The Missing Piece.

Almost every biography - book or article - of a famous person reads like this:

I was not famous.

I did some good/bad/clever/stupid/wrong/right things.

Met some good/bad/clever/stupid/wrong/right people.

Some other interesting stuff happened.

Now I'm famous.

Here is my Philosophy on Life for you to learn what I know.

Wait a minute. Flick back a few lines. Pages. Chapters.

What was the thing that you did or that was done to you that isn't done by or to the rest of us that took you from a couple of human readers of your blog (Hello and thanks you two!) to the international speaking circuit?

Sure, we get that you worked hard and never stopped chasing your dream, passion, goal, vision, obsession, love - despite the poverty, failure, sexual confusion, parental alienation and addictions.

But one minute you were an unemployed, broke teenager with a learning disability, banging a drum kit in a mate's garage next to the sheets and pillow you sleep on, and the next you're Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac.

The main reason what happened is never spelled out is because it's often Luck.
 

The same thing with leadership and management advice.

It's all 'You're doing it wrong and you know it.'

Then it's 'You can do better'.

Which means 'Have a Vision', 'Be Bold', 'Develop Your Culture', 'Innovate', 'Hire Good People', 'Nurture High Performing Teams', 'Be Disruptive', 'Trust Your People', 'Delegate', 'Work Hard', 'Mastery', 'Agility', 'Ten Ways To..'.

Wait a minute. Tell me how I...

'You want it broken down more? Sure. 'Wake up earlier'. 'Have meetings on Mondays not Fridays'. 'Do Performance Reviews.' 'Remember people's names'. 'First in, last out.' 'Have fun.' 'Give feedback'. 'Eat last.' 'Celebrate success.' 'Learn from failure.' 'Be accountable.' 

Still missing something?

Everything is the result of decisions.

Decisions are the building blocks of everything that happens. Including Luck.

Good decision making is the material that makes up the blocks upon which mighty things are built.

Good decision making is the missing element in every story worth telling.

No-one will tell you this.

Now the two of you know.

Be Yourself.

“Take that [rhythm] you’ve got in your foot and put it into your arm,” the maestro urges.'

- Sydney Symphony Orchestra Conductor David Robertson's advice to journalist and first time conductor, James Jeffrey

'I was telling my students about your little leadership habit,' Flight Lieutenant Waugh said when we caught up over lunch in the RAAF Base Point Cook Officers Mess. Kathy had been my Directing Staff or 'DS' during my Officer Training a few months earlier. I was intrigued. What did I, a newly-minted Air Force Officer, have to teach anyone about leadership?

'I told them about how you wrote down in your calendar when your Corporal said that she was having her hair done over the weekend so that you could remember to compliment her on it when you saw her on Monday.'

Something didn't feel right about that then, and it still doesn't.
 

The management books are full of 'fake it 'til you make it' advice to would-be leaders. Tips and tricks to look like you care about your people so that they will be motivated to work harder for you. I think I had been joking with Kathy about my calendar reminder, but I've been a bad boss so I've faked sincerity in other ways.

New and aspiring bosses get caught in the no man's land between remembering what they wished their boss had done for them, and not knowing how, or having the self-confidence, to do it for their workers. So we read the leadership books and do a bit of management by walking around, noting of people's children's names, and try to look interested during long winded responses to our rote 'How was your weekend?' questions.

It's hard.

As one of my bosses, the Abbot of New Norcia used to say to me:

Be yourself.

Take that steady rhythm of humanity in your heart, the wounds from so many bad bosses, your own fear that you recognise in our faces, the optimism and belief in the fundamental goodness in us all - including yourself - and put it into your baton.

Then lead us in playing each of our instruments in your original composition.

We Don't Need Another Leader.

Everyone is under pressure to be leading.

It's because we're not doing our job. We're not going where our boss wants us to go. We're not making her Widget to her satisfaction.

Our bosses don't know what to do about us not doing our jobs (ie they don't know how to do their jobs). 

So the bosses train or recruit people whose job is to get us to do our jobs - ie do the boss's job for them. 

