Faithful.
The author and teacher Parker Palmer recently wrote that measuring our effectiveness in our work by our results or outcomes risks leading us to only take on tasks that we know we can achieve.
Our decisions become smaller.
He proposed a new measure of effectiveness:
'Am I being faithful to the gifts I possess, the strengths and abilities that I have?'
His proposition helps us to better understand the importance and relevance of our Weekend Widget to our Weekday Widget.
If our Weekend Widget is a product of our gifts, strengths and abilities, then making sure that we are producing our Weekday Widget will serve our Weekend Widget - and vice versa. We will be more likely to make decisions that are expressions of our authentic selves, which can only be a good thing.
Bosses take note. You need to be discerning enough to recruit and retain people who want to express (or at least explore) their authentic selves through their work with you.
You need to be brave enough to allow them to make decisions that risk failure, yet teach.
You also need to be honest enough to suggest to them that if they want to be true to themselves, they may need to work elsewhere. (You can only get away with this if you've built enough credibility to avoid it sounding like you're gently sacking them.)
And if you expect all of that from them - you need to expect it from yourself. (It's called Leadership.)
Know your Weekend Widget.
Know your Weekday Widget.
Measure your effectiveness by how faithful you are to both. And be prepared to fail a lot.
If you and those who work for you are measuring yourselves on the 'Faithfulness Test' - Wow.
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?
Design.
The Design of Everyday Things by the cognitive scientist and engineer Donald Norman is an excellent examination of how good design makes it easier to use everything from a computer mouse to a fire escape.
Anyone with even a passing interest in the subject of leadership will quickly notice the remarkable similarities and analogies between good design and good leadership. Here are some extracts. (Try substituting the word ‘design’ for ‘leadership'.)
“To get something done, you have to start with some notion of what is wanted—the goal that is to be achieved. Then, you have to do something to the world, that is, take action to move yourself or manipulate someone or something. Finally, you check to see that your goal was made. So there are four different things to consider: the goal, what is done to the world, the world itself, and the check of the world. The action itself has two major aspects: doing something and checking. Call these execution and evaluation.”
“Many in the design community understand that design must convey the essence of a device’s operation; the way it works; the possible actions that can be taken; and, through feedback, just what it is doing at any particular moment. Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating.”
“Assume that any error that can be made will be made. Plan for it. Think of each action by the user as an attempt to step in the right direction; an error is simply an action that is incompletely or improperly specified. Think of the action as part of a natural, constructive dialog between user and system. Try to support, not fight, the user’s responses. Allow the user to recover from errors, to know what was done and what happened, and to reverse any unwanted outcome. Make it easy to reverse operations; make it hard to do irreversible actions. Design explorable systems. Exploit forcing functions.”
"Design should:
• Make it easy to determine what actions are possible at any moment (make use of constraints).
• Make things visible, including the conceptual model of the system, the alternative actions, and the results of actions.
• Make it easy to evaluate the current state of the system.
• Follow natural mappings between intentions and the required actions; between actions and the resulting effect; and between the information that is visible and the interpretation of the system state. In other words make sure that (1) the user should be able to figure out what to do, and (2) the user can tell what is going on.”
“Design should make use of the natural properties of people and of the world: it should exploit natural relationships and natural constraints. As much as possible, it should operate without instructions or labels. Any necessary instruction or training should be needed only once; with each explanation the person should be able to say, “Of course,” or “Yes, I see.” A simple explanation will suffice if there is reason to the design, if everything has its place and its function, and if the outcomes of actions are visible. If the explanation leads the person to think or say, “How am I going to remember that?” the design has failed.”
“1. Use both knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head.
2. Simplify the structure of tasks.
3. Make things visible: bridge the gulfs of Execution and Evaluation.
4. Get the mappings right.
5. Exploit the power of constraints, both natural and artificial.
6. Design for error.
7. When all else fails, standardize.”
Forced.
In his book The Design of Everyday Things, the cognitive scientist turned engineer Norman Davies coined the term ‘Forcing Function’ to describe a physical constraint that is built into the design of an object or system to interrupt the steps required to use it. For example, a child-proof cap on a pill bottle or a microwave oven that won’t start with the door open.
Forcing functions are an exception to the rule of good design that using something should be as intuitive as possible. A forcing function interrupts the user’s intuition to prevent them making an error. It makes the user pay attention to what they are doing so that they do it well.
