The Widget is at the Centre of the Picture.
'After the course, students also told fewer personal narratives and stories and instead worked to interpret the images using only the evidence before them. In physical examinations, it's important for clinicians to remove this type of bias..'
- Craig Klugman, Bioethicist and Medical Anthropologist
In an attempt to develop their observation skills, health care professionals were taught an art appreciation course modelled on one taught to children.
Participants were shown art works and asked:
- What do you see?
- What do you see that makes you think that?
- What more do you see?
The students who took the course discussed emotion less and made more medical observations, using more clinical language. They also noticed more about how their patients presented.
Step 4 of the Five Steps to Good Decision Making is Check for Bias.
We can't Assess the Information (Step 3) before us if we don't see it.
We can't share it with others and seek their advice if we don't have an objective language that doesn't contaminate the information with our personal anecdotes and opinions.
We can't assess its relevance to our Widget if we're distracted by a bias.
Good Decision Making requires us to have the technical skills and self-awareness to remove ourselves from the frame and put the Widget at the centre of the picture.
Good Decision Making in one word: Look.
The President Gives a Lesson on the Five Steps.
'Today the United States, together with our allies and partners, has reached a historic understanding with Iran which, if fully implemented, will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. As President and Commander in Chief I have no greater responsibility than the security of the American people. And I am convinced that if this framework leads to a final comprehensive deal it will make our country, our allies, and our world safer.'
- President Barack Obama announcing the Iran Nuclear Agreement.
President Obama begins a twenty minute explanation of a major decision by reminding his bosses - the American people - and the rest of the world, of his Widget:
'The security of the American people.'
He is saying 'There are many Widgets that may not be served by my decision and therefore as many critics of it. So when you're evaluating my decision and its criticisms, remember my Widget that you elected me to serve.'
He proceeds to explain to the American people and the world - his good decision making.
He's the most powerful person on earth - and yet unlike many lesser bosses - he doesn't rely on his positional power to get what he wants done.
He shows his working out. 'You may not agree with my decision,' he is saying, 'but at least you can see how I arrived at it.'
Most importantly the President is saying:
'I am going to share with you all the information that I have. I trust you - everyone from the Wall Street Banker to the farmer in Oregon - to be smart enough to see how I reasoned my way to this decision - as if you had been sitting alongside me at every table along the negotiating pathway to my decision.' That's a profound statement of both self-confidence and trust.
President Obama addresses four of the Five Steps to a Good Decision.
(We shouldn't expect any decision maker - particularly the President of the United States - to reveal her Step 1. To do so would risk undermining the purpose of the First Step: to allow the decision maker to purge themselves of emotions that may detract from her ability to address the decision on its merits. 'I ranted to the First Lady about how stubborn the Iranian leaders were and how political and pig-headed Congress is, and then had a couple of stiff drinks before watching a couple of episodes of West Wing followed by ten laps of the White House pool and several covert cigarettes in the Rose Garden while the Secret Service kept a look out. Then I went back to work making my decision.')
Step 2: Define the Issue. (Also the first job of a leader: Define reality.)
'By the time I took office, Iran was operating thousands of centrifuges, which can produce the materials for a nuclear bomb. And Iran was concealing a covert nuclear facility.'
In other words - 'My Widget, the security of the American people - wasn't being made.'
Step 3: Assess the Information.
'Because of our diplomatic efforts, the world stood with us, and we were joined at the negotiating table by the world's major powers: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China as well as the European Union.'
In other words 'I won't bore you with all the technical details in this speech, however other nations have looked at the same information that we did - and come to the same conclusions.'
Step 4: Check for Bias.
'In [my] conversations [with Congress], I will underscore that the issues at stake here are bigger than politics. These are matters of war and peace. And they should be evaluated based on the facts, and what is ultimately best for the American people and for our national security.'
In other words 'I'm not doing this for my own ego or glory or to ensure my place in history. What better way to prove this than for me to argue my case before Congress and teach Congress the same lesson of objectivity.' (We teach best what we most need to learn. If we want to ensure we're not being biased, teach someone else how to rid themselves of bias.)