We call those people 'Leaders', and call them getting us to do our jobs 'Leadership', because 'Leader' is sexier than 'Person who Gets Us To Do Our Jobs Because the Boss Can't.'

Then many of the 'leaders' don't do their jobs to the boss's satisfaction.

So they need someone to get them to do their jobs - ie a 'leader'.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Throw in some expensive 'Accountability' (compliance) to measure whether the leaders are effective or to find evidence to sack them.

Eventually, faster than we can chant 'We're totally committed to the highest standards of...'

We're working in a bureaucracy. 
 

We don't need more Leaders.

We just need to do our jobs the way our boss wants them done.

Doing our jobs means making good decisions.

Most of us (including our bosses) don't know how to make good decisions.

It's a skill we need to learn and practise.

Transfer the Leadership Training budget into Good Decision Making Training.
 

Good decisions advance us towards where our boss wants us to be.

If, during our advance, we turn around and one person is following us: 
 

Leader.

A Call for an Inquiry.

There's always Investigations Into What Went Wrong.

There should be Investigations Into What Went Right.

De-stigmatise 'Investigations' into simply a neutral process of gathering information.

Step 3: Assess the Information.

Six Gun in the Holster of Power.

'I understand executive decision making - which is making tough calls in tough times with high stakes for which you're prepared to be held accountable.'

- Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard, responding to a question as to why she may nominate for election as President of the United States.
 

Ms Fiorina declares that the quality that makes her the best person to lead the most powerful nation in the world is her understanding of decision making.

Her statement reveals why decision making is so poorly understood and executed and therefore why so many people are unhappy in their work.

Ms Fiorina is confident that good decision making is such a rare and precious quality that her possession of it makes her stand out from an already élite class - presidential candidates.

She comfortably assumes that the 240 million American voters will nod in agreement.

'Goodness! She knows about decision making! Let's make her President!'

Not just any sort of decision making - executive decision making. Apparently that's a superior form of decision making than the decision making on the factory floor.

You and I could never dream to understand executive decision making so best stand back and clutch our pearls as Ms Fiorina and all the bosses and other clever people take charge and command our timid souls what to do.
 

This cult of the hero leader - the tough decision maker making tough calls in tough times with high stakes - is at the heart of so much organisational failure and personal dissatisfaction. 

It reinforces the myth that decision making is the six gun in the holster of Power.

Instead of the Five Steps  we each can take towards where we want to be.

The Widget is at the Centre of the Picture.

'After the course, students also told fewer personal narratives and stories and instead worked to interpret the images using only the evidence before them. In physical examinations, it's important for clinicians to remove this type of bias..'

- Craig Klugman, Bioethicist and Medical Anthropologist

In an attempt to develop their observation skills, health care professionals were taught an art appreciation course modelled on one taught to children.

Participants were shown art works and asked:

•  What do you see?
• What do you see that makes you think that?
• What more do you see?

The students who took the course discussed emotion less and made more medical observations, using more clinical language. They also noticed more about how their patients presented.

Step 4 of the Five Steps to Good Decision Making is Check for Bias.

We can't Assess the Information (Step 3) before us if we don't see it.

We can't share it with others and seek their advice if we don't have an objective language that doesn't contaminate the information with our personal anecdotes and opinions.

We can't assess its relevance to our Widget if we're distracted by a bias.

Good Decision Making requires us to have the technical skills and self-awareness to remove ourselves from the frame and put the Widget at the centre of the picture.

Good Decision Making in one word: Look.

The President Gives a Lesson on the Five Steps.

'Today the United States, together with our allies and partners, has reached a historic understanding with Iran which, if fully implemented, will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. As President and Commander in Chief I have no greater responsibility than the security of the American people. And I am convinced that if this framework leads to a final comprehensive deal it will make our country, our allies, and our world safer.'

- President Barack Obama announcing the Iran Nuclear Agreement.

President Obama begins a twenty minute explanation of a major decision by reminding his bosses - the American people - and the rest of the world, of his Widget:

'The security of the American people.'

