The Decision Making Table
Increasing the level of women’s leadership, in particular at the decision-making table, is what leads to empowerment.
- Marle Festa, CEO, Chief Executive Women
All leadership is about good decision making.
Observing others’ decision making - good and bad - is a valuable apprenticeship.
Do they step back? Do they define the issue in relationship to the widget? Do they assess the information? Do they give others’ affected by the decision a hearing? Do they check for bias?
Hard to do all or any of that in a meeting.
That’s why decisions - good ones - are not made in meetings.
That’s okay. Meetings - the ones held around tables - are Performances.
That long boardroom table? A catwalk for the power participants to preen and flex and strut and sashay - and display their plumage to remind us who is in charge: them. (Which is why they invite representatives of the powerless: as witnesses to go forth with stories of the powerful.) The longer the table the more impressive the meeting.
The payoff for the powerless messengers is they get to assert their decision making authority with ‘I was at the meeting…’. And plan for their time on the catwalk.
An invitation to the Decision Making Table ritual is certainly symbolic.
In the meantime, in the Internet Age, you and I can make good decisions anywhere.
It’s just geography.
Feedback
The 747 is a witch’s broom with a better feedback loop.
- David Walsh (I think)
Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances us towards where we want to be.
Decisions provide feedback on where we are compared to where we want to be.
Like a submarine’s sonar ping.
If We Stay Here We Die
I am a verb.
Every action movie has a pivotal scene when the crouching hero turns to the gaggle of people cowering frozen behind them and says:
‘If we stay here, we die.’
A good decision is one that advances you towards where you want to be. It moves the plot of your life along.
Each decision you make is a verb - an action word.
It forces you to break the cover of the nouns and bound into the open shouting:
‘Here I am. This is what I think and believe. Come and get me!’
So expect them to. You know you’re advancing if you’re drawing fire. So don’t be surprised or complain.
No matter what occurs, no matter how it turns out, you will know:
I did this!
It didn’t happen to me.
I made it happen!
Nobody Wants to be Managed
Nobody wants to be ‘managed’.
Think about it. It’s demeaning.
‘Management’ relies upon us accepting we need managing - even though if we were directly given the option: ‘Do you need managing?’ I’m guessing most would say ‘No’.
That's why most organisations do people poorly.
The woman who wakes at 5.30 to do yoga before preparing her children’s breakfasts and finalising the costume for book week and proofreading her assignment for her part-time Masters then dropping her children at school.
Steps into her workplace and suddenly needs Managing.
The man who is the treasurer of his local church council, coaches and umpires sport during the week and on the weekend, buried one parent and cares for the other, and renovated two homes in his spare time and backpacked through Europe for a year at 19.
Steps into his workplace and must ask permission to leave early and has his name checked off a list of attendees at the monthly staff meeting.
It’s just as bad for the Managers.
‘Managing’ people is the workplace equivalent of the residential parent in a split family. Telling grown ups to eat your vegies. Do your homework. Tidy your room. Brush your teeth and go to bed.
Which is why most organisations outsource tough management decisions to a special department or departments so the boss can be the every-second-weekend parent. The one who takes his staff to the movies and then McDonald's and then the circus - then hands them over to that other department to wave its finger at them and smack them when they're really naughty.
Most call it Human Resources. Think about that title too for a minute because words matter.
What should we call the person directing and assessing our work with the power to hire and fire?
Perhaps ‘Harriet’, or ‘Jill’, or ‘Mike’, or ‘Tom.’
Or ‘boss’.
A Routine Task with No Immediate Results
If you are conducting a mining operation you are flying alone always at night, quite often in appalling weather. You may be flying over the sea for the entirety of your trip. There’s nothing to see. You drop your mines. What are you going to see? There’s no explosion. There’s no immediate damage. You come home again. You don’t know what the results of that operation are going to be. When you have a debrief from a bombing op, obviously you can say we dropped our bombs. We saw some massive explosions. Everywhere was on fire. Job done. We came home. When you’re doing a mining operation you haven’t got that sort of satisfaction if you like of seeing immediate results. So it’s dark. It’s a thankless task. It’s dangerous. The crews don’t really like doing it. But because it’s been given this image of being a much easier job than bombing, they tend not to hold that much store by it. That’s one of the reasons why in years to come it doesn’t get talked about so much. It’s considered to be a routine task with no immediate results. The mine might explode. It might sink a ship in twelve months time, two years time, who knows? Even though there were lots of results from mining from very early on, these results are not communicated to the crews. Morale is quite low. There are heavy losses. They don’t know what’s been achieved.