Step 5: Give a Hearing.
'Given the importance of this issue, I have instructed my negotiators to fully brief Congress and the American people on the substance the deal. And I welcome a robust debate in the weeks and months to come.'
In other words 'Let me know if you've got anything to add to my thinking and the many decisions that still need to be made.'
President Obama began by defining reality. He concludes as all good leaders do - by saying Thank You.
'And most of all, on behalf of our nation, I want to express my thanks to our tireless — and I mean tireless — Secretary of State John Kerry and our entire negotiating team. They have worked so hard to make this progress. They represent the best tradition of American diplomacy.'
Naming Orders the Chaos.
'Here the human being is using a word to order the chaos. Because that's what naming does. It orders the chaos. And that's what creation is.'
- Archbishop Mark Coleridge, explaining the Genesis Creation Narrative.
Name your Widget.
Naming our Widget is the beginning of ordering the chaos - of creating.
The mess of information that crowds our brains demanding equal attention and blurring our focus.
The noise of competing priorities that distracts us.
The right versus right decisions that perplex us.
The problems that demand our solutions.
The impulsive reactions.
Name the Widget.
What decision will serve our Widget?
What decision will serve our boss's Widget?
What decision will draw us closer to it?
What decision will advance us towards our Widget?
What information can I ignore?
Good Decision Making continues our ordering of the chaos that began when we named our Widget.
Regardless of what happens next - we served our Widget.
A Complicated Web of Events and Conditions.
The New Yorker published an article describing how prosecutors of a high profile defendant in New York made a wrong decision about a key piece of evidence. Instead of firing the lawyers responsible as expected, the District Attorney decided to inquire into the organisational errors that had led to the mistake.
She knew the lawyers were skilled professionals. She knew that they had not intended to make the error. 'What factors, she wondered, had caused competent people to make bad choices?'
The DA introduced a procedure well known to the health care and air transport industries where objective searches for causes of error take precedence over blame and personal liability.
What emerged was a 'complicated web of events and conditions'. It was 'a classic organisational error: a series of small slip-ups that cascaded into an important mistake'.
The DA concluded that 'even in a busy office like hers, she needed to create a step in which everyone could pause during certain complex or high-profile cases and have someone else take a fresh look at the evidence.'
Mistakes are treated as inevitable in decision making as successes and thus there needs to be the capacity for dealing with, and learning from them in a blame-free environment.
Another study of errors in prosecutions culminated in several jurisdictions agreeing to each doing a systems analysis of a high-profile criminal justice failure.
'In every case, the horrendous legal accident turned out to have multiple causes embedded in the legal system. There was no single bad actor. '
One case convened a group of more than thirty people representing every agency that had made contact with a repeat offender. It was discovered that 'in almost every incident, the people who made decisions about the boy had not seen his larger pattern of violent behavior because they did not have access to his complete records, or did not see them.'
In another involving a police officer who had committed multiple acts of professional misconduct, the review was able to 'identify seemingly minor perturbations—poor performance evaluations, excessive medical leaves, discourtesy complaints—as warning signs for early intervention.'
One participant in the studies said that 'the idea is to create a culture of learning from error—to look at what went wrong, what factored in the cases, and how to change the system so that doesn’t keep happening.'
As an expert adviser from air transport safety stated:
'I stressed the fact that, although it’s perfectly reasonable to be angry at a staff member who makes a mistake, you’re deluding yourself if you think simply firing someone gets to the underlying cause of the error in the first place.'
Good Decision Making in One Word
'I just did not — I didn't see it. I didn't see how it could work...And I just didn't think it was a good idea. I think I was kind of — I had blinders on. I think I was limited in that respect. And when I got on the phone with Don, I asked him what his idea was. And he said, "Writing is a form of memory, and perhaps it would be helpful for these people to have access to that form of memory as well." And that really struck me because I never thought about writing that way.'
- Dr Alan Dienstag, Psychologist specialising in Alzheimer’s Disease
Good decision making in one word:
Look.
The Job of the Manager.
'Knowledge workers own the means of production.'