He is saying 'There are many Widgets that may not be served by my decision and therefore as many critics of it. So when you're evaluating my decision and its criticisms, remember my Widget that you elected me to serve.'

He proceeds to explain to the American people and the world - his good decision making.

He's the most powerful person on earth - and yet unlike many lesser bosses - he doesn't rely on his positional power to get what he wants done.

He shows his working out. 'You may not agree with my decision,' he is saying, 'but at least you can see how I arrived at it.'

Most importantly the President is saying:

'I am going to share with you all the information that I have. I trust you - everyone from the Wall Street Banker to the farmer in Oregon - to be smart enough to see how I reasoned my way to this decision - as if you had been sitting alongside me at every table along the negotiating pathway to my decision.' That's a profound statement of both self-confidence and trust. 

President Obama addresses four of the Five Steps to a Good Decision.

(We shouldn't expect any decision maker - particularly the President of the United States - to reveal her Step 1. To do so would risk undermining the purpose of the First Step: to allow the decision maker to purge themselves of emotions that may detract from her ability to address the decision on its merits. 'I ranted to the First Lady about how stubborn the Iranian leaders were and how political and pig-headed Congress is, and then had a couple of stiff drinks before watching a couple of episodes of West Wing followed by ten laps of the White House pool and several covert cigarettes in the Rose Garden while the Secret Service kept a look out. Then I went back to work making my decision.')

Step 2: Define the Issue. (Also the first job of a leader: Define reality.)

'By the time I took office, Iran was operating thousands of centrifuges, which can produce the materials for a nuclear bomb. And Iran was concealing a covert nuclear facility.'

In other words - 'My Widget, the security of the American people - wasn't being made.'

Step 3: Assess the Information.

'Because of our diplomatic efforts, the world stood with us, and we were joined at the negotiating table by the world's major powers: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China as well as the European Union.'

In other words 'I won't bore you with all the technical details in this speech, however other nations have looked at the same information that we did - and come to the same conclusions.'

Step 4: Check for Bias.

'In [my] conversations [with Congress], I will underscore that the issues at stake here are bigger than politics. These are matters of war and peace. And they should be evaluated based on the facts, and what is ultimately best for the American people and for our national security.'

In other words 'I'm not doing this for my own ego or glory or to ensure my place in history. What better way to prove this than for me to argue my case before Congress and teach Congress the same lesson of objectivity.' (We teach best what we most need to learn. If we want to ensure we're not being biased, teach someone else how to rid themselves of bias.)

Step 5: Give a Hearing.

'Given the importance of this issue, I have instructed my negotiators to fully brief Congress and the American people on the substance the deal. And I welcome a robust debate in the weeks and months to come.'

In other words 'Let me know if you've got anything to add to my thinking and the many decisions that still need to be made.'
 

President Obama began by defining reality. He concludes as all good leaders do - by saying Thank You.

'And most of all, on behalf of our nation, I want to express my thanks to our tireless — and I mean tireless — Secretary of State John Kerry and our entire negotiating team. They have worked so hard to make this progress. They represent the best tradition of American diplomacy.'

Naming Orders the Chaos.

'Here the human being is using a word to order the chaos. Because that's what naming does. It orders the chaos. And that's what creation is.'

- Archbishop Mark Coleridge, explaining the Genesis Creation Narrative.

Name your Widget.

Naming our Widget is the beginning of ordering the chaos - of creating.

The mess of information that crowds our brains demanding equal attention and blurring our focus.

The noise of competing priorities that distracts us.

The right versus right decisions that perplex us.

The problems that demand our solutions.

The impulsive reactions.

Name the Widget.

What decision will serve our Widget?

What decision will serve our boss's Widget?

What decision will draw us closer to it? 

What decision will advance us towards our Widget?

What information can I ignore?

Good Decision Making continues our ordering of the chaos that began when we named our Widget.

Regardless of what happens next - we served our Widget.

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.

Monks Do What Monks Do.

'We monks should do what monks do. Here.'

