Decisiveness is Dangerous
President Kennedy’s leadership during the Cuban Missile Crisis is a lesson in how a leader serves by creating and holding the space for others’ decisions - those made contemporaneously with the leader’s, or subsequent.
By stretching out the time until making each decision, the leader not only models good decision making and gives permission for subordinate decision makers to do likewise, the leader gifts them the space to identify and transcend their emotions. The good decision maker leads others through their Step 1: Step Back.
Decision makers from the President down to the nuclear missile silo and bomber commanders had different emotions on Hour 1, Day One of the 13 Days of the Cuban Missile Crisis than on Hour 2, or Day 2, or Day 13.
Similarly for the equivalent Soviet decision makers. The President led them, too.
It takes enormous courage to resist the seduction of ‘decisiveness’ and the anxious pleas of those demanding a decision so they can make theirs. And blame you if something goes wrong.
It takes wisdom to keep your hands off the six gun in your holster of power.
Leadership is hard.
The Wisdom of My Own Failures
"Looking back on my career, my favorite managers allowed me to own decisions, even if they disagreed with me. They couldn't do this for every decision — some were just too expensive or difficult to reverse. But if they spotted an opportunity for me to own a decision, they let me run with it. This would often be preceded by spirited debate, where they challenged my assumptions and forced me to think through various outcomes. Then they gave me the space to decide and room to fail and learn (and to sometimes surprise them).
Jan Chong, VP of Engineering at Tally.
A leader creates the Space.
Positional power is only to install guard rails to contain any failure.
Leadership is the courage to empower others to question the space you created for them - hoping they may reject it and create their own.
A courage earned through the wisdom of my own failures.
Good Leadership Is Good Decision Making
There is simply no escape from this - and every leader should have tattooed on the inside of their eyelids the words ‘Leaders make decisions’ so they see them when they wake each morning.
-Alastair Campbell, former Director of Communications for Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Good leadership is good decision making.
How To Never Fail
Failure can only be measured when you know what it is you are trying to achieve.
- Anonymous
The Iranians test fired intercontinental missiles. They rose only as high as 120 miles before exploding.
The US observers gloated at the repeated malfunctions. At the Iranian failures.
Until someone realised 120 miles was the perfect height for a nuclear missile exploded above the United States to trigger an electromagnetic pulse that would destroy electronics on the ground and plunge the country into chaos.
This appears to be a cautionary tale about assuming what ‘success’ is for someone else. If that explanation advances you towards your widget - then happy to help.
My widget is to understand busywork in organisations where three out of four people are disengaged.
The Iranian missile story advances me towards my widget.
The advantage of not declaring our Widget - what we’re aiming for - even to ourselves is:
We can never fail.
Because once I identify what I’m trying to achieve -
I may fail. I probably will fail. Publicly- if I’ve declared it what it is I’m trying to achieve.
Best not to do so. Better to do busywork. And never fail.
To draw my last breath - comforted by knowing that not only did I have a Widget - I built it.
I Never Failed.
Not having a Widget - is Your Widget.
Decision Space
“Here’s a couple of rules of the road here that we’re going to follow. One is you never, ever, ever box in a president of the United States. You always give him decision space.”
General Mark A Milley, the chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff
Space is a Good Decision Maker’s Holy Place.
It is to be tended and nurtured and respected. It is a gift. A blessing.
Space is a clearing inviting inspiration, creativity, novelty, surprise. Freedom.
Like any cunning foe, the enemy of space is cloaked in virtue.
Decisiveness.
‘She was so decisive. She knew what decision to make and she made it and moved to the next decision.’
‘He was indecisive. He couldn’t make a decision.’
Decisiveness robs the decision maker and those they affect of the gifts of Space. Its haste desecrates the holy milliseconds, seconds, minutes, or hours in which another voice may speak to us of a better way.
Like General Milley, those of us who serve decision makers must gift them Decision Space. We must be grown up enough to surrender our childish desire for decisiveness. We must be disciplined and wise enough to support our boss to utter the words that might be the greatest compliment a superior can give a subordinate:
‘I don’t know.’
Shape the Course of Their Future Conduct
The … purpose of imposing a duty on a … decision-maker to give reasons for a decision ... is remedial. [It] has the purpose of enabling a person affected by the decision to be supplied with findings and … the evidence or other material on which those findings were based so that the person can shape the course of [their] future conduct ...
