Advocate.

"The real hell of life is everyone has his reasons."

 - Jean Renoir

The Premier of Western Australia Mr Colin Barnett has not supported a push to remove one of his party members who continues to criticise his government, including calling for Mr Barnett to resign.

Another example of a leader who is on top of his game.

Allowing a critic to remain within the ranks is the sign of a confident leader. And not because of her ego blinding her to the criticism.

The good leader knows that there is wisdom in testing arguments and positions inside the tent before they are released into the wild.

As Dr Tim McDonald says: 'Private honesty. Public loyalty.' 

Mr Barnett's accommodation of a dissenting view is also his compliment to the community he serves. He assumes of us what he is demonstrating himself: the maturity to accept that difference is not to be feared.

Mr Barnett is not afraid that the voting public may assume that his party's internal dissent calls into question the ability of his government to run our hospitals and schools and keep our streets safe.

This is what leaders do. They create a space that invites us in to see the version of ourselves that we want to become. 'See?' Mr Barnett says to us. 'I can run an entire State amidst criticism from one of my own. I'm not fleeing. I'm not fighting. I'm smiling. Try it in your own family, workplace, community.'

Very, very few people or organisations can do this. Basically, we don't know how. We don't have the skills. We haven't practised accommodating dissonance. We actively discourage dissent - often quashing it under cover of a breach of 'values' or 'code of conduct'. We drive the our critics to the fringes - until they have to scream so loudly that any merit in their shouted message is dismissed with labels such as 'vexatious'. 

If you want to test the maturity and confidence of an organisation or person - say 'complaint'.

Mature people and organisations will seek out dissenters to join their decision making process to kick the tyres.

If they can't find such a critic, they will appoint one. The 'devil's advocate' was someone appointed by the Catholic Church to argue against the canonisation of a person into sainthood.

The mature organisation knows that a dissenter is one of the ways to avoid the trap of groupthink.

The critic - whether internal or external - demands that we explain ourselves - rather than just declare, or even be satisfied by giving reasons for a decision.

A recent study showed that people who were asked to give reasons for an opinion remained convinced of its rightness. While other people who were asked to give a step by step explanation of how they arrived at their opinion were more likely to recognise an error in their thinking and start reviewing their assumptions.

(Herein lies the value of the Five Steps to a Good Decision.)

Therein also lies both the solution and the problem.

Better to cling on to the flawed certainty of our understanding of the world than to expose ourselves to the panic of finding out that we've been wrong.

It's a rare person who can accommodate the distraction in time and energy of a critic.

Which is why we need leaders like Mr Barnett who have the confidence to show us that whether we label it criticism, dissent, disloyalty, or even treason, it's just information.

Another opportunity for us to measure how we're going with our Widget.

Good leaders are rare.

Important.

'It's only in our decisions that we are important.'

- Sartre

Next time you're bored in a meeting, try this.

A Decision will be made.

It can be now. In a few seconds. Later today. Tomorrow. Next year.

One absolute certainty is that a Decision will be made. (Even by default.)

You don't know what the decision will be - you know there will be one. Thus it's almost irrelevant.

Use this certainty as a reference point to work out who are the managers and who are the leaders in the meeting.

The managers will be the ones assembling their dot points for their post-mortem speeches in case the Decision goes wrong. (Most likely to be delivered in hushed tones and with eye rolls in the tea room. 'I tried to tell them that....but they...')

The leader will be holding the space. (She may not be the person at the head of the table by the way.)

She's allowing for the Five Steps - the deliberate process of inquiry - to run its course.

She knows that if she makes a decision that advances her towards where she wants to be - that she cannot make a bad decision.

Her wisdom about the answer liberates her to focus on others.

Watch the leader bravely hold the space. She listens. Asks questions. Listens. Questions. Listens. Listens.

Listens.

Watch the managers and others compete to fling the most words, statements, fears, challenges, complaints, criticisms, and egos within and against the boundaries of that safe space being held for them by the leader.

Spot the manager promoted one or more steps above his competence. You can tell him by his confident assertions. His aim is to declare his opinion rather than to allow it to be tested by the evidence. (That would be too risky.) He wants to be seen as decisive. Sure. Stable. Knowledgeable. Courageous. He does so with the luxury of knowing that he doesn't have to make the decision.

