The Only Way to Learn.
Sergeant Mortellaro - My Drill Sergeant during Officers Training School
“I have already chose my officer.”
And what was he?
Forsooth, a great arithmetician...
That never set a squadron in the field,
Nor the division of a battle knows...
- 'Othello', William Shakespeare
'The problem is that when we're new to something or when we're approaching intermediate skill at something, it gets dangerous. Because you need to have an awareness about how much more you could learn. There's the cataract of not being great at something that makes it difficult to know what you need to learn to get better. The only way to learn that is from other people. It's very difficult on your own.'
- Merlin Mann
When you become the boss for the first time, you're dangerous.
Lots of positional power and no experience of how to use it.
You've made lots of widgets so well that you've been put in charge of other people making widgets. They're completely different skills with only the widget in common. You're an arithmetician - full of the theory. Or maybe not even that.
Sure - you've had lots of leadership role models:
Parents. Older siblings. School teachers. The drill sergeants in the movies.
That's not the worst of it. As Merlin Mann says, you may not know that you don't know. Or if you do, you can't show it. Your people will eat you alive. Your boss wants you to deliver from day one. You've got to be strong. Decisive even. That's what they do in the movies.
So you set about being Mum, Dad, older sister, home room teacher and Gunnery Sergeant Carter. You stop being yourself.
Your people will teach you what it takes to be a good boss. Ask them. Engage them in good decision making.
Yes it's risky. They may take advantage of you.
Which is why they won't.
The First Thing You Need to Do.
'To ask a manager about specific tasks which she/he assigns to a subordinate comes as an unfamiliar experience for most - and the managers find replying equally strange and awkward until they get used to it.'
- Elliott Jacques, Requisite Organisation
The first thing:
Find out your boss's Widget.
Ask your boss: 'What do you have to do, and by when?' (That's her Widget.)
Then ask: 'What are you relying on me to do and by when for you to do it?' (That's your Widget.)
(If her answer is the same as what's in your employment agreement or duty statement, that's a bonus.)
Then ask: 'What does your boss want you to do and by when?' (That's what your boss really cares about and therefore you should care about it too.)
Go away and think about your boss's answers. (If Elliott Jacques is right, you may need to give your boss some time to answer.)
If there's anything stopping you from giving your boss what she wants - tell her.
Then make your Widget.
Do your job.
It's that simple.
You've also made your first good decision.
You've undertaken a deliberate process of inquiry that has advanced you towards where you want to be.
You don't know where you want to be?...
Perhaps that was the First Thing you should have decided? - where do you want to be?
(It was still a good decision - it prompted you towards deciding where you want to be.)
What if you do all of that, make your Widget, and your boss isn't happy? Then you've misunderstood your boss. Your decision has helped you to readjust your understanding about what the boss wants. The sooner you start making Widget decisions, the sooner you'll learn whether you're making what your boss wants.
The boss is always right.
If you're someone's boss, invite them to have the same 'What do you need to do by when' conversation with you. Including inviting them to define for themselves where they want to be.
If you, your boss, or your workers have not had any of these conversations - then there's the source of every problem.
This conversation rarely happens.
It's all assumed.
Which is a lot of the reason why 81% of Australian workers are not engaged.
It's not too late.
Trust: The Best Way to Manage.
The High Court ruled last week that there is no implied term of mutual trust and confidence in Australian employment contracts.
What is trust?
Trust is the basic social glue.
It influences good decision making.
Yet just like good decision making, no-one teaches the theory and practice of Trust.
It's seen as an emotional, moral quality.
Is 'Trust' in MBA courses? Is it in Staff Induction days? Are there Trust policies?
Time to remedy our lack of knowledge about Trust.
Reinhard K. Sprenger wrote 'Trust: The Best Way to Manage.' Here are the highlights to help begin incorporating an understanding of the influence Trust has in good decision making.
It is no longer possible for trust to develop out of familiarity.
