Decider.
The President of the United States Barack Obama gave revealing interview about his decision making.
“You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits....I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”
“You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.”
He quoted President George W Bush who described the President as 'a decider'.
“Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable. Otherwise, someone else would have solved it. So you wind up dealing with probabilities. Any given decision you make you’ll wind up with a 30 to 40 percent chance that it isn’t going to work. You have to own that and feel comfortable with the way you made the decision. You can’t be paralyzed by the fact that it might not work out.” [My emphasis.]
Note that President Obama believes that 'comfort' doesn't come from the outcome of the decision. It comes from 'owning' the way that the decision was made.
The President added that 'after you have made your decision, you need to feign total certainty about it. People being led do not want to think probabilistically.'
“One of my most important tasks is making sure I stay open to people, and the meaning of what I’m doing, but not to get so overwhelmed by it that it’s paralyzing. Option one is to go through the motions. That I think is a disaster for a president.'
"There are times when I have to save it and let it out at the end of the day.”
Integrity.
The events leading to the suspension of James Hird as coach of the Essendon Football Club are a classic study in how decisions reveal, test and shape who we really are - beyond what we say we are.
James Hird stated in January that he took 'full responsibility' for everything done in the Football department. To you and me 'full responsibility' means that whatever happened, James will accept the consequences as if he pulled every lever, regardless of what he actually personally did or knew.
This is a sound legal and ethical position to take. Very commendable. His words gave comfort and reassurance that transcend the uncertainty about what happened. They were saying to us 'Don't worry. I was in charge and you know me. I am a Man of integrity and I would never allow illegal drug taking to go on. If it did, then I'd see it as such a heinous oversight on my part that I would resign. I'm still in charge, so that tells you that all is well. That shows you how confident that I am in my Club, and therefore you should be also.'
Then look at what he actually does because this is what speaks loudest. He dodges and weaves and blames others. What we assumed he meant by 'full responsibility' was wrong.
Yet we don't get to say 'James - you're wrong. You should do such-and-such.' James gets to define his Widget. Essendon affirms his definition for as long as he is employed as coach. He explains to us what he means by 'full responsibility' by his actions. He's not wrong if he acts differently to what we assumed. We are wrong in what we assumed James meant.
The result for James Hird is far worse than us thinking that he's 'wrong' - or indeed that he was ultimately suspended for a year by the governing body. There's nothing wrong with being 'wrong' - this is important and - in James' case - sad. The result of James' actions is that we can no longer make assumptions about what James will do when he says that he will do something. Indeed there's a double whammy because people also generally react badly to being duped.
'Integrity' is simply doing what you said that you were going to do. James no longer has integrity for those of us who assumed 'full responsibility' meant its plain meaning. We now have to second guess him when he says that something is a spade. Does he actually mean a shovel?
This should be such a fatal blow to his ability to lead - in any sense. We lack confidence in where he says he's going to take us. He says he's going to lead us to victory. Whose definition of victory? James' or ours? This uncertainty is death to a leader.
Our decisions - not our words - reveal, test and shape us.
It was so, so easy for James to sound noble and Churchillian in January. 'Full responsibility!' Yet James' decisions were harder to make than those words were to utter. Real life tested his courage to stand by his words.
And most fatally for him and Essendon, they will continue to shape how others will behave in the future in response to whatever he or Essendon say. This is damage that can't be undone.
It takes a few clicks of a marketing manager's keyboard to declare what an organisation is 'committed to'. But that is just plastic clickety-clack noise until a decision reveals what that actually means, tests just how 'committed' it is, and then shapes our assumptions about what it will do in the future.
As for James Hird - Essendon has offered him a two year contract extension. It appears that he has produced his Widget precisely to his employers' specifications.
And as for the governing body - the Australian Football League - what does it tell us about its Widget? How much did the $1.253 Billion in television rights and James Hird's popularity among supporters and viewers and ratings affect its decision-making? Again, it's pointless for us to argue whether it should have.