The real bravery in the room is in the leader. Risking being seen as weak. Indecisive. Uncommunicative. As she's talked over. As she holds the space. As she listens.

As she serves everyone else.

Including you. Learning from her as you watch, safe in the space she's created for you. (Guess what - she knows you're watching.)

Regardless of whether it's her decision that is made or followed, she's a leader. Because she created the space and invited you to enter and become who you are.

Allowed you to advance towards your Widget on the way to building hers.

Decisions don't make us important.

The Deciding does.

[Never spotted a leader in a meeting? Of course not. Good leaders are rare.]

Answer.

'I know this stuff inherently,' the senior manager said with a shrug at the end of the presentation.

It's the boss's job to know the answer. Or to know that it's not about the answer.

Knowing - or not knowing - is the beginning. Not the end.

The Widget is our north point from which we measure our knowing.

A good boss knows so much about the Widget that she knows it's never about the Widget.

Good decision making is our boss's way to liberate us from her constraints.

Thus freed, she turns her attention to our cages.

Resolved.

It's rare to hear someone reflect on a conflict in a former workplace and say:

'My life is worse because of it.'

Many people believe that the goal of conflict management is to make everybody happy.

Yet when you ask those people 'What are the chances of that happening?', they shake their heads and say 'It's almost impossible.'

We need to have some reference point as to when a conflict is resolved.

Universal happiness - complainant, respondent, boss, customer, widget - is not a realistic one.

Resolving conflict so that people can get back to the widget has benefits beyond the widget.

It lets them think 'Well, whether I like it or not, it has been resolved and I now need to make choices based upon that.'

It's rare in life to have an umpire who resolves something for us and says 'Here's what's going to happen.'

That's what a good boss does when she resolves a conflict.

We may not like it. We may not agree with it. It may not be what we wanted. Yet it provides a reference point for our decisions about our life and our happiness. We regain control in an environment where we may have felt as though we'd lost it. 

What might seem like a loss in the world of my cubicle, can be a win for personal growth, creativity, and realisations about where I want to be in the world of my life.

Trigger.

The majority of people votes for politicians who elect a leader who consults with her Cabinet and makes a decision that she passes on to her General who promulgates orders that are issued down the chain of command to a 19 year old rifleman with the optical scope of his weapon pressed against the pimple on his cheek.

Along with hundreds of other soldiers sailors and airmen issuing orders, pushing buttons, pressing levers and delivering violence upon other humans on seas, in skies, from air conditioned cubicles and lying on other bits of dirt, the teenage Private pulls a trigger and kills a stranger and thus produces his Widget.

Trust is like the lubricant between the working parts of the teenage infantryman's rifle that respond to his index finger pressure and discharge the round at supersonic speeds towards its living target.

Without trust, the mechanism that delivers a decision from the elected leader to the finger of an infantryman will friction and fail.

The military trains Trust.

Navies, Armies and Air Forces have learned and refined over hundreds of years how to recruit, train, exercise, promote, educate, discipline and remember people who demand and honour high levels of trust.

The military's widget - applying maximum violence permitted by law upon the enemy - is designed a long way from where it is delivered by mostly young women and men. They do so while knowing that their own deaths or maiming are part of their adversary's widget.

Trust is a force multiplier.

Police forces demand similar levels of trust. A probationary constable can deprive a person of their liberty and moves among their community with a gun.

Meanwhile, in the open plan battlefield and amidst the chaos and din of values statements, codes of conduct, team building exercises, most managers distrust their workers.

After all, if they were trustworthy, why would they need managing?

Murmuring.

St Benedict stated in his Rule for monks that there is no greater evil in a community than 'murmuring'. That sixth century behaviour translates as gossiping or underhanded and hidden criticism of someone in an organisation - usually in authority.

The character of Don Draper has very little in common with the monastic life. However, he quickly and effectively dealt with murmuring in Season 7 of Mad Men. 

He receives a letter purporting to terminate his partnership in the firm. After a moment of reflection (Step 1 - Step Back), he summonses all the decision makers who may have conspired against him out of their offices and into the open plan - where they could each see and be seen by Don, each other, and the other non-decision making staff.

Don: 'Hey! Get out here!' I just got a breach letter with your name on the bottom.'

Roger: 'What?'

Don: 'Joan! Get out here! Joan! Could you get Cooper out here?