Trust increases the scope for nonconformity (the lateral thinking so highly regarded everywhere), individuality and originality. People can be who they are. Without trust, motivation doesn't last.
Many studies have attempted to establish a correlation between internal company factors and corporate results. But only one variable has been substantiated as having a significant correlation: the nature of staff members' relationships with immediate managers. If the relationship is good, productivity increases; if it is bad, it declines. Within a relationship that someone experiences as positive, the most important feature is trust.
it has often been said that trust is the basis for management. Allowing oneself to be managed means trusting someone.
Modern trust is based on people's having chosen to work together and trust each other. This trust is reflective and calculating. This trust is neither blind nor naïve. This trust is a decision.
'The best managers trust their people from the first day. On the basis of an inner conviction they trust them to do the best and to deliver good work. Only the cynical managers think staff have to trust first.'
- Carolyn Dyer, Gallup Senior Analyst
Trust is a potential solution for problems involving risk. Accordingly, trust presupposes a risk situation. Risk comes first. Then comes trust (or mistrust).
I am prepared to relinquish control of another person because I expect them to be competent, and to act with integrity and goodwill.
It is only sensible that trust is always limited.
The reason that we often undervalue trust is that we aren't aware of it until it has been broken. Then we are usually astonished, sometimes even shocked.
Either/or: this is one of the greatest obstacles on the path to recognising trust as the elixir of life in the business world. What's missing is a sensible intermediate position. But if I want to talk about trust, build trust and make a decision about trust, I have to be aware of it. Only then does it become an option I can choose.
Only conscious trust is real trust: the conviction that the other person won't betray me, although I know they could. I shall leave it to you to judge whether "hope" or" confidence" might be better terms for this. What's important to me is that the diminution of trust is a contribution for its very existence.
Everything we value as trust can be obtained only within a framework of knowledge and in conditions of relative security. Because knowledge is limited and total security isn't possible, we must complement both with trust. Knowledge and security don't necessarily amount to mistrust; they are the basis to which trust can relate. This means that knowledge is the primary idea that must be in place before we can speak about trust.
What people tend to forget is that learning can't take place if the outcome isn't monitored.
Control doesn't necessarily undermine trust. Control can actually safeguard trust. The higher the degree of trust, the more important the safeguarding function of control. It then acquires an informative, supporting and enhancing character. But if on the other hand trust is displaced beyond a certain threshold, the experience becomes one of mistrust. The higher the degree of mistrust, the more limiting control becomes, thereby diminishing trust still further.
The optimum ratio between trust and control is not constant, but will fluctuate according to the situation and the occasion.
Contracts can provide a platform on which a trusting collaboration can be built. Take an employment contract. If it regulates the essentials and confines itself to the minimum, it will never see the light of day again once an employee has started work. But without it, many would never start at all. It represents a minimum guarantee for mutually acceptable behaviour.
Trust isn't possible without control, nor control without trust. It is the proportion that is important.
In its extreme form, trust paradoxically destroys the basis for its own future. A certain measure of selective mistrust is required in order to give worth to trust and to ensure its continued existence.
Trust is like an advance: it can be cashed in later. Trust is always on trial.
Trust still needs to be justified by results now and again if it is to be continually renewed. That's what sets it apart from the rule of obedience or loyalty to the alliance that still dominates many businesses today. If your interests are upheld by the other person's actions in the expected matter your trust remains intact.
Trust brings risk with it, but so does mistrust. There is no business without risk.
When we are in a position to evaluate the relative trustworthiness of someone, we are dealing with a proportion. And it is in this proportion that we deed to make a decision on.
Trust must remain constructive; it mustn't make you blind and mustn't ever be absolute. The same goes for mistrust.
Modern trust therefore involves a decision in favour of a combination of trust and mistrust, of control and the relinquishing of control.
Trust is often weighty, moralistic, admonishing. The question 'Don't you trust me?' makes you eager to say you do. Trust is often viewed as an unalloyed substance like honey, spreading well-being when ever it flows. But this picture is skewed. Trust isn't intrinsically good.