A better way to shape the AFL's Widget to our specifications? Stop buying it. Switch off the TV and with it the advertisers who pay the broadcasters who bid for the TV rights from the AFL which decides whether James Hird's Widget is well-made.
Copyright.
It's rare for decision makers to let us in on their decision making.
The fortunate exceptions are courts and the government. We can walk into almost any court and hear the judge explain how she reached her judgment. We can sit in the public gallery in parliament and listen to debate over legislation.
It's risky for decision makers to explain their reasoning because it may make their decisions look like the product of a methodical process of inquiry rather than the result of charisma or instinct or divine revelation. So we usually don't get invited to meetings or sent the minutes.
If decision makers publish the blueprint of how they do things they fear making themselves redundant. It means that anyone with the same information and process of reasoning could do what they do. Earn what they earn. Wield their power.
A Leader falls over herself to make her decision-making transparent. Her processes are open source. That's how she became a Leader. She's a teacher. She wants to show her working out for others to copy and follow. Leaders become Leaders because people are confident enough in their decision making to choose to follow them.
A Leader isn't worried about becoming redundant by showing her working out for three reasons:
One: It's who she is.
Two: While everyone is busy poring over her blueprints to discover and copy the trick, the Leader has long moved on to explore and fail and learn and make decisions and publish their working out for others to copy or follow if they so choose. In other words - Leading.
Three: Leaders are brave.
Mistakes.
A good decision is one that advances us towards where we want to be.
Mistakes - like forcing functions - say 'Wrong Way. Turn Back'.
The decision that led to the mistake still advances us towards where we want to be (and is therefore a good decision) if we've:
(a) got a Widget that we're measuring our progress against, and
(b) are leaving breadcrumbs (e.g. the 5 Steps) that we can use to retrace our path so that we know to turn left instead of right next time.
(One great outcome of making a mistake is that you may turn around to retrace your steps and bump into people following you. Confirms you're a leader. May as well encourage their own mistake-making by chatting with them about the terrain you learned about while making yours. That's what Leaders do.)
If our decisions are ad hoc and random then mistakes have little to teach us. People will only follow us because they have to - and even then very slowly.
Thus a decision is a good one regardless of the outcome as long as what we learn from it leads us closer to where we want to be.
Penicillin was discovered by mistake.
We need to normalise error that results from good decision making.
Why don't more organisations do this?
Because this is what Leaders do.
Brave things.
Despite the 313,000,000 hits on Google for 'Leadership' and everyone talking and teaching it, true Leaders in the wild are rare and precious and very quiet.
Hardy.
Andrew Zolli, the Author of 'Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back" was interviewed recently about his book. He said the following (with my bits added in brackets) that affirmed the value of the Widget:
'People who are psychologically hardy believe very prevalently in some things about the world. If you believe that the world is a meaningful place [Personal Widget]. If you see yourself as having agency within that world [Good Decision Making]. And if you see success and failures as being placed in your path to teach you things [Decisions Measured Against Widget], you are more likely to be psychologically hardy and therefore more resilient in the face of trauma [Life].
Criticism.
A senior official in local government was interviewed on radio about their response to a report that had criticised some decisions that the council had proposed.
The journalist asked him whether he was concerned that a political agenda was what motivated the report. His reply surprised and delighted me.
'No, not really. It's just another piece of information that we'll consider in deciding what is in the best interests of the community.'
Widget Thinking in action.
I'm a naïve inquirer.
This is information and I get to decide its value.
Its value is determined by what it tells me about making a better community (Widget).
It will be considered on its merits along with all the other information.
(Thank you and please keep sending me information about my Widget.)
Play.
Jonathon sent me an article recently about reconciling the highly regimented processes and structures in modern football with the desire of most sportsmen to just play on instinct.
