It's Not You We Salute
The Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) shares a campus with the University College of the University of New South Wales (UNSW). About a thousand Officer Cadets and Midshipmen live and study at ADFA. During the week, Cadets attend UNSW lectures like any student enrolled at university. Except they wear uniform and march between classes. And salute.
Officers posted to ADFA quickly learn to avoid being outside when Cadets change classes. Cadets approaching an Officer must crisply salute, accompanied by a loud ‘Sir!’ or ‘Ma’am!’. An Officer moving between buildings could return dozens of salutes. To a civilian observer, this would appear to be an impressive display of Command.
Once I was wearing civilians and felt safe to venture out during the change of classes. I was immediately struck by the noise. The couple of times I’d been caught transitting in uniform, the only sounds amidst the salutes and polite call of ‘Sir!’ from the passing Cadets, was the cadence of polished shoes on brick paving.
In my civilian rankless anonymity, the Cadets, while still marching, casually chatted as they approached and passed me, safely themselves: young men and women in conversation and friendship.
Anyone in positional power should stay humble.
It’s not your charisma luring us to meetings to stay and nod. It’s our mortgages.
It’s not your wisdom persuading us to do as you say. It’s school fees.
It’s not your natural leadership that wins our obedience. It’s employment laws.
It’s not your metaphor of ‘family’ that gains our affection. We have our own.
It’s not you we salute. It’s our village that raised us.
In recent times someone at ADFA sensibly declared the paths to and from the lecture theatres and tutorial rooms a ‘Non Saluting Area’. There was no outbreak of anarchy.
Declare your workplace a ‘Non-Parenting Area’ and see if we take up the offer.
The Presider
The Presider runs her thumbs along the comforting lip of the lectern. Clears her throat and opens with a personal anecdote.
The Presider adjusts her chair at the head of the boardroom table and squares the papers before her. Surveys the downcast faces lit by laptop screens.
The Presider steps across the cut ribbon and escorts the VIPs around the new facility. Funded, designed, and built by the toil of others.
The Presider taps out platitudes in an All Staff email. Achievement by association.
While others decide and do.
Presiders preside.
Pumping Up The Life Raft
The boss is in over her head.
She’s clinging to a life raft of one or more of her reports keeping her afloat.
A hissing sound. Someone questioning her subordinate’s decision making.
Sssssssssssss …
‘They’re excellent!’ the boss declares. ‘Great operator.’
Pump, pump, pump …
Sssssssssss …
‘A BIG thank you to …’ she publicly praises at the next staff meeting.
Pump, pump, pump …
Ssssssssss …
‘I’m delighted to announce a team promotion …’
Pump, pump, pump …
All bosses float on the buoyancy of the people in their team. People who should rise along with their boss. On merit.
But hear that hissing?
Everybody hears it. Everybody knows there’s a problem. Listen. It’s them hissing.
Because your denial. Your wilful deafness. Your pumping.
Are puncturing more holes in your life raft.
Less pumping. More mending.
Take responsibility.
Rescue yourself.
Why We Resist Change
The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The boss faces an existential crisis.
The new hire presents themselves at the expiration of their 90 days of observation.
‘Hey boss. Your company/department/team. I’ve identified opportunities for change.’
The boss hears: ‘Hey boss. Grab an archives box from the mail room. For your stress ball, novelty basketball hoop, and photo of the wife and kids. For your bathroom renovation. For your last ten years. For your identity. For all the plans you had for the next ten years. For your worthless compass. For the earth beneath you.’
Every day we turn up to work beyond our first three months, our DNA starts to meld with the DNA of our employer. We start developing Stockholm Syndrome. Our excuse that we’re new passes its use by date. We suppress our concerns about the way things are done. Our 20/20 vision starts to blur into what will eventually become wilful blindness. Sure, we allow ourselves to eye-roll with a trusted peer. Then one day we leave a professional development seminar determined to make changes.
We call meetings, brainstorm, send memos, and make some cosmetic fixes. It feels good. We’ve regained some agency. We’re making the place better. We recruit some new people. We back their new ideas. We’re part of the solution now. We’re shaping the organisation. We can see improvement. We’re rewarded. Promoted. Seen.
