The Receptionist is a Leader.
''Decision'...or... 'Choice'?' Jonathon asked me.
'Same thing,' I said.
I was wrong.
''Choice' is selecting one of at least two options,' I later corrected myself to Jonathon. ''Decision' is the product of a good decision making process.'
I was happier with this distinction.
Until I read a 1980 article Shared Responsibility in Ecclesial Decision-Making by Robert T. Kennedy, a Canon Lawyer.
He calls decision-makers 'choice makers'.
The decision/choice maker chooses between two or more options presented by what Kennedy calls 'idea people' - creative people who who have contributed their ideas towards a decision making process that arrives at the choices that are presented to the decision maker.
This view of decision making dramatically and constructively shifts deep and unsatisfying assumptions about power that are the source of much of the tension in workplaces.
As Kennedy says:
‘To decide well, there is need for many, diverse talents. The rarity of finding all such talents in a single individual gives rise to the need for participation by many people. Influence and power, so far from being concentrated solely in the moment of choice, are diffused throughout all stages of the decision-making process. Responsibility for a decision does not rest solely with the choice-makers.’
'If the choice makers are choosing between two or more options presented by idea people – who really holds the power?'
‘Choice-makers are often held captive (for better or worse) by idea people.'
Kennedy's analysis flattens the hierarchy in organisations and communities between those who have authority to make decisions and the rest.
It also adds to our understanding of the role of the leader.
Kennedy says that what an organisation most needs from its leaders is 'facilitation of the decision making process'. The leader is responsible for identifying, drawing forward and coordinating the 'necessary gifts' among the team in service of the Widget.
Indeed, Kennedy says that 'A leader need not be a choice-maker, or data or idea person, or implementor or evaluator. The service of a leader is quite different and requires quite different talents.’
The Receptionist is a leader.
Kennedy also addresses the majority of disengaged workers who haunt our workplaces:
‘Irresponsible refusal to participate, moreover, is in its own way a form of sharing responsibility for a decision. We are responsible not only for what we do but also for what we refuse to do; withholding the contribution of our talent, therefore, creates responsibility in us for decisions poorly made because of our failure to participate.’
If we engage with the decision maker by applying our talents to the creation of choices that are presented to her, we are co-responsible for the decision - even if the 'choice' was not one that we presented. By adding our ideas to the options before the decision-maker, we have influenced her choice by allowing her to compare and contrast alternatives. She was only able to not choose our option because she had it as a comparison.
Kennedy's 'choice maker' analysis is also a powerful reminder to decision-makers and leaders that good decision making demands authentic relationships with the 'idea people' so that their gifts may be discerned and recruited to nourish the decision making process.
It's Not Working.
John is a manager who tosses a coin to decide half his decisions, only implements about two out of ten effectively anyway, and bases the majority on practices that are proven to fail.
John should be terminated.
Yet John is the average manager.
45% of managers use instinct to make decisions.
Only 15% of organisations can make and implement important decisions effectively.
Two of every three business decisions are based on failure prone practices.
95% of a typical workforce does not understand the organisation’s strategy.
90% of organisations fail to execute on strategies.
86% of executive teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy.
76% of Australian workers are disengaged from their jobs.
Australian bosses lose an average of three months per year productivity from each worker due to disengagement.
Australia ranks second last on productivity growth – ahead of Botswana.
Is the above average worker profile any wonder when John is her boss?
There is evidence that many organisations' priorities are not defined by productivity, customer or community service, share value or sales growth. They are defined by self-interest.
And yet...
Prescriptive decision making strategies [ie The Five Steps] in workplaces were more successful no matter what the urgency, importance, resource level, initial support, decision-maker level, industry sector or type of decision.
Want to be a 'high performing team'?
Teach and apply good decision making.
Broomsticks with Feedback.
'Being right is occasionally useful in bars but it's very useless in life. It just doesn't open avenues for learning.
[Hospitals] engage in serious errors. The nature of Lourdes is that they don't get better at miracles because they're not learning from their mistakes.