It reminded me of a paper I wrote during my Masters of Defence Studies on how much the effectiveness of modern armed forces relied on the threat of courts martial and other forms of discipline. The simplistic view is that sailors soldiers and airmen put themselves in harm's way out of fear of being punished if they hesitate. An infantryman charges a machine gun nest because his officers told him to do it. I didn't think that this could be the thinking in modern armed forces. But I couldn't think of an alternative explanation.
My research directed me to a senior Air Force officer who had studied this question and presented a simple answer. Members of the armed forces behaving contrary to normal instincts of self-preservation was the result of thousands of hours of drills and other training. Soldiers' instincts had been re-programmed so that they reacted in a predictable way to coming under fire, and they knew that everyone else in their section was doing the same in a practised drill. They had become unconsciously competent.
Much like the air traffic controllers, this rote response actually freed their minds up to consider more creative options to deal with the threat. Soldiers charge machine gun nests because it's what they've been trained to do. It's their Widget. Not to detract from the significantly higher risk to them of this behaviour compared to that faced by the average office worker. This is why those whose actions are recognised with medals usually shrug awkwardly when asked about their bravery. They were doing their job. They knew that their fellow soldiers' ability to do their jobs depended on it.
The justification for the structures in football is much the same. As the writer of the article concludes:
'I think the key that ultimately opens the door for most footballers is that this process is not the football bogyman at all. In fact, if adhered to, these structures will let you return to the battle cry that made you a good player to begin with: ''JUST LET ME PLAY!''
In simple terms, all of these set plays and crosses on the whiteboard are just a place to start. With the right amount of teaching and practice, getting to these spots just becomes part of the routine, part of the rhythm of a game.
For the best players, it gives them a freedom, too. A starting point. To be in the spot your team needs you to be in can give a player a sense of inner confidence.'
Good policies, procedures, routines and Widgets in a workplace do the same. Combined with a good boss, far from constraining us, they free us to just play.
Always.
Your boss is always right. Always.
This is the First Rule of Employment.
Remember this - and you will set yourself free - one way or the other.
Your boss is always right because it is her Widget that you are helping to build. Your job is to give whatever expertise that you have to your boss in whatever form that you usually give it. If she says that you're wrong - then she should know because it's her Widget that you're wrong about.
Your job is to build the best Widget possible for your boss to incorporate into her Widget.
If you think that your boss is wrong - there are two possibilities: There is something about your Widget that you don't understand or there is something about the boss's Widget that you don't understand. Because your boss is always right. If you think that your boss is wrong (and of course she's not) then ask sincere questions with the mind of the naïve inquirer. Not in an annoying way - she's busy.
If you're the boss being asked those questions, then be secure enough to respond to them in a non-defensive, open-minded manner. Why wouldn't you? You want the questioner to make the best Widget possible because your Widget depends on it.
If you know that your team will always assume that you are right once you've made a decision - then the pressure is on to make sure that you are right - because they're off making their Widget to plug into your Widget based on the specs that you've given them.
You can't lose, boss. Because if you're confident about your Widget and how your team contributes to it, then the questioner will go away with their answers and do their bit to make sure your Widget is shiny. If the questions do reveal a flaw in your Widget, or at least the questioner's understanding of their Widget, then best to find that out now and remedy it, before your boss - or worse still - your customer does.
(This is the real incentive to have a genuine Open Door policy.)
The 'My Boss is Always Right' Rule is so counter-intuitively empowering. You can't lose - boss or worker.
It frees you up to focus your energies on making your Widget. Or to go and find somewhere else to work where your boss's right aligns with what you think is right.
Or better still - leave and become your own boss. And quickly learn how good life was when you had a Boss that was always right.
Transition.
The Weekend Australian newspaper published an editorial assessing the pace of decisions by the new Federal Government a couple of weeks after being elected.
It noted that the various Ministers were not hurrying about their business because of the 'obvious' reason that 'once these decisions are taken the clock starts ticking on getting results'.
