The Secret Deal With the Boss.
'Leaders and followers collude in the imagining of leadership as heroic feats that will fix problems and usher in a new era. These practices are seductive because they release individuals from the work of leading themselves, from taking responsibility for thinking through difficult problems and for critical decision-making.'
- Amanda Sinclair, Leadership for the Disillusioned
The dominant narrative in Leadership is the Leader as hero, protector, parent.
A recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek is evidence of the power this story has in our culture.
It also shows the myth of 'If only I had more power, things would be different'.
The President of the United States is the most powerful man in the world.
The article quoted 'administration veterans' as saying that President Obama responds to crises in 'a very rational way, trying to gather facts, rely on the best expert advice, and mobilise the necessary resources'. He is said to treat a crisis 'as an intellectual inquiry' where he 'develops his response through an intensely rational process'.
'As former CIA Director Leon Panetta said recently in a TV interview, “He approaches things like a law professor in presenting the logic of his position.”'
In doing so, he is said to 'adhere to intellectual rigour, regardless of the public's emotional needs'.
President Obama 'disdains the performative aspects of his job' and resists 'the theatrical nature to the presidency.'
These characteristics of the President were cited as weaknesses.
The article quoted a poll that found that 65 percent of Americans say they fear a widespread outbreak of Ebola in the U.S, despite the facts showing otherwise. 'People fear what they can’t control, and when the government can’t control it either, the fear ratchets up to panic.'
(26 per cent of Americans also think that the Sun revolves around the Earth and more of them think that President Obama is a Muslim than believe in the theory of Evolution.)
The President was said to be 'hampered' by 'an unwillingness or inability to demonstrate the forcefulness Americans expect of their president in an emergency.'
'A thought bubble over his head seems to say: “I can’t believe everybody’s flipping out about this stuff!” But as Panetta also said, “My experience in Washington is that logic alone doesn’t work.”'
The article acknowledges that President Obama's record 'even on issues where he’s drawn heavy criticism', is often much better than the initial impression would lead one to believe.
'He may tackle crises in a way that ignores the public mood, yet things generally turn out pretty well in the end. He and his economic team, though deeply unpopular, halted the financial panic and brought about a recovery that’s added jobs for 55 consecutive months. His signature health-care law addressed a slower-moving crisis; while similarly unpopular, it has delivered health insurance to more than 10 million people. Even Deepwater Horizon was nothing like the environmental cataclysm it threatened to become. “It really became a parable of how government can mobilize to solve a big problem,” Axelrod says. And he adds, “Bush didn’t get bin Laden—Obama did.”
And yet...
Author Peter Block noted the dominant 'patriarchal leadership narrative' when he said that:
'Obama is reluctant to attack Syria. When he decides to consult with Congress on it he's considered like he's waffling...and then when Russia comes along and says 'Wait a second you don't have to attack I think we can reach an agreement' and they play a good third party role, [it is portrayed as] a sign of Presidential weakness that he allowed another country not so friendly to us to be decisive in bringing peace and avoiding war in the world. That interpretation of events is what we're dealing with. There needs to be an alternative narrative - an alternative story telling.'
One of the hardest demands on a new leader is to resist the pressure to take people to where they already are.
A leader invites people to go where they otherwise wouldn't.
She needs confidence in her Widget before she can invite us to join her in its creation.
She assumes the best in us that we crave to be discovered and acknowledged.
She draws us out of the comfort of our fears and prejudices and oppressive, suffocating narratives, cadences and routines - and into the anxiety that is the surest sign that we are free.
Limitations Liberate.
'Leadership should be aimed at helping to free people from oppressive structures, practices and habits encountered in societies and institutions, as well as within the shady recesses of ourselves. Good leaders liberate.'
Amanda Sinclair, Leadership for the Disillusioned
A Leader Creates the Space.
This implies boundaries.
Boundaries give certainty of the resources - time, materials, people - with which to create.
Limits, rules, policies, regulations, contracts, processes, checklists - liberate.
The Leader, having created the space and its boundaries, stretches out her hand to us sheltering in our shady recesses and says:
'Come out and play!'
Compliance.
'I'm certainly not the first person to point out that general rules cannot handle all cases. This is exactly what Aristotle had in mind with the notion of Equity: The necessity of judgement making a correction to a rule - not because there is something wrong with a rule, but because of the generality of a rule that will necessarily make it inappropriate to some cases that it will seem to govern. Trying to accommodate or replace equitable judgement with additional rules simply won’t work.'
- Stephen Cohen
Deloitte released a Report last week that found Australia spends $250 billion a year on rules and compliance by both governments and businesses
That's more than eight and a half Defence budgets.
That's over $10,500 for every man, woman and child in the country.
