Just Sit.
I asked Cheryl, a fellow Director of Professional Standards for another Anglican Diocese:
'How do you respond to complainants after they've disclosed their childhood sexual abuse?'.
'I don't,' she said.
'I just sit with them.'
Something Funny Happens on the Way to the Widget.
A good decision is one that advances you towards where you want to be.
You make a decision.
Ping! (You.)
Listening....listening....listening...
... ... ...
PING! (Your boss or your team or your client or your family or The Universe reacts.)
Hmm....Ah-ha. Adjust course to Widget: zero-two-niner degrees...
Often the speed and path of the Decision Ping and therefore our measurement of the distance between us and where we want to be is distorted by passing through media of varying density.
Mostly other people.
Which is the Big Revelation of good decision making; namely:
Good decision making teaches more about where we are in relation to others, than our distance to our Widget.
It's all about the Widget.
It's never about the Widget.
The More Important the Decision the Longer It Should Take.
In September last year, two Qantas Airbus aircraft with a combined total of more than 600 passengers almost collided.
The Air Transport Safety Bureau classified the incident as 'Serious'. It stated that it expected the investigation to be completed 'no later than September 2014.'
More than a year later and a month after the anticipated completion date the investigation remains Active.
The more important a decision, the longer it should take to make.
Interested third parties will be patient if the decision maker manages their expectations.
Underpromise and Overdeliver.
If the decision is likely to take a month, predict two and make it in one and a half.
Artificially compressing decision time adds drama and gravity and importance to the decision - and thus to the decision maker's prestige.
Widget focus - keeping the end result in mind - can help to settle the ego.
The ATSB can take time to learn from how several hundred lives were almost lost in circumstances that are repeated thousands of times daily in the skies.
There are few workplace decisions that can't allow the same.
Go Widget or Go Home.
'I wish to God that you protected the White House like you are protecting your reputation here today. I wish you spent that time in that effort to protect the American President and his family...'
- Representative Stephen Lynch to Director of the Secret Service, Julia Pierson.
Widget focus helps us to apply our finite reserves of time and intellectual and emotional energy towards the job that we are paid to do and by which we will be measured and which will give us currency and calories - and more.
If we divert time and energy away from building our boss's Widget and towards defending our ego, we weaken our ability to produce the thing that will answer our critics.
Amidst the noise and distraction of information and our fight-or-flight responses, the Five Steps towards a good decision keep us focussed and on task.
Even when the Widget battle is lost, we should resist the urge to go down fighting for our ego.
Begin building our next Widget for our next boss by learning what went wrong with our construction of this one.
Because the boss is always right.
Three Points of Contact.
'Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?'
Course 1 of 90 Officer Training School learned Rock Climbing at Mount Arapiles during Exercise Discovery. Cute.
Four holds on the rock face - both hands and both feet - in the known. Secure. For as long as the muscles can hold your weight.
Keep at least three points of contact on the rock face at all times. Reach for the next hold with one hand or foot at a time.
That was me. Halfway up a cliff face.
Abandon one of those holds and stretch out an arm or a leg to inquire of the rock face above. Feel. Grasp. Test. Commit. Move.
That wasn't me.
I wasn't inquiring. I only had the strength to hold on. My legs were trembling with the strain - the 'sewing machine leg' we'd been warned about by our instructors.
To move I had to reach above and feel for a hand hold. I didn't know if I'd find one. I did know that the effort would suck my energy and probably for no gain. So I held on.
An instructor abseiled down beside me and I hated his encouragement that there were holds above me if I reached up because he was sitting in a harness of six month old blue sterling fusion nano rope and I was clinging to million year old quartzite.
Purely to hasten the standard tedious 'What did you learn from that?' debrief that we had at the top half an hour later I put up my hand and said 'Sir, I will reflect on today's exercise whenever I feel like I'm stuck.'
In the nearly 25 years since that answer it has never served as a metaphor for anything.
Until today.
A good decision is one that advances us towards where we want to be.
Three fixed holds that secure the inquiring reach for the next unknown hand hold:
- My Widget
- The decision making process
- My response to what happens next
Each anchors a reach into the unknown - exceeding our grasp.
(Or what's a Widget for?)
Amidst the Chaos We Control Three Things.
Life is random.
Luck.
Chance.
Grace.
Fate.
Misfortune.
We decide. Then Life happens.
So what's the point of good decision making?
We control three things:
The Only Way to Learn.
Sergeant Mortellaro - My Drill Sergeant during Officers Training School
“I have already chose my officer.”
And what was he?
Forsooth, a great arithmetician...
That never set a squadron in the field,
Nor the division of a battle knows...