It also applauded the approach of the Government of 'asking departments for advice before leaping into action.'
It also noted that this slow pace may be 'awkward for a leader who promised action'.
The transition from candidate to leader is almost always awkward, regardless of whether it's moving from opposition leader making promises to the electorate to becoming prime minister or the enthusiastic job applicant selling themselves into the position of being someone's boss.
One of the hallmarks of a leader is the discipline to withhold action after changing roles. The Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition posits that an expert is most vulnerable when they have to apply their expertise in a different context. An expert is fragile in this phase for another reason. Experts rely on confidence and yet one of the characteristics of expertise is recognising how ignorant you are. A juicy paradox.
Experts who change roles - whether it be from a member of the opposition to government minister or from one employer to another or from worker to line manager - need to resist the 'quick wins', the grand gestures and other superficial acts that declare their arrival.
Instead they may need to endure a rising level of gleeful ridicule from their critics as well as disappointment from their supporters as they take their time to absorb the new terrain.
They also need a boss who is expert enough to understand this settling in period and to patiently allow for it.
Faithful.
The author and teacher Parker Palmer recently wrote that measuring our effectiveness in our work by our results or outcomes risks leading us to only take on tasks that we know we can achieve.
Our decisions become smaller.
He proposed a new measure of effectiveness:
'Am I being faithful to the gifts I possess, the strengths and abilities that I have?'
His proposition helps us to better understand the importance and relevance of our Weekend Widget to our Weekday Widget.
If our Weekend Widget is a product of our gifts, strengths and abilities, then making sure that we are producing our Weekday Widget will serve our Weekend Widget - and vice versa. We will be more likely to make decisions that are expressions of our authentic selves, which can only be a good thing.
Bosses take note. You need to be discerning enough to recruit and retain people who want to express (or at least explore) their authentic selves through their work with you.
You need to be brave enough to allow them to make decisions that risk failure, yet teach.
You also need to be honest enough to suggest to them that if they want to be true to themselves, they may need to work elsewhere. (You can only get away with this if you've built enough credibility to avoid it sounding like you're gently sacking them.)
And if you expect all of that from them - you need to expect it from yourself. (It's called Leadership.)
Know your Weekend Widget.
Know your Weekday Widget.
Measure your effectiveness by how faithful you are to both. And be prepared to fail a lot.
If you and those who work for you are measuring yourselves on the 'Faithfulness Test' - Wow.
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?
Moorings.
'And McNamara's shifts back and forth from urging caution to urging action one is tempted to attribute in part to lack of moorings such as those in the minds of Kennedy, Rusk or Taylor.’
This observation by the authors of ‘The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis' is a reminder of the importance for decision makers of having a clear purpose - a Widget - that should be served by each decision.
Such a ‘mooring’ helps to give stability and clarity amidst the buffeting of details, emotions, biases and agendas.
Pause.
My friend Dan is a very experienced Air Traffic Controller. He teaches other Air Traffic Controllers how to safely separate airliners with hundreds of lives on board moving with closing speeds of up to half a kilometre a second tens of thousands of metres above the ground. (Dan has done this for years in the RAAF and Reserve as well - where closing speeds can be closer to a kilometre a second.) Constant decision-making in seconds with high consequences for failure is the nature of Dan's workplace.
Yet Dan nodded when I first told him about the first step towards a good decision being for the decision maker to step back.
He explained how he teaches his trainees to do the same.
'They need to have a rote understanding of what to do in any situation,' Dan said. 'The novice Air Trafficker knows that if X happens they do Y. It's automatic and requires very little thought process.'
'We want them to develop beyond that reactive drill. We want them to feel confident to explore and consider other options to situation X. They can only evolve to this ability if they have the discipline of automatic response Y. If they instinctively know that Y is available to them, then they gain themselves time to be more creative in finding alternatives to Y. It might only be an extra few seconds, but that's often sufficient time for them to think of a better decision for an aircraft. It may save an airline thousands of dollars in fuel by flying a more direct route. If a controller can't find a better decision than Y, then they just default to Y.'