400 years ago everyone believed that broomsticks could fly. Then these views of the world bifurcate and we have broomsticks that still don't fly terribly well and Jumbos that fly rather well. Jumbo Jets are just broomsticks with feedback.'
A Leader's decisions create errors that teach and invite us (educate - educare - 'to draw out') to overtake her, and make different errors for others to learn from and overtake us.
Contempt for the mistakes of others and fear of making our own are why true Leaders are rare.
Words Matter.
'Rhetoric . . . is not a set of techniques to impress (oratory, eloquence), nor a means of manipulating the will and emotions of others (sophistry, advertising), but rather a way of liberating the freedom of others by showing them the truth in a form they can understand.’
- Stratford Caldecott
Ian and I were 14 year olds in our Air Force cadets Flight Drill Squad that competed in the inaugural Squadron Drill Competition.
Our 17 year old Cadet Flight Sergeant didn't know how to execute the drill movements in the sequence that we were to be judged on. Correct drill was whatever his drill instructor had taught him. So he carried on the tradition and made them up.
We came second.
The next year Ian convinced the Flight Commander to allow him to lead the Squad despite just being promoted to Cadet Corporal. 'I promise you we will win, Sir,' the 15 year old told our forty-something Flight Commander. 'I've got a plan.'
Ian found a forgotten copy of the AAP 5135.001 Manual of Drill and Ceremonial, cracked open the spine and studied every drill movement until he knew each command, cadence, timing, foot height, toe angle and the two-three pauses in between by rote.
He then made us copies to study and learn for ourselves.
Our squad of teenagers spent hours and hours practising responding to Ian's commands.
We spent hours and hours practising without his commands.
We won the next two years' competitions. Second the third year. And won the year after that.
(The year we ran second it was to a team led by an ex-cadet from our squad who Ian had trained.)
Cadets Ian had led or who had been trained by ones he'd trained led winning squads from other Flights over the next few years.
Ian taught me to go to primary sources of information.
I took for granted that good leaders are teachers who aren't afraid of their students knowing as much or more than they do.
I haven't had a need to execute a right form from the halt, to the halt at all since then.
I sometimes wonder if should have practised piano for all those hours.
We're the They.
'No us and them. Just us.'
- Fr Greg Boyle
It sounded like a good idea.
She scheduled dozens of meetings to personally present the draft new workplace agreement to every one of the hundreds of staff members.
'We think that these new conditions are reasonable,' she repeated to each audience. 'But the Union disagrees. They won't negotiate with us. They are holding up the process.'
'We think that the increase in pay is generous,' she declared. 'But the Union wants more money and we can't afford it and so They are stalling your pay rises.'
The Union represented the staff in the agreement negotiations. One in five of the people in each audience was a Union member.
We were the They.
The manager calls a meeting to get advice.
'We need to confidentially access some staff computer and mobile phone logs to find evidence of misconduct.'
The IT Manager says 'We can do it and They won't know'. The Lawyer says 'We have legal authority and They don't need to consent.' The HR Adviser says 'We have contracts and They have agreed We have that power.' The Compliance Manager says 'We'll record that They did not need to consent.' The Line Manager says 'Good idea and They should know that We monitor them.' The Personal Assistant takes Minutes about what We will do to They. We nod that We agree with what needs to be done about They.
We vacate our chairs without making eye contact with a different team of advisers coming to meet with the manager and he closes his Open Door door.
We return to our respective desks, and resume being They.
Advisers come and go from the manager's office closing the Open Door door.
Our spouses, work and social friends all wonder why we've changed to Gmail and have a new personal phone number and use it to text during business hours instead of email and don't update our Facebook and can't book the children's concert tickets online at 9am before they're sold out and don't come to Friday drinks with the boss as much and haven't re-nominated for the social committee and take a few more sick days and have asked the boss from our last job to be a referee.
The manager pays consultants to help him improve teamwork and morale.
'We'll run off-site trust games. They will love them. We'll put blindfolds on them and They will fall backwards and We'll catch them.'
From Habits and Fears.
'The decision we will make....is a choice between....the habits and fears of the past, and the demands and opportunities of the future.'