In some cases, defensive managers misuse trust as a label. They don't pay attention, don't act, don't manage, and excuse their passivity by claiming trust in their employees. But trust can never mean retreat and passivity.
Trust is neither good nor bad. There is no need to evaluate it at all. It can be explained more or less fully as a product of a rational collaboration with no moral component.
Someone who says 'trust me' is effectively declaring trust to be a debt the other person owes them. The subtext is: 'if you don't trust me, there's something wrong with you'. In fact when people are told 'trust me' they often feel ashamed or guilty if they don't manage to trust.
A manager needs to remain aware of his role in the company and position in the hierarchy at all times – and that rules out genuineness. This applies especially critical situations that staff experience as threatening.
I want to be quite clear about the fact that my policy is to use trust to influence behaviour. This would only represent a moral problem if I were to conceal a manipulative intention.
A trusting relationship is characterised by the expectation that the dependency involved in the relationship will not be exploited by one of the parties.
It can be highly advantageous for people to confirm trust if they value the space to be themselves, manage themselves and be respected. And the benefits are great too if they coincide with the maximum benefit for the manager: if both are pursuing interests in the same direction.
If you nevertheless trust: you will consciously choose uncertainty, loss of control and the possibility of disappointment. You give the employee a task without knowing whether he will prove worthy of your trust; you don't know whether he will use his freedom of action to your detriment. So placing trust initially involves risk for you as a manager. This risky advance investment can't be justified in an absolute sense, but it is extremely reasonable, as we shall see.
Vulnerability starts trust.
Active trust is accepted vulnerability.
Trust brings commitment. It creates obligation. It binds. It unleashes a deep current from which we can barely escape. And the greater the risky advance investment, the greater the binding effect.
The important thing is that giving trust is a gift that creates obligations is precisely because it is difficult or impossible to demand.
It has now become clear that two things that appeared mutually exclusive actually belong together: trust and control. Trust controls the behaviour of another person. It is wrong to play trust and control off against each other. The opposite applies: trust is control.
If you as a manager place your fate in the hands of your staff, if you relinquish your power and ability to act arbitrarily, if you allow staff to take responsibility for things that will affect your success, then the binding effect of trust can develop. Are your staff aware that you will be damaged if they don't do the job? It isn't enough to say 'I need your contribution'; your staff must be aware that you have a problem if they don't do their job. If a member of staff is justified in feeling that their contribution hardly counts, has little effect and isn't indispensable, no trust can develop.
Trust people to have their own quality standards for themselves and their work. Get rid of time monitoring systems.
Take customer orientation seriously. Support unorthodox decisions made by the staff.
Check first, then trust.
Put yourself to the test with your staff: give them the opportunity to vote you out. This is the highest level of vulnerability possible at work. It is the ultimate level of trust. Trust becomes possible when you make yourself dependent on the agreement and performance of your staff.
You get the trust mechanism started when you yourself give trust first by allowing yourself to be vulnerable. This is the most important condition. You are vulnerable when an abuse of trust by the other person would be hugely detrimental to you.
When human beings are treated as responsible people, they behave as such. We know from research that we are strongly influenced by other people's opinion of us. The other person is, or can become, a person of integrity if we give them the opportunity to confirm trust.
If you distrust, you never have the chance to encounter a trustworthy person.
The message 'I trust you' is more effective in bringing about a desired outcome than 'trust me' is. It invests something before it expects anything; it gives first and then receives.
Trust is neither a prerequisite nor a result. It is both. It oscillates between prerequisite and confirmation. Trust runs in a circular pattern. So does mistrust.
Is sad mentality of caution: it is in hierarchies where the emphasis has shifted dramatically from responsibility for tasks to responsibility in terms of accountability that there is constant dissatisfaction with conditions in the company. Everywhere, the question 'Where were you when that happened?' creates the mixture of uncertainty and fear that turns trust into a constraint. Trust is sacrificed when people decide to take a safety measure to deal with a risk that may actually have been small.
