Circular Error Probable.
The Circular Error Probable (CEP) is the radius of a circle within which half the bombs dropped by an aircraft are expected to fall.
In World War II the CEP for 'dumb' iron bombs was measured in miles - hence 1,000 bombers area bombing cities to hit a single factory.
The CEP of today's 'smart' laser guided weapons is three metres.
The CEP increases by 200% if the aircraft comes under fire.
Evasive survival manoeuvres reduce target accuracy.
It's more likely to miss.
Nice analogy when you're taking aim at your Widget.
Or sniping at someone aiming for theirs.
Course Orderly Creep.
Officers Training School Morning Parades with Inspections by the Flight Commander were at 0750.
The Warrant Officer Disciplinary 'suggested' we form up at the rear of the Parade Ground by 0740 so that he could do an inspection before we marched on for the Inspection.
Our Drill Sergeant assembled us by 0730 to inspect us for the WOD's inspection for the Inspection.
The rostered student Course Orderly wanted us to be in place for the Sergeant by 0720.
We agreed to march off from our block at 0710 for the ten minute march to the Parade Ground.
We formed up outside at 0700 for the Course Horse to inspect us before the Sergeant would.
The Course Horse would begin yelling 'One Course...On the ROAD!' at 0650.
An hour before Morning Parade.
We called it COC. Course Orderly Creep.
We were 24 trainee leaders who submissively aided the theft of our sleep, trustworthiness and sense of humour.
A ritual designed for a commander to personally assess the well being and morale and therefore combat fitness of his troops - depleted all three.
Every organisation has versions of COC.
Pre-meeting meetings.
Hierarchies of pre-decision decisions.
Layers of redundancy filtering or distorting information on its way to the decision maker and destroying trust along the way.
Mostly good, professional people efficiently and competently working hard to successfully perform self-contained often inherited duties - innocently oblivious to any drag on the Widget - yet each with a gnawing dissatisfaction.
Inevitably a cry arises from management - 'We need leadership!'
Code for: 'What's our Widget?'
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?)
The Widget Goes to War.
Widget Clarity is essential in good decision making.
The military knows this.
'Selection and Maintenance of the Aim' is one of the Australian Defence Force's 10 Principles of War.
The United States' military's equivalent is 'Objective'.
The Widget has utility on many battlefields.
The Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff was asked by Senator John McCain whether he thought that the Syrians the US was training and arming to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) weren't going to turn those arms and training against the Syrian government.
Senator McCain said: 'You don't think that the Free Syrian Army is going to fight against Bashar Assad who has been decimating them? You think that these people you're training will only go back to fight against ISIL? Do you really believe that, General?'
General Dempsey's answer showed the power and clarity of Widget Thinking:
'What I believe, Senator, is that as we train them and develop a military chain of command linked to a political structure that we can establish objectives that defer that challenge to the future. We do not have to deal with it now.'
Senator McCain's Widget: Undermining President Obama.
The General's Widget: The defeat of ISIL.
General Dempsey's Widget Clarity continued to serve him well as he was questioned at the Senate hearing.
Senator McCain sought to use the General's previous support of US intervention in the Syrian civil war to undermine his (and therefore President Obama's) commitment to the 'ISIL first' strategy.
Senator McCain: 'General Dempsey, was the President right in 2012 when he overruled most of his national security team and refused to train and equip the moderate opposition fighting in Syria at that time?'
General Dempsey: 'Senator you know that I recommended that we train them. And you know that for policy reasons the decision was taken in another direction.'
General Dempsey demonstrated Widget Thinking.
He differentiated between his Personal Widget and his Professional Widget.
He showed loyalty to his boss - the Commander in Chief and President.
He showed integrity.
Widget Clarity.
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.
Insubordination.
Almost twenty years ago a subordinate lied to me.
He told me that this video did not exist.
I was the Air Force Prosecuting Officer gathering evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that two 6 Squadron F111 pilots, call signs 'Buckshot 1' and 'Colt 1' had breached military discipline.
My Widget.
The Leading Aircraftsman amateur cameraman was a member of 6 Squadron and lied to protect his pilots.
His Widget.
