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. 

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.

Polite.

'If one of us doesn't say something now we might lose ten years being polite about it.'
- Renée Zellweger - Jerry Maguire

There are many euphemisms for terminating someone's employment.

'Making you available to the labour force' is one.

'Allowing you to find your happiness elsewhere' is my favourite.

There is a school of thought that says a boss's decision to terminate someone's employment should be hers alone. Right, wrong, fair, unfair, stupid, wise. Irrelevant. The boss wants the ditch dug. If she doesn't want to pay me to do it any more because I'm wearing a blue tee shirt - then fine. It's her ditch and her cash.

If I'm as good a ditch digger as I think that I am, why protest? Best I shoulder-arms my shovel and someone will have offered me a job even before it's come to rest on my shrugging shoulder.

If I'm not a good ditch digger, best to find out now because I've got a mortgage. And a life of marrow-sucking days ahead.

Either way - good ditch-digger or woeful - my decisions in response to those made by others are probably teaching each of us both more than if we'd been polite. The boss gets better ditches or regrets being blue-ist. I get a better boss or my bobcat ticket.

The reality is that the industrial laws don't make sacking someone that easy. The legislators and the judges have designed a series of forcing functions into the employment decision-making processes. They compel bosses to follow steps that deter blue tee shirt discriminators making rash sacking decisions that may be damaging to their business and the worker's well-being. Wait. Step Back.

The result is that it's easy to hire and hard to fire.

Perhaps it should be the other way around.

Recruit hard. Mange easy.

Disengaged.

The Gallup organisation recently released a report that 87% of workers in the world are either not engaged or actively disengaged from their work. 

In Australia, the percentage  of engaged workers is a little higher at 24%. Yippee.

Only 19% of Australian bosses are engaged in their jobs. An interesting form of leadership - 'Follow me and be disengaged!'

(If you're someone's boss reading this and you're thinking 'Meh...', then it's likely you're one of the 81%.)

Gallup estimates that disengaged workers cost Australia $54.8 Billion a year. That's almost double the Education budget.

Think about that.

It's breathtakingly remarkable.

Each day in Australia, three out of four people:

Sit in traffic.

Pull their chairs up to their keyboards.

Occupy that space.

Briefly vacate it to sing 'Happy Birthday Miriam' alongside mostly other disengaged workers in the staff room and despite a 75% chance that Miriam didn't care.

Perhaps have a meeting with three out of four other disengaged workers to report to a boss who's probably not interested.

Sit in traffic.

Grow older.

Repeat. 251 times a year. For half a century.

What to do?

Engagement begins with the act of decision making.

When we make good decisions, we declare who and where we are.

We nail our colours to the mast.

We reveal ourselves.

We connect with other workers, our boss, customers, critics, with the organisation and its Widget.

We invite, demand, call on them to do the same.

Bosses - give your workers Widget clarity, authentic support, trust and affirmation and delegate decisions to the lowest appropriate level. Teach them about how to make a good decision and model it yourself.

Back them even when there's a mistake. Back them in front of your boss. Back them when someone complains.

Most of all, back yourself to have the courage and leadership to trust your workers.

This act of bravery alone will scare you into engagement with them.

Workers - make good decisions. Don't wait for permission - just make them methodically and learn from it. Your fear will surely engage you with your boss in what happens next.

We must stand up on our desks and shout 'O Captain, My Captain!'

Process.

Good decision making objectifies the outcome.

It puts distance between the result and our self worth.

It builds a firewall between our process and whatever happens next.

The more that we see our decisions as an extension of our personalities the less we are able to let go.

Step Back.

Identify the Issue.

Assess the Information.

Check for Bias.

Give a Hearing.

Make the decision.

Watch what happens next.

Learn.

Repeat.

Do your job.

Get paid.

Go home.

Investigate.

‘Investigation’ has sinister, negative overtones.  

‘We’re carrying out an investigation.’ ‘I'm being investigated.’  

These all imply that someone has done something wrong. The jury has returned, guilt has been proven, the judge has begun to read out the punishment.

The Defence Force tried to overcome this assumption by calling investigations ‘Inquiries’.  Then ‘Inquiry’ developed its own negative connotations. So Defence called then ‘Quick Assessments’. Now Quick Assessments are being replaced with something else.