When you withdraw trust from an employee, they don't have to balance the relationship account by contributing something in return. They no longer experience an inner pressure pushing them to restore the balance. They no longer have a bad conscience about cheating on you because you don't consider them trustworthy anyway.
Trust isn't a moral action. It doesn't necessarily consist in believing in the other person's good intentions. It can be assigned to the rational sphere. It consists of a rational policy of maximising benefit, and intelligence that calculates advantage. You can decide to trust.
Power doesn't come from above. It exists in the relationship of one individual to another in so far as the individual has freedom to act.
You are not really a member of the group until you have earned the trust of others. And trust develops when you place the objectives of the group above your own ego. The group always comes first.
What brings us together, what induces us to act considerately, is common problems.
Problems that allow us to collaborate must fulfill at least two conditions. First, they must be important problems that affect our business life directly or indirectly. Second, they must be self-evident problems; it's no good if people aren't aware of them unless they are given a briefing, or unless they have a university education.
Trust is rational against a background of common problems
Collective identity arises when management succeeds in presenting problems as collective problems.
Only those two trust themselves can trust others. People can be capable of trust only if they have relatively secure, prolonged contact with their own sense of reliability.
Being faithful to agreements is the core of trust.
What principle do managers follow? If they seek success it will be trust. If they are out to avoid failure, it will be mistrust.
Trust is inconceivable without taking a risk; it therefore requires courage. It is a bet on the future; it is located between knowing and not knowing. Under some circumstances, it entails taking risks that endanger life. But it also involves important chances.
A breach of trust occurs only if the other person fails to adhere to agreements in which expectations are balanced.
Trust is the rule, mistrust as the exception, not vice versa.
The gain from confirmed trust remains invisible and isn't even detected, whereas the loss from abused trust is visible and experienced directly.
The rules of second chance ethics are:
1. Always offer to cooperate first.
2. If your offer is returned, be prepared to trust in the long term; if not then punish immediately and mercilessly.
3. Offer the trust again after a certain period
Under no circumstances should you turn a blind eye to a breach of trust. Don't allow someone to break your implicit trust. If you don't act, you are an accomplice, as good as saying 'it's it okay to abuse trust'.
Tit for tat also applies in the event of you doing something wrong. Don't cover it up, but face up to it fairly and squarely. 'My behaviour wasn't acceptable and that matters to me. Will you give me another chance?' Scarcely anyone would deny you.
Trust isn't a matter of models and Mission statements. The acid test is the concrete behaviour of the person fixing the values in cases of conflict.
If you work with someone, you should trust them. If you don't trust them, you should do better not to work with them.
The decision to trust is then the result of rational calculation mixed with emotional processes.
Be Decisive And Wait.
Those iPod quarterly sales meetings in March 2002, June 2002, September 2002, December 2002, March 2003 and June 2003 must have been tough.
The owners of two billion iPods should be grateful that Steve Jobs didn't respond to these numbers with the 'decisiveness' that many managers mistake for good decision making.
The first job of a Leader is to create the space.
And hold it.
Hold it.
Hold.
Knowing Who You're Not.
'I recorded my first album, The Sound of White in Los Angeles when I was 20 (or was it 19?.) The producer, John Porter, said to me very nicely one day: "Your accent, it's...very strong when you sing, isn't it? Perhaps, ah, we could tone it down a little? Some people might find it a bit distracting."
I took great offence. Not only did I not tone down my accent, I went even harder with it. "Boom, that'll show them," I remember thinking. "How dare anyone think that me singing in my own accent is distracting? I'm not f..king American!" The accent went on to become stronger out of sheer spite. "If this is going to polarise people," I thought, "I may as well not do it in halves."
Missy Higgins was 19 and working her first job - making her debut album. She was doing what she'd wanted to do since she was 12 - singing.
John Porter, effectively her boss, had produced his first album for The Smiths eight years before she was born and had worked with Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry.
