Breathing.
Step 1 of the Good Decision Making process is to Step Back.
Don't mistake decisiveness for good decision making.
Don't mistake power for Leadership.
Don't mistake reaction for action.
Step Back.
Keep Breathing.
Distance.
Step One of Good Decision Making: Step Back.
Viktor Frankl wrote:
'Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. '
Stimulus: information. A complaint. Criticism. Bad news. New and unexpected data. A problem.
Instinctive reaction. Surprise. Shock. Anger. Defensiveness. Denial. React. Respond. Return fire. Fight.
Impotence.
Step Back.
Lean back in your chair. Stare at the ceiling. Get up and walk. Down the corridor. To the kitchen for a cup of coffee. To a sympathetic colleague's office. Or home.
Have a lemonade or three. Vent to your spouse or pet. Take the cat for a walk. Go for a run. Smash a golf ball. Have another lemonade. Wallow. Feel sorry for yourself. Search the job ads. Watch a movie. Reclaim your freedom.
Be human. Not boss, manager, leader, decision-maker, company woman, parent, mother, father, son, daughter, prodigy. Be worried, annoyed, frustrated, sad, impatient, unreasonable. Wallow. Be selfish.
Allow yourself to be yourself so you can choose to become yourself.
Create the space.
Expand it.
Step up and begin doing what your boss is paying you to do and what you promised her that you'd do. (That's called 'Integrity.')
'I'll have an answer to you by next Friday.' (Aim to have it to them by Wednesday. Under-promise and over-deliver.)
You feel your power returning.
The psychologist Yaacov Trope argues that:
'Psychological distance may be one of the single most important steps you can take to improve thinking and decision-making. It can come in many forms: temporal, or distance in time (both future and past); spatial, or distance in space (how physically close or far you are from something); social, or distance between people (how someone else sees it); and hypothetical, or distance from reality (how things might have happened).
But whatever the form, all of these distances have something in common: they all require you to transcend the immediate moment in your mind. They all require you to take a step back.'
Begin the rest of the Good Decision Making Process unencumbered by the emotions that strangle your ability to analyse and assess data openly and logically and on its merits. Earn your salary. Build your Widget. Become who you are.
'You can't change what's already happened but you can change what happens next.'
- Peter Baines, Disaster Management Specialist.
Yourself.
Our Widget is a destination that draws us out of ourselves using the map and compass of Good Decision Making to become who we are.
It's all about the Widget.
It's never about the Widget.
Position.
'What do you think is the main problem with this organisation?'
For three months Liz and I had been trying to diagnose the ailing culture of our new client so that we could fix it. So we asked to meet with one of its top executives.
'People won't make decisions,' he said without pausing to ponder our question.
'Why do you think that they won't?' Liz asked.
'Because they're afraid of the consequences.' His quick responses affirmed that we were asking the right questions and that he had thought about them a lot.
'What are the consequences?' Liz asked.
'There are none,' he said.
Liz and I left the meeting more confused than when we walked in.
It took me another three months to understand the logic of his answer.
Decisions are like a submarine's sonar pings.
A submarine sends out pulses of sound waves that reflect off objects on the surface and beneath the water around it and return to the submarine. The time that it takes to travel back allows the submarine to know its geographic location and depth in the water and the lay of the underwater land above, below, either side and ahead of it. The submarine can adjust its course accordingly.
Each time that we make a decision we send out information that will return new data back to us that will inform us about our world. Like sonar pings. We incorporate that updated information and adjust our understanding of where we are in our job and life accordingly.
In short - we learn.
Each of our decisions also announces something about our identity, views, course and objective. The same act that informs us about our position also declares ourselves to others and therefore exposes us to the risk of criticism, ridicule, error and judgement.
(Another analogy. Certain military aircraft use radar that is so advanced it can tell them the model, not just the location, of another aircraft that is out of sight of the naked eye. But that same radar is what the pilot uses to direct a missile. So while 'painting' another aircraft with the radar can tell the pilot an enormous amount about its identity, it will be detected by the other aircraft's electronics and could provoke the other pilot into fearing that he's about to be fired upon and thus to fire first.)
