Give Them A King.
So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”
But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him … ‘Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.”
Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plough his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”
When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the Lord.
The Lord answered, “Listen to them and give them a king.”
- The Book of Samuel.
Find a government and a boss to fight all our battles.
Relieve us from the anxiety that comes with freedom.
Dress One Trouser Leg at a Time.
“The empire created the emperors."
- Dame Mary Beard
Whenever a scandal or crisis involves an organisation, the top boss is trotted out to address the media or otherwise signal accountability and appease the mob.
If the CEO, or board chair, or minister is silent, the petulant media demands to know why. The longer the silence continues, the louder the calls for ‘accountability’ grow. It becomes almost personal. Like a scorned lover stalking their ex - ‘the public’ - aka the media demand ‘answers’ - aka - advertising dollars. The story moves to page one.
Eventually somebody utters ‘cover up’ and we’re off.
Who really thinks the minister, board chair, or chief executive knows the reason why something went wrong, let alone can fix it? Why a tired and overworked minimum wage earner overlooked a checklist item or a long-neglected piece of kit finally failed?
Like children, we need to believe in the Old Man with the Long White Beard.
We cling to the Great (Wo)Man Theory of organisations.
We endow the CEO with super powers. Same with our boss, as if they don’t put their trousers on one leg at a time. Be respectful, but never subservient.
Because, like the Emperors, with rare exceptions it’s not the boss who made our workplace or organisation great. It’s you, and the person before you. (And if your workplace is not so great … then …?)
The boss should remember that, and act with due humility.
Watch This.
“An Intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself"
- Albert Camus
When we Step Back - we take a seat in the stands and watch ourselves react.
With each of the remaining Five Steps to a Good Decision, we coach our thoughts at play on the field of deliberation.
We watch our mind at work.
We are intellectuals.
We Pack Our Children's Parachutes.
Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.
- Benny Hill
Complainants do us a favour. They are the spokespeople for those who either vote with their feet, suffer in silence, or would eventually be disappointed but for the remedy that follows a complaint.
Parents pack our children’s parachutes and send them off to compulsory school.
We should be grateful to any parent who complains.
I Can Do That.
'“Communication is what our lives are about. We must try. To be better or not doesn’t matter. Measurement is out of our reach. One only tries to send a message, a note, however inadequate from one aloneness to another.”
Will I always make a good decision if I follow the Five Steps? Of course not.
Will I always gain clarity by stepping back? It’s naive to believe so.
Will my good decision making process be recognised and rewarded? Doubtful.
Will anyone follow the path I lay for them? No guarantees.
Why bother?
When we pay attention, even to our own thinking and hesitant steps to a process, we signal ‘This is important.’ One person - perhaps more - may look up from their fear and possibly think ‘I can do that …’.
Walking is falling from one foot to another.
Creator or Slave.
“I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s.”
You don’t have to adopt the Five Steps to a Good Decision. Create your own system.
In the meantime, I hope those chains don’t chafe.
Mind the Gap.
A complaint reveals either:
A gap in your information leading to a decision or absence of decision, or
A gap in the complainant’s information or expectation.
You review the complaint and either change or affirm your decision with the information or after asking the complainant for more details, or
You fill the complainant’s information or expectation gap.
If the complainant challenges your response, you check whether their challenge reveals information gaps with them or you. If so, you address it as above.
If not, you respond that you’ve considered their response, and affirm your decision.
If the complainant challenges your response, you politely direct them either to your superior, or to your complaints process.
If you continue to engage with a complainant offering you no new information, you are training them that the price of getting what they want from you is one, two, three, fifteen, twenty emails, phone calls, or visits to reception.
The Shadow of Your Ego.
In the services the major proponents of tank development included, ironically, a small group of naval officers. The fact that the Admiralty felt less ‘threatened’ by tanks than did the War Office was strikingly illustrated at one of those demonstrations wherein proponents of a new idea strive to convert sceptics by confrontation with the evidence of their senses.After an impeccable display, in which prototype tanks cutthrough barbed wire, crossed trenches, slithered through mud and clawed their way out of craters, a naval officer was heard to remark: ‘We ought to order three thousand now!’ But the War Office contingent remained cool, one senior general retorting: ‘Who is this damned naval man saying we will want three thousand tanks? He talks like Napoleon.’
Norman F Dixon, ‘On The Psychology Of Military Incompetence’
Step 1 of the Five Steps to a Good Decision is Step Back.
Get perspective.
Stop blocking the light of alternative choices with the shadow cast by your ego.
Psychologically Hardy.
People who are psychologically hardy, it turns out, believe very prevalently some things about the world. So, if you believe that the world is a meaningful place, if you see yourself as having agency within that world, and if you see successes and failures as being placed in your path to teach you things…then you are more likely to be psychologically hardy, and therefore more resilient in the face of trauma.