He questioned who she was - she pondered and decided to defy him. At 19. In her first job. She decided to become herself.
Not half - but fully.
The Sound of White debuted at No. 1 and sold half a million copies.
A good decision is one that advances you towards where you want to be.
Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards where you want to be. You question or you're questioned. You search for your own answers, not someone else's.
If you look around and someone is following - buying half a million of your Widgets - you're a Leader.
If not - fine. You're still on your way to where you want to be.
The YouTube Test.
Ray Rice is a professional American football running back who is regarded as one of the best ever players for the Baltimore Ravens.
In February 2014 he assaulted his fiancée. The particulars of the assault were on the public record following his arrest.
In July 2014 the NFL suspended Rice for two games for violating its personal conduct policy by assaulting his fiancée.
In August 2014 the NFL Commissioner said that he 'didn't get it right' when giving Rice a two game suspension. He announced that in future such behaviour would attract a higher punishment. A six game suspension.
In September 2014 a video was posted online showing Rice punching his fiancée to unconsciousness.
The Ravens subsequently announced that his contract with its team had been terminated. The NFL said that he had been suspended indefinitely.
The NFL and the Ravens got new information and changed their minds. That's okay.
The new information?
Instead of the world reading that Ray Rice punched his fiancée in the face the NFL and Ravens knew that the world can see Ray Rice punch his fiancée in the face.
Let's test our declarations of commitment to transparency, integrity, values, accountability etc.
Next time you're considering - in Step 3 of the Five Steps to a Good Decision - a response to information that's in an email, phone call, letter or meeting - Imagine:
- Converting the information into a story and then a screenplay.
- Filming the screenplay.
- Posting the film to YouTube.
It's not your decision making process that the world will watch (boring) - it's the information that you're assessing. It's watching Ray Rice punch his fiancée instead of reading about it.
Wondering whether or how to discipline a staff member? Upload to your imagination. Post. Tweet. Watch.
The YouTube test isn't designed to encourage literal transparency or openness.
It's a forcing function that jolts us out of our deep grooves of unthinking responses to information so that we might see and respond to it in a different way.
Satisfaction.
'When I'm watchin' my TV
And a man comes on and tells me
How white my shirts can be
But he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarrettes as me.'
- 'Satisfaction' - Jagger/Richards
You want to resolve complaints to the satisfaction of the complainant?
You want someone else's happiness to be a measure of your decisions?
Good luck.
Stick.
Dan: 'As somebody who feels like a person who knows so little and my knowledge is so incomplete. And yet know I'm supposed to be imparting knowledge to our kids and I kind of almost tried to give up on that and I try to just focus on good decision making.
'It's one thing if you tell your kid: 'Well just do it like this'. And it's another to just walk them through it. You know that if you walk them through it the right way that they'll learn about the thought process. Because I think that thought processes are teachable. Or learnable. Good, logical thinking is a learnable thing. It's one thing if your kid says 'Well how do I do this?' Or 'Why is it like this?' And you just tell them. As opposed to kind of leading them down the path to figuring out the answer on their own. That seems to stick a little bit better.'
Merlin: 'I find it so hard not to intervene. She's doing something - like she's learning to jump rope right now. And it's all I can do not to seize the thing out of her hand and go 'Look! Stand on it with your two feet like this, pull it up to here and if it reaches your waist that's the right length!' 'Cos she's got about half the length that she needs to do it. She keeps jammin' it into her ankle and it drives me crazy to watch. It's all I can do not to intervene. But you know - that's part of the process.'
Substitute 'employee' for 'kid'.
Wire.
A frightening amount of organisational decision making is based on this:
My decisions are superior to yours because once someone drew boxes connected by lines and put boxes above your box.
I'm in one of those boxes.
I know more than you because I'm Up Here.
If anyone doesn't like the decision from your box they can ESCALATE it up to me in mine and I can change it.
Reason: My box is higher than yours.
Know this.