Our decisions are often what Joseph R. Badaracco called 'Defining Moments' that reveal, test and shape us.
If a submarine pings and doesn't get a response, it is blind. It doesn't know whether it's about to collide with a reef. It will stop, or at least slow down.
If a person makes a decision and there are no consequences - no affirmation, no acknowledgement, no criticism, no echo back - then they are blind. They will either slow down or stop making decisions. They will become passive consumers of second hand information via other people's decisions/pings.
People and organisations need to have good decision making processes that provide us with reliable information about where we are in relation to our professional and personal Widgets.
We also need Leaders who will affirm.
Stories.
Most people's work is disconnected from their Widget.
They go to their office, occupy themselves for eight hours, go home.
They know that they've done a good job because nobody told them that they didn't and they're still getting emails on the All Staff mail list.
Most importantly their boss puts money in their bank each fortnight for them to forward most of it into their mortgage.
Sure, they make things. Emails, reports, meeting agendas, minutes.
They go to quarterly staff meetings and listen to a boss tell them about how the Widget is going with PowerPoint slides in support.
Once a year they sit down with their boss who tells them how they've performed and what courses they need to do because We're A Learning Organisation.
So they go to the professional development seminars with relief at the novelty of being away from their desk and eat mints with the other seven perky strangers on their table as an expert projects PowerPoint slides with dot points about innovation with anecdotes about Fortune 500 companies and other stories to inspire them to be better.
We love stories. They connect us to something bigger.
Good decision making is story telling.
It has a heroic arc that gives us meaning.
It's heroic because it's our conscious act to embark on the journey and accept its possible consequences and take responsibility for them.
It's superior to what most call decision making which is actually an instinctive sneeze-like response to a stimulus.
Our journey begins with the ascent of a hill where we sit at the top and take in the view of the Widget.
Wow. We never realised how close our desk was to it.
Good decision making is a journey that takes us out and back again to our desk and it won't look the same afterwards.
That's what a Learning Organisation is.
'We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.'
- T.S. Eliot 'Little Gidding'.
Assembly.
The Atlantic Magazine had a recent article about how some companies in the United States are bringing their factories back home.
While increasing wages in developing countries and higher transport costs from the factory to market are part of the reason, most are found in Widget Thinking.
The time from when a product came into fashion and then fell out had shortened from seven years to two. It meant companies had to shorten the feedback loop between factory floor and design table.
General Electric is one company reversing the overseas outsourcing trend. It originally had designers in the United States and manufacturers in China. It decided to bring the workers who built washing machines into the same building as the engineers and designers.
Workers on the factory floor identifying any improvements or issues could immediately inform the engineers who could consult with the designers who could modify the Widget. One example was when workers recommended a design change that cut the hours needed to assemble a washing machine from 10 hours to 2.
This 'inherent understanding' (unconscious competence?) of the product had been lost with the outsourcing to cheaper labour in China. GE got it back by closing the gap between assembly line and designer.
Co-located assembly and design also allowed companies to adopt the ‘Lean’ manufacturing techniques popularised by Toyota. Everyone has a say in critiquing and improving the way work gets done, with a focus on eliminating waste. It requires an open, collegial and relentlessly self-critical mind-set among workers and bosses alike –a culture that is hard to create and sustain.
It requires a Leader.
Each worker adds their widget to the Widget moving along the assembly line. It's the job of the manager to make sure that the assembly line is itself assembled so that the work is as easy and efficient as possible. The best way for the manager to achieve this is through an open, collegial and relentlessly self-critical approach.
In the GE example, the dishwasher team created its own assembly line based on its practical experience of assembling dishwashers. The result was that it eliminated 35 percent of labour.
Here's where the bigger SPEAR picture is important to Widget production. The GE workers only shared the information that led to the reduction in labour after management promised them that none would lose their job.
The Leaders and managers had succeeded in creating the Space where the workers felt safe enough to be so innovative that they did put their very jobs at risk.
Every organisation is making something - its Widget. It's probably not literally an assembly line. It is at least made up of people who each makes something that contributes towards the Widget.
Is this process open? Is it collegial? Is it relentlessly self-critical?