'Engagement' is a buzz word. (Probably because 87% of workers are disengaged.)
Knowledge workers have knowledge.
The job of your manager is to use her organisational and people knowledge to engage your knowledge in the service of making her Widget.
'Engagement' happens when your manager positions your knowledge such that it meshes with Harry's knowledge. And Sophie's knowledge. And Maḥmūd's knowledge. And with Francine's team's knowledge...
...Picture a combination of gears...
Decision Making Force Multipliers.
'The only real power a manager has is to call a meeting.'
- Anonymous
A decision maker needs at least one of five things if her decision is to achieve its intended result:
- Time
- Positional Power
- Expertise
- Information
- Luck
She improves the likelihood of success by increasing any of them.
She can compensate for deficiencies in any of them by increasing one of the others.
Find more time, earn a promotion, learn more skills, attend more meetings...carry more good luck charms.
Or she could become a manager.
A manager should only use her positional power to gather the right people around her and to harness their time, expertise and access to information as force multipliers of her own capacities - or deficiencies - in each.
Or she could engage a consultant to use his time and rely on her positional power to gather information and expertise, and present her with the results.
The decisions she makes are the product of her hard work and skill in selecting, supporting - and getting out of the way of - those people as they do their work on her behalf. Phew. That's the labour of management.
Given the unique skills, trust and self-confidence this approach demands of a manager, any wonder that so many rely solely on their positional power - and the exclusive access it gives them to information - as the basis for their decision making.
The Decision Black Box Data Recorder.
A decision crashes to earth shortly after execution.
Shredded, mangled and smouldering plans and assumptions, and splintered egos lie strewn across the impact area, that is soon roped off with yellow and black tape marked with 'MISTAKE: DO NOT CROSS.'
Expectations - customers, clients, staff, connecting decision-makers - wait in vain to greet the decision at its scheduled outcome, then demand answers as to What Went Wrong and Who To Blame.
Connecting decisions are delayed across the decision making network, each spreading its own ripples of disruption.
Similar models of decisions are postponed or cancelled for fear that they share a fatal defect.
News of the failure affirms the procrastinators, cynics and equivocators' Fear of Trying. They celebrate by smugly busying themselves drafting agenda items for another meeting to discuss meeting formats.
What happened?
A naive inquirer ducks under the 'MISTAKE' tape and picks her way past the debris of opinions, conjecture, conspiracies, myths, recriminations, and folklore scattered for as far as rumour and fear can exaggerate.
She's searching for the Decision Making Black Box.
Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards where you want to be.
The Process of Inquiry - the Five Steps to a Good Decision - is the 'Black Box' Data Flight Recorder equivalent in decision making.
In the aftermath of a decision, the decision maker can review each of the Five Steps that led to the decision, identify any element that may have contributed to the decision not having the expected outcome, and learn from it.
Did Step 1 allow enough time for the decision maker to purge herself of emotions that may have contaminated her decision?
Did Step 2 accurately identify what the issue was - usually by finding a specific source of power to make the decision - or was the decision maker distracted by 'topics' or personality politics?
Did Step 3 gather, verify and inquire into enough relevant information?
Did Step 4 diligently and soberly seek out any biases that may have influenced the decision maker away from acting in the best interests of her Widget?
Did Step 5 identify all the people who might be affected by the decision and allow them to be heard on what the decision should be?
If the decision maker has the Five Steps she can review and learn from about why the decision didn't achieve the outcome she hoped for, then that knowledge can be applied to the next decision to make it more effective.
If, on the other hand, the decision is made like 45% of decisions are - by gut instinct or positional power, then there is no process of inquiry - no 'black box' - to learn from.
It should be routine for decision makers to review the decision making process to find out what can be learned from them and done differently next time, even when the decision did achieve the intended outcome.
It's Good Decision Making - a process that can reviewed and improved, and therefore advance us towards where we want to be.
When We Ask.
'Life is not a straight line. Life is a zig-zag.'
- Maira Kalman
I was 13 and Widgetless.