Dan's explanation is an excellent example of how rules and procedures in workplaces actually encourage creativity. They eliminate variables and force us to focus on what is available to us. They allow us to assume the ordinary so that we can explore the extraordinary - knowing that we have our boss's permission.
At the very least, boundaries that define our scope of decision making force us to decide whether we want to find or create our own decision-making space with another employer or on our own. (Instead, some people choose to pound their fists against their organisation's boundaries demanding that they shift. Dan's Air Traffickers don't have that option.)
If Dan can routinely step back in his decisions that are measured in seconds with catastrophic consequences from error, then it should be easy for workplaces where results are usually measured in months and mistakes don't risk hundreds of lives.
Dan has a simple way of seeing whether his trainees are applying the Step Back approach to decision making.
'I walk behind them as they're sitting at their screens. If I see someone leaning forward, I gently pull their shoulders back into the chair.'
My friend Liz told me about similar advice that she gives the Alternative Dispute Resolution practitioners that she trains and mentors. 'It's important that they don't get drawn too much into the details of the dispute between the two parties at the table,' she said.
'So I say to them: 'Make sure that you can always feel the back of your seat.'
Shortcuts
The authors of The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis make the point that the longer the discussions between President Kennedy and his advisers about what to do about the Soviet missiles in Cuba progress, the less they refer to historical events such as the attack on Pearl Harbour as a way of making sense of what is happening. The authors call this use of history as ‘intellectual shortcutting’ which is ‘a natural tendency when busy persons of active temperament confront unfamiliar circumstances’.
The authors attribute the gradual immersion in the detail of the crisis before them as the reason for the decreasing frequency with which Kennedy and his advisers refer to historical precedents. This analysis reinforces the importance of emphasising hard evidence ahead of simple and seductive assumptions that what may have explained something happening before, can explain why it happened or will happen again.
By stepping back from the information and following the other four steps towards a good decision, a decision maker increases her ability to methodically analyse the data instead of defaulting to instinct.
Tension.
In the Conclusion to the book The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the authors state:
‘Perhaps, above all, we observe in this record - more clearly than in any other documents we have seen - the contrary pulls of detail on the one hand and belief (or conviction or ideology) on the other.’
These battles between evidence and bias, and the micro and the macro, are critical ones to recognise and win for any decision maker.
The authors note that histories of decisions - whether insignificant or that such as faced by Kennedy; the destruction of the world- rarely see or even know the subtle flow of details and therefore underestimate their pushing and pulling on the mind of a decision maker.
This effect of detail on the ‘conscious and unconscious minds of decision makers, who see facts and form presumptions within frameworks of understanding shaped both by their personal interests and by their accumulated experience’ is further exaggerated when there are multiple contributors towards a decision. Each has their biases and personal frameworks and agendas and projects their advice on a decision accordingly.
Kennedy was under constant pressure from the military to use overwhelming force to solve the crisis, which was a seductively simple response, yet with potentially catastrophic consequences. Fortunately for the world, the President had learned a bitter lesson about accepting the generals’ advice after the Bay of Pigs debacle early in his Presidency. He even resists the taunt of General Curtis Le May that Kennedy’s cautious response to the Soviet aggression is ‘almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.’ The President has the self-confidence and mental strength to not be influenced by Le May’s highly emotional ‘argument’ against the quarantine.
There are many lessons for decision makers and their advisers in the way in which President Kennedy behaved during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The need to reconcile the incessant tension between realities and beliefs is one of them.
Time
'Look, you know, everyone stuffs up.
'The question is, you know, what do you learn from it all?
'I think as I reflect back on the period of being Prime Minister, what is really important to do is to - Jeff Kennett, would you believe, gave me this advice, which I didn't properly listen to prior to becoming Prime Minister. He said:
'If you become a head of government, leave yourself time to think, to reflect, and to plan.''