- 'Othello', William Shakespeare
'The problem is that when we're new to something or when we're approaching intermediate skill at something, it gets dangerous. Because you need to have an awareness about how much more you could learn. There's the cataract of not being great at something that makes it difficult to know what you need to learn to get better. The only way to learn that is from other people. It's very difficult on your own.'
- Merlin Mann
When you become the boss for the first time, you're dangerous.
Lots of positional power and no experience of how to use it.
You've made lots of widgets so well that you've been put in charge of other people making widgets. They're completely different skills with only the widget in common. You're an arithmetician - full of the theory. Or maybe not even that.
Sure - you've had lots of leadership role models:
Parents. Older siblings. School teachers. The drill sergeants in the movies.
That's not the worst of it. As Merlin Mann says, you may not know that you don't know. Or if you do, you can't show it. Your people will eat you alive. Your boss wants you to deliver from day one. You've got to be strong. Decisive even. That's what they do in the movies.
So you set about being Mum, Dad, older sister, home room teacher and Gunnery Sergeant Carter. You stop being yourself.
Your people will teach you what it takes to be a good boss. Ask them. Engage them in good decision making.
Yes it's risky. They may take advantage of you.
Which is why they won't.
The First Thing You Need to Do.
'To ask a manager about specific tasks which she/he assigns to a subordinate comes as an unfamiliar experience for most - and the managers find replying equally strange and awkward until they get used to it.'
- Elliott Jacques, Requisite Organisation
The first thing:
Find out your boss's Widget.
Ask your boss: 'What do you have to do, and by when?' (That's her Widget.)
Then ask: 'What are you relying on me to do and by when for you to do it?' (That's your Widget.)
(If her answer is the same as what's in your employment agreement or duty statement, that's a bonus.)
Then ask: 'What does your boss want you to do and by when?' (That's what your boss really cares about and therefore you should care about it too.)
Go away and think about your boss's answers. (If Elliott Jacques is right, you may need to give your boss some time to answer.)
If there's anything stopping you from giving your boss what she wants - tell her.
Then make your Widget.
Do your job.
It's that simple.
You've also made your first good decision.
You've undertaken a deliberate process of inquiry that has advanced you towards where you want to be.
You don't know where you want to be?...
Perhaps that was the First Thing you should have decided? - where do you want to be?
(It was still a good decision - it prompted you towards deciding where you want to be.)
What if you do all of that, make your Widget, and your boss isn't happy? Then you've misunderstood your boss. Your decision has helped you to readjust your understanding about what the boss wants. The sooner you start making Widget decisions, the sooner you'll learn whether you're making what your boss wants.
The boss is always right.
If you're someone's boss, invite them to have the same 'What do you need to do by when' conversation with you. Including inviting them to define for themselves where they want to be.
If you, your boss, or your workers have not had any of these conversations - then there's the source of every problem.
This conversation rarely happens.
It's all assumed.
Which is a lot of the reason why 81% of Australian workers are not engaged.
It's not too late.
Knowing Who You're Not.
'I recorded my first album, The Sound of White in Los Angeles when I was 20 (or was it 19?.) The producer, John Porter, said to me very nicely one day: "Your accent, it's...very strong when you sing, isn't it? Perhaps, ah, we could tone it down a little? Some people might find it a bit distracting."
I took great offence. Not only did I not tone down my accent, I went even harder with it. "Boom, that'll show them," I remember thinking. "How dare anyone think that me singing in my own accent is distracting? I'm not f..king American!" The accent went on to become stronger out of sheer spite. "If this is going to polarise people," I thought, "I may as well not do it in halves."
Missy Higgins was 19 and working her first job - making her debut album. She was doing what she'd wanted to do since she was 12 - singing.
John Porter, effectively her boss, had produced his first album for The Smiths eight years before she was born and had worked with Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry.
He questioned who she was - she pondered and decided to defy him. At 19. In her first job. She decided to become herself.
Not half - but fully.
The Sound of White debuted at No. 1 and sold half a million copies.
A good decision is one that advances you towards where you want to be.
Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards where you want to be. You question or you're questioned. You search for your own answers, not someone else's.
If you look around and someone is following - buying half a million of your Widgets - you're a Leader.
If not - fine. You're still on your way to where you want to be.
Stick.
Dan: 'As somebody who feels like a person who knows so little and my knowledge is so incomplete. And yet know I'm supposed to be imparting knowledge to our kids and I kind of almost tried to give up on that and I try to just focus on good decision making.
