been completed, the all staff email has been deleted - a boss chips a worker in front of their peers and deep inside the metal of each witness staff member, fissures grow and the individual micro fail tally resumes its countdown to breakdown.

Legions of experts, lawyers, consultants, therapists and researchers make their living both inside and external to organisations from training, advising, measuring, mentoring, coaching, facilitating, supporting, assisting, delaying, mending and covering up the human equivalent of the micro fail.

It's mainly placebos. Good and bad bosses alike are never sure what act of theirs will be the one too many.

A bad boss can routinely be bad and his workers will keep on building Widgets.

A good boss may omit one name from a speech acknowledging thirty others and the entire office is sprayed with debris and body parts from the disintegrating staff member for months afterwards.

So we keep on legislating, regulating, training, coaching and parenting in a vain attempt to smooth out the turbulence of the workplace and keep everybody happy.

It's not working. It can't. We can keep rewinding the meter or flying straight and level and avoiding tight turns and gravity, but we're deluding ourselves and each other.

As M Scott Peck wrote in the opening sentence of his book 'The Road Less Travelled':

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

The workplace is part of Life. It's difficult. The more we seek to protect people from the stressors of doing their jobs with good and bad bosses, peers, subordinates, clients, customers, machines, and gravity, the greater disservice we do to them by denying them the opportunity to confront Peck's Great Truth, learn from it, and to transcend it. All in a relatively safe environment - the workplace - compared to the unpredictability of the rest of Life where there is no boss to blame for what befalls us, and often no Widget to measure our bearings from.

I checked with my Aeronautical Engineer friend Francisco about my memory of micro fails. He'd never heard of them. He works on modern Boeing 787s.

'I think that you're referring to aircraft structures of the past that were built with a safe life,' he said. 'Newer aircraft are fail safe.'

We need to rethink our 'work frame' design and maintenance. We need to evolve from our artificial 'safe life' philosophy of minimising the consequences of engaging with the healthy human stressors that arise from doing any job that's worthwhile - ie Life. We need to stop demanding that the boss shields us from the natural turbulence and forces of doing innovative, creative, speed-of-sound work.

We need workers to become the equivalent of fail safe and bosses with the wisdom and bravery to allow it.

We need to come to the edge so that we can fly.

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.

Life's Forcing Functions Ask: Who Do I Want to Become?

My friend Michael gave advice about operating gadgets that I often reflect on: 'If you have to force something, it's not the right way. You'll break it.'

A 'forcing function' is a step in a process designed to interrupt us. It forces us to pause and think before proceeding to the next step. It's usually a safety feature.

Closing a door before a microwave will operate is a forcing function. Child proof locks on the caps of bottles of medicine are another example.

Life has naturally occurring forcing functions:

• Time.
• Sleep.
• Emotion.
• Laws.

Organisations add to or tailor them:

• Contracts.
• Policies.
• Values.
• Budgets.
• Other People.

Each of these constraints forces us to pause in our stream of consciousness workflow, instinctive, opinion-based decision making - and to pay attention to what we're doing.

Be attentively curious.

Yes - we could open the screw top faster if we didn't have to grip it at specified points and apply downward pressure while unscrewing.

Yes - we can get more work done by emailing in the evening and on weekends.

Yes - we can avoid the difficult conversation and ignore the poor performance.

Yes - we can use our positional power to override policies, ethics, emotions.

Yes - we can make decisions in one step instead of Five.

Yes - a monk could find God without having to live in community with other monks.

Yes - we can bypass the fiddly cap by smashing the bottle open.

Yet the higher and more permanent the stakes (prison, unemployment, loss of trust, eternal life), the more our evolution, jurisprudence and spiritual systems have designed the equivalents of the child-proof cap to interrupt our instinctive flow towards a decision so that we pay attention to what we're doing.

There's a good reason that the criminal justice system can take years to potentially put a person in prison. That an employee can't lose their job unless their boss follows the steps of procedural fairness. That we feel a twinge in our stomach at the thought of having a difficult conversation. That the more important the decision, the longer it should take. That it takes years for a monk to make final vows.

Forcing functions. 

Not blocking our progress - just making us mindful of it.

We pause and deliberate on what we're doing, who we're doing it to, and who we want to become.

One of the top myths in Leadership Lore is that Leadership is hard and reserved for a special few because it demands high stakes decisions to be made under pressure that are too difficult intellectually or emotionally for lesser, more timid beings.

Many leaders - new and experienced - conclude that their sole job is to deploy their positional power to ignore or bypass the laws, policies, processes, values, emotions, promises, information and other forcing functions that have hindered the non-leaders from making a decision.

If the leader won't use their power - then what's the point of having it?

Leadership Lore says that the function of the leader is to bypass forcing functions and get things done.

Yet even a 12 year old knows this is not the bravery that defines Leadership.

Where does the leader of Leadership Lore get this power?

We give it to them.

When we encounter something that is hard - in work or in Life - we pine for a Leader.

Not for their wisdom, patience, humility, trust, curiosity, compromise, intellect, pacifism, service, vulnerability, love...

We want their power.

Our Leader smashes the bottle open.

Hooray! Decisive! Effective! Uncompromising! Fast! Courageous! Heroic!

We return to our desks and homes - relieved that someone has Led.

Tiny shards of fear embedded in our souls.

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.'

- David Walsh

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.

The Root of All Conflict.

All conflict is this:

Did you make your Widget.

In every courtroom this is the case for the plaintiff, applicant, appellant, prosecution:

Where's the Widget you promised?

Where's the speed you said you'd drive at when we licensed you?