I may give you the benefit of my descriptions of my view from Up Here if I get the time.
Like bread tossed from the back of a moving UNHCR truck.
Be grateful.
Marketing.
‘Our culture is marketing. What is marketing? Trying to get people to do what you want them to.
... the only goal is to get you to buy a product. The only goal. The only goal. The only goal. The only goal.'
Without Widget clarity and discipline, every meeting is a marketing meeting.
Everyone's in competition to sell themselves.
Buy my opinion (ie me) and not hers (ie her).
The Widget is incidental.
A passing vehicle towing billboards with my portrait: BUY ME!
The only goal.
Preside.
From the very beginning, Obama has been a presider rather than a decider. His modus operandi is to marshal existing political forces toward a particular, prgmatic set of goals.
- Andrew Sullivan
A good Leader Creates a Space.
She presides over that Space.
She holds it.
The measure of her power is not in what she does.
It's in what others do in that space.
It takes strength for her to hold that space against the forces that batter against it. Time. Money. Efficiency. Expediency. Fear. Ego.
And the most powerful of them all - her self-doubt.
'Preside' comes from the Latin praesidere - to stand guard over.
Anyone who creates a space and protects the process of discernment and decision making within - is a Leader.
Flawless.
'All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavor to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called 'guessing what was at the other side of the hill.''
- The Duke of Wellington
'It was a flawless operation. It was just that the hostages weren't there.'
- Chuck Hagel, US Secretary of Defence.
A good decision is one that advances you towards where you want to be.
It takes discipline and courage to seek to execute a flawless operation instead of succumbing to the seduction of decisiveness.
That's why Leaders are brave.
Sure - you might solve a problem with instinct, intervention, positional power or luck.
Meanwhile, someone is planning their operation based upon the predictability of your decisions.
About where the hostages will be.
Navigation.
'First of all, every time you begin a good work, you must pray to him most earnestly to bring it to perfection.'
- The Rule of Benedict, Prologue.
If the Widget is our purpose.
If the Widget is our North.
And we're not beginning our meetings with an acknowledgment of the Widget.
If we're not bringing it to the forefront of our minds - 'praying' for it as the Benedictine monks are told to do before they begin their work - so that it may not just be made - but be made to perfection.
Naming it.
If we're not checking, measuring, calibrating, correcting and discipling our conversations against the Widget.
It's proof that the Widget isn't the Widget.
The Widget is something else.
And we're all just kicking opinions along the company road.
Look up from the theory of the organisation's map to the reality of your surrounding terrain.
Who is at the meeting? (And isn't?)
What are they emphasising? (And ignoring?)
What are their reference points? (And not?)
Who makes the decision?
Is one even made?
Take your bearings from these solid landmarks.
There's your True North.
There's the Widget.
Assuming you care.
Try opening each meeting with the prayer:
'Lead us to the Widget, and deliver us from our egos.
Amen'.
Golf.
'It was 'process' and 'spot.' That was it.'
- Rory McIlroy, 2014 British Open Golf Championship Winner
Rory McIlroy had teased journalists all week about two 'secret words' that he used before each golf shot. He'd reveal them if he won.
He won.
Process. Spot.
"With my long shots, I just wanted to stick to my process and stick to making good decisions, making good swings," he said. "The process of making a good swing, if I had any sort of little swing thoughts, just keeping that so I wasn't thinking about the end result, basically."
It's all about the Widget. It's not about the Widget.
'Spot' was before each putt.
"I was just picking a spot on the green and trying to roll it over my spot," he said. "I wasn't thinking about holing it. I wasn't thinking about what it would mean or how many further clear it would get me. I just wanted to roll that ball over that spot. If that went in, then great. If it didn't, then I'd try it the next hole."
A good putt is one that advances you towards the hole.
A good decision is one that advances you towards where you want to be.
Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards where you want to be.
Process. Spot.
Guns.
'...be prepared to punish immediately and mercilessly.'
- Reinhard K. Sprenger in his book 'Trust', on how to respond to a failure to acknowledge a breach of trust.