I didn't have the video evidence in the trial and got my two convictions.
My Widget was made.
The LAC's video ended up with the Air Force Directorate of Flying Safety to make military flying safer.
His Widget was made.
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.
Guns.
'...be prepared to punish immediately and mercilessly.'
- Reinhard K. Sprenger in his book 'Trust', on how to respond to a failure to acknowledge a breach of trust.
'Why does the military need the DFDA?' I asked the classroom of First Year Cadets and Midshipmen at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
I was delivering another lesson in the Defence Force Discipline Act.
No hands went up.
'Why do you need your own military laws? Why can't you just be subject to the same criminal laws as every other resident of Canberra? Of Australia?' No response.
They looked uncomfortable. Unlike 18 year olds at civilian universities, my rank demanded their attention and they had to pretend to give it.
Finally, a hand slowly rose.
'Yes?' I said, nodding towards the red-faced Army cadet.
'Sir, because we've got guns in our bedrooms, Sir?'
His classmates laughed.
'Correct.'
Sailors, soliders and airmen who are caught breaching society's laws, values or implied rules of behaviour are subjected to higher media attention and scrutiny and public shaming than the average civilian who might do the same.
Rightly so.
A democracy makes a deal with its 18 year olds with uniforms and guns.
We trust you.
We'll fall asleep in leafy suburbs next door to where you slumber beside your weapons.
We trust you not to turn those weapons on us.
We know History. We can't afford not to give you uniforms and guns.
We know History. We can't afford to wait to see whether our trust in you with guns was misplaced. That would be too late.
Instead -
We demand that you have higher levels of behaviour enforced by extra criminal laws.
We'll let you come onto our streets with your guns as long as we see you marching in controlled, neat, shiny, uniform ranks and snapping to attention when ordered to by superiors who have superiors who have superiors who defer to our elected government who we can vote out and ridicule on talk back radio and on Facebook.
If you behave in any way that hints that our trust in you might be a mistake:
Then we'll punish you immediately and mercilessly and publicly - disproportionately than if you were an unarmed teenager.
It's not your misogyny, pot smoking, petty theft, drunkenness, harassment or racist emails that we want to protect ourselves from.
It's your judgement.
And the guns in your bedroom.
Burden.
'You're asking me to quash his conviction?'
'Yes Sir.'
'Even though he pleaded guilty?'
'Yes Sir.'
'The Law is an ass, Bernard.'
Air Commodore Smith was a 'one star' general equivalent.
He'd graduated from the RAAF Academy the year I was born.
He was an Engineer. A Fighter Pilot.
He was flying Mirage fighters at twice the speed of sound at 40,000 feet over Malaysia during the Vietnam War when I was still in nappies.
He was a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
He was the Air Officer Commanding Western Australia.
He had a wife and grown up children.
He was my boss.
I was in my mid-twenties. Three years out of Law School. Four ranks and a thousand years junior to him in work and military and life experience.
'The Defence Force Discipline Act allows you to seek a higher legal opinion if you're not comfortable with mine, Sir,' I explained to him.
'Not necessary,' he said as he signed his acceptance of my review and recommendation to quash the conviction of the cannabis smoking airman on the basis of an error of law. 'You've explained your reasons both in your written report and verbally to me today and I accept the stupidity of the Law, not you. I'm going to bring this legal loophole to the attention of the other Base Commanders at our conference at Headquarters next week. They need to know about it.'
A month later, a file 'Command Legal Matters' was marked out to me by Wing Commander Oliver, the Air Commodore's Administrative Staff Officer. I opened it and found a copy of a letter that was marked to me 'For Information'.
It was a letter from the Air Officer Commanding Training Command, a two star general equivalent and my boss's boss. It was written to all the Air Force Base Commanders in Training Command - including my boss. It referred to the recent Commanders Conference and the jurisdiction issue I had cited to recommend quashing the conviction. It was admonishing my boss for quashing the conviction based upon my legal advice.