'It's one thing if you tell your kid: 'Well just do it like this'. And it's another to just walk them through it. You know that if you walk them through it the right way that they'll learn about the thought process. Because I think that thought processes are teachable. Or learnable. Good, logical thinking is a learnable thing. It's one thing if your kid says 'Well how do I do this?' Or 'Why is it like this?' And you just tell them. As opposed to kind of leading them down the path to figuring out the answer on their own. That seems to stick a little bit better.'
Merlin: 'I find it so hard not to intervene. She's doing something - like she's learning to jump rope right now. And it's all I can do not to seize the thing out of her hand and go 'Look! Stand on it with your two feet like this, pull it up to here and if it reaches your waist that's the right length!' 'Cos she's got about half the length that she needs to do it. She keeps jammin' it into her ankle and it drives me crazy to watch. It's all I can do not to intervene. But you know - that's part of the process.'
Substitute 'employee' for 'kid'.
Flawless.
'All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavor to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called 'guessing what was at the other side of the hill.''
- The Duke of Wellington
'It was a flawless operation. It was just that the hostages weren't there.'
- Chuck Hagel, US Secretary of Defence.
A good decision is one that advances you towards where you want to be.
It takes discipline and courage to seek to execute a flawless operation instead of succumbing to the seduction of decisiveness.
That's why Leaders are brave.
Sure - you might solve a problem with instinct, intervention, positional power or luck.
Meanwhile, someone is planning their operation based upon the predictability of your decisions.
About where the hostages will be.
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.'
Debate.
The boss is busy. He's important. He's got so many important things to worry about. Meetings to attend. Emails to write. Reports to read. It's unreasonable to expect him to have time to spend consulting with you. Anyway, his matters are lofty and serious. He doesn't have to explain himself to you. You wouldn't understand anyway because it's very complicated. He knows what he's doing because he's the boss. It's serious work being a boss. Don't waste his time and just get your work done so he can do his. The boss is busy.
In mid-1942 Prime Minister Winston Churchill rose to address the House of Commons. The Second World War was in its third year and the British Army was in full retreat in North Africa. The German Afrika Corps was forty miles from Alexandria and eighty from Cairo. Prime Minister Churchill was debating a vote of no confidence in his leadership. He was being accused of allowing the Axis forces of Germany and Japan to conquer and enslave the remaining free world.
Churchill did not use fighting a World War as an excuse for not preparing for and engaging in open debate on his decision making. On the contrary, 'What a remarkable example it has been of the unbridled freedom of our Parliamentary institutions in time of war,' he said.
The boss can't be expected to know everything that's going on. How can he be responsible for something that was done two or three levels below him?
'The question of whether Tobruk could be held or not is difficult and disputable. It is one of those questions which are more easy to decide after the event than before it...But those who are responsible for carrying on the war have no such easy options open. They have to decide beforehand. The decision to hold Tobruk and the dispositions made for that purpose were taken by General Auchinleck, but I should like to say that we, the War Cabinet and our professional advisers, thoroughly agreed with General Auchinleck beforehand, and, although in tactical matters the Commander-in-Chief in any war theatre is supreme and his decision is final, we consider that, if he was wrong, we were wrong too, and I am very ready on behalf of His Majesty's Government to take my full share of responsibility.'
Why can't someone just make a decision? Everything takes so long. There is so much bureaucracy. Ask anyone what needs to be done and they will tell you. The boss is useless.
'Complaint has been made that the newspapers have been full of information of a very rosy character. Several Hon. Members have referred to that in the Debate, and that the Government have declared themselves less fully informed than newspapers...The war correspondents have nothing to do except to collect information, write their despatches and get them through the censor. On the other hand, the generals who are conducting the battle have other preoccupations. They have to fight the enemy.'
The boss wants to be briefed. He wants to have everything run past him. He wants to approve every decision. He wants papers. He wants meetings. He wants pre-meeting meetings. He wants updates. He wants to step in if necessary.
'Although we have always asked that they should keep us informed as much as possible, our policy has been not to worry them but to leave them alone to do their job. Now and then I send messages of encouragement and sometimes a query or a suggestion, but it is absolutely impossible to fight battles from Westminster or Whitehall. The less one interferes the better, and certainly I do not want generals in close battle, and these desert battles are close, prolonged and often peculiarly indeterminate, to burden themselves by writing full stories on matters upon which, in the nature of things, the home Government is not called upon to give any decision...Therefore, the Government are more accurately, but less speedily, less fully and less colourfully informed than the newspapers.'
The boss likes people who work late. Who show how much they care by the number of furrows in their brow.