Good decision making has forcing functions built into it.
We need to pay attention.
We need to stop the momentum of our minds and constrain them from taking flight or starting a fight as a result of our prejudices, biases, distractions and even instincts that so often lead us into error.
This doesn’t come naturally. It needs to be forced.
Examples of forcing functions in decision making include:
Forcing functions in design lead the user to make a small mistake in order to prevent a bigger one.
Mistakes in decisions are the same. They are a form of forcing function in the larger design that is our life.
Mistakes compel us to pay attention. To pause, rethink and make another decision that moves us closer to where we want to be.
Good decision making needs the forcing function of mistakes.
Creativity.
Many creative people who value their freedom might be discouraged from adopting a good decision making model based upon a five step process. Advocating x steps to anything immediately smacks of a process-driven, creativity-barren, bureaucratic black hole for individuality.
Quite the contrary.
Ben Goldacre is a doctor, academic and science writer who advocates evidence-based medical practice in particular, and who has extended the virtues of this approach to areas such as education. In a paper titled Building Evidence into Education Dr Goldacre said (my emphases):
'The opportunity to make informed decisions about what works best, using good quality evidence, represents a truer form of professional independence than any senior figure barking out their opinions. A coherent set of systems for evidence based practice listens to people on the front line, to find out where the uncertainties are, and decide which ideas are worth testing. Lastly, crucially, individual judgement isn’t undermined by evidence: if anything, informed judgement is back in the foreground, and hugely improved.’
Creativity, innovation, and professional freedom and the professional and personal learning and growth that follow are all products of a good decision-making process that relies on evidence rather than intuition or positional power.
Moorings.
'And McNamara's shifts back and forth from urging caution to urging action one is tempted to attribute in part to lack of moorings such as those in the minds of Kennedy, Rusk or Taylor.’
This observation by the authors of ‘The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis' is a reminder of the importance for decision makers of having a clear purpose - a Widget - that should be served by each decision.
Such a ‘mooring’ helps to give stability and clarity amidst the buffeting of details, emotions, biases and agendas.
Map.
There were no doubt many reasons that the United States under the leadership and decision making of President Kennedy was able to avoid nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There is evidence in the transcripts of the meetings Kennedy had with his advisers of clear, cool and lucid logic, based upon intelligent analysis of the facts.
However, there may have been many reasons why the Soviet Union’s Premier Khrushchev didn’t respond to the American actions with escalated force that led to catastrophe for the world. It may have had nothing to do with the decision making prowess of Kennedy.
The problem is that, unlike the record left by President Kennedy and his advisers that allows us to analyse and learn from his decision making, there is little evidence of Khrushchev’s thought processes. We don’t really know why he did certain things and historians can only speculate. He was described as an ‘insecure and impulsive risk taker’. Maybe it was because of this recklessness that he didn’t pull the nuclear trigger and had he been as logical, well-advised and cool as Kennedy, he would have been the one to stare down the Americans. No-one, least of all his senior officials, could know.
So it should never be assumed that good decision making will always trump confused, emotional chance-taking in terms of outcomes. There are too many other variables in play to draw simplistic conclusions such as that the better decision-maker won.
The point is that at least a good decision maker makes their work visible. They show their working out so that others can point out any errors. They leave a clear map for their followers and for the rest of us to follow - or not - to measure ourselves against and to learn from and to become better at our own decision making.
Thanks to the transcripts of his meetings, we have a fairly good idea of why President Kennedy behaved the way that he did, and the consequences of it. As the authors of The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis point out in their Conclusion:
‘These tapes and transcripts form an almost inexhaustible resource for analyzing not only the mechanics but also the psychology of decision-making.’
Pause.
My friend Dan is a very experienced Air Traffic Controller. He teaches other Air Traffic Controllers how to safely separate airliners with hundreds of lives on board moving with closing speeds of up to half a kilometre a second tens of thousands of metres above the ground. (Dan has done this for years in the RAAF and Reserve as well - where closing speeds can be closer to a kilometre a second.) Constant decision-making in seconds with high consequences for failure is the nature of Dan's workplace.
Yet Dan nodded when I first told him about the first step towards a good decision being for the decision maker to step back.
He explained how he teaches his trainees to do the same.
'They need to have a rote understanding of what to do in any situation,' Dan said. 'The novice Air Trafficker knows that if X happens they do Y. It's automatic and requires very little thought process.'