- Gough Whitlam, Australian Prime Minister, 13 November 1972
'The Whitlam program as laid out in the 1972 election platform consisted three objectives: to promote equality, to involve the people of Australia in the decision-making processes of our land, and to liberate the talents and uplift the horizons of the Australian people.
This program is as fresh as it was when first conceived. It scarcely could be better articulated today.
Who would not say the vitality of our democracy is a proper mission of government and should not be renewed and invigorated.
Who can say that liberating the talents and uplifting the horizons of Australians is not a worthy charter for national leadership?'
- Noel Pearson, Eulogy for Gough Whitlam
'The essence of leadership is being aware of your fear, and seeing it in the people you wish to lead'
Seth Godin
'Am I any good? That's what I'd like to know and all I need to know.'
- Robert Frost, Four Times Pulitzer Prize winning Poet Laureate.
The first job of a Leader is to Create the Space.
Then invite us to raise our fearful eyes from white knuckles gripping our habits and towards our horizon.
And to remind us:
'You are good enough.'
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.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Trust: The Best Way to Manage.
The High Court ruled last week that there is no implied term of mutual trust and confidence in Australian employment contracts.
What is trust?
Trust is the basic social glue.
It influences good decision making.
Yet just like good decision making, no-one teaches the theory and practice of Trust.
It's seen as an emotional, moral quality.
Is 'Trust' in MBA courses? Is it in Staff Induction days? Are there Trust policies?
Time to remedy our lack of knowledge about Trust.
Reinhard K. Sprenger wrote 'Trust: The Best Way to Manage.' Here are the highlights to help begin incorporating an understanding of the influence Trust has in good decision making.
It is no longer possible for trust to develop out of familiarity.
Trust increases the scope for nonconformity (the lateral thinking so highly regarded everywhere), individuality and originality. People can be who they are. Without trust, motivation doesn't last.
Many studies have attempted to establish a correlation between internal company factors and corporate results. But only one variable has been substantiated as having a significant correlation: the nature of staff members' relationships with immediate managers. If the relationship is good, productivity increases; if it is bad, it declines. Within a relationship that someone experiences as positive, the most important feature is trust.
it has often been said that trust is the basis for management. Allowing oneself to be managed means trusting someone.
Modern trust is based on people's having chosen to work together and trust each other. This trust is reflective and calculating. This trust is neither blind nor naïve. This trust is a decision.
'The best managers trust their people from the first day. On the basis of an inner conviction they trust them to do the best and to deliver good work. Only the cynical managers think staff have to trust first.'
- Carolyn Dyer, Gallup Senior Analyst
Trust is a potential solution for problems involving risk. Accordingly, trust presupposes a risk situation. Risk comes first. Then comes trust (or mistrust).
I am prepared to relinquish control of another person because I expect them to be competent, and to act with integrity and goodwill.
It is only sensible that trust is always limited.
The reason that we often undervalue trust is that we aren't aware of it until it has been broken. Then we are usually astonished, sometimes even shocked.
Either/or: this is one of the greatest obstacles on the path to recognising trust as the elixir of life in the business world. What's missing is a sensible intermediate position. But if I want to talk about trust, build trust and make a decision about trust, I have to be aware of it. Only then does it become an option I can choose.
Only conscious trust is real trust: the conviction that the other person won't betray me, although I know they could. I shall leave it to you to judge whether "hope" or" confidence" might be better terms for this. What's important to me is that the diminution of trust is a contribution for its very existence.
Everything we value as trust can be obtained only within a framework of knowledge and in conditions of relative security. Because knowledge is limited and total security isn't possible, we must complement both with trust. Knowledge and security don't necessarily amount to mistrust; they are the basis to which trust can relate. This means that knowledge is the primary idea that must be in place before we can speak about trust.
What people tend to forget is that learning can't take place if the outcome isn't monitored.
Control doesn't necessarily undermine trust. Control can actually safeguard trust. The higher the degree of trust, the more important the safeguarding function of control. It then acquires an informative, supporting and enhancing character. But if on the other hand trust is displaced beyond a certain threshold, the experience becomes one of mistrust. The higher the degree of mistrust, the more limiting control becomes, thereby diminishing trust still further.
