Wrapping.
A complaint is information wrapped in the complainant's emotion.
The wrapping must be respectfully separated and put aside amidst the eagerness to get to the gift of information inside.
To decide what that information tells you about your Widget.
It's information.
About.
Your Widget.
A Judgment delivered by the Federal Court yesterday affirmed this, namely:
- The organisation gets to decide how to respond to a complaint - not the complainant
- Labelling a complaint as ‘formal’ or ‘informal’ is irrelevant to how its dealt with
It's information.
About.
Your Widget.
As with any gift-once the information has been handed to the organisation, it's the organisation's to use as it sees fit.
One difference between a complaint and the other information that thuds daily onto a decision maker's desk is it has an owner.
That's a good thing. It's healthy for an organisation to deliver a public performance from time to time of its information management and decision-making.
As long as the decision maker remembers:
The complainant may own the complaint.
The organisation owns the outcome.
Partnership.
You want to make a Widget.
I like the Widget.
I can help you to make it.
It can be Ours.
Let's call it Employment.
We'll define the Widget.
We'll agree what each will do by when.
Let's call it a Contract.
I'm not serving you. You're not controlling me. We're equals.
Creating the Widget.
There will be uncertainties during construction. One or both of us may feel anxious. That may be difficult. It will demand effort from each of us to resolve it to the satisfaction of the Widget. It will be hard.
Let's call it Work.
IAW
In Accordance With.
A familiar term to anyone who has served in the military.
IAW Defence Instruction PERS 34-4, I...
IAW Chief of Defence Force Directive, I...
IAW the directions of my Commander, I...
'I am making this decision as the servant of an inanimate, objective, indifferent, neutral pardon-me-and-no-offence-and-I-couldn't-care-less-I've-never-even-met-you-let-along-formed-an-opinion-about-your-mother source of authority.'
Not iaw my ego.
Not iaw my personal Widget.
Not iaw my biases.
Not iaw my instinct.
Not iaw I got out of the left side of the bed today.
Step 2 of the Five Steps to a Good Decision is to Name the Issue.
One way to do this is to check our decision making authority.
Try drafting an announcement of your decision that begins with:
'In accordance with...'
Answers.
I could tell the knock of a pilot on my office door. The ones who knocked. Most just slipped in and closed the door behind them and sat down and talked.
'I've got a job offer with Qantas,' they would whisper. 'But I've got a ROSO and I want to know how to get out of it. Can I get out of it?'
Military pilots had a Return of Service Obligation. Nine years of Air Force, Navy or Army flying after graduation from Pilot Course. The taxpayers want a return on their million dollar investment in jet fuel and tyres.
'Resign and find out,' was my advice.
The Air Force Act said that an officer could resign at any time and the Governor General had to accept the resignation unless there was a war on or the officer had a ROSO - in which case the Governor-General could choose to say 'No'. Only the Governor-General had that discretion.
'But will they let me out of my ROSO? I've been told that I can't resign if I've got ROSO left.'
'You won't know until you decide to resign.'
Everyone wants the Answer.
The Engineer is asked to answer a bridge. Every passenger in every car, truck and train and every pedestrian on the walkway each day after it is built repeats the question. Each journey brings the Engineer closer to the answer.
The pilot is asked to answer the landing. She finds out along with her passengers as the wheels slam onto the tarmac at the end of the flight.
The lawyer is asked to answer the liability. She learns it along with her client as the judge reads out her verdict at the end of the trial.
Ask a question and get an answer. Yes. No. 27. Liable. So what?
There are no Answers - just Decisions that advance us towards where we want to be.
Only charlatans market Answers.
Theory.
'Whether you think you do or not, you do have a theory of human behaviour. The only choice is in deciding which theory you will use. And the choice is an important one. It will determine how you see people, how you treat them, your assumptions about them - including yourself. It will affect your values, your views about motivation, the quality of your interactions and your leadership.'
- Elliott Jaques
Requisite Organization: A Total System for Effective Managerial Organization
Dr Elliott Jaques was a psychoanalyst by profession. He believed that you don't change organisations by changing people, you change people by changing organisations. Or perhaps you free people to become who they are, by changing organisations.
He had a lot to say about decision making in his book Requisite Organisation. Here is a selection.
'Retrievals and calculations are often confused with decision-making, a confusion which weakens our understanding of true decision-making.'
'All human thinking, and therefore all human work, is a continual and powerful interplay between non-verbal mental processes and the knowledge which we use to direct and focus those processes.'
'The work which you experience as the effort in decision-making is the effort in giving energy and direction to the non-verbal mental processing and bringing or allowing the outcomes into verbalisable awareness, so that they an become part of your knowledge and available for conscious use in problem-solving.'