Does every worker feel that they have a Leader who has created their Space, defined their Purpose, Equipped them, Affirmed them.?
Then got out of their way?
Dance.
Dance, as with most art, can teach us about how to harness the tension between order and creativity in an organisation and in ourselves.
An hour spent watching professional dancers rehearse is a humbling experience. Their discipline, intrinsic drive to perfect the smallest of moves, facial expressions, even the position of their fingers are inspirational for most workers whose main driver is whether Dorothy put doughnuts in the boardroom for morning tea.
The Weekend Australian newspaper had an article about the work of the choreographer Stephanie Lake that captured the paradox of creating beautiful art.
"When I watch her create movement phrases, to me it's the musical equivalent of listening to Bach improvise a fugue," says Fox, a renowned composer and sound artist. "It's incredibly intuitive but brilliantly precise at the same time."
Lake says of her collaboration with Fox on A Small Prometheus: "We have pushed each other into this place and we have ended up with a piece that has quite a lot of tension in it. We didn't set out to make that; it's where we have been led."
Lake says she often works with dancers in an improvisatory way and then selects those passages she wants to "fix", or retain in the final piece.
But for A Small Prometheus she wanted the dance to suggest instability, or constant flux, so some passages are fixed and others are a little unplanned. "Bodies melt, cascade, fall into each other," she says. "Often things go wrong. It hasn't been lethal, but it's risky. There are sections in this work - which is new for me - that are essentially loose and unpredictable."
Intuitive.
Precise.
Space.
Tension.
Led.
Improvisatory
Instability.
Flux.
Wrong.
Risky.
Unpredictable.
These are the nouns of an authentic life of a person and an organisation. We suppress them at our peril.
Almost all of us read these as signs of error, failure, disaster, impending job loss. Leaders not only allow these elements to exist, they fan them.
That's why Leaders are brave and rare. Not for the reason we traditionally assume - ie that they need courage to make the tough, unpopular decisions needed to preserve order.
A Leader is called to create the space and hold all of these contradictions within, amidst the fear, anger, anxiety, conflict and uncertainty that inevitably arise. The Leader perseveres despite the failures and the criticisms because this is what she is called to do. There is almost no choice for her.
As Stephanie Lake said about her work:
'We didn't set out to make that; it's where we have been led. '
Boundaries.
A Leader defines the Space in which those who join her will apply themselves towards the Purpose.
A Leader clearly marks out the boundaries - not as an exercise of power to restrain or control those following but as a shorthand way of defining the resources - time, money, laws, staff, decision-making authority - available to them. It removes as many variables as possible so that she can leave them to focus on doing good work.
The space is marked out in the job ad, the employment contract, the duty statement, policies, procedures, budgets. Practical, unambiguous boundary lines around a field of endeavour and creativity and good work.
A good Leader will make the space as large as practicable to allow those within it the freedom to explore and experiment and innovate.
She may have managers who patrol the boundaries on her behalf. (Many 'leadership' positions are actually caretakers of a boundary of the Space carved out by a Leader.)
Some people's response to boundaries is to run as fast as they can to the extremes of the space and pound on the walls. A few will even cross over them as a child-like expression of their independence or dissent from the Leader. Others will probe the boundaries for technical gaps and exploit them, only to retreat back inside and feign surprise and indignation when asked to account by the managers for their actions.
The Leader responds by inviting them to leave her space and create their own.
As she will soon do herself.
The Leader's final act is to Retreat from the Space that she has created for others to fill.
So that she can define a new one.
And so on.
Because that's what Leaders do.
Labels.
I was ranting to Jonathon about how poorly most organisations deal with complaints. I took him through my argument.
A good decision is one that advances us towards where we want to be.
It demands that we remain open to information that may orientate us about where we are in relation to where we want to be.
If we are clear about our Widget.
And authentic in our desire to become who we are.
We should eagerly, actively and greedily seize on any information that helps us to orientate ourselves in relation to our objectives.
One of the biggest obstacles that we have to good decision making is the label that we put on information before we have assessed it.
'Complaint' is the best example.
Call something a 'Complaint' and our ego hears a call to arms. It activates the equivalent of a bank teller security screen. Zip - up go our defences.