The optimum ratio between trust and control is not constant, but will fluctuate according to the situation and the occasion.
Contracts can provide a platform on which a trusting collaboration can be built. Take an employment contract. If it regulates the essentials and confines itself to the minimum, it will never see the light of day again once an employee has started work. But without it, many would never start at all. It represents a minimum guarantee for mutually acceptable behaviour.
Trust isn't possible without control, nor control without trust. It is the proportion that is important.
In its extreme form, trust paradoxically destroys the basis for its own future. A certain measure of selective mistrust is required in order to give worth to trust and to ensure its continued existence.
Trust is like an advance: it can be cashed in later. Trust is always on trial.
Trust still needs to be justified by results now and again if it is to be continually renewed. That's what sets it apart from the rule of obedience or loyalty to the alliance that still dominates many businesses today. If your interests are upheld by the other person's actions in the expected matter your trust remains intact.
Trust brings risk with it, but so does mistrust. There is no business without risk.
When we are in a position to evaluate the relative trustworthiness of someone, we are dealing with a proportion. And it is in this proportion that we deed to make a decision on.
Trust must remain constructive; it mustn't make you blind and mustn't ever be absolute. The same goes for mistrust.
Modern trust therefore involves a decision in favour of a combination of trust and mistrust, of control and the relinquishing of control.
Trust is often weighty, moralistic, admonishing. The question 'Don't you trust me?' makes you eager to say you do. Trust is often viewed as an unalloyed substance like honey, spreading well-being when ever it flows. But this picture is skewed. Trust isn't intrinsically good.
In some cases, defensive managers misuse trust as a label. They don't pay attention, don't act, don't manage, and excuse their passivity by claiming trust in their employees. But trust can never mean retreat and passivity.
Trust is neither good nor bad. There is no need to evaluate it at all. It can be explained more or less fully as a product of a rational collaboration with no moral component.
Someone who says 'trust me' is effectively declaring trust to be a debt the other person owes them. The subtext is: 'if you don't trust me, there's something wrong with you'. In fact when people are told 'trust me' they often feel ashamed or guilty if they don't manage to trust.
A manager needs to remain aware of his role in the company and position in the hierarchy at all times – and that rules out genuineness. This applies especially critical situations that staff experience as threatening.
I want to be quite clear about the fact that my policy is to use trust to influence behaviour. This would only represent a moral problem if I were to conceal a manipulative intention.
A trusting relationship is characterised by the expectation that the dependency involved in the relationship will not be exploited by one of the parties.
It can be highly advantageous for people to confirm trust if they value the space to be themselves, manage themselves and be respected. And the benefits are great too if they coincide with the maximum benefit for the manager: if both are pursuing interests in the same direction.
If you nevertheless trust: you will consciously choose uncertainty, loss of control and the possibility of disappointment. You give the employee a task without knowing whether he will prove worthy of your trust; you don't know whether he will use his freedom of action to your detriment. So placing trust initially involves risk for you as a manager. This risky advance investment can't be justified in an absolute sense, but it is extremely reasonable, as we shall see.
Vulnerability starts trust.
Active trust is accepted vulnerability.
Trust brings commitment. It creates obligation. It binds. It unleashes a deep current from which we can barely escape. And the greater the risky advance investment, the greater the binding effect.
The important thing is that giving trust is a gift that creates obligations is precisely because it is difficult or impossible to demand.
It has now become clear that two things that appeared mutually exclusive actually belong together: trust and control. Trust controls the behaviour of another person. It is wrong to play trust and control off against each other. The opposite applies: trust is control.
If you as a manager place your fate in the hands of your staff, if you relinquish your power and ability to act arbitrarily, if you allow staff to take responsibility for things that will affect your success, then the binding effect of trust can develop. Are your staff aware that you will be damaged if they don't do the job? It isn't enough to say 'I need your contribution'; your staff must be aware that you have a problem if they don't do their job. If a member of staff is justified in feeling that their contribution hardly counts, has little effect and isn't indispensable, no trust can develop.
Trust people to have their own quality standards for themselves and their work. Get rid of time monitoring systems.