- Abbot Placid Spearritt, Sixth Abbot of New Norcia
 

New Norcia needed 12 million dollars to maintain its heritage buildings.

One of my jobs was to help the monks to fund it.

The businessman was offering us lots of money in return for the use of the New Norcia brand to market his product.

'I'll need to take it to the brethren of course,' the Abbot said after I'd briefed him. 'I should warn you that I'll be voting against it. The proposal doesn't fit with our European, Aboriginal or Monastic heritage. I also need to be mindful not to distract the brethren away from their prayers. There are plenty of worthy tourist icons that could do with the money. As for us, we monks should do what monks do. Here.'

Widget Thinking.

The Abbot of a Benedictine Monastery, the Air Officer Commanding Western Australia, the Chief of the Defence Force; each had clarity of Purpose - their Widget - to guide them when faced with a right-versus-right decision.

Monks seek God - therefore they pray. Yet they interrupt their prayer to find Him in each visitor to their monastery.

The Air Officer Commanding WA seeks to develop positive relationships with the local civilian community to ensure its support of his jets screaming over its homes - therefore he allows families onto his Air Force Base to cool off in the taxpayer funded swimming pool built to to train military jet pilots to survive a ditching into the ocean.

The Chief of the Defence Force seeks to defend Australia and her interests - therefore he deploys forces beyond our shores.

Teachers should teach.
Doctors should heal.
Bakers should bake.

Leaders of the above - principals, medical directors, bakery owners -  should create the space and hire managers to keep it free of distractions from teaching or healing or baking.

Decision makers and their advisers faced with right versus right decisions should ask themselves: What's my Widget? Which decision will build it?

Good decision making begins with Widget clarity. Knowing where we want to be helps us to focus our time and attention, and that of those who support us, on making decisions that get us there.

The Abbot did approve another proposal - the New Norcia Abbey Ale. 'Monks have always brewed beer,' he said.

Decision Laundering.

'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

- The Gospel of Matthew

'If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.'

- 1 John 3: 17-18

The Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco decided to install sprinklers timed to soak and therefore deter homeless people from sleeping in the entranceways to its Cathedral.

The Archdiocese apologised in an unsigned media release.

It explained that the sprinklers were the solution to the 'problem' of 'needles, faces and other dangerous items' that were left in the 'hidden doorways' to the Cathedral.

The idea came from the use of sprinklers in 'the Financial District' as a 'safety, security and cleanliness' measure.

The dangerous items left in the hidden doorways were a risk to 'students and elderly people' who regularly passed the locations 'on their way to school and mass every day.'
 

We've all attended the equivalent kind of The Meeting where it was decided to install the sprinklers. We know it goes something like this:
 

Chairperson: 'Let the Minutes show that the Archdiocese Interfaith Council recorded yet another successful year of helping many thousands of people through food, housing, shelter programs for people at risk including homeless mothers and families, and in countless other ways. Well done and God bless to all concerned. Now moving on to Item 19 on the Agenda: 'Dangerous Items Left in Cathedral Hidden Doorways'. We've read Bob's excellent Facilities Management Report on the problem. Bob?'

Bob: 'Thank you Archbishop. My staff spend hours each week cleaning up shi... sorry Archbishop - human excrement - needles, and refuse from the hidden doorways around the Cathedral. It's time consuming. It distracts them from tending to the gardens. There's risk a needle stick injury.'

Harry: 'We have duty of care.'

Bob: 'Yes! Duty of care.'

Frank: 'To them and the children and the elderly coming to mass.'

Joe: 'We had this problem when I was with the bank. We installed sprinklers that were on timers to spray the areas where people gathered. It worked. And quite cheap too. I know someone who did the job. I can get a quote. They're Catholic so they'll do us a good price.'


Someone needed to apply the Widget Thinking brakes.

What's our Widget, Archbishop?  Eternal Life? And how do we make that again? Parable of the Good Samaritan any help? Didn't Jesus say something about if we love our neighbour we will find Eternal Life? Isn't that also the origin of our secular 'duty of care'?