'Why does the military need the DFDA?' I asked the classroom of First Year Cadets and Midshipmen at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
I was delivering another lesson in the Defence Force Discipline Act.
No hands went up.
'Why do you need your own military laws? Why can't you just be subject to the same criminal laws as every other resident of Canberra? Of Australia?' No response.
They looked uncomfortable. Unlike 18 year olds at civilian universities, my rank demanded their attention and they had to pretend to give it.
Finally, a hand slowly rose.
'Yes?' I said, nodding towards the red-faced Army cadet.
'Sir, because we've got guns in our bedrooms, Sir?'
His classmates laughed.
'Correct.'
Sailors, soliders and airmen who are caught breaching society's laws, values or implied rules of behaviour are subjected to higher media attention and scrutiny and public shaming than the average civilian who might do the same.
Rightly so.
A democracy makes a deal with its 18 year olds with uniforms and guns.
We trust you.
We'll fall asleep in leafy suburbs next door to where you slumber beside your weapons.
We trust you not to turn those weapons on us.
We know History. We can't afford not to give you uniforms and guns.
We know History. We can't afford to wait to see whether our trust in you with guns was misplaced. That would be too late.
Instead -
We demand that you have higher levels of behaviour enforced by extra criminal laws.
We'll let you come onto our streets with your guns as long as we see you marching in controlled, neat, shiny, uniform ranks and snapping to attention when ordered to by superiors who have superiors who have superiors who defer to our elected government who we can vote out and ridicule on talk back radio and on Facebook.
If you behave in any way that hints that our trust in you might be a mistake:
Then we'll punish you immediately and mercilessly and publicly - disproportionately than if you were an unarmed teenager.
It's not your misogyny, pot smoking, petty theft, drunkenness, harassment or racist emails that we want to protect ourselves from.
It's your judgement.
And the guns in your bedroom.
Power.
'The law always limits every power it gives.'
- David Hume
Step 2 of the Five Steps to a Good Decision: Name the Issue.
It's only an Issue if you have the power to make a decision in support of your Widget.
Ask: What power do I have?
Look for it in your contract.
Look for it in your policies.
Look for it in what your boss has said she expects of you.
No power? Then there is no Issue and therefore no decision required of you. Inform someone who does have the power.
Power?
Then ask:
What are the conditions or restrictions on the exercise of that power?
Welcome them. They give focus. Quieten the noise.
If you have a power - you have limits.
Be clear on what they are.
(You'll often find them in your Values.)
Then continue to Step 3.
Freedom.
'No science will give them bread as long as they remain free. In the end, they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, "make us your slaves, but feed us."
'So long as man remains free, he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship."
'I tell Thee that man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born."
- Fydor Dostoevsky, 'The Grand Inquisitor'.
The boss gives us bread in exchange for our days.
The boss is an altar upon which we lay our laments.
The boss relieves us from the anxiety of freedom.
The boss is our alibi.
Burden.
'You're asking me to quash his conviction?'
'Yes Sir.'
'Even though he pleaded guilty?'
'Yes Sir.'
'The Law is an ass, Bernard.'
Air Commodore Smith was a 'one star' general equivalent.
He'd graduated from the RAAF Academy the year I was born.
He was an Engineer. A Fighter Pilot.
He was flying Mirage fighters at twice the speed of sound at 40,000 feet over Malaysia during the Vietnam War when I was still in nappies.
He was a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
He was the Air Officer Commanding Western Australia.
He had a wife and grown up children.
He was my boss.
I was in my mid-twenties. Three years out of Law School. Four ranks and a thousand years junior to him in work and military and life experience.
'The Defence Force Discipline Act allows you to seek a higher legal opinion if you're not comfortable with mine, Sir,' I explained to him.