Where's the house you said you'd build in our contract?

Where's the work you said you'd do when we employed you?

Where's the safe workplace you said you'd provide for us?

The judges who rule on these questions can't build those Widgets.  They have their opinions but that's Hell, not justice.

Judges assume that you're the best person to define your Widget specifications. In the contract you signed, the law that binds you, the policies that you wrote.

The judges decide like this:

'We've never built your Widget. But we can read the Widget blueprint in your policies, contract, agreement, legislation.'

'We've heard the evidence of what you delivered.'

'Is there a gap?'

'Did you drive at the speed you agreed to when you got your licence?' (Judges aren't experts in town planning, physics, or metallurgy.)

'Did you build the house with the brand of bathroom tiles your contract promised?' (Judges aren't experts in Interior Design or Italian slate.)

'Did you do what the company's code of conduct required of you?' (Judges don't assume that their values are yours.)

Judges trust that you're the best Widget definer.

If what you made isn't what you promised - then the Judges order: 'Make what you said you'd make', or alternatively 'Do what you agreed you'd do if you didn't.' (Pay a fine, go to prison, pay compensation.)

Do what you said you were going to do.

Make your Widget.

It's called 'Integrity.'

It's all about the Widget.

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.

It's not about the Widget.

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.'

From Habits and Fears.

'The decision we will make....is a choice between....the habits and fears of the past, and the demands and opportunities of the future.'

- Gough Whitlam, Australian Prime Minister, 13 November 1972

'The Whitlam program as laid out in the 1972 election platform consisted three objectives: to promote equality, to involve the people of Australia in the decision-making processes of our land, and to liberate the talents and uplift the horizons of the Australian people.

This program is as fresh as it was when first conceived. It scarcely could be better articulated today.

Who would not say the vitality of our democracy is a proper mission of government and should not be renewed and invigorated.

Who can say that liberating the talents and uplifting the horizons of Australians is not a worthy charter for national leadership?'

- Noel Pearson, Eulogy for Gough Whitlam

'The essence of leadership is being aware of your fear, and seeing it in the people you wish to lead'

Seth Godin

'Am I any good? That's what I'd like to know and all I need to know.'

- Robert Frost, Four Times Pulitzer Prize winning Poet Laureate.

The first job of a Leader is to Create the Space.

Then invite us to raise our fearful eyes from white knuckles gripping our habits and towards our horizon.

And to remind us:

'You are good enough.' 

Limitations Liberate.

'Leadership should be aimed at helping to free people from oppressive structures, practices and habits encountered in societies and institutions, as well as within the shady recesses of ourselves. Good leaders liberate.'

Amanda Sinclair, Leadership for the Disillusioned

A Leader Creates the Space.

This implies boundaries.

Boundaries give certainty of the resources - time, materials, people - with which to create.

Limits, rules, policies, regulations, contracts, processes, checklists - liberate.

The Leader, having created the space and its boundaries, stretches out her hand to us sheltering in our shady recesses and says:

'Come out and play!'

Compliance.

'I'm certainly not the first person to point out that general rules cannot handle all cases.  This is exactly what Aristotle had in mind with the notion of Equity: The necessity of judgement making a correction to a rule - not because there is something wrong with a rule, but because of the generality of a rule that will necessarily make it inappropriate to some cases that it will seem to govern. Trying to accommodate or replace equitable judgement with additional rules simply won’t work.'

- Stephen Cohen

Deloitte released a Report last week that found Australia spends $250 billion a year on rules and compliance by both governments and businesses

That's more than eight and a half Defence budgets.

That's over $10,500 for every man, woman and child in the country.

The private sector spends $155 billion a year administering and complying with self-imposed rules 

1 million people - one in every 11 workers - are employed in ‘the compliance sector’.

Middle managers and senior executives spend 8.9 hours a week complying with the rules that firms set for themselves, with other staff spending 6.4 hours.

These rules cost $21 billion a year to administer.

They generate $134 billion a year in compliance costs – double the matching compliance cost of public sector regulations. 

The Widget for many people is ticking boxes.

There are many good reasons to learn and apply good decision making.

Cost is one.

The last job of a Leader is to get out of the way.

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.'

The Only Way to Learn.

Sergeant Mortellaro - My Drill Sergeant during Officers Training School

“I have already chose my officer.”
And what was he?
Forsooth, a great arithmetician...
That never set a squadron in the field,
Nor the division of a battle knows...

- 'Othello', William Shakespeare

'The problem is that when we're new to something or when we're approaching intermediate skill at something, it gets dangerous. Because you need to have an awareness about how much more you could learn. There's the cataract of not being great at something that makes it difficult to know what you need to learn to get better. The only way to learn that is from other people. It's very difficult on your own.'

- Merlin Mann

When you become the boss for the first time, you're dangerous.

Lots of positional power and no experience of how to use it.

You've made lots of widgets so well that you've been put in charge of other people making widgets. They're completely different skills with only the widget in common. You're an arithmetician - full of the theory. Or maybe not even that. 

Sure - you've had lots of leadership role models:

Parents. Older siblings. School teachers. The drill sergeants in the movies.

That's not the worst of it. As Merlin Mann says, you may not know that you don't know. Or if you do, you can't show it. Your people will eat you alive. Your boss wants you to deliver from day one. You've got to be strong. Decisive even. That's what they do in the movies.

So you set about being Mum, Dad, older sister, home room teacher and Gunnery Sergeant Carter. You stop being yourself.

Your people will teach you what it takes to be a good boss. Ask them. Engage them in good decision making.

Yes it's risky. They may take advantage of you.

Which is why they won't.