We look for reasons to dismiss the complaint, or at least filter out the information.
It's anonymous.
It's not in writing.
It hasn't come through the right channels.
The complainant said that they don't want us to do anything about it.
We're like children searching to legitimise not eating our greens.
Then Jonathon says: 'Imagine if a car pulled up alongside you at the traffic lights, sounded their horn to get your attention, and the passenger rolled down their window and pointed at your rear tyre and then drove off when the lights turned green. Would you ignore their signal because they're anonymous? Would you look away because their information was in the form of gestures and not in writing?
Complaints are just information in an emotional wrapper.
SPEAR.
She summarised it all.
Cadets. Law School. Officers Training School. Basic Staff Course. Masters of Defence Studies. Consulting. Workshops. Seminars. Books. Lots of books. All the PowerPoints, training films, lectures, military exercises, manuals, exams, yelling, drill, marching, chains of command, legislation, tutorials, performance reviews and on the job experience.
She was 12 years old.
I had finished teaching spear throwing to a group of Year 7s who were at New Norcia on a Leadership Camp. They were sitting cross-legged in the shade of the trees at the end of the oval and I was trying to draw leadership lessons from the last hour of throwing Gidgies - the Aboriginal spear - using the Miro. It was impromptu. I was making it up as I went along. I had an inbox full of emails back in my office.
'Did you learn anything today about being Leaders?' I asked them.
A hand went up.
'You're the New Norcia Town Manager and you led the activity today?' the boy said with a child's typical upward inflection.
'Well, yes. And was there anything that I did that you thought was what leaders do?'
A different hand went up.
'You drew a line in the dirt and told us that we weren't to go over the line unless you said that we could?'
'Was that because I was bossy?'
'No. You didn't want one of us to accidentally get speared.'
'That's right. So I explained the boundaries of our activity. Good. Anything else?'
Hand up.
'You put that cardboard box full of straw in front of us and told us it was a pretend kangaroo and that was our target that we had to spear?'
'Good. I gave you something to aim for. Anything else that I did that you think a leader might do?'
'You gave us each a Gidgie and Miro and taught us how to use them?'
'Yes. Anything else?' I reckoned I'd exhausted all the lessons. One last opportunity to squeeze thoughts out of their capped heads.
Hand up. I'm surprised. I nod towards the boy squinting up at me.
'After each throw you told us what we did right and what we did wrong? We kept missing the box - er - kangaroo but we got closer each time?'
I was impressed. 'Good. So I was giving you feedback. Yes. Leaders give feedback in a way that encourages or affirms.'
I reckoned that was about it. I was feeling quite chuffed about how much we'd extracted given I'd done no planning. Most had lost eye contact with me and were tugging at the tufts of dead grass. I glanced at my watch. Five minutes left.
'So does anyone have anything else to add? Any questions about our activity?'
Silence. Then her hand slowly rose from the middle of the group.
'Yes?'
'You got out of the way?' she said. A few giggles.
I started to smile. But didn't. I wondered.
'What do you mean?' I'm wondering if...
'Well, the last thing that you did was that you moved to the side and just let us throw the spears. You waited for us all to finish and didn't say anything. You just watched us. And then you came over and let us know how we'd gone so that we could do it better next time.'
I felt a tingle.
'That's right. I got out of the way. There was nothing more for me to do.' I paused to remember the list of things that they'd told me I'd done. 'I'd shown you the area or space that you had to do the activity in. I shown you what the purpose was - to spear the kangaroo. I gave you all the equipment and taught you how to use it. I gave you feedback after each throw so that you learned how to do it better. And then - I got out of your way and let you get on with it.'
Wow.
I scanned their bored faces. They didn't share my excitement at the significance of that exchange. They were thinking about afternoon tea and then Aboriginal tool making with Lester. But my mind was humming.
And then this.
The same girl's hand rises. 'Yes?'
'Is that why they say that leaders are brave?'
My tingles tingled.
'What do you mean?'
She blinked. Cocked her head slightly. Waved away a fly.
