Kanye.
Musician Kanye West explained how Good Decision Making and Widget Thinking help him to become who he is.
His life and creative process and therefore his mistakes are before the world. They are the product of Good Decision Making and therefore teach others so he can never be wrong:
'I'm opening up my notebook and I'm saying everything in there out loud. A lot of people are very sacred with their ideas, and there is something to protecting yourself in that way, but there's also something to idea sharing, or being the person who makes the mistake in public so people can study that.'
Kanye also understands that it's all about the Widget. And it's never about the Widget:
'It's more about the art of conversation, the companionship, the friendships, and the quality of life that you get out of working—it's about the creative process even more than the final product. I think there's something kind of depressing about a product being final, because the only time a product is really final is when you're in a casket.
My mission is about what I want to create.'
Answers.
'You only have the answers for things that don't matter.'
- Peter Block
You don't say 'I don't know' too often and keep your job.
We're paid to Know.
People rely on us to Know.
There is little patience even for I'm Not Sure.
Which means our Widget doesn't matter.
Could this be why only 13% of the world's workers are engaged in their work?
Or why only 7.5% of workers consider themselves productive?
I'm not sure.
Structures.
The job of a manager is to balance enforcing structure while allowing creativity through good decision making.
In a recent interview with Lord David Owen, the former British Foreign Secretary who helped bring peace to Bosnia in the 1990s, this tension can be seen at the level of sovereign states.
He was asked how he began negotiating an end to the fighting between the Serbs and the Muslims:
'All this time, you're trying to form structures which can give people a measure of security and, to some extent, decentralised power. And then on top of it, you're trying to construct an overarching organisation for the whole country.'
Lord Owen was talking about the situation as he found it in 1992. The war ended in December 1995.
Simple. Create some governance in your nation or workplace that makes people feel safe. Delegate decision-making power downwards. People will respond by laying down their AK47s, dropping their bullying complaints, and living and working together in productive harmony. A triumph of diplomacy, reason, and our better angels. Sack the lawyers and spend the savings on vision statement coffee mugs, running fun team building days and bean bags in the common rooms.
Then the interviewer asked:
'Do you accept, ultimately, that in the case of Bosnia, what ended the war was the use of military force from outside?'
Boo! Hiss! Of course not! Structures! Power-sharing! Human reason! Self-organising system!
Yet Lord Owen, career politician, diplomat, negotiator, peacemaker said:
'Oh, absolutely. I argued for force. I wanted to enforce the Vance-Owen Peace Plan, as it was called in May 1993. And had we done so, we'd have brought the war to an end two years earlier...'
Sometimes you have to drop bombs. As the Director of Values said in one organisation: 'People should be given the freedom to perform their duties defined by clear boundaries. If they cross them they should be shot.'
Most organisations have the structures of an old Hollywood movie set. They are the out-of-focus backdrop to the main action. Come up against them and they'll randomly either fall away or crush you.
All workplace conflict would be quickly resolved if the consequences were clear, timely and as promised on the label. It's best for all in the long term.
It's called Integrity - doing what you say you're going to do.
Artist.
'Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen. Suppose you describe the job ‘artist’ as ‘a person who creates situations in which you can have art experiences.''
Brian Eno
Good decisions are the vehicles of experiences.
Leaders are good decision makers who engage in a process that creates situations that allow others to have those experiences.
Leaders are artists.
Cranky.
This is how Linda - an educator - explained the painting:
'I don't know exactly what direct experience Scarlett has had with "the cranky man," but she certainly knows the truth of him. She explained to me that he figure in her drawing was "a cranky man" so I had to ask her why he was cranky. The truth according the Scarlett came down to this:
'He is a cranky man because he doesn't like his house. It's not got any bathroom, kitchen bedroom or anything to eat.'(Enough to make anyone cranky, but the real truth followed) 'He doesn't know what he wants because he is a cranky person and he's always a cranky person who says he doesn't know!'
I felt in the moment that she was sharing this meaning with me that I was being given a great insight into what makes someone cranky, not knowing what you want and the consequences of that...
Widget Thinking. From the mouth of a three-nearly-four year old.