'Decision-making has to do with human uncertainty:
- It is precisely the uncertainty inherent in human work, the feeling of never being quite sure, that makes you close your eyes and agonise over decisions.
- You do not have all the words, and as you agonise you get hold of raw ideas, clothe them inwards, and dig them from the unverbalised recesses of your mind.
- If you are given tasks of complexity beyond your capability in a role with too long a time-span you become anxious and eventually confused - there is a longer run of uncertainty and more variables than you can cope with.'
'Decision-making and action call for judgement and discretion based upon non-verbal mental work. I term our ability to do this our complexity of mental processing.'
'But never forget, at the actual moment of choice, the choice or decision just gets made, as though on its own, and we become aware of what we have chosen only after we have committed ourselves to some specific particular choice.'
'Skilled knowledge helps to organise and simplify work by enabling a person to carry out parts of a problem-solving activity without having to think about them, thus freeing discretion and judgment which would be otherwise engaged.'
'The important thing is not to confuse the skilled knowledge with the work.
- Skilled knowledge you do not have to think about: work is the part you have to attend to, think about, and make decisions about.
- When you are skilled at touch-typing you no longer have to think about which keys you are seeking - that is automatic: but you do have to think about whatever it is that you are using the typewriter to record.'
'The art of the good society and of the good organisation is to ensure opportunity for the use of their full potential by all of its people.'
'My whole orientation is towards the performance of individuals in carrying out purposeful goal-directed activities.'
'What we all really yearn for is to have work at a level consistent with our current potential and for progression in line with our maturation, and the chance to get the necessary education and training. That is the true democratic dream.'
'What is more, subordinates yearn for someone above them to sit down with them and discuss their careers and opportunities: and this includes not only those with growth in potential ahead of them but also those who know that they have matured to full potential and seek assurance of continued opportunity to work at that level.'
'You have no idea of the positive galvanising effect upon your people of having their intuitive awareness of their own true potential confirmed by understanding managers-once-removed who have been charged with this duty. Indifference is annulled and a flow of creative energy is released.'
'Manifest Organisation: the organisation structure as it is represented on the official organisation chart: at best a very rough approximation to what is actually going on, if you can even make sense of it.
Assumed Organisation: the structure as different people assume it really works; likely to have as many variations as you have people, and produces confusion.
Extant Organisation: the system as it actually functions, as demonstrated by systemic study. It will always be an approximate picture. It requires that you dig in and find who is actually being held acceptable for what, and what authority they are in fact able to exercise in relation to whom and toward what.'
'If you want each and very one of your managers - at all levels and in any and every function - to be able to be held accountable for deciding what outputs each of their immediate subordinates is producing...then you must ensure not only that they have the following minimum authority but also that they have been taught that they have it and have been instructed in how to use it:
- Veto any new appointment
- Decide types of work assignment
- Decide effectiveness appraisal
- Decide removal from role.'
'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.'
'There is a very important point to be noted here, which will save a lot of susbsquent confusion if taken into account.
- Work (and its complexity and difficulty) is not the traversing of known paths.
- The work is to choose pathways or construct new ones, and to adapt them as you encounter unanticipated difficulties in traversing them.
- Obeying known rules and regulations is not work: it does not constitute a problem: deciding how best to obey under particular circumstances may do so, for rules and regulations set boundaries (prescribed limits) within which your choice of pathways is constrained.'
CC.
If your email is about me and I'm not copied in - why not?
If your meeting is about me and I'm not invited - why not?
If the new employee will work with me and I'm not consulted - why not?
If your decision is about me and I'm not heard - why not?
Look at each reason. Now search for any of the following capitalised nouns in your values, codes, policies, mission, speeches, website, LinkedIn page:
Transparent. Committed. Team. Collaborate. Engage. Learn. Accountable. People. Loyal. Inclusive. Serve. Innovative. Creative. Trust. Courage. Excellence.
Integrity.
Leader.
God.
Amend either deed or noun as appropriate.
Or delete 'Integrity'.
Or sack me. [I obviously can't be trusted.]
Or quit. [You can't trust yourself.]
Clarity.
The Officer Commanding summoned me to his office.
'Explain your legal advice on the Base Swimming Pool matter, please.'
'Defence Instructions allow commanders to authorise civilian use of Defence land or assets only for Defence purposes, Sir. For you to have the power to authorise local non-RAAF families and children to use the Base pool, you have to demonstrate how Defence will benefit from having those civilians coming onto the Base. That's a lot of potential liability on the Commonwealth running around, Sir. There has to be some payoff for Defence to justify inviting that risk.'
The Air Commodore pushed a document across his desk towards me. 'Here are my four reasons for existence as Officer Commanding,' he said.