'Not necessary,' he said as he signed his acceptance of my review and recommendation to quash the conviction of the cannabis smoking airman on the basis of an error of law. 'You've explained your reasons both in your written report and verbally to me today and I accept the stupidity of the Law, not you. I'm going to bring this legal loophole to the attention of the other Base Commanders at our conference at Headquarters next week. They need to know about it.'
A month later, a file 'Command Legal Matters' was marked out to me by Wing Commander Oliver, the Air Commodore's Administrative Staff Officer. I opened it and found a copy of a letter that was marked to me 'For Information'.
It was a letter from the Air Officer Commanding Training Command, a two star general equivalent and my boss's boss. It was written to all the Air Force Base Commanders in Training Command - including my boss. It referred to the recent Commanders Conference and the jurisdiction issue I had cited to recommend quashing the conviction. It was admonishing my boss for quashing the conviction based upon my legal advice.
One line stands out in my memory: 'There is no place for High Court decisions in the administration of summary hearings under the Defence Force Discipline Act on Bases. Command Legal have confirmed this. Commanders should therefore seek higher headquarters legal advice in future before quashing convictions based on jurisdictional grounds. '
The Air Commodore never mentioned the letter nor his boss's criticisms of him at his commanders conference to me, let alone my legal superiors' contradictions. I don't even think that he intended the letter to come to me - otherwise he would have spoken to me about it rather than have me find out via a marked out file. He must not have thought it important.
Air Commodore Smith backed me. He backed me over the commanding officer whose guilty verdict he quashed. He backed me in front of his boss. He backed me before his peers. He backed me when he could have gone to my legal superiors for a second opinion. He backed me even though he disagreed with the legal outcome as a matter of common sense. He backed me when my own legal superiors did not. He backed me with the same business-as-usual manner as he would return my salutes if we passed each other or crack his lawyer jokes.
Air Commodore Smith didn't need to hear a Supreme Court Judge affirm my legal reasoning at a Legal Officers conference six months later. He continued to challenge, question, and ultimately back my advice to him for the remainder of my posting as his legal adviser.
His faith in me was a huge burden. It increased my self-doubt because I had to continue to live up to his total reliance on me and I thought I could not. It made me feel more exposed, rather than protected. It made me more careful and diligent in the legal advice that I gave to him. It made me accept other decisions that he made as the Base Commander that I did not necessarily understand or agree with because I trusted him based upon the way that I had seen him go about his decision making. It connected me to him. It made me a better legal officer, lawyer and person. His trust in my judgement and legal ability and officer qualities was hard to live up to.
Which was another gift that Air Commodore Smith gave me.
He just assumed I was up to it.
Backed.
'Decisions made by my Chief of Staff and my Office have my full backing and authority. Anyone who suggests otherwise is wrong.'
When your boss says 'I'll back you,' - and she does - that's arguably one of the greatest gifts.
And a huge burden.
Pass both on.
Say: 'I'll back you,' to your people.
Say: 'I'll back you,' to your customers.
Say: 'I'll back you,' to yourself.
Feel your burden ease.
Feel the anxiety in your chest.
Backing them isn't a sentimental leap of faith into the unknown.
When you back them. When you promise them - or at least yourself - that they act with your authority and that you will stand by their decisions regardless of the outcome and accept all the consequences - you realise you're utterly compelled to:
- Know them
- Clearly define their expectations
- Define their Widget
- Equip them with everything you have - especially information
- Affirm them
- Get out of their way
When I reflect on my good bosses.
My peers.
My parents.
I think that the message - in words and deeds - of 'I'll back you,' taught me the most about work, myself, and life.
'I'll back you,' says: 'I believe in you. Go and become that person I see and believe in.'
[Now think of the converse and understand how damaging and destructive it can be not to have the backing of a boss. It wounds our soul.]
[Now think of a boss who backed you - and write to them and thank them for the faith they showed in you.]
Laying down your life for another isn't as literal as the mournful notes of the Last Post honouring war dead have us believe.
It's putting yourself at risk to back another.
Is this the answer to how we bring Love into our workplaces?
The Greatest Love?
By backing each other?