Switch.
‘When did the flame ignite for you?’ the interviewer asked champion runner Robert de Castella. ‘Most people think that the idea of running for 42 kilometres without stopping over and over again is self-mutilation or insanity. When does it become something you think you want to do for a career?
‘I know exactly when it was and Pat [coach Pat Clohesy was there. I’d been a really good junior until the age of 17 or 18 and set national records and things. Then I went to Europe where I had a bit of a period where I went backwards and it was partly because I was training hard with the older guys and probably socialising a fair bit. But I still managed to get selected into an Australian team to compete in the World Cross Country and went to Limerick and Pat [Clohessy - his coach] was the manager of that team.
‘In the World Championships I had one of the worst runs that I’d ever had. I finished 62nd or something. It was a shocker. And the next week we had another race in Italy – a race called the Cinque Mulini – the Five Mills. I had an awesome race. I just came into the last few hundred metres with a couple of the heroes that I’d looked up to, shoulder to shoulder. They kicked away but I was up there racing them and it was something that I never thought I would.
‘That night after we had dinner we were walking back to the hotel and everyone else had walked off and Pat and I were at the back and I said to Pat ‘After this run today, I ran so badly last week and I’ve run so well this week, maybe I can really be a good runner. Maybe if I dedicate myself.’
‘Pat stopped and looked at me and he said ‘I’ve been waiting two years for you to say that.’
'That was a switch for me and my whole approach to training and my commitment changed from being a runner to being an athlete and I was serious.’
In December 1988 while eating lunch on a park bench in Supreme Court Gardens, Shaun and I discovered Objectives.
We realised that the content of what was taught to students should be determined by what they needed to do at the end of the training. The trainer needed to be able to justify how everything that was taught in the classroom helped to achieve the objective. The objectives needed to be written in terms of what the student needed to be able to do – not what the teacher did.
As we walked back to our respective offices in the city, we felt a new command over our role as instructors and clarity about how we could apply our craft.
Years later Shaun told me that Benjamin Bloom had discovered Objectives in 1956.
When we make a decision we switch from runner to athlete.
From consumer to creator.
From child to adult.
From another to ourselves.
When we create the space for another to decide, we switch from parent to leader.
From master to servant.
From fear to love.
Make.
“Try to make things that can become better in other people’s minds than they were in yours.”
Brian Eno
Good decision-making is an act of creation.
Good decisions are gifts we make.
Our piece clicks into the Puzzle.
Each decision draws someone forward with their piece and so on.
Until we have the complete picture.
Our piece indistinguishable.
Good decision making is an act of service.
Perhaps - an act of love.
Seeing.
'You must love those you lead before you can be an effective leader, You can certainly command without that sense of commitment, but you cannot lead without it. And without leadership, command is a hollow experience, a vacuum often filled with mistrust and arrogance.'
General Eric Shinseki - Ex-US Army Chief of Staff
The Air Commodore saw the Flight Lieutenant waiting at the Orderly Room counter.
'How are you finding the job so far, Bernard?' He remembered my name. He was the Air Officer Commanding Training Command with hundreds on his immediate staff and thousands more at the units under his Command scattered around Australia and overseas. He remembered me after being introduced a month earlier when I began my first real Air Force posting.
'Busy?' he asked. I gave the only answer that I could to my boss's, boss's boss. 'Well, you need to find a couple of days to spare,' he said. 'How would you like to come with me on a Staff Visit to RAAF Base Wagga?'
The next day I accompanied the Air Commodore and his senior staff to all his meetings with the various commanding officers of units at RAAF Wagga. 'I think it's important that all junior officers get to see what we do first hand,' he told me in his car on the way there. 'You need to get out of Headquarters as much as you can to see what our people do.'
I watched how a One Star commander listened, spoke, deliberated, questioned, joked, sat, responded, decided, commanded. No other boss ever gave me an opportunity like that, let alone a boss's, boss's boss. The second most senior commander in the Air Force.
No other boss saw me.
On the drive back to Melbourne he asked me 'What did you think?'
A good boss sees.
She sees you and stops to help you [to become who you are].