Yet good decision making demands that we gather as much information as we can – ie investigate.

An investigation can be as simple as a telephone call, a conversation, a read of a policy, an email – or as complex as a royal commission.

What information do you need before you can decide what to do?

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

Be curious.

'Be curious. Read widely. Try new things. What people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity.'

- Aaron Swartz

'Our ancestors who were not curious who did not go looking over the hill to see what was on the other side disappeared. They were not successful. Tribes that were curious out competed them.' 

- Bill Nye

‘To be wise is to be eternally curious.’

- Frederick Buechner

‘What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: curious and teachable.’

- Roger Ebert

Visible.

A Leader makes the work visible.

In knowledge work, decisions build upon other decisions as they move along the assembly line to emerge as the organisation's Widget.

A Leader makes decisions that are visible in process and outcome to others who need to follow.

The word educate comes from educare which means to ‘draw out’.

Leaders draw out followers by making decisions that in turn open up space for them to make their own decisions that they know will be supported by the Leader.

We will follow someone whose decision making processes are transparent and predictable. We gain the confidence to make our own decisions that build upon and enable the decisions of our Leader.

Leaders are teachers and teachers are leaders because through their decisions they draw others into engagement with the world.

Many ‘leaders’ do the opposite. They make decisions in isolation and using processes and reasons only known to them. They sit in meetings where they have exclusive access to information that they use to make decisions. They then expect their followers to act on their decisions based on positional power alone.

A Leader whose decisions are based on policies or other visible processes and who is not afraid or too busy to explain her reasoning, particularly in response to criticism or complaint – or...her own mistakes...is more likely to draw out her followers from their bunkers of fear or suspicion.

'The decision about what to do next is even more important than the labor spent executing it. A modern productive worker is someone who does a great job in figuring out what to do next.'

Seth Godin

Neurons.

'I'm sorry that I didn't seek your advice today,' the Air Commander said over drinks in the Mess, 'But I didn't have a neuron spare.' 

I'd watched from two seats along as he'd coordinated fighter aircraft launches into the skies over Northern Australia and beyond to defend it against waves of attack by the Kamarian Air Force. He was making a decision about every two minutes for eight hours.

What I wanted do say was 'You need to practise having a neuron spare, Sir. Better for you to practise and learn when the air battles are staged.' But I didn't. I was only a Flight Lieutenant Lawyer and he was a Group Captain Fighter Pilot and I wanted to make it to Squadron Leader. 

 'We didn't have the resources to stop and attend to the enemy wounded,' the Army Lieutenant Colonel Infantry Officer had explained to the International Committee of the Red Cross representative who reported this breach of the Law of War to me in Exercise HQ. 'They need to train as they would fight,' I wrote in my post-Exercise Report. 'They must learn what resources that they need to fight lawfully.' I scraped promotion to Squadron Leader.

 'We don't have time to comply with the various policies in this organisation,' the senior executive said to me as his peers in the audience nodded with folded arms. 'We're too busy doing our jobs.' More nodding and the beginnings of applause. 'You need to practise having a neuron spare,' I quoted myself. 'Those policies are laws and doing your job means doing it lawfully.' I glanced across at the CEO who was texting on his phone. 

Good decision making is a skill. Like any skill it needs to be practised until it becomes routine. We need to build the neural pathways by applying the Five Steps until doing so is unconscious. It's called being Professional.

The Air Commander wondered out loud how he could resolve his Rules of Engagement with the radar blips playing out on the huge screen covering the wall in front of us. It was the last wave of the week. 'Air-to-air missiles are not classed as 'aircraft' under International Law, Sir,' I said, loudly beginning my unsolicited advice.

He bought me a drink in the Mess that night.  'Let's kill a few of those neurons you made me exercise today,' he said.

Consequences.

The Australian Electoral Commission gave another example of Good Decision Making today. 

Ed Killesteyn the AEC Commissioner was interviewed on Radio National on the decision by the AEC to declare the Senate result in Western Australia despite the disappearance of 1375 votes.

He began by acknowledging the 'gravity' of the situation and apologising to the electors.

He said that he was left with 'a nagging and almost irreconcilable doubt' about the result of the WA Senate election. 

The journalist then asked him if this was the case, 'Why on earth is the AEC going to declare the Senate result in WA this afternoon?'