Joan: 'What's going on?'

Don: 'Find Pete. No-one knows about this?'

Joan: 'I saw it.'

Don: 'Then why did you say 'What's going on?''

Cooper: 'I want you to calm down. I just called Jim, we're going to get the bottom of this.'

Pete: 'Is there a meeting?'

Don: 'Have you seen this?'

Pete: 'This is outrageous! You know we're going to be at Burger Chef on Monday!'

Roger: 'I vote against this. Right now.'

Jim: 'It's not subject to a vote. The contract is very clear.'

Don: 'You want to play parliamentary procedure? Let's play. Everyone who wants to get rid of me - raise your hand.'

Jim: 'Fine. I have Ted's proxy.'

Cooper: 'You had no right to put my name on that!'

Don: 'Anyone else?... All opposed?...Motion denied!'

Pete: 'That's a very sensitive piece of horse flesh. He shouldn't be rattled!' 

- Mad Men Season 7 'Waterloo'.

Good decision making draws the decision maker out of his office into a neutral space of inquiry and invites those who may be affected by it to contribute in full view of each other.

Somewhere.

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don’t much care where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"--so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

- Lewis Carroll - 'Alice in Wonderland'

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

Do I know where I want to be:

1. In one second (while you're yelling at me)?
2. In ten minutes (after you've stormed out)?
3. In six hours (after I've read your complaint)?
4. Next week (after my boss has read your complaint)?
5. In six months (when my performance review is due)?
6. In a year (when my daughter asks 'What do you do at work, Daddy?')
7. In thirty years (when I'm dying)?
8. In 200 years (when my great-great-great-great gand-daughter is researching the Family Tree)?

My boss can answer the first five.

(A good boss cares about six, seven and eight because she cares about one to five.)

Emotion may excuse the answers to one and eight.

Good decision making will answer the rest.

Loud.

Following the Five Steps to a Good Decision is thinking out loud.

It's teaching.

Leaving a trail that others may choose to follow - or not.

Said.

'Never lend the weight of a superior to an order.'

- Military maxim.

When we say:

'The Boss said...', or

'Human Resources said...', or

'The Rule says...'.

We're declaring:

'I'm not trustworthy and nor are you.'

We've weakened our workplace.

Trust.

'People do not have to love each other, or even like each other, to work together effectively. But they do have to trust each other in order to do so. Trust between people is the basic social glue: suspicion and mistrust are the prime enemies of reasonable human relationships.'

- Dr Elliott Jacques, 'Requisite Organization'.

A witness in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was asked why he didn't act on a report by one of his staff.

'Because I didn't think that I had enough information to act upon,' was the essence of his explanation.

'If you had witnessed the behaviour yourself, would you have acted upon it?'

'Yes,' he replied.

Here was a rare glimpse into the dirty little secret of almost every organisation and the root cause of their dysfunction.

Bosses won't delegate decision making power because no-one else has the skill to see and interpret information and act upon it as effectively as they can. They're the Boss, after all.

Workers who have delegated decision making power but don't use it because they assume their boss must have a superior understanding of the same information. They're the Boss, after all.

If we fail to act on information given to us by another in the same way that we would if we had first hand knowledge of that information, we declare:

'I don't trust you.'

In which case cancel the off-site team building exercises, Myers-Briggs Tests, Christmas party, external consultant reviews, coaching, values statements, and staff surveys.

And spend the savings on the glue in Payroll to retain the untrusted people who remain to service their mortgages, and to hire the extra managers needed to supervise them. 

Knowing.

Peggy: Did you park your white horse outside? Spare me the suspense and tell me what your Save the Day Plan is. 

Don: I don't have anything yet. The idea I had wasn't great. 

Peggy: It wasn't great. It was terrible. Now I want to hear the real one. Or are you just going to pull it out during the presentation?

Don: This idea is good. I think we can get the client to buy it.

Peggy: No you don't. Or you wouldn't have questioned it. 

Don: I'm going to do whatever you say. 

Peggy: So you're going to pitch the hell out of my shitty idea and I'm going to fail?

Don: Peggy, I'm here to help you do whatever you want to do. 

Peggy: Well how am I supposed to know?

Don: That's a tough one. 

Peggy: You love this. 

Don: Not really. I want you to feel good about what you're doing but you'll never know. That's just the job. 