Justice Rares, Federal Court of Australia
The Parliament- (aka ‘us’) - acknowledges that when we impose a decision on a person, we take away some of their decision-making agency in service of an agreed greater good.
We erect a detour sign along their line of advance towards where they want to be: aka their Widget.
The law recognises that imposing our will on the decision making freedom of another is not a natural state of affairs.
It is an ill we must ‘remedy’. The greater damage to the person is not that they feel disempowered. No. It is that they will learn to prefer the feeling of being told what to do, over the anxiety that comes from freedom to decide.
The result? The average workplace.
The law says we must serve the person made ill by our decision by assisting them to reset their course.
We explain what our decision was, why we made it, and the information we relied upon to do so. Like monks, we shelter and nourish the pilgrim, and hand them the redrawn map so they are free to resume their journey of decision making.
And thus, we enable the person to resume shaping the course of their future conduct.
We must give ourselves the benefit the same wisdom and self-care in our decision making journey.
We will make decisions that are thwarted by external forces. Our Widget is our reason for the decision. The five steps to a good decision contain the information we relied upon to make it. Reflecting on both is our remedy.
And the starting point for shaping the course of our future conduct.
Feel the Back of Your Chair
A friend who trains Air Traffic Controllers explained how he walks behind his trainees as they practise making decisions that stop aircraft from bumping into each other and falling from the sky
A high tempo, high stakes job.
If one of his students is leaning forward and staring into their screen, he places his hand on their shoulder and gently eases them back into their chair.
Another friend with a Masters in Alternative Dispute Resolution explained how she trained mediators to help people in conflict move beyond their dispute. She said it’s important for a mediator to remain engaged with, but removed from the emotions of the parties.
‘I tell my students ‘Feel the back of your chair’.
Step One of The Five Steps to Good Decision Making: Step Back.
Liberation
The trick of civilisation lies in recognising the moment when a rule ceases to liberate and begins to govern.
A good policy liberates.
A good policy is a decision made in advance.
A good policy has the five steps to a good decision baked in. Use the policy and you’ll make a good decision.
A good policy marks out the boundary of your decision making authority and discretion and silences the distracting white noise of your circle of concern .
Policies have such a bad rap from organisations who draft, apply, and interpret them to rule rather than liberate. They use language such as ‘comply’, ‘enforce’, ‘audit’, ‘breach’. Entire departments are dedicated to compliance and audit.
We’re transformed back to school. Someone telling us what to do. A comforting certainty.
We aid and abet the compliance mindset and fall into line behind the rules because we choose the wrong liberator. We choose the anxiety liberator over the freedom one. This also gives us someone else to blame for our predicament.
It takes courage to choose liberation. To be an adult.
To liberate ourselves so we can seek to liberate others.
The Missing Piece.
Almost every biography - book or article - of a famous person reads like this:
I was not famous.
I did some good/bad/clever/stupid/wrong/right things.
Met some good/bad/clever/stupid/wrong/right people.
Some other interesting stuff happened.
Now I'm famous.
Here is my Philosophy on Life for you to learn what I know.
Wait a minute. Flick back a few lines. Pages. Chapters.
What was the thing that you did or that was done to you that isn't done by or to the rest of us that took you from a couple of human readers of your blog (Hello and thanks you two!) to the international speaking circuit?
Sure, we get that you worked hard and never stopped chasing your dream, passion, goal, vision, obsession, love - despite the poverty, failure, sexual confusion, parental alienation and addictions.
But one minute you were an unemployed, broke teenager with a learning disability, banging a drum kit in a mate's garage next to the sheets and pillow you sleep on, and the next you're Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac.
The main reason what happened is never spelled out is because it's often Luck.
The same thing with leadership and management advice.
It's all 'You're doing it wrong and you know it.'
Then it's 'You can do better'.
Which means 'Have a Vision', 'Be Bold', 'Develop Your Culture', 'Innovate', 'Hire Good People', 'Nurture High Performing Teams', 'Be Disruptive', 'Trust Your People', 'Delegate', 'Work Hard', 'Mastery', 'Agility', 'Ten Ways To..'.