She sees because she is looking.
She is looking because she is confident that she doesn't know and that you may.
She hands you her map and says 'Take us there'.
Error.
But what if I'm wrong?
'Anything worth doing is worth failing at'.
- Fr Greg Boyle
‘Experts step outside their comfort zone and study themselves failing.’
- Josh Foer
‘An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. We learn how to get it right by getting it wrong again and again.
- Niels Bohr
‘The only mistake is when I'm not able to perceive what it is that someone else did.’
Stephan Harris Jazz Musician
‘What amazes me is that people rarely see today's problems as new challenges born out of yesterday's perfect solutions.’
- Anon
‘The freedom to fail is more important than freedom to succeed. A big creative adventure vs. a small, safe future.’
- Anon
‘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.’
- President Obama
'It is only at the moment of humans' realistic admission to selves of having made a mistake that they are the closest to that mysterious integrity governing the universe.'
- R. Buckminster Fuller
Simplicity.
'Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.'
- Carl von Clausewitz
The more business education about decision making, the worse the decisions.
The more complex the decision-making environment, the more need for simplicity of decision making process and tools.
These were the conclusions from a PhD thesis.
The participants in the experiments who were given a simple objective - make a profit - made the best decisions. Those who made the worst decisions were the ones who were distracted by information about their competition and the need to maintain market share.
The participants who were given simple tools to work through their decisions had the flexibility to adapt to dynamic circumstances.
Widget Thinking and the Five Steps provide both the simplicity and the 'sense making' that serve good decision making.
Good decision makers check their progress against their Widget as their True North.
In 1983 John Bertrand and the crew of Australia II were down 1-3 in the seven race Americas Cup final. This was his response at a press conference:
'Basically, nothing has changed. After Sunday afternoon, we had to win three boat races. Today we still have to win three boat races.'
He held his nerve and Australia won the next three races and the Cup.
Leaders don't measure their progress by where they are with respect to anyone else. They make good decisions and the rest takes care of itself.
Underpins.
The Report into the Inquiry into the 2013 WA Senate Election provides further rich examples of Good Decision Making - particularly Widget Thinking.
The Executive Summary details the many complex challenges confronting the Australian Electoral Commission in conducting an election. It concludes with this statement (italics added):
[T]his Inquiry noted a range of issues involving culture, planning, systems and practices that contributed to the loss of the ballots. The implementation of the various recommendations, findings and observations throughout this Report could assist the AEC in its future operations. The Inquiry believes that these could be achieved by pursuing a future state where the sanctity of ballots underpins all aspects of the AEC’s operations, from planning to training, to materials management and all other aspects covered in this Report.
How does the AEC/Organisation X resolve the competing demands on it leading up to and during an election/doing business? How does it ensure that there is clarity amidst the chaos/organisational life?
It asks itself: 'What decision will ensure the sanctity of ballots/our Widget?'
It resolves all issues according to this outcome.
Productivity.
Whenever you talk in the abstract or the generic to a large group of people, every single person thinks that you're talking to them. Except for you, because you're special and smart.
- Merlin Mann
I designed, organised, advertised and prepared for five presentations on Good Decision Making open to the public.
An hour. Free.
No one registered for the first one.
Two people registered for the second. Neither turned up.
We cancelled the rest.
Lots of possible reasons why. All my fault.
Meanwhile...
A study has found that bosses are losing an average of three months per year of productivity from each worker.
Those with the most unused 'discretionary effort' were knowledge workers.
One of the conclusions was lack of clarity about outcomes. Widgets.
Australians spend more hours at work than those in most other countries and yet according to another study, we rank second last on productivity growth, just ahead of Botswana.
Perhaps everyone who read about my Workshop was part of the 7.5% who considered themselves productive.
None of this applies to you and me though.
Foot.
'Tis all one as if they should make the standard for the measure we call a foot, a Chancellor’s foot; what an uncertain measure would this be? One Chancellor has a long foot, another a short foot, a third an indifferent foot: ‘tis the same thing in a Chancellor’s conscience.’
Many knowledge workers' decisions are adrift from their boss's widget.