The interrupter (I think they're called a Leader) needs the courage to persevere beyond the inward and outward eye-rolls around the table, and Frank's response that will begin with an irritated 'That's all very well, but...' and end with all eyes glaring at her.

It's the right versus right decisions that are the tough ones. Choosing between the well being of the homeless and the safety of children and the elderly. Choosing between People Are Our Most Important Asset and cashflow says we need to make some of them redundant. Choosing between openness and transparency (I think that used to be called 'honesty') and the risk both brings to The Brand.

St Benedict, whose writings influenced European governance, said to begin all work with a prayer. Remind ourselves of what we're here to do. What's our Widget? Thanks for that idea Joe - and while we appreciate your wisdom with our budget, a bank's Widget is different to the Church's Widget.

All organisations are guilty of what the decision makers in the Archdiocese of San Francisco did.

All organisations engage in Decision Laundering.

They exploit the distraction of a 'secondary' problem with a soft and attractive outer moral layer - the risk to children and the elderly mass goers -  to harness the analytical skills of good workers away from the 'primary' hard core failure of difficult decision making - the plight of the homeless and drug addicted. The diligent workers fix the secondary 'problem' and feel good about themselves and the organisation. The knotty primary problem remains.

Another more common version of Decision Laundering is to engage workers' intellect and eagerness to problem solve for their boss - in fixing the fallout from the boss's bad primary decision. 'Hey Larry - we need your expertise to wordsmith a media release that puts this sprinkler business into context by honouring all the hard work that our volunteers do in our homeless shelters. We don't want to jeopardise the donations we need to keep them operating.'

The bad primary decision is laundered into a good one by the workers employing Good Decision Making in the secondary decision. The workers will loyally (and rightly) defend their secondary decision making and thus the organisation - allowing their bosses and their flawed primary decision to desert under the cover of the smokescreen of the secondary decision's integrity. Imagine Larry on the phone to the San Francisco Chronicle: 'We'd like to invite you to do an exclusive story to raise awareness of the plight of women in our refuge and the grave consequences for them if we don't make our fundraising target this year.' Good work, Larry. What sprinklers?

Good workers' decision making can be like the water efficiently and effectively cascading down the sides of St Mary's Cathedral like clockwork - cleansing it of the risk to health and safety - and with it, the evidence of the unfulfilled Widget - the path to Eternal Life.
 

The prime job of a leader is to remind the organisation to become more like the thing it says it wants to be. To say to the Archbishop - we need to put the poor ahead of mass attendance. To say to the CEO - our brand will survive our apology. To say to the boss - I disagree and here's why. Then to stick around to help deal with the aftermath of that dissent. This is very, very hard. Which is why real Leaders are rare.


It took two years after their installation and an investigative journalist's exposure for the Archdiocese to acknowledge its decision. It will be redeemed if what it learned advances the faithful towards Eternal Life. Meanwhile, the homeless people just used umbrellas and raincoats.

God must despair. His followers fouling the entrance to His Kingdom. Filthy with our hypocrisy and egos.

He may yet deploy sprinklers.

Purpose and Principle Clearly Understood.

'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

First, get the Widget right.

Then watch your:

Lawyers go home to play with their children.
Managers fold codes of conduct into origami swans.
Workers create.


 

The Widget Can Be Made to Measure.

Is the Widget label not to your liking?
A bit tight around the crotch area, Sir?
A tad impersonal on the shoulders, Madam?
Its fabric chafing against your sensitivities?
Off the Rack label not fitting enough for you?
Prefer hand made organic labels?

Perhaps you'd feel more comfortable exchanging the Widget Label for a bespoke design tailored for you - versatile for both Day Wear and After Five?

Some other Labels from the Widget Line to choose from: 

Aim
Goal
Outcome
Objective
Mission
Vision
Purpose
Destiny
Happiness

Success? You'd like to try on Success instead? Okay, take off Widget and try on Success.

'A good decision is one that advances you towards Success.'

'Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards Success.'

Fabulous.

What Does Excellence Look Like?

My friend Ian coined the Deperdussin Theory.