Wait a minute. Tell me how I...
'You want it broken down more? Sure. 'Wake up earlier'. 'Have meetings on Mondays not Fridays'. 'Do Performance Reviews.' 'Remember people's names'. 'First in, last out.' 'Have fun.' 'Give feedback'. 'Eat last.' 'Celebrate success.' 'Learn from failure.' 'Be accountable.'
Still missing something?
Everything is the result of decisions.
Decisions are the building blocks of everything that happens. Including Luck.
Good decision making is the material that makes up the blocks upon which mighty things are built.
Good decision making is the missing element in every story worth telling.
No-one will tell you this.
Now the two of you know.
The Decision Making Spiral.
A good decision is one that advance us towards where we want to be.
The decision making process isn't a straight line.
It's a circle. More a spiral.
The end of our decision process is to take us back to where we started; albeit with the benefit of the information gathered, we have a more advanced understanding of our position in relation to where we want to be - our Widget.
(Which is really a better understanding of ourselves.)
Think of a coil - like as in a spring. Follow the coil one full rotation until it's back on the same plane as where you started - although further along the horizontal axis. That's the decision making path of inquiry.
Each decision builds on the one before it and is connected to it - as it will be to the ones after it.
When we circumvent the decision making process by using positional power, or instinct, or guesswork to get directly to where we want to be, we don't lay a coil of reasoning and learning behind us that we can build upon to spring us into our next decision. We just arrive at a place, with no understanding of how we got there except that we are the boss, or high enough up HR's wire diagram, or play tennis with someone who is.
No path for anyone else to follow us, therefore no possibility of Leadership. Or of Learning.
Our decision making process is like the rifling in a gun barrel; the Five Steps are the grooves that guide the bullet into a spin on its axis as it propels along the barrel of thought, thus stabilising its flight and therefore its accuracy towards its target.
Our Widget.
The Leader as Orchestra Conductor.
'The conductor, often referred to as the orchestra 'leader', does not play a musical instrument, nor sing an aria; He does not recite lines; he appears in no chorus or ballet. He does none of those things. Indeed, for want of the talents they require, he could not do any of those things. Yet he renders an indispensible service. He draws out the gifts of others; he coordinates, motivates, inspires; quietly and almost unnoticed, he makes the entire production happen. Such a picture of leadership should perhaps find an analogue in the administrative decision making processes..'
- Robert T. Kennedy 'Shared Responsibility in Ecclesial Decision Making'
The leader as conductor of an orchestra is an excellent metaphor that has been explored in many books.
James Jeffery, a journalist, recently wrote about his experience in conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Read these extracts and recognise in a conductor, the qualities of the authentic Leader in any field.
'When you’re conducting...part of what you’re having to do is process everything in as close to real time as you possibly can. You have to both process the now, what’s going on right when you’ve heard it; and the things that are constantly getting further in the past, making decisions whether there are things that need to be referred to, whether it’s something you can do the next time, whether it’s something you need to stop on, whether there’s a particular player or section that has a problem and if they need your attention visually while the music is still going on. And then you’re constantly aware of what is coming so you can be prepared to make the gestures that allow that music to happen.
'So there’s this almost field theory way of looking at time, where you don’t just exist in the now, you exist in the present, past and future simultaneously.
'It’s about creating an environment in which everybody feels not only that they can give their best but that they can take chances. Great things don’t happen without people really trying to take chances.
'Part of your job is to make it so that the musicians have the best chance collectively to engage with the music and to get better as a group as (well as) they possibly can — so you’re also kind of involved in cognitive psychology. What is it that allows people to do their best, how do they perceive information and take it in, what amount can you give things, what’s the best way to handle the group dynamic at any particular moment?
'What [orchestra members] respond to most is trust. I’ll be honest, none of [the orchestra members] trusted you at all. It had nothing to do with the way you were moving your arms, it was the terror in your eyes, the ‘Oh my God, what am I doing here?”....While we were instinctively able to follow your arm movements, we knew instinctively that you were not to be trusted.
'If you look back in history at the sort of figures conductors cut, you look at Bernstein, you look at (Herbert) von Karajan, walking around with cashmere jackets draped over their shoulders, walking in as if they owned, well, they did own the place. The way they walk into the rehearsal affects the way we start to play.