It may have happened when their bosses changed. Or when there was a restructure. Or there may have never been a connection in the first place. They are products of poor management. Which - ironically - encourages their sense of expertise because they are usually an island of decisiveness amidst timidity.
They are almost always good people who are dedicated and work hard and long hours. They are often called 'indispensable'.
They make decisions that they feel are morally right. This adds to their defensiveness and disproportionate reaction if challenged. Much like Selden's Chancellor's foot, their decisions are an extension of them, not transferrable and attached with an equal degree of organic stubbornness.
They are 'experts' whose advice is sought by others, thus further affirming their sense of expertise. They have become so simply by having exclusive access to information and authority and not because of any objective qualification or because the pillars of their decisions have held up a bridge. They're knowledge workers after all.
They spend much time at meetings, conferences and other forums where experts gather and talk.
At staff gatherings, they're nursing the cupcake in the corner surveying the room with the weary look of the veteran, regularly glancing at their watch to ensure that they are back at their desk to answer the important phone calls and emails and not let anyone down.
They mark their own homework. Their decisions are rarely tested.
They design, manufacture and quality control their own widget.
Their only accountability?
Complaints.
Scared.
'Make the time to be scared of more interesting things.'
- Merlin Mann
Watching TV at 8.37pm on a Wednesday when my phone announced an email and I nearly vomited.
At my desk at 2.50pm when I'm summonsed by the boss and I pocket my shaking hands.
Exiting the ceiling loft at 11.15 on a Saturday morning watching work scenes in my head instead of the ladder and stepping into space and falling five metres onto a plastic bin and then concrete.
I lay on my side for ten minutes wiggling my toes and visualising my spine and ribs and pulling plastic shards from my clothes and feeling reincarnated.
Work had nearly killed me.
I thought of the Merlin Mann quote.
The earth had slammed me into its bosom demanding I make time to think about my fear dividend.
Slumped in a car outside a chemist with a searing headache after a second day of prosecuting two military pilots. Stressed. Out of my depth. Thriving.
Sitting at a boardroom table next to the Chief Operating Officer facing off ten government and commercial lawyers opposite and the contract that would make or break our start-up company in stalemate. Stomach churning. Overwhelmed. Thrilling.
Emails about inaccurate staff leave accounting making me nauseous? Ridiculous.
Calls about not filling out an HR form correctly constricting my breathing? Embarrassing.
Peter Block says 'The price of freedom is anxiety.' Any decision worthwhile will make us scared. The key is to Step Back and confirm that our Widget is worth it.
I.
'There is a lot of learning between 'It fell' and 'I dropped it'.
- Anonymous
'You got a sec?,' the strike pilot asked me. His cheeks still had the outline of his oxygen mask.
I followed him to another room and he pushed a video casette into the VCR.
'This is vision from the package that I just led.'
The black and white infra red images filmed from an F111C aircraft earlier that night three nautical miles away at 600 knots began playing. He was about to narrate when he paused, smiled, leaned back in his chair and gently closed the door from where three pilots from one of our allies were looking in.
'See the cross-hairs?' he resumed. 'You'll see me move them over the corner of this intersection.' He jabbed at the screen where the white cross was settling on the outline of the top of a building. 'This was our target. The telephone exchange in the centre of the city. Top left hand corner. Remember it?'
I nodded. I had reviewed and approved all the strike package targets for the Commander earlier in the day.
'See those numbers here?' He pointed at one of several sets of readouts along the edge of the image. 'They are simulating my laser guided bomb coming in. Three, two, one. Perfect. Bang on. Target destroyed. Well, simulated. Now watch.'
The cross hairs remained in place for a few seconds. Then glided to the ghostly outline of the building on the bottom right of the intersection. Then back up. Pause. Then diagonally down. The image flickered to black.
'Wrong building,' he said, punching the tape out of the recorder. 'I bombed the wrong corner of the intersection. I need you to tell me the consequences. I need you to brief me and the rest of the Squadron on the legal implications of my error. Can you do that?'
'Yes, Sir.'
'Good,' he said. 'Thank you.'
There was a knock at the door then it opened to five bearded, filthy and grinning Special Forces soldiers.