'I have no choice,' Mr Killesteyn replied. 'I am obligated to declare the result. Legally I have no other choice.' 

'So you need to do this so that it can be referred to the courts?'  the journalist asked.

'That's correct. The 40 day petition period to the courts is only enlivened once the last of all the writs has been returned. '

The Commissioner then summarised to the Australian public, via the journalist, everything that he had done to find the missing votes. 

The AEC had already begun an inquiry into the missing votes and was reviewing its procedures.

Mr Killesteyn understands that he is a servant of the Law, which says that he must declare the election. Despite some withering criticism, he recognises that he must make this decision to allow the consequences to begin flowing from it, whatever they may be.

He steps back from his own doubt and uncertainty and does his job. He produces his Widget so that others may produce theirs.

Like most good leaders, Mr Killesteyn is not in the heroic model. He is a career public servant who appears to have discharged his duties without fanfare or fuss.

In a 2009 speech he listed the four principles under which the AEC operated in order to build public confidence in its impartiality, one of which was 'decision-making in accordance with objective application of the law'.

He quoted from a speech given by the Indian Chief Election Commissioner, who said that the Indian organisation was able to retain the confidence of the electors because it was 'a listening Commission'.

Listening.

The Indian Commissioner concluded by saying: 

'Being human, we can be wrong sometimes, but our intention should never be impure.'

Mr Killesteyn's words and tone of speech showed that he understood and accepted that his organisation had failed in fulfilling its public duty to deliver on nothing short of the democratic process of a Federal Election.

Yet his voice during the interview was calm, measured, steady and without the edge that one expects from someone under so much criticism. Possibly because he was liberated by the knowledge that while he had failed in his Widget, his decision making was flawless.

His response today was even more remarkable given that it was he who decided to overrule the WA Electoral Commissioner's original decision and to allow the re-count that has ultimately revealed his organisation's errors and undermined public confidence in it, and in him. 

Leaders are Brave. 

Summary.

Good Decision Making in three words: 

Be attentively curious.

Distance.

Step One of Good Decision Making: Step Back.

Viktor Frankl wrote: 

'Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. '

Stimulus: information. A complaint. Criticism. Bad news. New and unexpected data. A problem.

Instinctive reaction. Surprise. Shock. Anger. Defensiveness. Denial. React. Respond. Return fire. Fight. 

Impotence. 

Step Back. 

Lean back in your chair. Stare at the ceiling. Get up and walk. Down the corridor. To the kitchen for a cup of coffee. To a sympathetic colleague's office. Or home.

Have a lemonade or three. Vent to your spouse or pet. Take the cat for a walk. Go for a run. Smash a golf ball. Have another lemonade. Wallow. Feel sorry for yourself. Search the job ads. Watch a movie. Reclaim your freedom.

Be human. Not boss, manager, leader, decision-maker, company woman, parent, mother, father, son, daughter, prodigy. Be worried, annoyed, frustrated, sad, impatient, unreasonable. Wallow. Be selfish.

Allow yourself to be yourself so you can choose to become yourself.

Create the space. 

Expand it. 

Step up and begin doing what your boss is paying you to do and what you promised her that you'd do. (That's called 'Integrity.')

'I'll have an answer to you by next Friday.' (Aim to have it to them by Wednesday. Under-promise and over-deliver.) 

You feel your power returning. 

 The psychologist  Yaacov Trope argues that:

'Psychological distance may be one of the single most important steps you can take to improve thinking and decision-making. It can come in many forms: temporal, or distance in time (both future and past); spatial, or distance in space (how physically close or far you are from something); social, or distance between people (how someone else sees it); and hypothetical, or distance from reality (how things might have happened).

But whatever the form, all of these distances have something in common: they all require you to transcend the immediate moment in your mind. They all require you to take a step back.'

Begin the rest of the Good Decision Making Process unencumbered by the emotions that strangle your ability to analyse and assess data openly and logically and on its merits. Earn your salary. Build your Widget. Become who you are.

'You can't change what's already happened but you can change what happens next.' 

- Peter Baines, Disaster Management Specialist.

Yourself.

Our Widget is a destination that draws us out of ourselves using the map and compass of Good Decision Making to become who we are.

It's all about the Widget. 

It's never about the Widget. 

Position.

