Textbook
A textbook example of good decision-making was on display today for us all to learn from.
The Australian Electoral Commissioner, Mr Ed Killesteyn decided to allow appeals from two of the unsuccessful Senate candidates in the recent Federal Election. He overruled a decision by the Electoral Officer for Western Australia. He published his reasons for the world to see.
1.4 million votes were counted and those candidates who had the most votes won seats in the Senate. Simple maths. Nothing complicated there.
Two of the unsuccessful candidates argued that the count was so close that the votes should be re-counted in case there was a mistake in counting them. Put another way, the losers were alleging that the officers counting the ballot papers failed to do their jobs properly. The scrutineers looking over the electoral officers' shoulders also failed in their jobs.
The Western Australian Electoral Officer responded to the requests for a recount by effectively saying: No. I'm not doing a re-count. Just because it's close - doesn't mean that the counters and the scrutineers made mistakes.
The two unsuccessful candidates said that they thought that the WA Electoral Officer had made the wrong decision. So they appealed. Today Mr Killesteyn decided to order a re-count. Mr Killesteyn published his reasons on the Internet. So we all get to learn from how he made his decision. Here's how he explained it to those affected - ie the Australian people:
"In making my decision I sought an explanation of the various matters raised in the appeals from Senator Ludlam and Mr Dropulich. (The Assess stage of the Five Steps to a Good Decision.)
"I also provided an opportunity for written correspondence from the other key affected parties in the Senate election.' (The Hearing step in the Five Steps to a Good Decision.)
"I have concluded that the recount will be in the best interest of all candidates who contested the 2013 WA Senate election, and in the overall interest of the WA electorate's confidence in the outcome," (The Issue step in the Five Steps to a Good Decision.)
Thankfully Mr Killesteyn didn't explain himself like some decision makers responding to appeals by complainants. He didn't say 'I have investigated this matter and have found that the WA Electoral Commissioner was wrong and that the electoral officers who counted the votes were guilty of misconduct and the scrutineers were negligent'.
He didn't say 'I have stood down the WA Electoral Commissioner and I will appoint new electoral officers to re-count the votes and I will decide the outcome.'
He didn't even say 'The appellants were right'. In fact he affirmed the reasoning of the WA Electoral Commissioner's decision saying: '...closeness of a particular count in the process of distributing Senate preferences is not in itself a basis for a recount...'.
He granted the re-count 'in the best interests of all the candidates'. Wow. Not just in the interests of the two who appealed or the other unsuccessful candidates but even those who had initially thought they'd won.
This is such a powerful statement by Mr Killesteyn. He is saying 'I know that the candidates who are finally declared Senators will want to be certain that they were elected by the majority of people.' He is assuming the best in each of the candidates. A brilliant example of a decision maker who has the wisdom to see beyond simplistic winners and losers and to reasoning a decision that serves the individual and the greater good.
He also granted the recount 'in the overall interest of the WA electorate's confidence in the outcome.' Mr Killesteyn recognises that he's responsible for a very valuable Widget. Nothing short of the Democratic Process is at stake.
Yet despite the magnitude of his decision compared to the subject matter of most workplace complaints or investigations, no mention of 'punishment', 'wrong', 'guilty', or striking of his breast with phrases like 'We remain vigorously committed to the democratic process and have a zero tolerance for errors in counting votes and in the management of that process'.
Mr Killesteyn resolved this 'complaint' to the satisfaction of his Widget - not to make the complainants happy or to find anyone guilty of anything.
Re-counting 1.4 million bits of paper is nothing if it shines that priceless Widget.
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.
Distinction.
I was recently advising a member of the Defence Force in my Reserve Legal Officer capacity.
He had been given an Unsuitability Report. This means that his boss had ruled that he lacked the ability to do his job through no fault of his own.
I asked him about the short statement that he had written in response to receiving the Report.
'Why did you state that you accepted the Report?' I asked.