Peggy: What's the job?

Don: Living in the "Not knowing". 

Peggy: You know I wouldn't have argued if it was me. I would have just given you a hundred ideas and never questioned why. You really want to help me? Show me how you think. Do it out loud. 

Don: You can't tell people what they want. It has to be what you want. 

Peggy: Well I want to go to the movies. 

Don: Whenever I'm really unsure of an idea, first I abuse the people whose help I need. And then I take a nap. 

Peggy: Done. 

Don: Then I start at the beginning again. And see if I end up in the same place. 

- Mad Men - Series 7 'The Strategy'.

Subversion.

'A leader engages in this task of constructive subversion. What they subvert is unthinking custom and practice. A leader will not accept that things are merely done because everybody does it, because that's just the way that we do things around here.

But they're not seeking to impose some kind of idiosyncratic view of their own on the organisation. They're not trying to bring it down. It's constructive because the job of leadership is to help the organisation become more like the thing it says it wants to be.

But to do this requires extraordinary moral courage. It's really, really hard.

Can you imagine what your colleagues are going to do? Some might say it's fantastic. A lot are going to say 'Sorry, just get out of the way and let us get on with it. We know what we're doing.'  And there will be your peer group who will be pretty annoyed with some of you who do it because if you start doing it then they might have to start doing it and that's going to be a burden.

Resource constrained. Time constrained. 'We're just trying to cope and you want us to do this as well?'

And there will be superiors who will get pretty annoyed from time to time that you have asked the difficult question that if had just been left unasked it would have made life more bearable.  

Yet that is not leadership.

If you're going to lead. If you volunteer for the task. This is the sort of thing in which you're going to have to engage.'  

- Dr Simon Longstaff, Director of the St James Ethics Centre

Judgement

The New York Times published an interview with Ron Kaplan, the CEO of Trex, a manufacturer of outdoor decks on 'Making Judgements Instead of Decisions'.

It's an opinion on the difference between decision making and judgement. 

'To this day, I find I’m most effective as a leader by facilitating other people talking.'

'When people speak, you measure the variance between what they tell you is going to happen and what actually happens. The smaller the variance, the greater the credibility.'

'Decision-making usually is the dissection of facts to come to a conclusion. Coming to a judgment really has to do with the issues of luck, character and probability.'

Tolerance.

'What we don't realise is how much of our feelings, our actions, our beliefs are coming from our unconscious mind and I think that when we raise our consciousness about our unconscious, you're knowing yourself better. And to know yourself better I think is a good thing. You understand how you're going to react and you understand why you did things and you just have more understanding for yourself. So it not only helps you make better decisions economically, but it helps you make better decisions spiritually because you have in a way more tolerance for yourself as well as more understanding.'

- Leonard Mlodinow, Physicist.

Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances us towards where we want to be.

I pay attention to my thinking.

I see the world as it is and not as I presumed it to be.

I learn about you.

I learn about me.

Five.

The fifth of the Five Steps to a Good Decision is to Offer a Hearing.

Step 1 is to Step Back.

Step 2 is to Name the Issue.

Step 3 is to Assess the Information.

Step 4 is to Check for Bias.

If you believe that your decision is likely to adversely affect any person, you should allow that person to be heard.

A 'hearing' is simply:

• Informing the person of the information that you have about them.
• Informing them that it may require you to make a decision that may be adverse to their interests or expectations.
• Inviting them to respond to the information and explain to you why you should not make an adverse finding.

A 'hearing' may be a simple as a short conversation, an email or letter.

If the person doesn't accept your offer, you simply make the decision based upon the information that you have.

The ‘Show Cause’ is the best example of the Hearing step in action.  It says:

‘I’m thinking of doing X as a result of Y facts and Z policy.  I’m inviting you to give me reasons why I should not do X by the close of business on Date.  I will consider your reasons before making my decision.'

There are five benefits of the Hearing Step:

• It allows the person with the most at stake to put forward information that can ensure that you are aware of the most personally damaging outcomes of your decision, and assess them accordingly.
• It allows the person to feel involved in their own fate and that you value them enough to engage with them.
• It has echoes of the ‘listening’ in Step 1.
• It is another opportunity for you to Step Back.
• It is one of the most important elements of Natural Justice.

If the person responds, genuinely consider and reflect upon the information that they have given you.