'What do you think is the main problem with this organisation?' 

For three months Liz and I had been trying to diagnose the ailing culture of our new client so that we could fix it. So we asked to meet with one of its top executives.

'People won't make decisions,' he said without pausing to ponder our question. 

'Why do you think that they won't?' Liz asked. 

'Because they're afraid of the consequences.' His quick responses affirmed that we were asking the right questions and that he had thought about them a lot. 

'What are the consequences?' Liz asked. 

'There are none,' he said. 

Liz and I left the meeting more confused than when we walked in. 

It took me another three months to understand the logic of his answer. 

Decisions are like a submarine's sonar pings. 

A submarine sends out pulses of sound waves that reflect off objects on the surface and beneath the water around it and return to the submarine. The time that it takes to travel back allows the submarine to know its geographic location and depth in the water and the lay of the underwater land above, below, either side and ahead of it. The submarine can adjust its course accordingly.

Each time that we make a decision we send out information that will return new data back to us that will inform us about our world. Like sonar pings. We incorporate that updated information and adjust our understanding of where we are in our job and life accordingly.

In short - we learn.

Each of our decisions also announces something about our identity, views, course and objective. The same act that informs us about our position also declares ourselves to others and therefore exposes us to the risk of criticism, ridicule, error and judgement.

(Another analogy. Certain military aircraft use radar that is so advanced it can tell them the model, not just the location, of another aircraft that is out of sight of the naked eye. But that same radar is what the pilot uses to direct a missile. So while 'painting' another aircraft with the radar can tell the pilot an enormous amount about its identity, it will be detected by the other aircraft's electronics and could provoke the other pilot into fearing that he's about to be fired upon and thus to fire first.)

Our decisions are often what Joseph R. Badaracco called 'Defining Moments' that reveal,  test and shape us. 

If a submarine pings and doesn't get a response, it is blind. It doesn't know whether it's about to collide with a reef. It will stop, or at least slow down.

If a person makes a decision and there are no consequences - no affirmation, no acknowledgement, no criticism, no echo back - then they are blind. They will either slow down or stop making decisions. They will become passive consumers of second hand information via other people's decisions/pings.

People and organisations need to have good decision making processes that provide us with reliable information about where we are in relation to our professional and personal Widgets.

We also need Leaders who will affirm. 

Stories.

Most people's work is disconnected from their Widget.

They go to their office, occupy themselves for eight hours, go home.

They know that they've done a good job because nobody told them that they didn't and they're still getting emails on the All Staff mail list. 

Most importantly their boss puts money in their bank each fortnight for them to forward most of it into their mortgage. 

Sure, they make things. Emails, reports, meeting agendas, minutes.

They go to quarterly staff meetings and listen to a boss tell them about how the Widget is going with PowerPoint slides in support.

Once a year they sit down with their boss who tells them how they've performed and what courses they need to do because We're A Learning Organisation. 

So they go to the professional development seminars with relief at the novelty of being away from their desk and eat mints with the other seven perky strangers on their table as an expert projects PowerPoint slides with dot points about innovation with anecdotes about Fortune 500 companies and other stories to inspire them to be better. 

We love stories.  They connect us to something bigger.

Good decision making is story telling.

It has a heroic arc that gives us meaning. 

It's heroic because it's our conscious act to embark on the journey and accept its possible consequences and take responsibility for them.

It's superior to what most call decision making which is actually an instinctive sneeze-like response to a stimulus.

Our journey begins with the ascent of a hill where we sit at the top and take in the view of the Widget.

Wow. We never realised how close our desk was to it.

Good decision making is a journey that takes us out and back again to our desk and it won't look the same afterwards.

That's what a Learning Organisation is. 

'We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.'

- T.S. Eliot 'Little Gidding'. 

Assembly.

The Atlantic Magazine had a recent article about how some companies in the United States are bringing their factories back home.

While increasing wages in developing countries and higher transport costs from the factory to market are part of the reason, most are found in Widget Thinking. 

The time from when a product came into fashion and then fell out had shortened from seven years to two. It meant companies had to shorten the feedback loop between factory floor and design table.   

General Electric is one company reversing the overseas outsourcing trend. It originally had designers in the United States and manufacturers in China. It decided to bring the workers who built washing machines into the same building as the engineers and designers.