'Well...it must be really hard for a leader to just stand back and let people do their jobs and not keep yelling at them or taking over and doing it themselves. To know that some people might do it wrong and it's the leader who gets blamed. I think it must take lots of bravery to be a leader.'
Then off they trotted up the hill behind their teachers to their biscuits and cordial and more lessons about Leadership.
Space.
Purpose.
Equip.
Affirm.
Retreat.
Participation.
The Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah said in an interview something that we all know:
People who have been heard, and whose position is understood, tend to be more willing to accept an outcome that they wouldn't have chosen because they feel that they've had a voice, that they've participated in the process.
This is consistent with Step 5 of the Five Step Good Decision Making Process - Hearing.
The 'process' can be a single decision. Or the entire boss-worker relationship.
The job advertisement. 'This is our Widget. If you build Widgets that look like this, we need you to help us build our Widget.'
The interview. 'Have you read the contract of employment that says that if you build your Widget in the way that we describe then we will put money in your bank?'
The informal chat over a coffee. 'What sport do you play?'
The conversation over a copy of the employment agreement. 'Yes, we can add a clause that says that you can leave early on Tuesdays for State representative hockey practice in exchange for those overnight work trips interstate.'
The tour of the potential workplace. 'Here's your desk and your surroundings where you will spend a lot of hours of your life.'
The job is offered and accepted. 'Thank you for choosing to work with us.'
The Entry Interview. 'Why did you choose to work with us and what are you hoping for in this job?'
The three days of induction before touching a computer mouse. 'Here are our Values and let's take a tour of our factory floor so you can see the final Widget coming off the conveyor belt with the bit that we want you to build.'
The ad hoc conversations. 'I heard that the Hockeyroos are training down the road today. Let's have our weekly catch up over a sandwich at the oval.'
And so on.
A year on and the boss raises the potential new position in Singapore.
The boss chooses Geoffrey. Disappointment. Hurt. A sting to the ego. Self doubt.
Reflection. Recalibration.
There's a job in the Rio office. 2016 Olympics host city.
Wrong.
In 2003 in the case of Australian Communication Exchange v Deputy Commissioner of Taxation the seven Justices of the High Court of Australia ruled 4-3 in favour of granting an appeal.
This meant that three of the wisest, most experienced lawyers in the country - including the Chief Justice - who were in the minority and denied the appeal were 'wrong'.
It meant that the Barristers and Solicitors who quoted legal precedents, legislation and fact in support of the respondent before the High court were 'wrong'.
It meant that the three Judges of the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia who made the finding that was the subject of the appeal and the barristers and solicitors who appeared in that trial on behalf of the losing party that was overturned by the High Court was each 'wrong'.
It meant that each bureaucrat in the Australian Tax Office who made decisions and internally reviewed and upheld decisions that applied and interpreted legislation, policy and case law that were eventually overturned by the High Court was wrong.
From the first public servant to the judgment in the High Court, dozens of decision makers and their advisers including three of the sharpest legal minds in the land, each with education, experience, expertise and wisdom and hundreds of combined years of interpreting and applying policies and procedures and laws were....'wrong'.
The High Court, Federal Court, Supreme Courts, District and County Courts, Magistrates Courts and miscellaneous other tribunals across the country overturn thousands of decisions of lower decision makers every day. Their 'wrong' legal reasoning, reputation, credibility and intellect will remain pinned up in the public square of the World Wide Web for the world to see as long as there is such a thing.
Law students, solicitors, barristers, text book writers, Queens and Senior Counsel, judges associates, judges and High Court justices will continue to read and study their 'wrong' reasoning and use it to form and strengthen their own arguments based on different facts and sometimes even law.
Next time that you're 'wrong' about something, remember the Chief Justice and his two other High Court of Australia brethren and Australian Communication Exchange v Deputy Commissioner of Taxation.
You're in good company.
Purpose.
Every experienced decision maker knows the frustration of having to deal with the aftermath of the right decision that was made the wrong way.
Nicola Roxon, the former Federal Attorney-General and Health Minister gave a speech this week in which she told of the previous government dealing with the same consequences. It was a rare insight into the fundamentals of good decision making in the leadership of the country.