- Kevin Rudd, former two-time Prime Minister of Australia, after his first Prime Ministership
Emotion.
In the Conclusion of ‘The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis’, the authors assess the decision-making of the Soviet and American leadership that is revealed almost word-for-word in the nearly seven hundred pages of taped crisis meetings in the book.
Khrushchev made his decisions alone and without seeking advice or analysis. He ‘acted more from instinct than from calculation’, was an ‘impulsive risk taker’ and was described by aides as ‘reckless’. Khrushchev had little experience or knowledge of foreign affairs and his understanding of the world was framed in simplistic Marxism-Leninism. He made assumptions about Kennedy based purely on the President’s youth and family wealth, and saw his ‘flexibility’ as a weakness. Khrushchev also suffered from an inflated sense of his influence on world affairs as a result of his mis-reading of the motivations for America’s responses to his previous decisions.
In short, Khrushchev’s decision-making was driven by emotion more than reason. If this made it difficult for the Americans to read and anticipate his actions, it must have been equally so for his generals and ministers.
In comparison, President Kennedy ‘did not make any impulsive decisions during the crisis’. He ‘opened up much of his reasoning….and likely consequences of his choices before he made them. He explained his thinking to a range of analyses and critiques from formal and informal advisers and even representatives of the British government.’ He also allows his advisers to ‘reason through the problems’.
At the height of the crisis, the authors argue that Kennedy ‘seems more alive to the possibilities and consequences of each new development than anyone else’, remaining calm and lucid, and clear about his objectives.
While Kennedy kept himself open to the advice of others, and had obviously nurtured a working relationship that meant his advisers felt confident enough to disagree with him, he was firm when he needed to be. He overrode the generals’ planned air strike in retaliation for the shooting down of an American U2 aircraft, even though that was the response that he had initially agreed upon.
The ability to remain uninfluenced by bias is one of the most important qualities of a good decision maker. It makes her thinking visible, her actions predictable and teachable and gives confidence to her team who may have to execute their own decisions that flow from hers.
Kennedy used many tools to keep him focussed on the facts. He verbalised his logic, exposing his thinking even to those outside his circle to avoid ‘groupthink’. He had private venting conversations with his brother, the Attorney-General Robert Kennedy. Most importantly, Kennedy did not surround himself with ‘Yes Men’.
President Kennedy’s willingness to be transparent in his decision making and open in his uncertainties showed courage and were evidence of great leadership.
Questions.
‘The Kennedy Tapes - Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis' is a verbatim account of all meetings that President Kennedy had with his advisers in mid-October 1962 in response to the Soviet Union installing nuclear missiles in Cuba - thus threatening the world with nuclear war.
Kennedy’s first meeting is a lesson in good decision-making.
He called together 12 advisers.
His advisers spoke 285 times.
The President spoke 66 times - mostly no longer than a sentence.
The first 11 times he spoke he asked questions and listened to the answers.
The first non-question from him was ‘Thank you’.
He then asked 21 more questions - a total of 32 questions - before making a statement.
His first statement to the meeting was a summary of the information that had been given to him.
He then asked six more questions and listened to each answer.
His 40th statement was ‘Well now, let’s decide what we ought to be doing’.
His asked nine more questions.
He made four asides.
His 54th statement was to ask that the meeting reconvene later in the evening.
He made three more statements.
He followed these with six questions.
Then two statements, a question, two statements, four more questions, one statement.
He ended with a question.
President Kennedy, the most powerful man in the world, facing a decision that could result in nuclear armageddon, asked four times as many questions as he made statements.
The only decision that he made was that they should have another meeting.
Confidence
"He is sufficiently confident of his own abilities that he can tolerate other people with a different point of view."
- Senator Arthur Sinodinos on Prime Minister Tony Abbott