‘Hey boss. Your department. I’ve identified opportunities for change.’
A stranger dangles your shiny innovations and ego over the pit of the rotting past.
All change is a condemnation of the judgement and labour of the custodians who stewarded the organisation to here. It says: ‘You weren’t smart or attentive enough to realise this isn’t good enough.’ Or ‘You saw the deficiencies but lacked the competence, courage, or energy to address them. You are not good enough.’
The longer someone has presided over the organisation, the more they stand to lose if they accept the need for change. Thus, the more they resist - actively or passively.
If there’s change, they are redundant. A wiped hard drive. A wheel-less car on bricks.
This dynamic is happening in some form in every organisation at all levels. People investing energy on inertia, on resistance, and on going nowhere. Meetings. Papers. Committees. Consultations. Working Parties. Training. Consulting. Recruiting. Restructuring. All designed to avoid confronting the brutal truth that what we made yesterday is not good enough for today. That we are not good enough. That all our labour and sacrifice will be bulldozed and crushed into dust. That we are dust.
For over twenty years after his retirement and until his death, Wesfarmers invited my Dad to an annual ex-employees lunch. The boss would make a speech, reminding those current employees present what they owed to people like my Dad. The boss would then propose a toast, and the employees would rise, raise their glasses and acknowledge the debt they and Wesfarmers owed to their predecessors like Reg Hill. My Dad loved his annual lunch. We knew when the day was approaching and after it had been. He looked forward to Wesfarmers remembering him.
Teams, departments, and organisations should establish meaningful and authentic rituals proclaiming, ‘The King is dead! Long live the King!’
If only because one day, we will be the one being fêted.
How Leaders Become Leaders
The Directing Staff (DS) taps the Syndicate Leader on the shoulder.
‘Handover',’ the DS announces.
The Syndicate Leader salutes the DS, and calls us in from wherever we are on the line of march the Syndicate Leader mapped to our destination. We gather around the DS, who announces the Officer Trainee taking over as Syndicate Leader.
The outgoing and incoming Syndicate Leaders detach, with the assessing DS observing and writing. Outgoing briefs incoming for ten minutes in the standard format on all the incoming needs to know to take over. The incoming madly scribbles in their notebook. The DS briefs the incoming on ‘new’ Mission orders.
The new Syndicate Leader has a few minutes alone to process and adopt the information received, and jot down notes for their Syndicate Brief.
They shout, with the DS hovering and evaluating: ‘Syndicate! On me!’
We know the routine. We form a tight semi circle, mindful that while each Leader is being assessed on Leadership, the DS is assessing us on ‘Followership’.
The Officer Trainee who ten minutes earlier was lazily dragging a stick and cracking jokes just loud enough for the Trainee in front to hear, is now The Leader.
‘Listen Up! This is a Brief! Save your questions until the end! Situation …’. The New Leader methodically mimics the tight SMEAC script in word and delivery. Situation. Mission. Execution. Administration and Logistics. Command and Communications. Appointing who will be her Second in Command, who will be Navigator, who will Pacer One and Pacer Two. Concluding with ‘Are there any questions?’ Two of us raise our hands to ask soft questions that she can answer. We want her to look good as we know we’ll have our turn in her shoes.
The Syndicate Leader finishes by asking us token questions in her ‘Check of Understanding’. The DS writes. We answer obediently, demonstrating not only we’ve listened, but that she’s The Leader. We each know our part.
The new Syndicate Leader is in charge. She’s our Leader. We will follow her.
Why?
Because the DS Tapped Her on the Shoulder and said ‘You’re Leading.’
Because the outgoing Syndicate Leader and DS gave her Information We Don’t Have to get Somewhere We Don’t Know.
Because with every step the Leader takes, her Navigator and Pacer give her more information than us, building both her knowledge of the terrain, and confidence.
Because we Know How to Play the Game. We trail passively behind, growing ignorant and less confident, and thus more dependent on the Leader with every step. Surrendering our adulthood and agency and initiative and curiosity. Growing weaker. And thus ever more grateful for the Leader’s protection and favour.
And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen; boys and girls.
How every organisation is run.
How some get the title Leader.
Annointed.