The Deperdussin was the first aircraft to serve in the Australian Flying Corps, the predecessor to the Royal Australian Air Force. The Theory is that if a lost tribe looked up through the forest canopy and saw a Deperdussin flying overhead (max speed 210 km/h), they would declare it was the most remarkable and awe inspiring magic flying machine. It would become the benchmark against which they would measure everything else they saw or did.

Only because they'd never seen an F-111 (max speed 2665 km/h).
 

What does 'Excellence' look like?

It looks like the last thing that we thought was excellent.

So boss you'd better hope that it was an F-111 and not a Deperdussin.

Or better still - don't assume we know what you mean by Excellent. Instead, show us your Excellent. Or whatever other Adjective you want us to be.

(I think that's called 'Leadership'.)

And boss - keep innovating your Excellence because the RAAF retired the F-111 from service 18 months ago.

(Even good theories need updating.)

Lead Us to The Widget.

'It has been an over-engineered, over-proceduralised process whereby workers spend more and more time driving desks than actually visiting and seeing children.

[W]e have an over-engineered system which has created its own paradox whereby in trying to seek to be compliant with all of the instructions and requirements and procedures and policies that workers are inadvertently now spending more time engaging in that element of the work and less time in actually building a relationship, which takes time, it is a time-consuming principle of our practice, and unless we start inverting that pyramid or inverting that, then we will continue to struggle to engage our workers in the things that they intuitively know they need to do and the voices of the child in that space are loud and clear. The voices in the theory are loud and clear, but we have created an architecture which I believe prevents workers from engaging in that in a purposeful and meaningful way.'

- Tony Kemp, Deputy Secretary of Tasmania's Human Services Department

In his evidence to the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Mr Kemp cited the 'well established theory' that staff should spend eighty percent of their time with children and twenty percent to administration. He said that this had been reversed in recent years.

Mr Kemp's Department is not unique. Australian organisations spend $250 Billion a year on compliance - evenly split between government and the private sector.

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organisation there will be two kinds of people:

• Those who are devoted to the goals of the organisation. Teachers in a school, nurses in a hospital, soldiers in an Army.
• Those who are dedicated to the organisation itself. Administrators in an education system, hospital management, generals.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second kind will gain and keep control of the organisation. It will write the rules, and control the first kind's career advancement.

The demoralising inevitability that Pournelle's Iron Law means the organisation ends up being its own Widget - its dedicated staff conquering the devoted ones - has an antidote.

Widget Thinking.

The second 'dedicated' kind must make its decisions in service of the same Widget as the first 'devoted' group is making.  

The second kind should start every meeting, every decision making process with a prayer:

'Lead us to the Widget, and deliver us from our egos.

Amen'.

Everything You Do Sends a Message.

'All the riches will not buy a man. But promise him a ribbon and he will offer his life.'

- An Unknown General.
 

General Dwight Eisenhower was a career soldier who was responsible for the planning and execution of the D Day landings and subsequent invasions of France and Germany. He led the armed forces that liberated Nazi occupied territory in World War II and rescued Western Civilisation. He was NATO Supreme Commander and after retiring from the Army he served two terms as President of the United States.

President Eisenhower made his farewell speech at the height of the Cold War as Soviet and US nuclear missiles sat in their silos waiting to destroy the earth. His decades in uniform immersed in Army tribalism and identity did not blind him to warning of the threat to civil liberties of 'the military-industrial complex'. He used the word 'I' eighteen times.

President Eisenhower concluded with:

'We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.'

General Eisenhower was awarded ten US and decorations and chose to wear only a handful of them. He is buried in uniform, with his wife of 53 years, wearing only three.

General David Petraeus commanded all coalition forces in Iraq. He retired from the Army as the United States was struggling to contain guerrillas in Afghanistan.

His final speech was twice as long as General Eisenhower's. He affirmed the 'need to maintain the full-spectrum [military] capability that we have developed'. General Petraeus shouted 'Hoo-ah!' three times and said 'I' 79 times. He concluded with:

'May God bless each of you, our great country, and most importantly our men and women in uniform and their families.'