I picked up the piece of paper. It was the OC - my Boss's - Letter of Appointment as Air Officer Commanding Western Australia from his Boss - the Air Officer Commanding Training Command.
'Read dot point four,' the OC said.
'To develop and maintain positive relationships with the local civilian community,' I read out loud.
'Would you agree that me allowing the locals to use the Base swimming pool would be consistent with the execution of that aim, Legal Officer?' the Air Commodore asked.
Widget clarity is the foundation for good decision making.
A good and patient boss who has the confidence to show his working out is a priceless gift for life.
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?
See.
'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.'
- Edmund Burke
See. Name. Point.
See it. See it. See what that person is doing.
Name it. Don't analyse it, judge it, interpret it, filter it, psychoanalyse it, project onto it, condemn it, ignore it.
Point to it. It's over there. It's not in me. It's someone doing a thing. It's not about me. I tell a decision maker the name of what I saw someone else do.
Not a story. A name.
Not what they intended. Not what they were thinking. Not what I was thinking. Not what I wanted it to be. Not what they wanted it to be. Not what I would be intending or thinking if it was me doing the thing.
See. Name. Point.
The Widget is the noun that liberates verbs to bring itself into being.
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.
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?
Ding-a-Ling.
'It has so much to do with hiring. You see so many big companies that don't understand why they aren't the big disruptive company anymore. Well, that's because you hired these guys that you could work with, and who have the same disabilities as you, and they hired more people that they could boss around with the same disabilities. And you wonder why you've got a bunch of ding-a-lings running around trying to boss everyone around. Well that's who you hired. That's who the company is.'
Recruit hard, manage easy - works both ways.
We don't understand what happened to our enthusiasm. We fall asleep replaying scenes from our day and see ourselves behaving like a ding-a-ling.
Well, that's because we applied for and accepted a job where we're bossed around by a ding-a-ling, whose boss is a ding-a-ling (must be to keep paying a ding-a-ling).
That's who the organisation is.
That's who we are.
Ring it!
Ca-ching! Pay day!
Participants in the arduous training to qualify as United States Navy SEALS signal their decision to quit by ringing a brass bell.
Ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling.
'Hey everybody! I'm humiliated and embarrassed to announce I've decided that I don't need to spend the best years of my life being cold, tired, wet, endangered, and in physical and mental pain as I follow orders so that I can kill strangers in defence of my country!'
Ring it!
Whatever the judgement of others - at least have the courage to declare we're playing by someone else's rules. Or not.
Grab that bell and ring it.
I'm here because I need the money.
I'm here because I'm afraid of the alternative.
I'm here because I don't think I'm good enough to be accepted anywhere else.
Liberation into anxious freedom begins with seeing, pointing and naming. Out loud.
Especially the hard and shameful stuff.
Perhaps start with 'Here is the cage I've locked myself into and here is the key that I won't use because I know my cage and I'm afraid of what's outside it.'
Ring it!
Communication.
We grow up to the sound of cheers and boos.
Parents affirm our good behaviour and correct the bad.
Teachers grade our work.
Coaches urge us on and post our scores.
Peers select and reject us.
Employers do the same.
Right up until we give payroll our bank details and pull our chair into our desk and log on.
Then the stands fall silent.
'There's a lack of communication here,' we say.
'I don't get any feedback.'
'Not so much as a 'Thank You'.'
(As we transfer money from our savings account to our mortgage account.)
It's time to grow up.
When the Boss says nothing she's saying:
'I trust you to do the work.'
On pay day she's saying:
'Thank you.'
Trust.
'People do not have to love each other, or even like each other, to work together effectively. But they do have to trust each other in order to do so. Trust between people is the basic social glue: suspicion and mistrust are the prime enemies of reasonable human relationships.'
- Dr Elliott Jacques, 'Requisite Organization'.
A witness in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was asked why he didn't act on a report by one of his staff.
'Because I didn't think that I had enough information to act upon,' was the essence of his explanation.
'If you had witnessed the behaviour yourself, would you have acted upon it?'
'Yes,' he replied.
Here was a rare glimpse into the dirty little secret of almost every organisation and the root cause of their dysfunction.
Bosses won't delegate decision making power because no-one else has the skill to see and interpret information and act upon it as effectively as they can. They're the Boss, after all.
Workers who have delegated decision making power but don't use it because they assume their boss must have a superior understanding of the same information. They're the Boss, after all.
If we fail to act on information given to us by another in the same way that we would if we had first hand knowledge of that information, we declare:
'I don't trust you.'
In which case cancel the off-site team building exercises, Myers-Briggs Tests, Christmas party, external consultant reviews, coaching, values statements, and staff surveys.
And spend the savings on the glue in Payroll to retain the untrusted people who remain to service their mortgages, and to hire the extra managers needed to supervise them.
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.'