Workers on the factory floor identifying any improvements or issues could immediately inform the engineers who could consult with the designers who could modify the Widget. One example was when workers recommended a design change that cut the hours needed to assemble a washing machine from 10 hours to 2.  

This 'inherent understanding' (unconscious competence?) of the product had been lost with the outsourcing to cheaper labour in China. GE got it back by closing the gap between assembly line and designer. 

Co-located assembly and design also allowed companies to adopt the ‘Lean’ manufacturing techniques popularised by Toyota. Everyone has a say in critiquing and improving the way work gets done, with a focus on eliminating waste. It requires an open, collegial and relentlessly self-critical mind-set among workers and bosses alike –a  culture that is hard to create and sustain.

It requires a Leader. 

Each worker adds their widget to the Widget moving along the assembly line. It's the job of the manager to make sure that the assembly line is itself assembled so that the work is as easy and efficient as possible. The best way for the manager to achieve this is through an open, collegial and relentlessly self-critical approach.

In the GE example, the dishwasher team created its own assembly line based on its practical experience of assembling dishwashers. The result was that it eliminated 35 percent of labour. 

Here's where the bigger SPEAR picture is important to Widget production. The GE workers only shared the information that led to the reduction in labour after management promised them that none would lose their job.

The Leaders and managers had succeeded in creating the Space where the workers felt safe enough to be so innovative that they did put their very jobs at risk. 

Every organisation is making something - its Widget. It's probably not literally an assembly line. It is at least made up of people who each makes something that contributes towards the Widget.

Is this process open? Is  it collegial? Is it relentlessly self-critical? 

Does every worker feel that they have a Leader who has created their Space, defined their Purpose, Equipped them, Affirmed them.?

Then got out of their way? 

Rules.

Rules are liberating.

They free our mind to focus its attention on creativity.

It can't be creative and analytical at the same time. They're different processes.

Most organisations try to make people happy. Social clubs, birthday cakes, employees of the month, work-life balance. Yet few spend time with each job applicant and go over the contract, enterprise agreement, policies. The Rules.

People can be unhappy and still do good work. They just need Rules. If I do this, then that will happen.

'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.' Requisite Organization. 

Rules allow workers to do good work knowing that trust is baked into the Rules.

As Liz says -  rules are like old fashioned secretaries - they do the 'non-thinking' tasks to free the expert up to do expert work. 

Rules liberate. 

They allow us to move from the reactive to the de-liberate. 

'De-liberation': a Freeing of multiple possibilities. I can choose. 

Rules are the solid, immovable anvil against  which we hammer out our Widget and therefore our identities. We fashion ourselves against the boundaries created by our employer.

Widget clarity releases our energy and creativity.

If only to help us realise that we don't want to make that widget any more. 

Labels.

I was ranting to Jonathon about how poorly most organisations deal with complaints.  I took him through my argument.

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

It demands that we remain open to information that may orientate us about where we are in relation to where we want to be.

If we are clear about our Widget.

And authentic in our desire to become who we are.

We should eagerly, actively and greedily seize on any information that helps us to orientate ourselves in relation to our objectives.

One of the biggest obstacles that we have to good decision making is the label that we put on information before we have assessed it.

'Complaint' is the best example. 

Call something a 'Complaint' and our ego hears a call to arms. It activates the equivalent of a bank teller security screen. Zip - up go our defences. 

We look for reasons to dismiss the complaint, or at least filter out the information.

It's anonymous.

It's not in writing.

It hasn't come through the right channels.

The complainant said that they don't want us to do anything about it.

We're like children searching to legitimise not eating our greens. 

Then Jonathon says: 'Imagine if a car pulled up alongside you at the traffic lights, sounded their horn to get your attention, and the passenger rolled down their window and pointed at your rear tyre and then drove off when the lights turned green. Would you ignore their signal because they're anonymous? Would you look away because their information was in the form of gestures and not in writing? 

Complaints are just information in an emotional wrapper. 

Competition.

The ABC programme Landline had a story on Chinese investment in the Ord River region of Western Australia on the Northern Territory border. 

A local sugar farmer said something that was a rare and refreshing example of an ability to think beyond a simplistic and impulsive response to the government supporting the entry of a huge competitor. One would think that he would be wary and resistant to a large foreign company competing with his livelihood.