I glanced at the Daily Bulletin pinned askew to our classroom noticeboard as I was leaving for lunch. I stopped to read the anonymous poem:
When we ask:
'Why am I?'
'What am I to become and be?'
'What is the meaning of my life?'
Then we are exploring
The region of our experience
Where God may be found.
I re-read those lines once, and have never forgotten them.
It was okay to not know my Widget. Indeed, it was a good thing.
Not knowing - and knowing it - were the beginning of Knowing.
Next - were questions.
A deliberate process of inquiry that would lead me to knowing.
And Knowing.
The Widget.
Pointing to the Gods.
'You're pointing at the gods but you can't really see the gods so you create a statue. Same sort of thing in Physics - you can't really see that far so you create a model. Then you fall in love with the model and it becomes a form of idolatry. You end up worshipping the model as opposed to the thing you were trying to understand...so you need to be an iconoclast and take those down and re-animate your direct experience, your direct epiphanies and insights into that world of pattern. And yet by taking that turn you also connect back into lived experience in a way that to me opens up the moral and ethical dimensions of life once again.'
- Arthur Zajonc, Physicist
We name our Widget. The thing that we want to build. The place we want to be. It's our Purpose. Our reason for coming to work. The thing that keeps us going.
At this point of every Widget explanation - most people shift in their seats. Fold their arms. Drop their chins into their chests. Inspect their shoes.
They don't like the Widget.
I never anticipated the Widget to provoke such discomfort verging on anger. Surely it's self-evident to say that everything that we do should be directed at achieving an outcome?
If our Personal Widget is a little ambiguous, at least our Work Widget should be straightforward. After all, our boss is paying us money to make it for her.
And yet - no.
People challenge the idea of a Work Widget. Some find it offensive - yet none has been able to explain to me why. I want someone to do so because I might be wrong. I'm most often wrong in the things that I think are self-evident - like our boss pays us money to make her Widget.
Perhaps it's because the Widget sounds like one of Arthur Zajonc's gods. An inferior imitation of what is really important in life. Even the name - 'Widget' - demeans our labour and therefore our lives?
'They' are right. Widget worship is demeaning.
This Widget thing that we define? This True North on our decision making compass? This foundation of good decision making?
Our job is to try to destroy it.
With each good decision - we gamble our Widget. With each good decision - we invite criticism of our Widget. With each good decision - we risk discovering that our Widget is not what we thought it was. With each good decision - we draw closer to our Widget and therefore diminish it.
This thing we were recruited to do for our boss and that sounded so hard and beyond us? With each good decision becomes less so. This life goal that we thought was so important to us? School? Uni? Job? Promotion? Relationship? We reach and overtake them and they fade into our rear vision mirror.
Now we understand why people would prefer to make instinctive, gut-driven, positional power based, 'decisive' decisions than apply the discipline of a deliberate process of inquiry. There's no Widget at stake.
The Widget critics are actually Widget early adopters. They are only able to criticise the Widget idea because - it's a Widget. By arguing for what is limiting about the Widget; what they don't like about it, they need to think about what they do seek. They need to think about...their Widget.
By setting up our Widget icon we begin its destruction with each good decision.
To be replaced by another Widget. A new project, role, job, career...love.
Like the 100km drive through the night where you only ever see the 30m of road ahead that's illuminated by the headlights.
Building on each good decision until ultimately - we transcend the icon and stand before the god.
It's all about the Widget.
Knowledge Workers Wear Badges.
Terry was a fast jet pilot who was my neighbour in the Officers Mess.
He was still in bed when I left for my office in the morning and I'd find him reclined on my couch in my room watching my TV when I'd return after work. It wasn't his fault. His Squadron flew Macchis and they spent a lot of time grounded with mechanical problems.
'What's the definition of an optimist?' I'd say within his earshot at the Mess bar. 'A 79 Squadron pilot in his flying suit.'
Terry's response was to take me flying, let me have a go for a bit, then turn off the cockpit air conditioning so hot air blew at my oxygen mask encased face, then do high G force aerobatics until I threw up.