'Because my Sergeant is my boss and the expert and it's his job to decide whether I'm suitable and therefore I have to accept his decision.'
'So why do you want my advice if you've said that you accept his decision?'
'I just don't think he used the right information. So I want to give it to him.'
It was the first time in 24 years of advising on decision making that I've ever had someone so clearly understand the distinction.
The irony is - he's been assessed as 'lacking maturity'.
Other.
There's a theory that matter only becomes matter by virtue if its relationship with other matter.
The word 'monk' comes from the Latin for 'alone'. Yet monks live in community because they discover themselves by bumping into other monks discovering themselves.
We exist only because of our relationship with another.
We need encounters with other particles to define our reality.
The more that we bump into each other the more we bring ourselves into existence.
The more we become who we are.
A Complaint About Me? Why thank you for filing smooth my uneven edges.
A Performance Review? How kind of you to buff me into a sparkling shine.
Shall I Make a Decision? Oh please do so that I can learn more about you.
Cooo-EE!
Marco!.....
...[polo].
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.
UIOGD.
In gold letters above the Benedictine Monastery gates at New Norcia for all the world to see:
UIOGD.
Ut In Omnibus Glorificetur Dei.
That In All Things May God be Glorified.
A mission statement dating back to the sixth century.
God's glory is the Widget and the buildings and surrounds are the monks' efforts to make it visible.
The monks declare their Weekend and Weekday Widget to the world. They open themselves to be made accountable for their progress.
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.
Discernment.
“But I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time. The wisdom of discernment redeems the necessary ambiguity of life and helps us find the most appropriate means, which do not always coincide with what looks great and strong.”
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?
Design.
The Design of Everyday Things by the cognitive scientist and engineer Donald Norman is an excellent examination of how good design makes it easier to use everything from a computer mouse to a fire escape.
Anyone with even a passing interest in the subject of leadership will quickly notice the remarkable similarities and analogies between good design and good leadership. Here are some extracts. (Try substituting the word ‘design’ for ‘leadership'.)
“To get something done, you have to start with some notion of what is wanted—the goal that is to be achieved. Then, you have to do something to the world, that is, take action to move yourself or manipulate someone or something. Finally, you check to see that your goal was made. So there are four different things to consider: the goal, what is done to the world, the world itself, and the check of the world. The action itself has two major aspects: doing something and checking. Call these execution and evaluation.”
“Many in the design community understand that design must convey the essence of a device’s operation; the way it works; the possible actions that can be taken; and, through feedback, just what it is doing at any particular moment. Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating.”
“Assume that any error that can be made will be made. Plan for it. Think of each action by the user as an attempt to step in the right direction; an error is simply an action that is incompletely or improperly specified. Think of the action as part of a natural, constructive dialog between user and system. Try to support, not fight, the user’s responses. Allow the user to recover from errors, to know what was done and what happened, and to reverse any unwanted outcome. Make it easy to reverse operations; make it hard to do irreversible actions. Design explorable systems. Exploit forcing functions.”
"Design should:
• Make it easy to determine what actions are possible at any moment (make use of constraints).
• Make things visible, including the conceptual model of the system, the alternative actions, and the results of actions.
• Make it easy to evaluate the current state of the system.
• Follow natural mappings between intentions and the required actions; between actions and the resulting effect; and between the information that is visible and the interpretation of the system state. In other words make sure that (1) the user should be able to figure out what to do, and (2) the user can tell what is going on.”
“Design should make use of the natural properties of people and of the world: it should exploit natural relationships and natural constraints. As much as possible, it should operate without instructions or labels. Any necessary instruction or training should be needed only once; with each explanation the person should be able to say, “Of course,” or “Yes, I see.” A simple explanation will suffice if there is reason to the design, if everything has its place and its function, and if the outcomes of actions are visible. If the explanation leads the person to think or say, “How am I going to remember that?” the design has failed.”
“1. Use both knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head.