The private sector spends $155 billion a year administering and complying with self-imposed rules
1 million people - one in every 11 workers - are employed in ‘the compliance sector’.
Middle managers and senior executives spend 8.9 hours a week complying with the rules that firms set for themselves, with other staff spending 6.4 hours.
These rules cost $21 billion a year to administer.
They generate $134 billion a year in compliance costs – double the matching compliance cost of public sector regulations.
The Widget for many people is ticking boxes.
There are many good reasons to learn and apply good decision making.
Cost is one.
The last job of a Leader is to get out of the way.
Naïve Inquirer.
Scarlett's Mother: 'How do you feel after your [one year old] sister has screamed non-stop for an hour next to you in the back seat of the car?'
Four Year Old Scarlett: 'Puzzled'.
We Are Wide Open to Criticisms.
The Blue Angels is the United States Navy's flight demonstration squadron.
Its Widget is 'to showcase the pride and professionalism of the United States Navy and Marine Corps by inspiring a culture of excellence and service to country through flight demonstrations and community outreach.'
After every flight the team goes through a critical debriefing process which they consider is as important as the actual flight itself. They talk about what worked, what didn't, and 'no punches are pulled'.
'We are as wide open as can possibly be to criticisms. We want to become our own worst critics.'
The debriefing process takes twice as long as the flight took. 'Rank doesn't come into play.'
'We have a term that we use: 'Glad to be here''. It's a way of reminding themselves of the privilege of flying with the Blue Angels while their fellow pilots are doing night carrier landings in the Mediterranean Sea.
'We have two 'critiquers' on the ground that look at the manoeuvres and tell us their impressions basically.'
'We make these mistakes and we 'fess up to them and we do it every time we fly. It's an extremely important aspect of what we do. What we do after we've said it is 'I've made this mistake. I'll fix it. You always say you're going to fix it It leaves the rest of us with the feeling that you've recognised your mistake and you're going to take corrective action not to let it happen again. So it doesn't drop our confidence level in another person in the formation.'
'You gotta be able to learn each and every time you go flying because there's never been the perfect flight demonstration yet.'
Simply Did.
'I never thought of success or failure. I simply did what I wanted to do.'
- Isamu Akasaki, 2014 Joint Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics
No Success.
No Failure.
No Management.
No Leadership.
No Team.
No Committed.
No Passionate.
No Marketing.
No words, words, words, words, words, words...
He simply did what he wanted to do.
Widget Clarity.
Widget Bliss.
Simple.
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.
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.'
Meet is Murder.
'We only get one life. Wasting someone’s time is the subtlest form of murder.'
You're a people person?
They're your most valuable resource?
You're a Leader?
Respect people's time.
Start on time.
Finish on time.
Make any interruption worth the 25 minutes they'll take to refocus.
Lead them by example to respect time.
Others'.
Theirs.
Thank you for your time. Sincerely.
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.
The Divisive Decisive and The Indecision Villain.
'For the perfect accomplishment of any art, you must get this feeling of the eternal present into your bones — for it is the secret of proper timing. No rush. No dawdle. Just the sense of flowing with the course of events in the same way that you dance to music, neither trying to outpace it nor lagging behind. Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.'
- Alan Watts
We boo the Indecision Villain.
We cheer the Divisive Decisive.
Both share the awkward discomfort of their uninvited guest: New Information.
('Behind you! Behind you!)
The Divisive Decisive waves their Positional Power Wand over New Information and says the magic words:
'I think that...'
And magically pulls Decisions out of...their...hat.
The Indecision Villain just ignores New Information.
Boo!
The Good Decision Maker sits with New Information for a while.
Then - feeling the eternal in their bones - rises and takes New Information into the space created by the Leader.
Counts out the Organisation's Widget rhythm (Step 2, two three, Step 3, two three...)
And they dance.
Secured by the Secret Service.
On 19 September Omar Gonzales jumped the fence of the home of the President of the United States armed with a knife.
He sprinted across the White House lawn towards the front door.
The plainclothes surveillance team whose job it is to detect fence jumpers and protect the most powerful man in the world didn't stop him.
The Secret Service officer in the North Lawn guardhouse did not stop him.
The attack dog did not stop him.
The Secret Service guard at the front door did not stop him.
The SWAT team at the front door did not stop him.
The alarm box designed to alert the building to an intruder had been muted.
The intruder was finally tackled inside the East Room.
Seven successive failures in decision making.
16 breaches of White House security in the last five years. Six this year. 'Hundreds' have approached the perimeter and made verbal threats.
The fear of being wrong is understandably a major influence on our decision making.
As someone wrote - we tend to compare our bloopers with everyone else's highlight reel.