One evening I'd been downstairs in the Mess Bar and returned to get something from my room. Terry jumped up when I walked in.
'Mate! Who are the chicky babes I saw you with you in the Mess?'
I explained that they were Uni students who were members of the Air Force Undergraduate Scheme, and as a graduate of the Scheme, I had been asked to host their orientation visit to the Base.
'Well, I'd better demonstrate my Officer Qualities, put on my flying suit, and go downstairs and introduce myself,' Terry said. After he'd changed, I watched him stride down the corridor, stop, look down and pat the empty velcro patches on his puffed out chest, glance and slap at each blank velcro square on both shoulders of his flying suit, then do an about turn.
'Badges! Not enough squadron badges! I need to put my badges on! Chicks dig flying suits with badges!'
Knowledge workers wear badges designed to impress.
'Let's scrub in on stakeholder engagement and designate a high performing team to drill down and exploit the leverage at our next all-hands meeting and get buy in on being fully committed to this project, going forward.'
Sewn into our writing and speech.
'To better position our team to compete in a highly fragmented and competitive market, we'll reach out and engage a thought leader to partner with us to think outside the box and transition to new markets.'
Declaring our organisational status.
'There's been a paradigm shift that has impacted the level playing field and re-tooled the key performance indicators for our deliverables so we need to get some skin in the game and shoe horn our people into places at the table.'
Someone successful adorns their language with badges. We want to be seen as successful. We clothe our writing and speech in them like faded army greatcoats bought from a surplus store.
Words matter.
Shortly before I transferred to the Air Force Reserve, someone decided to introduce a badge showing that a person had met their fitness and weapons handling standards. Yet if an Air Force member didn't pass those annual tests, they would be discharged. Therefore everyone wore the badge. It effectively said: 'I'm in the Air Force.' It was meaningless. It had the status of a button.
Same with this language. It's a recycled tacky plastic badge. It presents my credentials in a one way conversation. It betrays that I'm not confident in the substance of what I have to offer you. Terry didn't wear his badges when he was doing his job with his Squadron. He was judged on how he made his Widget of perfecting the strafing of ground targets. He deployed his badges to impress civilians who didn't know any better.
While we're at it, let's purge the valedictory 'Warmly's, 'Sincerely's, 'Faithfully's and other standardised, one-size-fits all regardless of the text that went before it - endings to emails. (I've often received an angry tirade in an email from a member of clergy expressing contempt for me that has closed with a variation of 'Christ's Blessings and Peace Be Upon You'.)
Stand out. Make the effort to use plain language. Step out from behind the mass produced patches. Delight us. Show us you trust us with - you.
Become who you are.
Try it.
Here's some templates to begin with that can be easily tailored for different contexts:
'Let's meet with Tom and Harry and get their help to decide what we want to do.'
'Our client is unhappy and we need to fix that.'
'I'd like to speak with you about the idea you had.'
'You were right. I was wrong. I'm sorry.'
'You did a good job.'
'Thank you.'
Words matter.
Monks Do What Monks Do.
'We monks should do what monks do. Here.'
- Abbot Placid Spearritt, Sixth Abbot of New Norcia
New Norcia needed 12 million dollars to maintain its heritage buildings.
One of my jobs was to help the monks to fund it.
The businessman was offering us lots of money in return for the use of the New Norcia brand to market his product.
'I'll need to take it to the brethren of course,' the Abbot said after I'd briefed him. 'I should warn you that I'll be voting against it. The proposal doesn't fit with our European, Aboriginal or Monastic heritage. I also need to be mindful not to distract the brethren away from their prayers. There are plenty of worthy tourist icons that could do with the money. As for us, we monks should do what monks do. Here.'
The Abbot of a Benedictine Monastery, the Air Officer Commanding Western Australia, the Chief of the Defence Force; each had clarity of Purpose - their Widget - to guide them when faced with a right-versus-right decision.
Monks seek God - therefore they pray. Yet they interrupt their prayer to find Him in each visitor to their monastery.