'The hardest thing for a conductor to do is to have the conviction of their beliefs, to tell 100 people in front of them, who know the music inside out, that their way is correct. That is why they have such thick skin, and why they’re paid so much more money, because they have to believe it, make us believe it, and make the audience believe it. And that’s what they’re there for, otherwise it’s a committee.
'In a sense, the complexities of conducting equal the complexities of communication between people....There’s a certain point at which you become like Wittgenstein — ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’ At the same time, Laurie Anderson quite correctly in her response to that says, ‘But can you point at it?’ So there is a sense in which you try to bring out the ineffable, but you’re not able to do it, so you just point at it.'
Be Yourself.
“Take that [rhythm] you’ve got in your foot and put it into your arm,” the maestro urges.'
- Sydney Symphony Orchestra Conductor David Robertson's advice to journalist and first time conductor, James Jeffrey
'I was telling my students about your little leadership habit,' Flight Lieutenant Waugh said when we caught up over lunch in the RAAF Base Point Cook Officers Mess. Kathy had been my Directing Staff or 'DS' during my Officer Training a few months earlier. I was intrigued. What did I, a newly-minted Air Force Officer, have to teach anyone about leadership?
'I told them about how you wrote down in your calendar when your Corporal said that she was having her hair done over the weekend so that you could remember to compliment her on it when you saw her on Monday.'
Something didn't feel right about that then, and it still doesn't.
The management books are full of 'fake it 'til you make it' advice to would-be leaders. Tips and tricks to look like you care about your people so that they will be motivated to work harder for you. I think I had been joking with Kathy about my calendar reminder, but I've been a bad boss so I've faked sincerity in other ways.
New and aspiring bosses get caught in the no man's land between remembering what they wished their boss had done for them, and not knowing how, or having the self-confidence, to do it for their workers. So we read the leadership books and do a bit of management by walking around, noting of people's children's names, and try to look interested during long winded responses to our rote 'How was your weekend?' questions.
It's hard.
As one of my bosses, the Abbot of New Norcia used to say to me:
Be yourself.
Take that steady rhythm of humanity in your heart, the wounds from so many bad bosses, your own fear that you recognise in our faces, the optimism and belief in the fundamental goodness in us all - including yourself - and put it into your baton.
Then lead us in playing each of our instruments in your original composition.
Have A Say.
'Whatever you do in life, policy, politics, commodities, consumer stuff, make sure the voter understands there's some opportunity at least – whether they take it on – for them to have a say. 'Cause otherwise, what's the point?'
- Mark Textor, Political Campaign and Corporate Strategist
Step 5 of the Five Steps to a Good Decision is to Give a Hearing.
It's an opportunity for the 'voter' - the person who will be affected by your decision - to have a say.
Here's how you do it:
'Based upon the following information I'm considering making X decision that may cause Y to you. You are invited to give me any reasons why I should not make this decision. I will take your reasons into account when deciding what to do.'
It's more than a token gesture.
It allows the decision maker to hear what should be the most compelling argument against their decision by the person who has the most to lose. That person has the greatest incentive to present every possible counter-argument.
Their response is one of the best antidotes to groupthink.
If a decision maker is reluctant to show his decision making reasoning to a person who may suffer loss as a result of it, then it calls into question how confident he is of his argument.
A sign that it won't be a good decision.
We Don't Need Another Leader.
Everyone is under pressure to be leading.
It's because we're not doing our job. We're not going where our boss wants us to go. We're not making her Widget to her satisfaction.
Our bosses don't know what to do about us not doing our jobs (ie they don't know how to do their jobs).
So the bosses train or recruit people whose job is to get us to do our jobs - ie do the boss's job for them.
We call those people 'Leaders', and call them getting us to do our jobs 'Leadership', because 'Leader' is sexier than 'Person who Gets Us To Do Our Jobs Because the Boss Can't.'
Then many of the 'leaders' don't do their jobs to the boss's satisfaction.
So they need someone to get them to do their jobs - ie a 'leader'.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Throw in some expensive 'Accountability' (compliance) to measure whether the leaders are effective or to find evidence to sack them.
Eventually, faster than we can chant 'We're totally committed to the highest standards of...'
We're working in a bureaucracy.
We don't need more Leaders.