Given access to information.
Gaining more information from their access to information.
While the rest of us play the game learned since we lay helplessly on our backs in our cots, waiting to be picked up, fed, and cuddled.
What to do?
Leaders: Define Reality. Recognise your anointing. Stay humble. Serve.
In short: Do good work.
The rest of us?
In short: Do good work.
Something We've Created
‘There are very few things that we can make on our own. Most things we do with a lot of help from other people. And most people do a fraction of an activity that goes into something else. And that makes it harder for us to see what we’re doing. It makes it harder for us to see our own contribution to something.
But I think that we need to help that. We need to help people see that they’re contributing to something and what it is that they’re contributing.
Employers need to give people the sense of this creation and doing and contribution and ownership for it.
It’s also the reason why many of us go to all kinds of hobbies. Our hobbies are our outlets for creating something complete. I can do a chair - and even though it takes me two years its a chair that I have done everything from scratch or I can create a drawing and I’ve done everything about the drawing.
I think we crave that notion that there is something that we have created.
Let There Be Doubt
Doubt or indecision at the start of an investigation is the hallmark of impartiality. A starting point that eliminates doubt has the hallmark of bias.
Seek the truth. Don't construct a case.
An imposed belief inhibits the asking of relevant and necessary questions.
Sir Richard Henriques, Justice of the High Court of England and Wales
Step 5 of the Five Steps to a Good Decision:
Check for Bias.
And So On
Commander Denniston: Have you ever won a war Turing? I have. Do you know how it's done? Order. Discipline. Chain of Command. You are a very small cog in a very large system. And you will do as your commanding officer instructs.
Alan Turing: Who is your commanding officer?
Commander Denniston: Winston Churchill. Number 10 Downing Street. London SW1. If you have a problem with my decision you can take it up with him.
When we agree to work for someone, we accept we serve their Widget. They in turn serve their boss’s Widget. And so on. That’s why our boss gets to direct us how to make our Widget because it’s a component of their Widget… and so on.
This logic is not the reality of most workplaces.
For starters, often only the Winston Churchill level boss can describe their Widget.
Assuming they can, they need an entirely different set of skills to recognise when they may need to delegate making a component Widget to someone else.
Assuming they do, they need another set of skills to accurately describe that component Widget in a job description or recruitment ad.
Assuming they can, they need another set of skills to select a recruiter or employ a Human Resources person to run the recruitment process.
Assuming they do, they then rely on the recruiter or HR person to be good enough at their Widget to recruit the best person for the Boss’s Widget.
Assuming they are, the Widget Boss needs the talent, time, and motivation to induct, mentor, correct, affirm, listen to, learn from, respond to - aka ‘manage’ the person.
And so on.
The odds are against the Widget Boss recruiting even one person who can make the component Widget to make the Boss’s Widget to the Boss’s standards.
It’s a miracle any organisation of more than two people functions.
Organisations mostly don’t. Look at the evidence. Only 13% of workers are engaged at work and 19% of bosses.
Which is why nobody talks about Widget thinking.
Because failure can only be measured when we know what it is we are trying to achieve. The moment we talk Widgets - we define our failures.
And in our failures - is our humanity.
Yet we recoil and reject the Widget and cog analogy because they’re cold and impersonal and dehumanising. Preferring the nothingness of Opinion. The Widget of Everyone.
And we disengage. Which means our fellow humans disengage.
And so on.
Studied Indifference
Ms Carr’s demeanour was that of studied indifference. She gave her evidence as would a disinterested bystander who had had little or no engagement with the events discussed.
- Mr Justice Kerr, Federal Court, Roohizadegan v TechnologyOne Limited (No 2)
Step 1 in the Five Steps to Good Decision Making is to Step Back.
We privately surrender to the emotions that are our humanity. We make no apology. In doing so, we purge ourselves of the guilt that may distract us during the decision making process. Having indulged our ‘weaknesses’, we are less likely to attempt to suppress or conceal them with defensiveness, anger, cynicism, or contempt.
By purging our emotions, we have the confidence and energy to direct our attention outwards. To see the other. To connect with the humanity in our decision.
We proceed to Step 2 with the demeanour of studied indifference.
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.