'We want them to develop beyond that reactive drill. We want them to feel confident to explore and consider other options to situation X. They can only evolve to this ability if they have the discipline of automatic response Y. If they instinctively know that Y is available to them, then they gain themselves time to be more creative in finding alternatives to Y. It might only be an extra few seconds, but that's often sufficient time for them to think of a better decision for an aircraft. It may save an airline thousands of dollars in fuel by flying a more direct route. If a controller can't find a better decision than Y, then they just default to Y.'
Dan's explanation is an excellent example of how rules and procedures in workplaces actually encourage creativity. They eliminate variables and force us to focus on what is available to us. They allow us to assume the ordinary so that we can explore the extraordinary - knowing that we have our boss's permission.
At the very least, boundaries that define our scope of decision making force us to decide whether we want to find or create our own decision-making space with another employer or on our own. (Instead, some people choose to pound their fists against their organisation's boundaries demanding that they shift. Dan's Air Traffickers don't have that option.)
If Dan can routinely step back in his decisions that are measured in seconds with catastrophic consequences from error, then it should be easy for workplaces where results are usually measured in months and mistakes don't risk hundreds of lives.
Dan has a simple way of seeing whether his trainees are applying the Step Back approach to decision making.
'I walk behind them as they're sitting at their screens. If I see someone leaning forward, I gently pull their shoulders back into the chair.'
My friend Liz told me about similar advice that she gives the Alternative Dispute Resolution practitioners that she trains and mentors. 'It's important that they don't get drawn too much into the details of the dispute between the two parties at the table,' she said.
'So I say to them: 'Make sure that you can always feel the back of your seat.'
Shortcuts
The authors of The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis make the point that the longer the discussions between President Kennedy and his advisers about what to do about the Soviet missiles in Cuba progress, the less they refer to historical events such as the attack on Pearl Harbour as a way of making sense of what is happening. The authors call this use of history as ‘intellectual shortcutting’ which is ‘a natural tendency when busy persons of active temperament confront unfamiliar circumstances’.
The authors attribute the gradual immersion in the detail of the crisis before them as the reason for the decreasing frequency with which Kennedy and his advisers refer to historical precedents. This analysis reinforces the importance of emphasising hard evidence ahead of simple and seductive assumptions that what may have explained something happening before, can explain why it happened or will happen again.
By stepping back from the information and following the other four steps towards a good decision, a decision maker increases her ability to methodically analyse the data instead of defaulting to instinct.
Curious
Malcolm Turnbull MP the Federal Member for Wentworth said in a recent interview:
'You know, there was very good advice that my father-in-law actually, Tom Hughes when he was a Member of Parliament, was given by a very distinguished member that was much older than him. And he said:
‘You should treat every question no matter how provocative as a polite request for information’. ’
Substitute ‘complaint’ for ‘question’ and this is even more helpful advice.
If good decision making was to be reduced to two words it would be:
Be Curious.
Investigation.
Earlier today, two Qantas Airbus aircraft carrying a combined total of more than 600 passengers came close to colliding over the Gulf of St Vincent. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) commenced an investigation into the incident.
According to the ATSB website, the investigation will include:
- the review and analysis of the recorded radar and audio data
- the review of relevant air traffic control procedures, documentation and training
- interviews with the air traffic controllers and flight crew.
The procedures followed after aircraft incidents are excellent models of good decision making philosophies and processes. According to the ATSB 'the object of a safety investigation is to identify and reduce safety-related risk' and 'It is not a function of the ATSB to apportion blame or determine liability'. The ATSB even publishes mistakes so that the aviation industry can learn from them.
Imagine if all workplaces took an inquisitorial response to complaints, mistakes, poor performance or misconduct with the aim of the entire organisation learning from the data. Yet the usual reaction to error - if there is one at all - is to find a bad person, punish them, and impose more policies and regulation to move power further up the management hierarchy away from line management. The whole process is usually kept secret to 'protect' everyone's reputation.
Organisations often confuse good decision making with decisiveness. Policies set artificial timelines for complaints to be resolved and managers react to information rather than deliberate upon it. If decisions do take a while it is usually through inaction rather than because of measured analysis.
Yet when does the ATSB predict that it will complete its investigation into today's incident?
September 2014. 600 lives were potentially lost. No hurry.