Yet here's what he said: 

'I think it would radically change it in a positive way, and I think often, we all oppose change. It's a scary thing. It can be very hurtful and difficult, but it's a positive thing. It brings out the best in people. We're a very open community, we embrace new people. I'm really looking forward to having some new farmers come in and show us up a bit, you know, 'cause hopefully they're better than us.' 

SPEAR.

She summarised it all. 

Cadets. Law School. Officers Training School. Basic Staff Course. Masters of Defence Studies. Consulting. Workshops. Seminars. Books. Lots of books. All the PowerPoints, training films, lectures, military exercises, manuals, exams, yelling, drill, marching, chains of command, legislation, tutorials, performance reviews and on the job experience.

She was 12 years old. 

I had finished teaching spear throwing to a group of Year 7s who were at New Norcia on a Leadership Camp. They were sitting cross-legged in the shade of the trees at the end of the oval and I was trying to draw leadership lessons from the last hour of throwing Gidgies - the Aboriginal spear - using the Miro. It was impromptu. I was making it up as I went along. I had an inbox full of emails back in my office.

'Did you learn anything today about being Leaders?' I asked them. 

A hand went up. 

 'You're the New Norcia Town Manager and you led the activity today?' the boy said with a child's typical upward inflection.

 'Well, yes. And was there anything that I did that you thought was what leaders do?'

A different hand went up. 

'You drew a line in the dirt and told us that we weren't to go over the line unless you said that we could?' 

'Was that because I was bossy?' 

'No. You didn't want one of us to accidentally get speared.' 

'That's right. So I explained the boundaries of our activity. Good. Anything else?' 

Hand up. 

'You put that cardboard box full of straw in front of us and told us it was a pretend kangaroo and that was our target that we had to spear?' 

'Good. I gave you something to aim for. Anything else that I did that you think a leader might do?' 

'You gave us each a Gidgie and Miro and taught us how to use them?' 

'Yes. Anything else?' I reckoned I'd exhausted all the lessons. One last opportunity to squeeze thoughts out of their capped heads. 

Hand up. I'm surprised.  I nod towards the boy squinting up at me.

 'After each throw you told us what we did right and what we did wrong? We kept missing the box - er - kangaroo but we got closer each time?'

I was impressed. 'Good. So I was giving you feedback. Yes. Leaders give feedback in a way that encourages or affirms.' 

I reckoned that was about it. I was feeling quite chuffed about how much we'd extracted given I'd done no planning. Most had lost eye contact with me and were tugging at the tufts of dead grass. I glanced at my watch. Five minutes left.

'So does anyone have anything else to add? Any questions about our activity?' 

Silence. Then her hand slowly rose from the middle of the group. 

'Yes?' 

'You got out of the way?' she said. A few giggles. 

I started to smile. But didn't. I wondered. 

'What do you mean?' I'm wondering if... 

'Well, the last thing that you did was that you moved to the side and just let us throw the spears. You waited for us all to finish and didn't say anything. You just watched us. And then you came over and let us know how we'd gone so that we could do it better next time.' 

I felt a tingle.

'That's right. I got out of the way. There was nothing more for me to do.' I paused to remember the list of things that they'd told me I'd done. 'I'd shown you the area or space that you had to do the activity in. I shown you what the purpose was - to spear the kangaroo. I gave you all the equipment and taught you how to use it.  I gave you feedback after each throw so that you learned how to do it better. And then - I got out of your way and let you get on with it.'

Wow. 

I scanned their bored faces. They didn't share my excitement at the significance of that exchange. They were thinking about afternoon tea and then Aboriginal tool making with Lester. But my mind was humming.

And then this. 

The same girl's hand rises. 'Yes?' 

'Is that why they say that leaders are brave?'  

My tingles tingled. 

'What do you mean?' 

She blinked. Cocked her head slightly. Waved away a fly.

'Well...it must be really hard for a leader to just stand back and let people do their jobs and not keep yelling at them or taking over and doing it themselves. To know that some people might do it wrong and it's the leader who gets blamed. I think it must take lots of bravery to be a leader.' 

Then off they trotted up the hill behind their teachers to their biscuits and cordial and more lessons about Leadership.

Space.

Purpose. 

Equip.

Affirm.

Retreat.