Walk, Don't Run
“With less haste, we have more speed, since rushing sets up a whole multitude of antagonistic vibrations.”
Reality TV paramedics never run.
Lights strobing and sirens wailing and red lights ignored and overtaking cars all the way to the scene.
Step out of the ambulance like it’s a Sunday drive leg stretch. Grab gear. Brisk walk to the patient. Begin saving a life.
A job demanding good decision making.
There are good reasons for this ranging from hazard awareness to projecting reassuring calm for Granddad and his distressed family.
If you’ve pumped out enough good decision making reps, you can ditch the novice furrowed-brow-sense-of-urgency theatre.
You can Step 1: Step Back.
Don’t rush for failure.
Two Speeches
The advisors to President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis divided into two camps. One advocated for an airstrike that risked nuclear retaliation by the Soviet Union, and the other for a naval blockade that risked giving the Cubans time to fortify their defences against US invasion to neutralise Soviet nuclear missiles.
Robert Kennedy wrote that each group’s submission had to begin with an outline of the President’s speech to the nation announcing news of the decision advocated.
According to one of those advisors, Ted Sorensen, the process ‘helped clarify their thinking’. Ultimately, the airstrike ‘was not a solution for which any of us could write words that John Kennedy would speak.’
You may choose your variations on the Five Steps to a Good Decision.
Writing a speech justifying your decision may be one of them.
You're In There With Me
“You’re in a pretty bad fix at the present time,” LeMay said.
“What did you say?” Kennedy snapped.
“You’re in a pretty bad fix,” LeMay responded.
Kennedy forced a laugh. “You’re in there with me.”
- Jeff Nussbaum, Undelivered
Workplaces function on the parent-child dynamic. It’s deeply etched into our psyche. Boss as Mum or Dad. We as Children.
We see this in action even in the highest levels: Between the President of the United States (‘Dad’) and the United States Air Force Chief of Staff and Commander of Strategic Air Command, General Curtis LeMay (‘Child’).
Le May speaks to his Commander in Chief as would a petulant child to their father. Insubordination and discourtesy aside, Le May implies President Kennedy - ‘Dad’ - alone can make right the nuclear annihilation confronting the world.
We see in this exchange the Faustian pact every worker makes with their boss: I’ll suppress my agency in my life if you protect me from the anxiety of choice.
President Kennedy will have none of it.
“You’re in there with me.”
As both President and General confront vaporisation in a nuclear fireball along with millions, President Kennedy acknowledges their shared humanity.
It’s time we grew up.
Compose His Mind
Marshall had less than 24 hours to come up with a plan. He decided to sneak away from the interruptions at First Army headquarters and take a walk along the Marne Rhine Canal that ran through Ligny en Barrois. He recalled the next hour as “the most trying mental ordeal experienced by me during the war.” He managed to compose his mind by sitting in silence beside “one of the typical old French fishermen who forever lined the banks of canals and apparently never get a bite.”
Still, without a solution, he returned to his office, spread a map out on a table, and reviewed the list of divisions to be engaged to the offensive. Inventing an adage, “The only way to begin is to commence,” he began dictating.
Inside of an hour he had drafted a preliminary plan for the movement of First Army divisions, guns, and equipment to the Meuse Argonne assembly points, while at the same time providing for the defence of the ground gained at Saint Mihiel.
George Marshall - Defender of the Republic
- David L. Roll
George Marshall was a 37 year old American First World War Army staff officer, tasked with planning the biggest logistical undertaking in the history of the U.S. Army, before or since. to relieve 220,000 troops of the French Second Army.
What does he do amidst his mental anguish?
Sneaks away for half an hour to sit and watch a fisherman.
Exploration
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.- T.S. Eliot ‘Little Gidding’
We define our Widget.
So we can reach it, redefine it, and create a new Widget.
Don’t like the term ‘Widget’?
Rename it.
Don’t like the idea of a Widget?
Not having a Widget - is your Widget.
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.