One line stands out in my memory: 'There is no place for High Court decisions in the administration of summary hearings under the Defence Force Discipline Act on Bases. Command Legal have confirmed this. Commanders should therefore seek higher headquarters legal advice in future before quashing convictions based on jurisdictional grounds. '
The Air Commodore never mentioned the letter nor his boss's criticisms of him at his commanders conference to me, let alone my legal superiors' contradictions. I don't even think that he intended the letter to come to me - otherwise he would have spoken to me about it rather than have me find out via a marked out file. He must not have thought it important.
Air Commodore Smith backed me. He backed me over the commanding officer whose guilty verdict he quashed. He backed me in front of his boss. He backed me before his peers. He backed me when he could have gone to my legal superiors for a second opinion. He backed me even though he disagreed with the legal outcome as a matter of common sense. He backed me when my own legal superiors did not. He backed me with the same business-as-usual manner as he would return my salutes if we passed each other or crack his lawyer jokes.
Air Commodore Smith didn't need to hear a Supreme Court Judge affirm my legal reasoning at a Legal Officers conference six months later. He continued to challenge, question, and ultimately back my advice to him for the remainder of my posting as his legal adviser.
His faith in me was a huge burden. It increased my self-doubt because I had to continue to live up to his total reliance on me and I thought I could not. It made me feel more exposed, rather than protected. It made me more careful and diligent in the legal advice that I gave to him. It made me accept other decisions that he made as the Base Commander that I did not necessarily understand or agree with because I trusted him based upon the way that I had seen him go about his decision making. It connected me to him. It made me a better legal officer, lawyer and person. His trust in my judgement and legal ability and officer qualities was hard to live up to.
Which was another gift that Air Commodore Smith gave me.
He just assumed I was up to it.
Backed.
'Decisions made by my Chief of Staff and my Office have my full backing and authority. Anyone who suggests otherwise is wrong.'
When your boss says 'I'll back you,' - and she does - that's arguably one of the greatest gifts.
And a huge burden.
Pass both on.
Say: 'I'll back you,' to your people.
Say: 'I'll back you,' to your customers.
Say: 'I'll back you,' to yourself.
Feel your burden ease.
Feel the anxiety in your chest.
Backing them isn't a sentimental leap of faith into the unknown.
When you back them. When you promise them - or at least yourself - that they act with your authority and that you will stand by their decisions regardless of the outcome and accept all the consequences - you realise you're utterly compelled to:
- Know them
- Clearly define their expectations
- Define their Widget
- Equip them with everything you have - especially information
- Affirm them
- Get out of their way
When I reflect on my good bosses.
My peers.
My parents.
I think that the message - in words and deeds - of 'I'll back you,' taught me the most about work, myself, and life.
'I'll back you,' says: 'I believe in you. Go and become that person I see and believe in.'
[Now think of the converse and understand how damaging and destructive it can be not to have the backing of a boss. It wounds our soul.]
[Now think of a boss who backed you - and write to them and thank them for the faith they showed in you.]
Laying down your life for another isn't as literal as the mournful notes of the Last Post honouring war dead have us believe.
It's putting yourself at risk to back another.
Is this the answer to how we bring Love into our workplaces?
The Greatest Love?
By backing each other?
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.
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.'
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.
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!
Follow.
Interviewer: 'We are supposed to do the right things...'
Retired US Navy SEAL: 'Do you know what the right thing is?'
Interviewer: 'Well...not to kill innocent civilians...'
Retired SEAL: 'You don't have any idea. Not to be rude or anything, but one person's...what they think is the right idea is, is completely opposite from what the other one is. That's why we have to solely focus on our Leadership, our Admirals, who have been around and have been through all of this and they make the calls and it flows all the way down to us and we follow our orders to the T. Being in the SEAL teams we're outside of the box thinkers. We're not idiots. Most SEALS have their degrees and a lot of them have their Masters and we've been in this game for a very, very long time. So the thing that we ask - not out loud - we hope and pray that the American public has enough trust and faith in us to do and make the right decision....It's war and there is no right or wrong answer...'
To dismiss this response as the predictably military gung-ho blind 'We just follow orders' is to ignore some powerful insights into good decision making in the most extreme circumstances that also translates to the every day.
Navigating a good decision requires a fixed north - the Widget.
The Widget is designated by the Leader.