Fifteen months after his retirement speech, General Petraeus resigned as Director of the CIA after an alleged extra-marital affair with his biographer. He subsequently pleaded guilty to a charge of mishandling classified information that he had given to her. 

General Petraeus wore over 30 ribbons and badges.

The Controller Accepted Jurisdiction

'I....do swear that I will truly and honestly demean myself in the practice of a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Western Australia according to the best of my knowledge and ability.'

- Oath taken on admission as a legal practitioner.

The Report on Investigation into Loss of separation between Airbus A330 VH-EBO and Airbus A330 VH-EBS near Adelaide SA on 20 September 2013 referred a number of times to the air traffic controllers 'accepting jurisdiction'. For example:

'The controller accepted jurisdiction for the track of the eastbound 747 at 1204:58.'

'Accepted jurisdiction.' What a great way of saying 'The controller accepted authority to act.'

I had a boss in the corporate world who used to ask when he wanted a report on the progress of a client engagement: 'Who owns that relationship?'

Step 2 of the Five Steps to a Good Decision is to Define the Issue.

One way of the decision maker defining her issue amidst the noise of opinions and competing self-interests is to ask herself: 'Do I have the authority to make a decision that will advance my boss's Widget?'

Do I have the power? The authority? The jurisdiction? Where can I find the source of that power? In my contract of employment? A policy? What elements need to be in play to trigger my power to act? If I don't have the power - who does so I may 'offer them jurisdiction'.

Jurisdiction is a fine word for another reason.

The controller was required to make decisions. Not at their whim and discretion and subjective opinion. The origin of the word 'jurisdiction' is the Latin jur - law - dictio - saying.

To have jurisdiction - decision making power - requires the decision maker to speak the law. To give effect to a higher power. The controller's job was to serve and animate the will of a higher authority.

Or put another way, the controller's job was not to meet their needs - but the needs of their boss's Widget.

'Demean' is a word not often used, and when it is, it is in a pejorative context. It is about as unfashionable as the word 'obedience'.

Law graduates seeking admission to practice used to have to swear to demean ourselves to the Law. To humble ourselves. To put ourselves beneath. To serve.

I think this concept may be what organisations are grasping for when they speak of being 'committed to...'. They mean - demean. To make everything else secondary.

When we truly accept the jurisdiction for our Widget - to 'speak its truth';  
When we undertake to demean ourselves in the building of our Widget - put our egos aside and serve it;  
Then we liberate ourselves from so much of the distractions, self-interest and trivialities that sabotage good decision making.

Too much? Too heavy? Too...demeaning?

Then don't accept the job. Or quit.

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.'

Crime and Punishment.

'The sole objective of the investigation of an accident or incident shall be the prevention of accidents and incidents. It is not the purpose of this activity to apportion blame or liability.'
 
-  Clause 3.1 to Annex 13 to the International Convention on Civil Aviation

Vengeance. Retribution. Revenge.

Deterrence. Punishment. Justice.

Blame.

We have a powerful longing for these outcomes from decisions that follow errors.

Maybe its a carryover from our childhood. Parents. School. Discipline.

If there's an error and no-one gets publicly named and shamed, it's like an enthusiastic waiter has cleared our coffee cup from our table before we've drunk the last mouthful.

Perhaps we're trained in our thinking and expectations by stories from books, movies, and the news about the adversarial winner-loser criminal justice system that relish arrest, prosecution, trial,confession, admission, guilt, judgment, verdict, conviction, sentencing, penalty. 

There are no blockbuster movies where the hero rises to her feet in the middle of an Administrative Appeals Tribunal hearing and shouts 'You can't handle procedural fairness and natural justice and correct or preferable decision making in the inquisitorial process!' It's Crime and Punishment that is the classic bestselling literary novel. Not Ultra Vires and Certiorari.

Listen for assumptions about blame and punishment lurking ominously just beneath the surface of the benign, dull, haze-grey drone of our organisational language. 'Accountability' doesn't mean 'We'll celebrate and reward you and eagerly learn from you when it all goes well.' We know it really means 'Don't you screw it up - or you'll pay for it.'