(I wonder if it's actually just adopting another good decision making tip of under promising and over delivering.)
Narrowing
The meetings of the executive committee of the United States Government National Security Council met over 13 days in October 1962 to make decisions that the future of the world would depend upon.
The meetings were described as ‘disorderly’ - not because of lack of formal organisation, but because President Kennedy did not want to be too quick to suppress analysis by his advisers, or to delegate it to a sub-committee. Kennedy kept the participants on topic, mainly by asking questions, and by keeping his statements short.
The authors of The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, observed that at times, certain members of the committee broke away and left the main discussion in order to attend to specific ‘action’ items. This was necessary if tasks were to get done, yet had the effect of narrowing their focus so that they had difficulty adjusting their contributions back to the big picture when needed.
Decision makers need to be mindful of this ‘narrowing’ effect that experts, specialist sub-groups or other niche contributors risk bringing to decisions. The best way to overcome this is to keep reminding all of those involved in offering advice and analysis of the big picture and to keep them up to date as it changes.
This ‘big picture’ communication applies in the day to day running of organisations as well. Leaders need to give their people frequent reasons and opportunities to lift their heads out of their trenches and to scan the whole battlefield.
Tension.
In the Conclusion to the book The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the authors state:
‘Perhaps, above all, we observe in this record - more clearly than in any other documents we have seen - the contrary pulls of detail on the one hand and belief (or conviction or ideology) on the other.’
These battles between evidence and bias, and the micro and the macro, are critical ones to recognise and win for any decision maker.
The authors note that histories of decisions - whether insignificant or that such as faced by Kennedy; the destruction of the world- rarely see or even know the subtle flow of details and therefore underestimate their pushing and pulling on the mind of a decision maker.
This effect of detail on the ‘conscious and unconscious minds of decision makers, who see facts and form presumptions within frameworks of understanding shaped both by their personal interests and by their accumulated experience’ is further exaggerated when there are multiple contributors towards a decision. Each has their biases and personal frameworks and agendas and projects their advice on a decision accordingly.
Kennedy was under constant pressure from the military to use overwhelming force to solve the crisis, which was a seductively simple response, yet with potentially catastrophic consequences. Fortunately for the world, the President had learned a bitter lesson about accepting the generals’ advice after the Bay of Pigs debacle early in his Presidency. He even resists the taunt of General Curtis Le May that Kennedy’s cautious response to the Soviet aggression is ‘almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.’ The President has the self-confidence and mental strength to not be influenced by Le May’s highly emotional ‘argument’ against the quarantine.
There are many lessons for decision makers and their advisers in the way in which President Kennedy behaved during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The need to reconcile the incessant tension between realities and beliefs is one of them.
Time
'Look, you know, everyone stuffs up.
'The question is, you know, what do you learn from it all?
'I think as I reflect back on the period of being Prime Minister, what is really important to do is to - Jeff Kennett, would you believe, gave me this advice, which I didn't properly listen to prior to becoming Prime Minister. He said:
'If you become a head of government, leave yourself time to think, to reflect, and to plan.''
- Kevin Rudd, former two-time Prime Minister of Australia, after his first Prime Ministership
Change
"He has the capacity to surprise. He has demonstrated the ability to change which means that he can listen and reflect on his weaknesses which is an admirable quality not obvious in all Prime Ministers."
- Chris Uhlmann, Journalist speaking about Prime Minister-elect Tony Abbott
Emotion.
In the Conclusion of ‘The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis’, the authors assess the decision-making of the Soviet and American leadership that is revealed almost word-for-word in the nearly seven hundred pages of taped crisis meetings in the book.
Khrushchev made his decisions alone and without seeking advice or analysis. He ‘acted more from instinct than from calculation’, was an ‘impulsive risk taker’ and was described by aides as ‘reckless’. Khrushchev had little experience or knowledge of foreign affairs and his understanding of the world was framed in simplistic Marxism-Leninism. He made assumptions about Kennedy based purely on the President’s youth and family wealth, and saw his ‘flexibility’ as a weakness. Khrushchev also suffered from an inflated sense of his influence on world affairs as a result of his mis-reading of the motivations for America’s responses to his previous decisions.
In short, Khrushchev’s decision-making was driven by emotion more than reason. If this made it difficult for the Americans to read and anticipate his actions, it must have been equally so for his generals and ministers.