She explained why the Labor Party chose to remove Kevin Rudd as the Prime Minister.
'I think we had all the right reasons to act,' she said, 'but I think we were clumsy and short sighted in the way we did it.'
'Even though the reasons were there to justify our action, I don’t think we handled it properly at the time, and Labor has paid a very high price for this mishandling ever since.'
In other words, Labor's process leading up to and following the removal of Kevin Rudd revealed, tested and shaped its Widget in the eyes of the electorate. The re-defining of its Widget that this caused, and the damage to Labor's integrity is hard to overcome.
'If Kevin had been an employee,' Ms Roxon a former industrial lawyer said, 'he would have won his unfair dismissal case. Not because there wasn’t cause to dismiss him, but because we didn’t explain the reasons properly to him, let alone to the voting public.'
'I used to see a lot of these cases - where there was good cause to dismiss someone but the employer hadn’t given notice of the problem, or used a different excuse because it was too embarrassing to simply tell a colleague they weren’t up to the job, or that everyone found them unbearable.'
She spoke about how attempts to save people from the consequences of their actions and the decisions that they draw upon themselves can actually be crueller in the long run.
'After the most brutal and speedy sacking, we got overcome with politeness and thought it would save Kevin pain to say as little as possible and move on quickly. What the rest of the world calls a polite white lie, became political poison.
'So although at the time it seemed unimaginable to contemplate being so publically rude to your own PM, with the benefit of hindsight, some of us should’ve spoken out - if not before, at least immediately after.
'Instead, we made a brutal decision and then shied from the brutal explanation that was needed.
'We left everyone looking for other answers and by doing this we did a great disservice to both Kevin and Julia. On its own it would’ve cast a long shadow over the next three years in government, and with active fanning by Kevin and his supporters, it proved impossible to recover from.'
It's either sobering or reassuring for the average boss to know that the senior law and justice officer in the country and an expert in employment law was collateral damage from her government's poor workplace performance management and decision making.
This is a striking example of how even the most experienced, intelligent and powerful decision makers can be so fixated on the need to make the right decision, to be 'decisive', that they neglect to make the decision in the right way.
They got what they wanted - the removal of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister - yet at the cost of their Widget. As Ms Roxon said in response to the argument that political expediency justified the decision:
'We know bums on seats in Parliament do matter - but they aren’t all that matters. If the damage to our sense of purpose, to our reputation for delivering good policy and for caring for the community is severe, this reputational loss, and lack of purpose, can take longer to recover from than it takes to win back seats here and there.
'And it is harder to win the seats back if your people don’t think you stand for anything.'
Hard.
A Leader recognises the tension between the uncertainty, anxiety and chaos that flow from navigating virgin territory, and the fear that this is evidence that she is failing and that she needs to turn back.
Leadership is Leadership because it is advancing where no-one has been before. Leadership is taking people in a direction that they otherwise wouldn't have chosen. It follows (no pun intended) that this will give rise to emotional turbulence in both the Leader and those following her.
It is hard.
Leaders are Leaders because they continue to advance towards where they want to be beyond the point where the PowerPoint leaders turn back because there's no path and it's hard and people are complaining.
The PowerPoint leader talks of leadership of leading of leaders of lead of leadership positions with the background hum of their wheels running over the smooth bitumen highway that was beaten, then surveyed, then graded, then laid out in front of them to travel on in air conditioned comfort with the cruise control on directed by the onboard navigation system while everyone's asleep in the back.
The PowerPoint leader then makes a decision in their voice to deviate. They immediately become disconcerted by the sound and unevenness of the gravel and the bumpy ride as they veer off someone else's route. Those in the back seat stir and mutter at being disturbed by the poor driving. They peer through the windows and feel anxious as they don't recognise their surroundings. They seek comfort and affirmation of the legitimacy of their fears in the other anxious fellow back seat faces. There's murmurs of dissent.
The PowerPoint leader makes another decision that relies on what they learned from their first decision. They veer off the track and into virgin terrain. The back seat grumbles grow into calls to turn back because surely the vibrations and the shaking and the noise and the uncertainty mean that this can't be the right direction.
