Elsewhere.
'Nobody cares how you pay your rent. Your job is to show us something we didn’t know we needed to see.'
The best leaders sneak up and buffet us then draw us forward on their slipstream.
We're minding someone else's business. Going through the motions. Comfortable. Smothering our inner restless child with our pillow of outer respectability so none of the other happy successful people around us hears its death rattle.
We're marching to the rhythmic drum drum hum drum drum hum drum of the boss and the managers and the meetings and the courses and the mission statements and the core values and the consultants and the professional development and the change management and the teams and the acronyms and the buzz words and the performance reviews and the clichés and the emails about cake in the staff room and the promise of Friday afternoon.
Loitering for the fortnightly hit from payroll.
She is here. No introduction. No names. No preface or title.
Her voice distracts us from ourselves long enough to rouse the child who squirms free and gasps for air.
We know nothing of her other than she wants to be elsewhere.
She's not waiting for us.
Nor are we.
We leave ourselves behind to go and see.
Simon.
He says: Come Here - so they go There.
He says: Do This - so they do That.
He says: It is Thus - so they say Thus It Is.
He says: Put Money in their Bank - so they say See You Next Week for more He Says.
Be: Creative, productive, innovative, industrious, proactive, engaged, accountable, resilient, loyal, ethical, aligned, happy, autonomous, fearless, motivated, passionate...
No-one moves.
Not without a He Says.
Saying.
Decision-Making is THE act of communication.
What am I saying?
We are the products of our Decision-Making, not our words.
How's that going?
How's the organisation's Decision-Making budget?
Compared to the iDevice budget?
The Marketing one?
Where's Decision-Making in the Staff Development Agenda?
In the Leadership Training?
In the Performance Reviews?
In the Recruitment ads?
In the KPIs?
How do we make right versus right decisions under stress?
How do we integrate what we already know - or think we know - with what we need to discover?
How do we orientate ourselves?
What is the relationship between our problem‐analysis and our Decision‐Making?
What happens when what actually happens does not track with what we assumed?
What awaits us when we look inwards for our moral compass?
What happens when we're wrong?
How do we Make Decisions of Love and Hope?
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.
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?
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.
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.'
Mess.
'[The BBC gave us] total freedom. They gave us the freedom to mess up which is the best freedom you can have.
For our first series we made our own mistakes. We made lots of mistakes and we realised the control you had to have to get better - the things we needed to change and appreciate...and we were allowed a second series.'
A good boss anchors the straining tension of paying her workers to build and break and build her Widget.
It takes intelligence, confidence, wisdom, patience, resilience, judgement, and humility to be that kind of boss.
Good bosses are rare.
Workers who are grown up enough to choose the anxiety that comes with the freedom of making their own mistakes - and to change and get better - and thus be worthy of such bosses - are also rare.
Most settle into the comfort and security of the tepid disgruntlement of being told what to do in return for the salary that funds their refuge in their Weekend Widget.
The emphasis on leadership and management in workplaces reinforces a message that Someone Else is responsible.
Someone Else is controlling us and therefore our mistakes.
The They will tell us when and how to get better.
The They will Manage and even Drive Change.
We are free to choose the boss that we deserve.
If.
If I write a good job description for you.
If I write a good job ad for you.
If I write good questions for your job interview and write down the ones you ask back.
If I write to your last boss and ask her if you make good Widgets.
If I write a good employment contract for you.
If I write good policies for you.
If I teach you a good job induction.
If I teach you about my Widget.
If I teach you how your Widget fits into my Widget.
If I teach you with feedback and a pay cheque.
If I get out of your way.
If I Do all of this for everyone who you rely on to help you to Do your job.
If - after you Do it - I say:
Thank you.
If I keep Doing for you all I said that I would Do.
I'd have done my job.
And you'll go on Doing yours.
You don't need to be managed or led.
You just need to be left to Do.
We don't need more leaders or managers.
We need more Writers and Teachers.
We need more Doers.
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.
Terms.
'The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.'
-Socrates
The Widget is the product of your decisions.
The Weekday Widget is the product of the decisions that your boss pays you to make.
The Weekend Widget is the product of making decisions for your boss.
A Good Decision is one that advances you towards where you want to be.
[It's harder to make a good decision if you don't have a Widget.]
Good Decision Making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards where you want to be.
A Leader is someone who makes decisions that others choose to follow.
It's all about The Widget.
I might be wrong.
Rare.
Being a Leader is hard.
That's why it's rare to find her.