The decision maker accepts the Widget as the creation of a person who they trust - even if that trust is that there will be money in their bank account each fortnight.
Implicit in the dynamic between Widget, Leader and decision maker is that the decision maker continues to choose the Widget.
If I sneer at this equation it's either because my Leaders are managers or I choose not to choose.
'Right' and 'Wrong' are irrelevant.
It's all about the Widget.
Structures.
The job of a manager is to balance enforcing structure while allowing creativity through good decision making.
In a recent interview with Lord David Owen, the former British Foreign Secretary who helped bring peace to Bosnia in the 1990s, this tension can be seen at the level of sovereign states.
He was asked how he began negotiating an end to the fighting between the Serbs and the Muslims:
'All this time, you're trying to form structures which can give people a measure of security and, to some extent, decentralised power. And then on top of it, you're trying to construct an overarching organisation for the whole country.'
Lord Owen was talking about the situation as he found it in 1992. The war ended in December 1995.
Simple. Create some governance in your nation or workplace that makes people feel safe. Delegate decision-making power downwards. People will respond by laying down their AK47s, dropping their bullying complaints, and living and working together in productive harmony. A triumph of diplomacy, reason, and our better angels. Sack the lawyers and spend the savings on vision statement coffee mugs, running fun team building days and bean bags in the common rooms.
Then the interviewer asked:
'Do you accept, ultimately, that in the case of Bosnia, what ended the war was the use of military force from outside?'
Boo! Hiss! Of course not! Structures! Power-sharing! Human reason! Self-organising system!
Yet Lord Owen, career politician, diplomat, negotiator, peacemaker said:
'Oh, absolutely. I argued for force. I wanted to enforce the Vance-Owen Peace Plan, as it was called in May 1993. And had we done so, we'd have brought the war to an end two years earlier...'
Sometimes you have to drop bombs. As the Director of Values said in one organisation: 'People should be given the freedom to perform their duties defined by clear boundaries. If they cross them they should be shot.'
Most organisations have the structures of an old Hollywood movie set. They are the out-of-focus backdrop to the main action. Come up against them and they'll randomly either fall away or crush you.
All workplace conflict would be quickly resolved if the consequences were clear, timely and as promised on the label. It's best for all in the long term.
It's called Integrity - doing what you say you're going to do.
Love.
'We've come to love you,' the nurse said after introducing herself and another nurse.
It was the strangest and most beautiful thing to say to me as I lay in my hospital bed a day before elective surgery. Spoken in the same tone as 'If there's anything that you need, please just press the call buzzer.' Not in a sentimental voice nor a perfunctory one nor in a rote meeting of a mission statement. She meant it.
They left and I looked out of the window and felt held in an overwhelming peace.
Imagine going to work and loving.
Ridiculous. Work is work. There are Widgets to be made. Budgets to be met. Profits to be achieved. Love is a powerful, erratic, distracting, whimsical emotion that is reserved for intimate relationships built up over time through trust and commitment and has no place in a professional workplace.
We leave love at home along with the novel by our bed, the guitar and sheet music in the spare room, the cookbooks in the kitchen, the half written MBA assignment.
We spend about a third of our lives at work - not seeking, offering nor expecting love.
Is it possible we are not engaged with our work because we've partitioned it off from love?
Is the exclusion of love in labour - whether experienced as workers, bosses or customers of someone else's work - a contributor to almost half of all Australians experiencing mental illness at some time in our life?
If a military commander believes that love is a prerequisite for Leadership then shouldn't our boss feel the same way?
Is love of every person and thing a science that can be learned and applied as in the short story A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud?
Do we choose to work to escape the demands, obligations and struggles of loving?
If we are to become who we are - can we do so without loving and being loved at work?
'The old man still held the collar of the boy's jacket; he was trembling and his face was earnest and bright and wild. "For six years now I have gone around by myself and built up my science. And now I am a master. Son. I can love anything. No longer do I have to think about it even. I see a street full of people and a beautiful light comes in me. I watch a bird in the sky. Or I meet a traveler on the road. Everything, Son. And anybody. All stranger and all loved! Do you realize what a science like mine can mean?"'
- 'A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud', Carson McCullers