Laws that were designed as shields to protect people are brandished like swords and waved menacingly towards us. Or instead of serving as cobblestones meant to pave society's streets of mutual progress, laws are seized by an aggrieved person grasping for reasons for some calamity and prised loose from their intended legal context to be used as missiles to hurl and draw blood from anyone deemed at fault.

The inquisitorial system is so alien to our thinking compared to the adversarial one, and our Whodunnit expectation so strong that it must be managed. Watch and listen to  Datuk Kok Soo Chon, the Investigator in Charge of the Malaysian Airlines MH370 disappearance, solemnly repeat word for word Clause 3.1 to Annex 13 of the ICAO Convention as part of his Interim Report on the investigation as he looks down the barrel of the camera at you and me. 'You'll not find blame here,' he's saying. 'We're not going to give you a head on a  platter,' he's warning us in more austere bureaucratic language. 'There's nothing more to see here except lessons for a better future.'

To paraphrase Clause 3, the sole purpose of a good decision should be to make a better decision next time.

There's also a lot of learning between 'It fell' and 'I dropped it'.

We don't become who we are on the back of the shamed and fallen.

A Good Decision Takes as Long as A Good Decision Takes.

On 20 September 2013 two Qantas Airbus aircraft with a combined passenger load of more than 600, nearly collided 12km in the air almost above Adelaide.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) began an investigation that day. It said it would be finished by September 2014 - almost a year later. In November 2014 and already two months overdue, it updated the investigation status to be that the report would be made available to the public by January 2015.

On 5 March 2015, almost two and a half years after the incident, six months longer than the date it was first promised, and two months past the amended reporting date,  ATSB Transport Safety Report Aviation Occurrence Investigation AO-2013-161 was published.

Meanwhile, hundreds of aircraft carrying thousands of passengers continued to fly the same routes each day in the control of the same systems and people and decision making doing the same things that failed on 20 September 2013 and nearly killed 600 people.

The more important the decision, the longer it should take.

Decision makers can be tempted to do the opposite: Important decisions must be made quickly. Urgently. Decisively. Get it done. Get it over with.

Not so for the ATSB. The risk that the undiagnosed errors in person and machine could be repeated with catastrophic results did not compel it to compromise its decision making process.

How long should a decision take? It should take as long as a good decision takes. How long do the Five Steps take?

The ATSB process was not initiated by a complainant. Decision makers resolving complaints are under pressure to decide quickly. Complaints policies impose response times. Complainants demand answers. Neither serves good decision making.

This is one of many examples where a clear Widget cuts through the complexity. Does speed, appeasing a demanding complainant, or meeting an artificial time constraint in a policy or self-imposed serve the Widget?

The ATSB had a clear Widget:

'The ATSB’s function is to improve safety and public confidence in the aviation, marine and rail modes of transport through excellence in: independent investigation of transport accidents and other safety occurrences; safety data recording, analysis and research; fostering safety awareness, knowledge and action.'

As each self-imposed deadline for the report approached, the ATSB would have asked itself: 'Will publication on the promised date serve our Widget? Which is more important: the integrity of our deadlines or of our findings and recommendations about aviation safety?' Appropriately the answer was the latter. Let's update the information on our website and continue inquiring with excellence.

Time constraints - 'Complaints will be resolved in x days' - should only be added to decision making processes if they serve the decision maker's Widget. 'Your decisions take too long' is not sufficient reason alone to impose deadlines. Better to manage expectations. Under promise and over deliver. Next time ATSB - promise us a report in two years and delight us by publishing it in one and a half.

A deadline may be appropriate to improve the turnaround time for a broken toaster under warranty. Yet it may compromise the careful analysis needed to understand the failure of a complex system.

Such as why two 240 tonne aircraft with advanced navigation aids and under air traffic control converged at a closing speed of one and half times the speed of sound 38,000 feet above the earth.

Or why that person did that thing.