The Air Officer Commanding WA seeks to develop positive relationships with the local civilian community to ensure its support of his jets screaming over its homes - therefore he allows families onto his Air Force Base to cool off in the taxpayer funded swimming pool built to to train military jet pilots to survive a ditching into the ocean.
The Chief of the Defence Force seeks to defend Australia and her interests - therefore he deploys forces beyond our shores.
Teachers should teach.
Doctors should heal.
Bakers should bake.
Leaders of the above - principals, medical directors, bakery owners - should create the space and hire managers to keep it free of distractions from teaching or healing or baking.
Decision makers and their advisers faced with right versus right decisions should ask themselves: What's my Widget? Which decision will build it?
Good decision making begins with Widget clarity. Knowing where we want to be helps us to focus our time and attention, and that of those who support us, on making decisions that get us there.
The Abbot did approve another proposal - the New Norcia Abbey Ale. 'Monks have always brewed beer,' he said.
Decision Laundering.
'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.
- The Gospel of Matthew
'If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.'
The Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco decided to install sprinklers timed to soak and therefore deter homeless people from sleeping in the entranceways to its Cathedral.
The Archdiocese apologised in an unsigned media release.
It explained that the sprinklers were the solution to the 'problem' of 'needles, faces and other dangerous items' that were left in the 'hidden doorways' to the Cathedral.
The idea came from the use of sprinklers in 'the Financial District' as a 'safety, security and cleanliness' measure.
The dangerous items left in the hidden doorways were a risk to 'students and elderly people' who regularly passed the locations 'on their way to school and mass every day.'
We've all attended the equivalent kind of The Meeting where it was decided to install the sprinklers. We know it goes something like this:
Chairperson: 'Let the Minutes show that the Archdiocese Interfaith Council recorded yet another successful year of helping many thousands of people through food, housing, shelter programs for people at risk including homeless mothers and families, and in countless other ways. Well done and God bless to all concerned. Now moving on to Item 19 on the Agenda: 'Dangerous Items Left in Cathedral Hidden Doorways'. We've read Bob's excellent Facilities Management Report on the problem. Bob?'
Bob: 'Thank you Archbishop. My staff spend hours each week cleaning up shi... sorry Archbishop - human excrement - needles, and refuse from the hidden doorways around the Cathedral. It's time consuming. It distracts them from tending to the gardens. There's risk a needle stick injury.'
Harry: 'We have duty of care.'
Bob: 'Yes! Duty of care.'
Frank: 'To them and the children and the elderly coming to mass.'
Joe: 'We had this problem when I was with the bank. We installed sprinklers that were on timers to spray the areas where people gathered. It worked. And quite cheap too. I know someone who did the job. I can get a quote. They're Catholic so they'll do us a good price.'
Someone needed to apply the Widget Thinking brakes.
What's our Widget, Archbishop? Eternal Life? And how do we make that again? Parable of the Good Samaritan any help? Didn't Jesus say something about if we love our neighbour we will find Eternal Life? Isn't that also the origin of our secular 'duty of care'?
The interrupter (I think they're called a Leader) needs the courage to persevere beyond the inward and outward eye-rolls around the table, and Frank's response that will begin with an irritated 'That's all very well, but...' and end with all eyes glaring at her.
It's the right versus right decisions that are the tough ones. Choosing between the well being of the homeless and the safety of children and the elderly. Choosing between People Are Our Most Important Asset and cashflow says we need to make some of them redundant. Choosing between openness and transparency (I think that used to be called 'honesty') and the risk both brings to The Brand.
St Benedict, whose writings influenced European governance, said to begin all work with a prayer. Remind ourselves of what we're here to do. What's our Widget? Thanks for that idea Joe - and while we appreciate your wisdom with our budget, a bank's Widget is different to the Church's Widget.
All organisations are guilty of what the decision makers in the Archdiocese of San Francisco did.
All organisations engage in Decision Laundering.
They exploit the distraction of a 'secondary' problem with a soft and attractive outer moral layer - the risk to children and the elderly mass goers - to harness the analytical skills of good workers away from the 'primary' hard core failure of difficult decision making - the plight of the homeless and drug addicted. The diligent workers fix the secondary 'problem' and feel good about themselves and the organisation. The knotty primary problem remains.