Between 638 and 864 ships were sunk by Royal Air Force aerial laid mines during World War II. German coastal trade and troop transports were strangled. Damaged ships took up space in dockyards and used scarce raw materials and maintenance personnel during their repairs.
Only ten U Boats were sunk by aerial laid mines. But mines forced the German Navy to spread out their U Boat training facilities and disrupted the preparation of submarine crews.
Air laid mines forced Germany to expend resources in mine sweeping and in coastal defences. At the beginning of the War in 1939, Germany had 22 mine sweepers. By April 1943 they’ve had to expand this to 400.
By the end of the War in 1945 an estimated 40% of German naval warfare is focussed on mine sweeping. Germany also has to divert anti-aircraft artillery away from defending other infrastructure to try and repel the bombers laying the mines.
Marine insurance rates for merchant shipping increased exponentially because so many ships were being sunk. The Germans relied on neutral crews, particularly Swedish, who eventually refuse to sail because it’s so dangerous, and eventually Sweden withdraws its ships from trading with Germany.
Coastal trade is forced inland to railways and road systems that were bombed by Bomber Command.
Comparing mine laying with attacks by Bomber Command on ports and harbours. it takes 104 direct attack sorties to sink one vessel. It takes 31 mine laying sorties to sink one vessel.
Like the crews dropping aerial mines silently into the darkness, there’s often nothing to see after making a good decision. Results may take days, months, or years to appear. Or never be seen.
That’s okay. You can always look back and track your good decision making process.
Feel each decision making rep building unconscious competence. Bulking up your instinct muscles.
Freeing up milliseconds, seconds, minutes … for creativity.
For becoming who you are.
Where Instinct Comes From
If you’ve never seen a person juggle, you’re unconsciously incompetent. You’re unaware that you don’t know how to juggle.
If you see a person juggle, you’re consciously incompetent. You’re aware you don’t know how to juggle.
If you practise juggling, you're consciously competent. You’re aware that you’re juggling.
If you practise so often that you can juggle while telling jokes and riding a unicycle, you’re unconsciously competent. You are unaware you’re juggling.
Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards where you want to be.
Following a process - the Five Steps or your own design - moves decision making into the realm of unconscious competence.
Into instinct.
Freeing you to be attentive to the content.
To the other.
To you.
To your shared humanity.
Be Rote to be Human
Liz says:
'Be assertive about the process so you can be attentive to the content.'
Process critics scream ‘Impersonal!’ or worse ‘Corporate!’.
They seize and hold the high moral ground by embracing the poor victim of a Process, wrapping them in a warm and comforting blanket of emotion and pastoral care. Protecting the victim from the World.
And another victim - and another warm blanket of personalised care.
In short: An Anti Process Process. (Shhh! Don’t tell them that.)
Breathe Into the Situation
I obviously don’t know if this happened as I wasn’t on the field, but I wonder if Stokes had said to his counterpart, Pat Cummins, who he obviously respects, “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Some would argue that’s not Stokes’ job, but it might have given some clarity, even a moment to breathe into the situation.'
- Former Australian cricketer and coach Justin Langer on a controversial cricket dismissal.
Asking a decision maker questions helps them step back.
You make yourself an eyewitness.
You invite them to show their working out.
You gift them time.
To breathe.
The Room Where It Happened
No one else was in
The room where it happened
The room where it happened
The room where it happened
No one else was in
The room where it happened (The room where it happened)
The room where it happened
The room where it happened (The room where it happened)
No one really knows how the game is played (Game is played)
The art of the trade
How the sausage gets made (How the sausage gets made)
We just assume that it happens (Assume that it happens)
But no one else is in
The room where it happens. (The room where it happens.)