Organisations call 'Leaders' people who:
- Made a Widget well enough to supervise other people to make (often different) Widgets
- Did something in another organisation that their boss wants them to repeat for them
- Get invited to meetings with limited chairs to learn to advocate their boss's opinion
- Umpire Widget conflicts (rarely) and interpersonal conflicts (mostly)
- Make their Widget better than anyone else in the organisation
- Control others so that the boss doesn't have to
Boss's call them 'leaders' to acknowledge what they want them to do is hard - yet not Leadership hard.
It's a rare boss who will pay you to make decisions that contradict her.
It's a rare boss who will trust you to trust others to change direction from the one she chose.
Rare good bosses means rarer Leaders.
Competing.
'In review tribunal proceedings there is no necessary conflict between the interests of the applicant and of the government agency. Tribunals and other administrative decision making processes are not intended to identify the winner from two competing parties. The public interest `wins' just as much as the successful applicant because correct or preferable decision making contributes, through its normative effect, to correct and fair administration and to the jurisprudence and policy in the particular area.'
- Managing Justice: A Review of the Federal Civil Justice System.
The complaint arrives.
Step 1: Step Back and feel the offence, indignation, anger, fear, fatigue or betrayal well up inside you - then allow seconds, minutes, hours, days for it to ebb away. [I'm human.]
Step 2:What's my Widget and what does this complaint teach me about it? ['The first job of a leader is to define reality.']
Step 3: Do I seek other information to help me to learn about this complaint and my Widget?
Step 4: Is there anything clouding my vision about how this complaint serves my Widget? ['A leader serves.']
Step 5: Is there anyone who might be affected by a decision I may make?
Thank you complainant for testing my Widget. ['The last job of a leader is to say 'Thank you.'']
It's rare to find anyone with this wisdom.
Because Leaders are rare.
Our Justice System is precious.
Quiet.
We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see,
it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer,
perhaps even a fiercer life because of our quiet.
- William Butler Yeats, The Celtic Twilight
A Leader makes decisions that others choose to follow.
They follow a better version of themselves they glimpse in the Leader.
Leaders are Quiet.
Follow.
Interviewer: 'We are supposed to do the right things...'
Retired US Navy SEAL: 'Do you know what the right thing is?'
Interviewer: 'Well...not to kill innocent civilians...'
Retired SEAL: 'You don't have any idea. Not to be rude or anything, but one person's...what they think is the right idea is, is completely opposite from what the other one is. That's why we have to solely focus on our Leadership, our Admirals, who have been around and have been through all of this and they make the calls and it flows all the way down to us and we follow our orders to the T. Being in the SEAL teams we're outside of the box thinkers. We're not idiots. Most SEALS have their degrees and a lot of them have their Masters and we've been in this game for a very, very long time. So the thing that we ask - not out loud - we hope and pray that the American public has enough trust and faith in us to do and make the right decision....It's war and there is no right or wrong answer...'
To dismiss this response as the predictably military gung-ho blind 'We just follow orders' is to ignore some powerful insights into good decision making in the most extreme circumstances that also translates to the every day.
Navigating a good decision requires a fixed north - the Widget.
The Widget is designated by the Leader.
The decision maker accepts the Widget as the creation of a person who they trust - even if that trust is that there will be money in their bank account each fortnight.
Implicit in the dynamic between Widget, Leader and decision maker is that the decision maker continues to choose the Widget.
If I sneer at this equation it's either because my Leaders are managers or I choose not to choose.
'Right' and 'Wrong' are irrelevant.
It's all about the Widget.
Doubt.
'Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.'
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
'One of the reasons that a person is interested in what other people have to say is they know they don't know. Doubt is the place in me for you to affect me.'
- John Patrick Shanley
A Leader holds certainty with doubt.
A Leader is someone whom others choose to follow. People won't easily abandon their driftwood and tread water over to your raft if you're bailing water.
Doubt is never on the PowerPoint list of The 10 Qualities of a Leader.
Yet Leadership is inherently a transitional state between certainties. Leaders are on a journey from here towards their belief in Something Better Over Somewhere. Otherwise it's Management. (There's nothing wrong with that.)
People who complain about their Leaders almost always don't need Leadership. They need a Manager. Or a parent.
Almost by definition, if someone has certainty about where they're going and how they're going to get there, they are not a Leader. They're an airline pilot or a train driver. (There's nothing wrong with them either.)
Each of us hears the call towards Something Better Over Somewhere. Many of us respond, only to fall back as the tether between our ego and the opinions of the world tightens.
She breaks free and suffers the whiplash of our jealous displeasure.
She lays down a pathway of good decision making to a familiar beat of self-doubt that calls:
'Come! I am just like you.'