Another more common version of Decision Laundering is to engage workers' intellect and eagerness to problem solve for their boss - in fixing the fallout from the boss's bad primary decision. 'Hey Larry - we need your expertise to wordsmith a media release that puts this sprinkler business into context by honouring all the hard work that our volunteers do in our homeless shelters. We don't want to jeopardise the donations we need to keep them operating.'
The bad primary decision is laundered into a good one by the workers employing Good Decision Making in the secondary decision. The workers will loyally (and rightly) defend their secondary decision making and thus the organisation - allowing their bosses and their flawed primary decision to desert under the cover of the smokescreen of the secondary decision's integrity. Imagine Larry on the phone to the San Francisco Chronicle: 'We'd like to invite you to do an exclusive story to raise awareness of the plight of women in our refuge and the grave consequences for them if we don't make our fundraising target this year.' Good work, Larry. What sprinklers?
Good workers' decision making can be like the water efficiently and effectively cascading down the sides of St Mary's Cathedral like clockwork - cleansing it of the risk to health and safety - and with it, the evidence of the unfulfilled Widget - the path to Eternal Life.
The prime job of a leader is to remind the organisation to become more like the thing it says it wants to be. To say to the Archbishop - we need to put the poor ahead of mass attendance. To say to the CEO - our brand will survive our apology. To say to the boss - I disagree and here's why. Then to stick around to help deal with the aftermath of that dissent. This is very, very hard. Which is why real Leaders are rare.
It took two years after their installation and an investigative journalist's exposure for the Archdiocese to acknowledge its decision. It will be redeemed if what it learned advances the faithful towards Eternal Life. Meanwhile, the homeless people just used umbrellas and raincoats.
God must despair. His followers fouling the entrance to His Kingdom. Filthy with our hypocrisy and egos.
He may yet deploy sprinklers.
Purpose and Principle Clearly Understood.
'Purpose and principle, clearly understood and articulated, and commonly shared, are the genetic code of any healthy organisation. To the degree that you hold purpose and principles in common among you, you can dispense with command and control. People will know how to behave in accordance with them, and they'll do it in thousands of unimaginable, creative ways. The organisation will become a vital, living set of beliefs.'
- Dee Hock CEO Emeritus, Visa International
First, get the Widget right.
Then watch your:
Lawyers go home to play with their children.
Managers fold codes of conduct into origami swans.
Workers create.
How Knot to Lead*.
333 BC: Alexander the Great slices through the Gordian knot with his sword, demonstrating how difficult problems can be solved with bold strokes.
332 BC: Decisive Leadership: How to Solve Difficult Problems Through the Application of Power released through Nile Publishing on Papyrus, Parchment, Spoken Word and Tablet.
331BC: First recorded bullying complaint.
330 BC: First evidence of complainant beheading.
329 BC: Date of first entombment of an Army of Human Resource Consultants alongside their Pharaoh.
*may contain traces of historical inaccuracies.
The Widget Can Be Made to Measure.
Is the Widget label not to your liking?
A bit tight around the crotch area, Sir?
A tad impersonal on the shoulders, Madam?
Its fabric chafing against your sensitivities?
Off the Rack label not fitting enough for you?
Prefer hand made organic labels?
Perhaps you'd feel more comfortable exchanging the Widget Label for a bespoke design tailored for you - versatile for both Day Wear and After Five?
Some other Labels from the Widget Line to choose from:
Aim
Goal
Outcome
Objective
Mission
Vision
Purpose
Destiny
Happiness
Success? You'd like to try on Success instead? Okay, take off Widget and try on Success.
'A good decision is one that advances you towards Success.'
'Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards Success.'
Fabulous.
What Does Excellence Look Like?
My friend Ian coined the Deperdussin Theory.
The Deperdussin was the first aircraft to serve in the Australian Flying Corps, the predecessor to the Royal Australian Air Force. The Theory is that if a lost tribe looked up through the forest canopy and saw a Deperdussin flying overhead (max speed 210 km/h), they would declare it was the most remarkable and awe inspiring magic flying machine. It would become the benchmark against which they would measure everything else they saw or did.