Yet if the United States Secret Service - with a budget of $1.8 billion and the job of protecting the most powerful man in the world - can fail in each of seven layers of defence - we can feel a little better about getting it wrong.
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?'
If You Build It - Happiness Will Come (Maybe).
'Alastair Clarkson [Hawthorn Coach] ringing all his players asking them if they like him and if there's anything he can do to make them happier.'
- A wag's riff on the 'resignation' by the Bulldogs' coach after his captain asked to leave.
Alastair Clarkson coached Hawthorn to the 2014 AFL Premiership.
The wag implies that winning the Grand Final is the Widget. Do this as coach - and your players will be happy. Happiness may be a by-product of the Widget.
('We're a happy team at Hawthorn' begins the team song.)
The word 'Happy' comes from the middle English hap meaning 'chance' or 'good luck'. Hence the word 'happenstance'.
It's your Widget.
If you want to use Happiness - someone else's or your own - as your Widget, then good luck and God's speed.
Alastair Clarkson also coached Hawthorn to the 2013 AFL Premiership.
Three days later his champion Lance Franklin left to play for Sydney.
Be Open to Surprises.
The Chief Executive of the organisation that governed most of the civilised world for the last two thousand years has some claim to know about good decision making.
As the boss of the largest private employer in Australia with 180,000 employees, over $100 billion in assets and an annual income of over $15 billion, he's worth listening to - regardless of whether you are a customer.
Earlier this week he warned about the risk of creating 'masterpiece' systems hat were so perfect that they closed themselves off from the potential for 'surprise'.
He reminded us that we need to remember that we are 'on a journey....and when we set out on a journey, when we are on our path, we always encounter new things, things we did not know.'
He reminded us that the law - systems - are not ends in themselves - but the means to an end. If those systems do not bring is to our Widget - then they are 'dead'.
He said that we should ask ourselves: 'Am I attached to my things, my ideas, [are they] closed? Or am I open to...surprises? Am I at a standstill or am I on a journey?'
A good decision is one that advances us towards where we want to be.
Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry - a journey open to 'surprises' - that advances us towards where we want to be.
The challenge for organisations - whether the Roman Catholic Church or a factory - and those of us leading them - Pope Francis or a line manager - or the rest of us in the pews or in open plan cubicles - is to create and maintain a framework for decision making that does not tether us but frees us to be surprised.
That takes courage.
And leaders who are brave.
If You Name It - You Own It.
'If you name it you own it. And they don't want to own it.'
- Anonymous US official and the lack of a code name for operations against the Islamic State.
Few workers can name their Widget - the thing they're being paid to make.
Most managers find it difficult to state their subordinates' Widget - the thing that they supposedly need made to make their own Widget.
It's either because they don't know what their Widget is, or they have disowned it.
How extraordinary. What's everyone doing if not making their Widget?
They're talking about making - something.
Without Widget Clarity - it's meetings all the way down.
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.
The Truth Is Worth a Pause.
'It was submitted by Essendon and Mr Hird that Ms Andruska was non-responsive, evasive and partisan. It was observed, as was the fact, that there were long pauses between the questioning of Ms Andruska and her responses.
'I do not consider these criticisms, to the extent they impact on her veracity, can be sustained. Ms Andruska was a truthful witness. Ms Andruska was careful in all her responses, and in my view wanted to consider properly each question, seeking to provide a truthful answer....The cross-examination traversed many areas of detail relating to various meetings and decisions made in the course of the investigation. I would have expected Ms Andruska to be careful in responding to the interrogation made of her on these matters, as indeed she was.'
- Justice John Middleton, Federal Court Judge
Step 1 - Step Back.
Don't mistake decisiveness for good decision making.
Successfully Failing Your Way.
'If you're going to fail - fail my way.'
- Ron Barassi, six time AFL Premiership player, four time Premiership coach.
A good decision is one that advances you towards where you want to be.
At home - choose where you want to be and how you get there and by when.
At work - your boss pays you to advance her towards where she wants to be.
Where she wants to be.
It's her Widget she's paying you to make.
Her Widget.
You don't get to tell her what her Widget is. That's her boss's job.
You don't get to tell her she's making her Widget wrongly. Again - her boss.
Your boss is paying you money to do whatever she has employed you to do to contribute towards making her Widget to her boss's satisfaction.
You're paid to tell her anything about your widget that is relevant to her Widget.
Once you've done that and you're sure she's understood you - then shut up.
That's why the boss is always right. Always.
Yours is probably one of many widgets that the boss is coordinating to make her Widget. She needs you to make it to her specs so that the other widgets will fit.
She's entitled to ignore your opinion on your widget because it's ultimately her Widget.
Your boss can lead you to failure if she wishes.
It's her Widget.
Let her fail her way.