Run a Tight Process
Everything I learned about making impossible decisions during the first two years of my presidency culminated in one of the toughest choices I had to make: whether to authorize the raid to take out Osama bin Laden. It was an operation rife with uncertainty and risk. So, I ran a tight process. I trusted my team. I listened to every voice in the room. I gave myself space to think. And then I made a decision that reflected my own personal sense of what was right.
While I couldn’t guarantee the outcome, I was confident in making the decision.
- Barack Obama
Be assertive in the process so you can be attentive to the content.
I Left the Meeting
To get everybody on the same page, I called a meeting with my economic team. By evening, I left the meeting to have dinner and get a haircut and told my team that I expected a consensus upon my return.
- President Barack Obama
Decisions are not made in meetings.
An Illuminated Purpose
A frequent consequent of self-representation is that the court must assume the burden of endeavouring to ascertain the rights of parties which are obfuscated by their own advocacy.
Neil v Nott - High Court of Australia
It’s been said ‘A lawyer who represents themselves has a fool for a client.’
Every decision - no matter how trivial - is both a statement of who we are, and ideally a reach towards who we want to be.
It is therefore an admission we are not where and who we want to be. There is a whole lot of ego tied up in our decision-making.
Our Widget serves to replace self-advocacy obfuscation with an illuminated Purpose.
It disentangles us from our self-doubt and shame, and directs our attention outwards.
Towards where we want to be.
With Goodness
Be subversive with goodness in your heart.
- Bob Schwartz (General Manager, Global Design & User Experience, GEHC)
Dr Simon Longstaff’s plea for ‘Constructive Subversion’ is in my Good Decision Making Wisdom Top 5.
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.