Only because they'd never seen an F-111 (max speed 2665 km/h).
What does 'Excellence' look like?
It looks like the last thing that we thought was excellent.
So boss you'd better hope that it was an F-111 and not a Deperdussin.
Or better still - don't assume we know what you mean by Excellent. Instead, show us your Excellent. Or whatever other Adjective you want us to be.
(I think that's called 'Leadership'.)
And boss - keep innovating your Excellence because the RAAF retired the F-111 from service 18 months ago.
(Even good theories need updating.)
Lead Us to The Widget.
'It has been an over-engineered, over-proceduralised process whereby workers spend more and more time driving desks than actually visiting and seeing children.
[W]e have an over-engineered system which has created its own paradox whereby in trying to seek to be compliant with all of the instructions and requirements and procedures and policies that workers are inadvertently now spending more time engaging in that element of the work and less time in actually building a relationship, which takes time, it is a time-consuming principle of our practice, and unless we start inverting that pyramid or inverting that, then we will continue to struggle to engage our workers in the things that they intuitively know they need to do and the voices of the child in that space are loud and clear. The voices in the theory are loud and clear, but we have created an architecture which I believe prevents workers from engaging in that in a purposeful and meaningful way.'
- Tony Kemp, Deputy Secretary of Tasmania's Human Services Department
In his evidence to the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Mr Kemp cited the 'well established theory' that staff should spend eighty percent of their time with children and twenty percent to administration. He said that this had been reversed in recent years.
Mr Kemp's Department is not unique. Australian organisations spend $250 Billion a year on compliance - evenly split between government and the private sector.
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organisation there will be two kinds of people:
- Those who are devoted to the goals of the organisation. Teachers in a school, nurses in a hospital, soldiers in an Army.
- Those who are dedicated to the organisation itself. Administrators in an education system, hospital management, generals.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second kind will gain and keep control of the organisation. It will write the rules, and control the first kind's career advancement.
The demoralising inevitability that Pournelle's Iron Law means the organisation ends up being its own Widget - its dedicated staff conquering the devoted ones - has an antidote.
The second 'dedicated' kind must make its decisions in service of the same Widget as the first 'devoted' group is making.
The second kind should start every meeting, every decision making process with a prayer:
'Lead us to the Widget, and deliver us from our egos.
Amen'.
Everything You Do Sends a Message.
'All the riches will not buy a man. But promise him a ribbon and he will offer his life.'
- An Unknown General.
General Dwight Eisenhower was a career soldier who was responsible for the planning and execution of the D Day landings and subsequent invasions of France and Germany. He led the armed forces that liberated Nazi occupied territory in World War II and rescued Western Civilisation. He was NATO Supreme Commander and after retiring from the Army he served two terms as President of the United States.
President Eisenhower made his farewell speech at the height of the Cold War as Soviet and US nuclear missiles sat in their silos waiting to destroy the earth. His decades in uniform immersed in Army tribalism and identity did not blind him to warning of the threat to civil liberties of 'the military-industrial complex'. He used the word 'I' eighteen times.
President Eisenhower concluded with:
'We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.'
General Eisenhower was awarded ten US and decorations and chose to wear only a handful of them. He is buried in uniform, with his wife of 53 years, wearing only three.
General David Petraeus commanded all coalition forces in Iraq. He retired from the Army as the United States was struggling to contain guerrillas in Afghanistan.
His final speech was twice as long as General Eisenhower's. He affirmed the 'need to maintain the full-spectrum [military] capability that we have developed'. General Petraeus shouted 'Hoo-ah!' three times and said 'I' 79 times. He concluded with:
'May God bless each of you, our great country, and most importantly our men and women in uniform and their families.'
Fifteen months after his retirement speech, General Petraeus resigned as Director of the CIA after an alleged extra-marital affair with his biographer. He subsequently pleaded guilty to a charge of mishandling classified information that he had given to her.
General Petraeus wore over 30 ribbons and badges.