Wrong way. Turn back. You must be lost. There's no track let alone marked highway and signs. Look around. Nobody else is on this route. Here - look at the map that proves you're wrong. Everyone in the back seat thinks you're wrong. We took a vote. Democracy.
The fear for the novice Leader transcending from PowerPoint slides is that the voices behind them and in their head might be right. Who do they think they are to deviate off the bitumen?
The real time symptoms of error are the same as those of Leadership. It's only those who may follow who can see the sense and predictability of the path.
Choosing to transcend the PowerPoint slides and into Leadership demands exceptional confidence that can survive the battering to ego and identity and the ceaseless gnawing of self-doubt that is louder than the critics' voices. Not motivated by any external goal or incentive because these may never be grasped.
But because to do so is to become who you are.
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.
Spades.
We initially define another's Widget based upon what they say it is.
If they say it's a spade, and we buy it, and it performs as we assume that a spade does, then no problem.
If it performs as an axe, then we have a problem. We say 'But I assumed that this would dig holes' and they say - whatever.
We could argue or complain and perhaps win.
But the real problem is that we can't rely on them any more. Even if we win and convince them that it isn't a spade but it's an axe - we might get a refund or an exchange - but we can never trust them again because we can't rely on what they say aligning with what we think that they mean.
That's why defining our Widget and then acting consistently with it is such a fundamental and important part of what any person or organisation needs to do. One tenth of the job is defining the Widget. Then the other 90% is communicating it in both words AND actions such that it aligns with what people expect the Widget to be.
We are all ethics teachers both internally and externally. Everyone watches to see what we DO and then there is almost no going back.
Employees won't usually say 'Hey - you said that people are your most valuable asset and yet you treat me like dirt'. They will just absorb it into their assumptions about the worth of your words and then treat everything that you say with skepticism and begin to silently disengage without trace.
This is why our response to people or organisations who do not deliver on the Widget as we expect them to do is critical and where our freedom really lies. If we accept the Widget as delivered - axe not spade - then we accept the organisation's definition of the Widget.
As employees, consumers, or observers, we do contribute to defining an organisation's Widget - but not through saying 'You're wrong' (especially as an employee) but through how we choose to act in response.
Debating whether a person or organisation's Widget is 'correct' is wasted energy, especially if it involves conflict. It's their Widget not ours.
A better response is to say 'Oh - so that's what you meant when you said 'Integrity''.
We make our decisions in response to their newly-defined Widget. If we're a customer, we don't give any more business and tell our friends to do likewise. If we're an employee, we quit. If we're an elector, we vote out the Government. If we do none of these things then we're accepting and affirming the organisation's definition of its Widget. It will continue to sell spades that chop trees, disrespect our work, or make bad laws.
Once an organisation loses our trust by saying its Widget is one thing yet delivering another, it's very very hard for it to recover. Because even if it says (as many do when their profit, polling or other measure of their Widget success begins to fall) 'We were wrong and now we're going to do things differently' - how do you know what 'differently' means?
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.
Information
Imagine if everyone went to the Executive team meetings.
Or received a copy of the Minutes.
Or at least got an email saying:
'The Executive team met today and here are the things that we discussed and the decisions that we made and why we made them.
We will begin to execute those decisions in 48 hours. If you have any suggestion as to how we could improve any of them, please let us know.
If you have any questions about anything that the Executive does, please also ask us. Thank you'.
How much of the power held in organisations is the result of being at a meeting and having more information than someone who wasn't?
If an organisation is truly Widget focussed ('Alignment' I think is the fancy term);
If an organisation is truly desperate for everyone to be continuously learning so that it can remain innovative ('The Learning Organisation' is what we consultants cleverly call it);
If it wants people who make decisions that others choose to follow ('Leaders' is what I call people who do that);
Then why wouldn't a leader in a learning organisation who's widget focussed want to throw open the floodgates of information and works-in-progress for everyone to see and contribute towards and learn from as openly as technology allows?
My best answer so far (I'm still thinking about this) is that it's because people with the power to do this are the ones who go to executive meetings and they have egos.
They are putting their Weekend Widget ahead of their Weekday Widget.
Information is power.
Google it.