- The Room Where It Happens, Hamilton
Many decisions are made in organisations by people who have only two qualifications more than anyone else in the world:
They are higher up the organisation’s wire diagram, or
They were invited to meetings that others weren’t.
Often the first is the result of the second, and the second because of the first.
I wonder if we grabbed a random selection of people at the local supermarket and put them in the same room and gave them the same positional authority, how they would fare in comparison.
In 2023, we shouldn’t be limiting decisions based on the technology of the speed of the stagecoach, the reliability of a speakerphone, the seating capacity of a boardroom, or the availability of certain people to come together at a set time.
And yet we do. Routinely.
It’s arrogant and dumb to act as if the only wisdom available to an organisation is those who fit into a room.
And yet we do. Routinely.
Need a policy to support 5,000 employee decision makers? You can do what organisations have done since the century before last. Give a dozen experts desks in a building. Task them to draft, refine, approve and publish a policy. Go through the motions of a ‘change management’ process to sell it to the other 4,988 employees. Hold lots of meetings in rooms to explain the policy to rows of folded arms. Schedule a policy review every two years. Tick. Change Management.
As if the Internet was never invented.
In 2023 and beyond, we have had the technology for years to invite every person in our organisation to the table. We can draft a policy old-school style, publish it on any number of enterprise platforms, invite staff to amend or comment, add the changes (or not) and have the boss sign off.
(Expect little to no engagement the first, second, or tenth time you do this. Employees are unused to genuine participation in decision making. They haven’t pumped out any decision making muscle reps so will rightly be wary. You’ve spent years training them to be passive consumers and complainers)
The boss can invite the users to submit more improvements to the policy once they’ve taken it for a test drive. Those suggestions can also be published, and further comments invited, and the policy incrementally refined to an operational sharpness and practicality that the traditional handful of experts in a room would never achieve.
What a simple way to gain authentic ownership beyond the rote change management script. What a practical demonstration of trust and respect in the workers and operational decision makers beyond the ‘people are our most important resource’ slogans.
All organisations exist to amplify human achievement.
Let’s stop using a cardboard megaphone.
Easy to Complicate the Simple
This:
A person who suspects on reasonable grounds that there has been an unauthorised disclosure or loss of personal information; namely information or an opinion about an identified person, or a person who is reasonably identifiable, whether the information or opinion is true or not; and whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not, must as soon as is reasonably possible, assess the alleged unauthorised disclosure and, if the person forms a reasonable belief that the loss or breach may cause serious harm to one or more individuals, must notify the individual or individuals, and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
Or This:
Click to address an unauthorised access or loss of information.
A characteristic of organisational busywork is impressive but excessive and thus complex narrative nouns.
Meetings, minutes, reports, papers, emails, committees, sub-committees, working parties, consultations, submissions, training, change management.
And a a scarcity of step-by-step processes leading to a decision.
Complicated is mistaken for important and thus valuable.
Simple is mistaken for unsophisticated and cheap.
As any number of famous people are alleged to have said: ‘I would have written you a shorter letter but I didn’t have the time.’
There’s an incentive to befuddle.
It’s easy to complicate the simple.
It’s hard to simplify the complex.
55 Seconds
The High Court bench asked a brilliant barrister appearing before it whether he agreed with a particular view of the Law.
The Barrister rose from his seat as is the etiquette when addressing or being addressed by the Court
He stood in silence for 55 seconds.
Then said:
'Yes'.
The Court thanked him and he resumed his seat.
Eyewitness
My eyes have seen what my hand did.
- ‘Dolphin’ , Robert Lowell
The fastest way to learn how to do something right is by doing it wrong in front of witnesses.
- Scott Adams
Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards where you want to be.
Following a process makes you an objective eyewitness to thoughts and emotions that may otherwise lurk hidden behind the grassy knoll of bias.
So whether your decision is cut down by the sniper round of failure, or triumphantly motorcades its way to success -
You’re learning.
And when you make that process visible to other witnesses, and at least one chooses to do the same -
You’re leading.
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.