We just need to do our jobs the way our boss wants them done.
Doing our jobs means making good decisions.
Most of us (including our bosses) don't know how to make good decisions.
It's a skill we need to learn and practise.
Transfer the Leadership Training budget into Good Decision Making Training.
Good decisions advance us towards where our boss wants us to be.
If, during our advance, we turn around and one person is following us:
Leader.
A Call for an Inquiry.
There's always Investigations Into What Went Wrong.
There should be Investigations Into What Went Right.
De-stigmatise 'Investigations' into simply a neutral process of gathering information.
Step 3: Assess the Information.
Six Gun in the Holster of Power.
'I understand executive decision making - which is making tough calls in tough times with high stakes for which you're prepared to be held accountable.'
- Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard, responding to a question as to why she may nominate for election as President of the United States.
Ms Fiorina declares that the quality that makes her the best person to lead the most powerful nation in the world is her understanding of decision making.
Her statement reveals why decision making is so poorly understood and executed and therefore why so many people are unhappy in their work.
Ms Fiorina is confident that good decision making is such a rare and precious quality that her possession of it makes her stand out from an already élite class - presidential candidates.
She comfortably assumes that the 240 million American voters will nod in agreement.
'Goodness! She knows about decision making! Let's make her President!'
Not just any sort of decision making - executive decision making. Apparently that's a superior form of decision making than the decision making on the factory floor.
You and I could never dream to understand executive decision making so best stand back and clutch our pearls as Ms Fiorina and all the bosses and other clever people take charge and command our timid souls what to do.
This cult of the hero leader - the tough decision maker making tough calls in tough times with high stakes - is at the heart of so much organisational failure and personal dissatisfaction.
It reinforces the myth that decision making is the six gun in the holster of Power.
Instead of the Five Steps we each can take towards where we want to be.
Luck is What Happens.
'Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.'
- Seneca
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
According to Mr Seneca, the fifth variable will favour us at the moment of decision.
If we've prepared with the Five Steps.
The Decision Making Momentum.
'Very often when we're asked to approve the use of targeted lethal force, it can only be in a matter of minutes. And so there's a lot of momentum to that. So to say no is like stepping in front of a 90-car freight train.'
- Jeh Johnson, Homeland Security Secretary and former Pentagon General Counsel
There can be a lot of momentum behind a issue requiring a decision.
President Kennedy learned this during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It took enormous courage for him to absorb the momentum of opinion from the military and many of his advisers that he should start a nuclear war or risk losing one.
Few decision makers will confront these consequences.
There is a momentum of expectations acting upon all decision making.
The momentum of the experts and advisers that have contributed information and opinions towards their preferred decision and want to be right.
The momentum of the people who will be affected by the decision and who want to feel safe.
The momentum of those whose needs would be met by a decision in their favour and who want to be affirmed.
The momentum of the mythology of the hero leader/decision maker who is decisive and bold and thrives on urgency.
The momentum of the reputations of those who appointed the decision maker and can't be let down.
The momentum of the way it has always been done.
The momentum of a parent who didn't give enough hugs.
The momentum of the fear of being wrong.
The Five Steps to a good decision serve as shock absorbers that dissipate momentum and transfer its energy into outward visible inquiry, rather than internal, hidden friction.
Nothing Can Be Loved at Speed.
'Nothing can be loved at speed.'
If our decision making is to be an act of love towards those affected (Yes, I'm looking at you Christians and fellow Golden Rule followers), then we need to slow down.
Avoid being seduced by the myth of decisiveness.
Avoid the myth of the Hero Leader.
Loving others beings with loving ourselves.
Step 1: Step Back.
Verify Range to Target.
'Verify our range to target. One ping only.'
- Captain Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) The Hunt for Red October
Our decisions are like a submarine's sonar pings.
They announce our position in the world - to the world - and the world pings back its position in relation to us - and we learn more about our position in the world - and we learn more about the world.
About where we are.
About our range to target. (Our Widget.)
About any course adjustments we need to make to get there.
The accuracy of the information learned from a sonar ping relies upon the constant of the speed of sound through water.
The accuracy of the information learned from a decision relies upon the constant of the Five Steps to a Good Decision.
The more good decision making pings we make - the more we learn about our Widget, the world, and ourselves.