'Come in fellas,' the Air Commodore said, then to me 'Sorry - these blokes just want to see the video of us tracking them along a creek bed last night from five miles away. They're curious. Didn't hear a thing. Want to sit in?'
Bad.
Watch a bad boss until you see what he does well. There's a lot to be learned.
Every bad boss has a skill that explains their rise to bossdom.
One bad boss was superb at being able to concisely and accurately summarise a situation. He could sit silent for an hour or more at important meetings. Nodding and uh-huhing enough to appear engaged. At the end he would clear his throat, lean forward and list each discussion point, individual arguments for and against, action items, and those responsible for carrying them out. He was never on the list.
I would watch him at these meetings and think 'He sounds so intelligent. Maybe I've misjudged him. He's a good listener and has an impeccable memory. All the other executives seem to accept his authority, including the CEO.'
He reported what was, affirming by his simple narration the gravitas of each participant who had been absorbed in analysing the information. They assumed that because he was at the same meeting as them and they heard their words from his mouth minus the faltering cadence of raw thoughts forming sentences, that he was as smart as them.
He was essentially a tape recorder.
Or the voice in a lift that reports before you exit: 'Level 7. Have a nice day,' as if it lifted you there on its shoulders.
The rest of the time he was bad.
He was very senior in the organisation and was boss of dozens of people. I never knew him to make a decision.
I once felt sorry for him. Being a boss is hard work. A different kind of effort is required to be a bad boss. The performance anxiety. The fatigue. The fear of being found out. Any sympathy vanished when I heard how much he was paid. Four times more than the nurse who cared for my sick child. Obscene.
We've all known bosses like that because organisations are suckers for thinking that being good at one thing means being good at lots of other things.
It's like making the star juggler the manager of the circus.
A bad boss is like a bad driver. They drive on - serenely indifferent to the other drivers breaking and veering and swerving and colliding in their aftermath. Their damage cascades down the organisation.
Bad bosses often teach us more than good ones, and definitely more than mediocre ones. I know because I've learned so much from bad bosses.
Including that I've been a bad boss.
Rejection.
We want to belong.
Yet each time we make a decision we risk rejection.
Creativity - by definition - demands decisions that extend us beyond what is, towards what may be.
(Mind the gap.)
Creative people - by definition - make decisions that expose themselves up there for us to see. And reject.
Dancers, singers, musicians, conductors, poets, painters.
Leaders.
A recent study concluded that 'bolstering independence of self-concept' (ie self-confidence) can develop resilience and potentially enhance creativity. Good news.
It suggests that our decisions lead to creativity, that leads to resilience, that leads towards becoming who we are, that leads to decisions that lead to creativity that leads to reslience, that leads us towards becoming who we are...
Leading.
Artists are brave.
Fail.
'No plan survives first contact with the enemy.'
- Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
'Everyone has a plan 'til they get punched in the mouth.'
-Mike Tyson
Each decision is a plan.
The plan will fail.
Someone won't like the way the decision affects them. Everyone will think that they could have done better. The result won't pay the dividends that were expected. Execution will take longer. Cost more.
This is why many (most) organisations lack decision makers - let alone Good Decision Making - because the great majority of decisions don't give the result we intended. We declare ourselves each time we make a decision. We expose our egos to the judgement of others when we inevitably fail.
There are at least six ways that most of us avoid failing:
We avoid making decisions
We make decisions but don't act on them
We 'do' things that aren't decisions but look like it to anyone who matters. Busy-work is an example.
We hold a position of power that masks our inaction behind its routines, rituals, mantras and the issuing of orders.
We blame someone else for the decision.
We declare every decision a success, despite the evidence.
Good decision making is a process that expects failure, prepares for it, and allows us to learn from it. The Five Steps to a good decision is a process that we can retrace and review and identify which element led to the failure.
It's the decision-maker's equivalent of the black box flight data recorder.
The reality is that life is messy and complicated and imperfect and more things go wrong than right and many of the right results are the product of happy coincidence than good planning.
The enemy that waits to ambush our plans isn't out there. It's hiding in plain sight.
In our ego.