2. Simplify the structure of tasks.
3. Make things visible: bridge the gulfs of Execution and Evaluation.
4. Get the mappings right.
5. Exploit the power of constraints, both natural and artificial.
6. Design for error.
7. When all else fails, standardize.”
Forced.
In his book The Design of Everyday Things, the cognitive scientist turned engineer Norman Davies coined the term ‘Forcing Function’ to describe a physical constraint that is built into the design of an object or system to interrupt the steps required to use it. For example, a child-proof cap on a pill bottle or a microwave oven that won’t start with the door open.
Forcing functions are an exception to the rule of good design that using something should be as intuitive as possible. A forcing function interrupts the user’s intuition to prevent them making an error. It makes the user pay attention to what they are doing so that they do it well.
Good decision making has forcing functions built into it.
We need to pay attention.
We need to stop the momentum of our minds and constrain them from taking flight or starting a fight as a result of our prejudices, biases, distractions and even instincts that so often lead us into error.
This doesn’t come naturally. It needs to be forced.
Examples of forcing functions in decision making include:
Forcing functions in design lead the user to make a small mistake in order to prevent a bigger one.
Mistakes in decisions are the same. They are a form of forcing function in the larger design that is our life.
Mistakes compel us to pay attention. To pause, rethink and make another decision that moves us closer to where we want to be.
Good decision making needs the forcing function of mistakes.
Creativity.
Many creative people who value their freedom might be discouraged from adopting a good decision making model based upon a five step process. Advocating x steps to anything immediately smacks of a process-driven, creativity-barren, bureaucratic black hole for individuality.
Quite the contrary.
Ben Goldacre is a doctor, academic and science writer who advocates evidence-based medical practice in particular, and who has extended the virtues of this approach to areas such as education. In a paper titled Building Evidence into Education Dr Goldacre said (my emphases):
'The opportunity to make informed decisions about what works best, using good quality evidence, represents a truer form of professional independence than any senior figure barking out their opinions. A coherent set of systems for evidence based practice listens to people on the front line, to find out where the uncertainties are, and decide which ideas are worth testing. Lastly, crucially, individual judgement isn’t undermined by evidence: if anything, informed judgement is back in the foreground, and hugely improved.’
Creativity, innovation, and professional freedom and the professional and personal learning and growth that follow are all products of a good decision-making process that relies on evidence rather than intuition or positional power.
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.
Map.
There were no doubt many reasons that the United States under the leadership and decision making of President Kennedy was able to avoid nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There is evidence in the transcripts of the meetings Kennedy had with his advisers of clear, cool and lucid logic, based upon intelligent analysis of the facts.
However, there may have been many reasons why the Soviet Union’s Premier Khrushchev didn’t respond to the American actions with escalated force that led to catastrophe for the world. It may have had nothing to do with the decision making prowess of Kennedy.
The problem is that, unlike the record left by President Kennedy and his advisers that allows us to analyse and learn from his decision making, there is little evidence of Khrushchev’s thought processes. We don’t really know why he did certain things and historians can only speculate. He was described as an ‘insecure and impulsive risk taker’. Maybe it was because of this recklessness that he didn’t pull the nuclear trigger and had he been as logical, well-advised and cool as Kennedy, he would have been the one to stare down the Americans. No-one, least of all his senior officials, could know.
So it should never be assumed that good decision making will always trump confused, emotional chance-taking in terms of outcomes. There are too many other variables in play to draw simplistic conclusions such as that the better decision-maker won.
The point is that at least a good decision maker makes their work visible. They show their working out so that others can point out any errors. They leave a clear map for their followers and for the rest of us to follow - or not - to measure ourselves against and to learn from and to become better at our own decision making.
Thanks to the transcripts of his meetings, we have a fairly good idea of why President Kennedy behaved the way that he did, and the consequences of it. As the authors of The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis point out in their Conclusion:
‘These tapes and transcripts form an almost inexhaustible resource for analyzing not only the mechanics but also the psychology of decision-making.’
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.