Curious

Malcolm Turnbull MP the Federal Member for Wentworth said in a recent interview:

'You know, there was very good advice that my father-in-law actually, Tom Hughes when he was a Member of Parliament, was given by a very distinguished member that was much older than him.  And he said:

‘You should treat every question no matter how provocative as a polite request for information’. ’

Substitute ‘complaint’ for ‘question’ and this is even more helpful advice.

If good decision making was to be reduced to two words it would be:

Be Curious.

Investigation.

Earlier today, two Qantas Airbus aircraft carrying a combined total of more than 600 passengers came close to colliding over the Gulf of St Vincent. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) commenced an investigation into the incident.

According to the ATSB website, the investigation will include:

• the review and analysis of the recorded radar and audio data
• the review of relevant air traffic control procedures, documentation and training
• interviews with the air traffic controllers and flight crew.

The procedures followed after aircraft incidents are excellent models of good decision making philosophies and processes. According to the ATSB 'the object of a safety investigation is to identify and reduce safety-related risk' and 'It is not a function of the ATSB to apportion blame or determine liability'. The ATSB even publishes mistakes so that the aviation industry can learn from them.

Imagine if all workplaces took an inquisitorial response to complaints, mistakes, poor performance or misconduct with the aim of the entire organisation learning from the data. Yet the usual reaction to error - if there is one at all - is to find a bad person, punish them, and impose more policies and regulation to move power further up the management hierarchy away from line management. The whole process is usually kept secret to 'protect' everyone's reputation.

Organisations often confuse good decision making with decisiveness. Policies set artificial timelines for complaints to be resolved and managers react to information rather than deliberate upon it. If decisions do take a while it is usually through inaction rather than because of measured analysis.

Yet when does the ATSB predict that it will complete its investigation into today's incident?

September 2014. 600 lives were potentially lost. No hurry.

(I wonder if it's actually just adopting another good decision making tip of under promising and over delivering.) 

Narrowing

The meetings of the executive committee of the United States Government National Security Council met over 13 days in October 1962 to make decisions that the future of the world would depend upon.

The meetings were described as ‘disorderly’ - not because of lack of formal organisation, but because President Kennedy did not want to be too quick to suppress analysis by his advisers, or to delegate it to a sub-committee.  Kennedy kept the participants on topic, mainly by asking questions, and by keeping his statements short.

The authors of The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, observed that at times, certain members of the committee broke away and left the main discussion in order to attend to specific ‘action’ items.  This was necessary if tasks were to get done, yet had the effect of narrowing their focus so that they had difficulty adjusting their contributions back to the big picture when needed.

Decision makers need to be mindful of this ‘narrowing’ effect that experts, specialist sub-groups or other niche contributors risk bringing to decisions.  The best way to overcome this is to keep reminding all of those involved in offering advice and analysis of the big picture and to keep them up to date as it changes.

This ‘big picture’ communication applies in the day to day running of organisations as well.  Leaders need to give their people frequent reasons and opportunities to lift their heads out of their trenches and to scan the whole battlefield.

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.

Reality.

The businessman and writer Max De Pree wrote:

'The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.  The last is to say thank you.'

On the first day of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, President Kennedy met with his advisers.  He listened to them outline the evidence that the Cubans, assisted by the Soviet Union, were installing nuclear missiles.  Once he had heard the intelligence summary and some analysis, he said:

‘What you’re really talking about are two or three different potential operations.’  

He summarises what he has heard from them.  There is some discussion. He then says:

‘Well, now, let’s decide what we ought to be doing.’

President Kennedy defined reality.

Thirteen days later, having looked into the abyss of nuclear annihilation and stared down the Cubans and Soviets who dismantled their missiles, President Kennedy closed the last meeting of his team of advisers.  Immediately after they left the Oval Office he telephoned an assistant and said:

‘Dick, I want to get a President’s commemorative for the Executive Committee of the National Security Council who’ve been involved in this matter’.

The President said Thank You.

Athwart.

During one of the meetings in the White House to discuss the US response to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Robert Kennedy, Attorney-General and brother of President John Kennedy referred to a memo that had been prepared by Under Secretary of State George Ball.  

The memo argued against a surprise strike against Cuba.  It said that to do so would be to behave ‘in a manner totally contrary to our traditions, by pursuing a course of action that would cut directly athwart anything we have stood for during our national history, and condemn us as hypocrites in the opinion of the world.’

Robert Kennedy said ’I think George Ball has a hell of a good point….I think it’s the whole question of…what kind of country we are.’

Every decision that we make is a statement to the world - louder, more honest and memorable than words - about who we really are. 

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.

Leader

A good decision is one that advances you towards where you want to be.

If you turn around and someone is following you…

Hello Leader!

Personal

I was eavesdropping on a conversation between two men sitting just outside my peripheral vision. We were all waiting for a delayed flight departure. One was telling the other how he had asked Human Resources for leave to help his family relocate interstate where he had been posted. HR had refused, saying that it was outside their budget.

"You've seen their financial state," I heard him say to his colleague. "I've just ignored their hypocrisy in the past. But this is personal now. I shall get even. Or better-than-even. I'll just bide my time. "

I wondered how much their company had saved by denying the executive leave to help his family manage the disruption to their lives that the company had caused.  I knew as he did that the cost would never appear on any spreadsheet. There literally would be no accounting for it. There would be no information to allow the HR Department decision maker to connect their decision with its consequences on the company's bottom line. There would be no learning.

I sensed both men rise from their seats so I looked over towards them. I wanted to I see if I could tell from their appearance what their business may be, and thus how the disgruntled one could extract his revenge. 

They walked out of the café, both putting on their airline pilot caps as they went. 

Declaration

Good decision making is choice making.

A decision is a declaration.

‘Here I am.’

‘Here’s who I am.’

‘Here’s where I’m going.’

The moment we make that decision - our declaration - we raise our heads above the parapet of our sheltering trench of anonymity.

And wait for the sound of response.

Of the crack-whizz of the incoming sniper rounds.

Or of applause.

Or worst of all - Silence.

Solitude

Emerson wrote ‘he who would inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.’

One of the burdens of leadership is the weight of others’ voices.  Opinions, statements, requests, demands, complaints, criticisms - demanding the leader’s attention.

A leader listens to others’ voices.  Reflects on them.  Measures them against reality.  Keeps her emotions in check.   

She focusses on the voices of others.

Until she decides what to do.

Only then does the leader find her voice in the solitude of her decision.  

A statement about who she is, or at least, who she wants to become.

Then perhaps the terror of looking behind to see if anyone is following.