'Some people assume too readily that, because a Government keeps cool and has steady nerves under reverses, its members do not feel the public misfortunes as keenly as do independent critics. On the contrary, I doubt whether anyone feels greater sorrow or pain than those who are responsible for the general conduct of our affairs.'
The boss wants to know why the plan went wrong.
'Sir, I do not know what actually happened in the fighting of that day. I am only concerned to give the facts to the House, and it is for the House to decide whether these facts result from the faulty central direction of the war, for which of course I take responsibility, or whether they resulted from the terrible hazards and unforeseeable accidents of battle.'
The boss wants to scrutinise every decision. He won't approve anything until he's absolutely certain that it is perfect.
'How do you make a tank? People design it, they argue about it, they plan it and make it, and then you take the tank and test and re-test it. When you have got it absolutely settled you go into production, and only then do you go into production. But we have never been able to indulge in the luxury of that precise and leisurely process. We have had to take it straight off the drawing board and go into full production, and take the chance of the many errors which the construction will show coming out after hundreds and thousands of them have been made.'
The boss has a serious job. He's a serious man making very, very serious and important decisions. Don't mock the boss. He deserves our respect.
'This tank, the A.22, was ordered off the drawing board, and large numbers went into production very quickly. As might be expected, it had many defects and teething troubles, and when these became apparent the tank was appropriately re-christened the "Churchill."'
The boss doesn't like mistakes. He wants the job done right the first time. If not, he'll lay the blame where it belongs. He can't be held responsible for what others do.
'I cannot pretend to form a judgment upon what has happened in this battle. I like commanders on land and sea and in the air to feel that between them and all forms of public criticism the Government stand like a strong bulkhead. They ought to have a fair chance, and more than one chance. Men may make mistakes and learn from their mistakes. Men may have bad luck, and their luck may change. But anyhow you will not get generals to run risks unless they feel they have behind them a strong Government. They will not run risks unless they feel that they need not look over their shoulders or worry about what is happening at home, unless they feel they can concentrate their gaze upon the enemy.'
It's a serious business being a boss. It's no laughing matter. He's engaged in important things.
'I have stuck hard to my blood, toil, tears and sweat, to which I have added muddle and mismanagement...'
The boss acts on instinct. He makes decisions and expects his authority to be carried out. No questions. If something goes wrong, let's spin ourselves out of it. Don't admit anything.
'Nearly all my work has been done in writing, and a complete record exists of all the directions I have given, the inquiries I have made and the telegrams I have drafted. I shall be perfectly content to be judged by them.'
Inquiry.
'Whether it’s in political parties, juries, or boardrooms, groups of humans tend to make better decisions, and to be better at solving problems, when composed of individuals who see the world differently from each other.
Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards where you want to be.
Inquiry is a brave act. Risky. It declares 'I Don't Know'.
What boss will admit that? What other things might she not know? Why is she being paid the big bucks if she doesn't know?
Might she not know things that she needs to know for me to know things? I've got a job to do. Where does her not-knowing - leave me?
Not knowing.
Inquiry is a brave act. It levels the power scales. The boss and I are equally ignorant. We learn the new thing together.
The good boss gathers people around her in her inquiry and invites them to tell her she's wrong and encourages me to watch. Brave. [The good boss is a teacher.]
Inquiry implies the boss isn't certain of her footing. She's unsure of the world and needs to know more. She's off balance. Vulnerable to a push from above or below.
Inquiry invites new information that may erase the old. It may call into question everything we assumed. It may even demand that the boss says: 'I was wrong.' Oh dear.
Inquiry is counter to the decisive, busy, brain-in-the-next-meeting, heroic boss.
Thus most bosses don't inquire. [Good bosses are rare.] They pretend to know. They make decisions using instinct. Or delegation (up or down). Or they do nothing and let entropy decide for them. We let them get away with it because he's the boss and we just want a decision - any decision - so that we can plug it into our Widget and have an alibi if the Widget doesn't work and go home and moan about the boss and our life.
A good boss inquires because she is curious. Because she is impatient in her advance towards her Widget which she knows lies beyond the Knowing.
A good boss doesn't decide with power. Or by keeping her workers ignorant. Or by pretending. Or mothering us by protecting us from the scary world of not-knowing.
A good boss knows that I Don't Know might be the three most powerful words in the dictionary.
Or not.
[Let's speak them and see what happens.]
Hacked.
Some companies run 'bug bounty' programs that reward hackers for disclosing vulnerabilities they find in the organisation's computer code.
Imagine that. Opening up your internal software to a bunch of strangers and inviting them to try and break it.
Every organisation has a similar service available to it. For Free. People who volunteer their time to point out errors in its entire operating system.
They're called 'Complainants'.
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.]