In comparison, President Kennedy ‘did not make any impulsive decisions during the crisis’. He ‘opened up much of his reasoning….and likely consequences of his choices before he made them. He explained his thinking to a range of analyses and critiques from formal and informal advisers and even representatives of the British government.’ He also allows his advisers to ‘reason through the problems’.
At the height of the crisis, the authors argue that Kennedy ‘seems more alive to the possibilities and consequences of each new development than anyone else’, remaining calm and lucid, and clear about his objectives.
While Kennedy kept himself open to the advice of others, and had obviously nurtured a working relationship that meant his advisers felt confident enough to disagree with him, he was firm when he needed to be. He overrode the generals’ planned air strike in retaliation for the shooting down of an American U2 aircraft, even though that was the response that he had initially agreed upon.
The ability to remain uninfluenced by bias is one of the most important qualities of a good decision maker. It makes her thinking visible, her actions predictable and teachable and gives confidence to her team who may have to execute their own decisions that flow from hers.
Kennedy used many tools to keep him focussed on the facts. He verbalised his logic, exposing his thinking even to those outside his circle to avoid ‘groupthink’. He had private venting conversations with his brother, the Attorney-General Robert Kennedy. Most importantly, Kennedy did not surround himself with ‘Yes Men’.
President Kennedy’s willingness to be transparent in his decision making and open in his uncertainties showed courage and were evidence of great leadership.
Reality.
The businessman and writer Max De Pree wrote:
'The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you.'
On the first day of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, President Kennedy met with his advisers. He listened to them outline the evidence that the Cubans, assisted by the Soviet Union, were installing nuclear missiles. Once he had heard the intelligence summary and some analysis, he said:
‘What you’re really talking about are two or three different potential operations.’
He summarises what he has heard from them. There is some discussion. He then says:
‘Well, now, let’s decide what we ought to be doing.’
President Kennedy defined reality.
Thirteen days later, having looked into the abyss of nuclear annihilation and stared down the Cubans and Soviets who dismantled their missiles, President Kennedy closed the last meeting of his team of advisers. Immediately after they left the Oval Office he telephoned an assistant and said:
‘Dick, I want to get a President’s commemorative for the Executive Committee of the National Security Council who’ve been involved in this matter’.
The President said Thank You.
Donuts
I always ask for written feedback after a presentation.
'Give the presentation a mark out of 10.
If you didn't think that it was worth a 10, please tell me what I needed to have done differently for you to have given it a 10.'
Feedback from 25 Squadron members after my Military Law presentation to them at RAAF Base Pearce yesterday.
Athwart.
During one of the meetings in the White House to discuss the US response to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Robert Kennedy, Attorney-General and brother of President John Kennedy referred to a memo that had been prepared by Under Secretary of State George Ball.
The memo argued against a surprise strike against Cuba. It said that to do so would be to behave ‘in a manner totally contrary to our traditions, by pursuing a course of action that would cut directly athwart anything we have stood for during our national history, and condemn us as hypocrites in the opinion of the world.’
Robert Kennedy said ’I think George Ball has a hell of a good point….I think it’s the whole question of…what kind of country we are.’
Every decision that we make is a statement to the world - louder, more honest and memorable than words - about who we really are.
Questions.
‘The Kennedy Tapes - Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis' is a verbatim account of all meetings that President Kennedy had with his advisers in mid-October 1962 in response to the Soviet Union installing nuclear missiles in Cuba - thus threatening the world with nuclear war.
Kennedy’s first meeting is a lesson in good decision-making.
He called together 12 advisers.
His advisers spoke 285 times.
The President spoke 66 times - mostly no longer than a sentence.
The first 11 times he spoke he asked questions and listened to the answers.
The first non-question from him was ‘Thank you’.
He then asked 21 more questions - a total of 32 questions - before making a statement.
His first statement to the meeting was a summary of the information that had been given to him.
He then asked six more questions and listened to each answer.
His 40th statement was ‘Well now, let’s decide what we ought to be doing’.
His asked nine more questions.
He made four asides.
His 54th statement was to ask that the meeting reconvene later in the evening.
He made three more statements.
He followed these with six questions.
Then two statements, a question, two statements, four more questions, one statement.
He ended with a question.
President Kennedy, the most powerful man in the world, facing a decision that could result in nuclear armageddon, asked four times as many questions as he made statements.
The only decision that he made was that they should have another meeting.