Remain focussed on the relevance of the information to your Widget. 

They may tell you about their illness, their lost cat, their 37 years of faithful service, their passion for their job...

Don’t engage with any of these topics if they have nothing to do with your Widget.

Don’t seek to rebut or refute or correct in your response.  Simply say:

‘Thank you for taking the time to write those 73 pages in response to my invitation for you to give me reasons why I should not move your desk. I have given all of your submissions my consideration, and after taking them into account, together with Policy X and Report Y, I have decided to move you to the position near the window.’  

And you might add: ‘I am sorry to hear about your cat and I can understand how its absence has proved stressful for you.  I invite you to take advantage of our Employee Assistance Programme and will approve any reasonable leave that you may require to do so.’

The five steps allow someone to tell us their story and for us to listen.  

Our brains love stories.

Need.

We don't need more leaders.

(Too many people leading and an organisation will break.)

One Leader is enough.

We don't need more managers.

(People don't like being managed.)

We need people who follow a deliberate process of inquiry that advances them towards where the Leader wants them to be.

We need Good Decision Makers.

Four.

The fourth of the Five Steps to a Good Decision is to Check for Bias.

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

Bias can distract us from our Widget in two ways:

• From brains wired to drown out rational thought by screaming 'RUN!' or 'KILL IT!' in response to new information.
• From egos that put our Weekend Widget ahead of our boss's Widget.

The first Three Steps to a Good Decision often quell the screaming in its more sophisticated 21st century workplace manifestations.

The second is mostly tackled in long and overly complicated policies around 'conflicts of interest.'

The easiest way to detect whether we have this kind of bias is to ask ourselves:

‘Am I able to apply my mind to the information and assess its merits and exercise my discretion unhindered by any personal investment in its outcome?’

If you do feel personally invested, you need to tell your boss and let her decide whether you should refer the decision to someone else.

After all, she's paying you to build her Widget.

Value.

[Inspired by Hugh McCleod's 'Value Curve'.]

Three.

'Intelligence is the ability to recognise a better argument than your own.'

- Anonymous

The third of the Five Steps to a Good Decision is to Assess the information.

‘Investigation’ has sinister, negative overtones.  

‘We’re carrying out an investigation.’

‘We’re being investigated.’  

These all imply that someone has done something wrong.

Yet no decision should be made without gathering as much information as we can – ie investigating.

An investigation can be as simple as a telephone call, a conversation, reading a policy, an email asking questions, seeking expert advice – or as detailed as a royal commission.

What information do you need to decide what to do?

What information do you need to make your Widget?

What is important is the attitude that you take to the gathering of information.

Be curious.

Take the position of the ‘naïve inquirer’.

Seek the advice of experts, more experienced people, policies and procedures.

Be inquisitorial not adversarial.

Aim to learn rather than blame.

Two.

The second of the Five Steps to a Good Decision is to Name the Issue.

The commonest mistake in every decision making level of every organisation is to ignore our Widget.

(Hence the importance of Widget clarity.)

A Good Decision is one that advances us towards where we want to be - ie our Widget.

In Step 1, we purged our emotions so that we could make a decision using external information and not internal emotion.

In Step 2, we need to ask ourselves: ‘What is the Issue?’

We need to sift through all the information that we have and identify what it tells us about our Widget.

The answer is the Issue.

There are a number of tools that we can use to name the Issue:

• How does this information affect my Widget?
• What law, policy, procedure, rule, promise, value or other undertaking am I responsible for that requires me to act on this information?
• Do I have the authority to act on the information?
• What action does my Integrity (doing what I said I was going to do) demand of me in response to this information?

If there is no clear statement about whether you have the authority to make a decision, you could rely on the principle of Subsidiarity:

‘It is a fundamental principle of social philosophy, fixed and unchangeable, that one should not withdraw from individuals and commit to the community what they can accomplish by their own enterprise and/or industry.’

- Pope Pius XI

Don't be distracted or bound by what someone else tells you is the issue because they're defining it against their Widget - not yours.

A third party usually doesn’t get to decide what the Issue is.  You do.  

Because it’s your Widget.

You are in the job presumably because you have the experience, expertise and authority to make decisions about your Widget that serve the organisation’s Widget.

If the information does not affect your Widget, either pass it on to someone whose Widget may benefit from it, or…proceed to Step 3.