Take customer orientation seriously. Support unorthodox decisions made by the staff.
Check first, then trust.
Put yourself to the test with your staff: give them the opportunity to vote you out. This is the highest level of vulnerability possible at work. It is the ultimate level of trust. Trust becomes possible when you make yourself dependent on the agreement and performance of your staff.
You get the trust mechanism started when you yourself give trust first by allowing yourself to be vulnerable. This is the most important condition. You are vulnerable when an abuse of trust by the other person would be hugely detrimental to you.
When human beings are treated as responsible people, they behave as such. We know from research that we are strongly influenced by other people's opinion of us. The other person is, or can become, a person of integrity if we give them the opportunity to confirm trust.
If you distrust, you never have the chance to encounter a trustworthy person.
The message 'I trust you' is more effective in bringing about a desired outcome than 'trust me' is. It invests something before it expects anything; it gives first and then receives.
Trust is neither a prerequisite nor a result. It is both. It oscillates between prerequisite and confirmation. Trust runs in a circular pattern. So does mistrust.
Is sad mentality of caution: it is in hierarchies where the emphasis has shifted dramatically from responsibility for tasks to responsibility in terms of accountability that there is constant dissatisfaction with conditions in the company. Everywhere, the question 'Where were you when that happened?' creates the mixture of uncertainty and fear that turns trust into a constraint. Trust is sacrificed when people decide to take a safety measure to deal with a risk that may actually have been small.
When you withdraw trust from an employee, they don't have to balance the relationship account by contributing something in return. They no longer experience an inner pressure pushing them to restore the balance. They no longer have a bad conscience about cheating on you because you don't consider them trustworthy anyway.
Trust isn't a moral action. It doesn't necessarily consist in believing in the other person's good intentions. It can be assigned to the rational sphere. It consists of a rational policy of maximising benefit, and intelligence that calculates advantage. You can decide to trust.
Power doesn't come from above. It exists in the relationship of one individual to another in so far as the individual has freedom to act.
You are not really a member of the group until you have earned the trust of others. And trust develops when you place the objectives of the group above your own ego. The group always comes first.
What brings us together, what induces us to act considerately, is common problems.
Problems that allow us to collaborate must fulfill at least two conditions. First, they must be important problems that affect our business life directly or indirectly. Second, they must be self-evident problems; it's no good if people aren't aware of them unless they are given a briefing, or unless they have a university education.
Trust is rational against a background of common problems
Collective identity arises when management succeeds in presenting problems as collective problems.
Only those two trust themselves can trust others. People can be capable of trust only if they have relatively secure, prolonged contact with their own sense of reliability.
Being faithful to agreements is the core of trust.
What principle do managers follow? If they seek success it will be trust. If they are out to avoid failure, it will be mistrust.
Trust is inconceivable without taking a risk; it therefore requires courage. It is a bet on the future; it is located between knowing and not knowing. Under some circumstances, it entails taking risks that endanger life. But it also involves important chances.
A breach of trust occurs only if the other person fails to adhere to agreements in which expectations are balanced.
Trust is the rule, mistrust as the exception, not vice versa.
The gain from confirmed trust remains invisible and isn't even detected, whereas the loss from abused trust is visible and experienced directly.
The rules of second chance ethics are:
1. Always offer to cooperate first.
2. If your offer is returned, be prepared to trust in the long term; if not then punish immediately and mercilessly.
3. Offer the trust again after a certain period
Under no circumstances should you turn a blind eye to a breach of trust. Don't allow someone to break your implicit trust. If you don't act, you are an accomplice, as good as saying 'it's it okay to abuse trust'.
Tit for tat also applies in the event of you doing something wrong. Don't cover it up, but face up to it fairly and squarely. 'My behaviour wasn't acceptable and that matters to me. Will you give me another chance?' Scarcely anyone would deny you.
Trust isn't a matter of models and Mission statements. The acid test is the concrete behaviour of the person fixing the values in cases of conflict.
If you work with someone, you should trust them. If you don't trust them, you should do better not to work with them.
The decision to trust is then the result of rational calculation mixed with emotional processes.