- Andrew Zolli
If you believe that the world is a meaningful place [Personal Widget].
If you see yourself as having agency within that world [Decision Making].
And if you see success and failures as being placed in your path to teach you things [Decisions Measured Against Widget].
You are more likely to be psychologically hardy and therefore more resilient in the face of trauma [Life].
Think About Me to Think About You.
Being present, whether with children, with friends, or even with oneself, is always hard work. But isn’t this attentiveness — the feeling that someone is trying to think about us — something we want more than praise?
Prof Stephen Grosz
When we Step Back - we are present to ourselves. To our emotions. To our sullen, selfish, child self. We stare our imperfection and unworthiness in the face. We think about the Us that we truly are: confused, disoriented, alone. It’s hard work.
We want to change. To look outward. We’re ready.
Only then can we be present to the Others in our decision.
We try to think about Them.
Harder to Lie.
Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov
The Five Steps to a good decision show our working out.
By showing our working out - even to ourselves - we make it harder to lie to ourselves. Not impossible - but harder.
Let the Unwatched Pot Boil.
These stories suggest that an initial period of concentration—conscious, directed attention—needs to be followed by some amount of unconscious processing. Mathematicians will often speak of the first phase of this process as “worrying” about a problem or idea. It’s a good word, because it evokes anxiety and upset while also conjuring an image of productivity: a dog worrying a bone, chewing at it to get to the marrow—the rich, meaty part of the problem that will lead to its solution. In this view of creative momentum, the key to solving a problem is to take a break from worrying, to move the problem to the back burner, to let the unwatched pot boil.
- Dan Rockmore, Professor of Mathematics
Miserable.
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
~ William James
Which comes first:
80% of workers are disengaged from their jobs so don’t make decisions?
Or that 80% of workers don’t make decisions so disengage?
Either way, they’re miserable.
Eloquent Silence.
The power of preserving silence is the very first requisite to all who wish to shine, or even please in discourse; and those who cannot preserve it, have really no business to speak. … The silence that, without any deferential air, listens with polite attention, is more flattering than compliments, and more frequently broken for the purpose of encouraging others to speak, than to display the listener’s own powers. This is the really eloquent silence. It requires great genius—more perhaps than speaking—and few are gifted with the talent.
Arthur Martine
Monks observe two types of silences:
Day silence - between 8am and 8pm when they avoid frivolous conversation.
The Great Silence - between 8pm and 8am when they avoid all conversation.
Monks are listening to hear God.
Not because He rarely speaks - because He’s always speaking.
But we don’t hear because we’re not listening.
With all the training in leadership - who is teaching us the ‘gifted talent’ of silence?
Head Think to Gut Feel.
The key thing for young coaches is to work out what their decision-making process is, back it in, and probably have some guidelines in place around why they make the decisions.
As they progress through and see a lot of those situations unfold, decision-making will become a bit more instinctive for them. It becomes a lot more gut feel.
Expert coaches have seen so many things time and time again, they will instinctively react and say, 'I know this works; we can do this'.
An example might be a coach going into his first Grand Final not sure how to address the media and what to put out and what to hold back.
Mick Malthouse, meanwhile, knows clearly what he's going to say and how he's going to address all those press conferences he's going to face.
You can only gain that experience over time, so it's good to have some guidelines in place.
- John Worsfold, AFL Captain, Premiership Player and Coach
Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards where you want to be.
Over time, that deliberate process moves from your head think to your gut feel, freeing space in your head for more deliberation. And so on.
You can’t explain your gut decision but you can explain your process that formed it.
What Is This Post About?
Our ancestors who were not curious who did not go looking over the hill to see what was on the other side disappeared. They were not successful. Tribes that were curious out competed them.
Bill Nye
Good Decision Making in two words:
Is This Who
Sometimes it helps to ask, “Is this who I want to be?”
- Merlin Mann
A good decision is one that advances us to towards where we want to be.
A good decision, therefore, is a chance to change into who we want to be.
We Are All Alice.
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don’t much care where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"--so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
- Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
We are all Alice.
No Personal Cause to Argue
It was my impression that O'Donnell had the greatest influence in shaping the President's most important decisions. He was able to set aside his own prejudices against individuals and his own ideological commitments …. and appraise the alternatives with total objectivity. It was impossible to categorize O'Donnell, as White House observers did with other staff members, as either a "hawk" or a "dove" on foreign policy …. JFK gave extra weight to O'Donnell's opinions because he knew he had no personal cause to argue. Ken had only one criterion: Will this action help or hurt the President? And that, for O'Donnell, was another way of asking: Will it help or hurt the country?
- Pierre Salinger, Press Secretary to President Kennedy on Kenny O’Donnell, assistant and friend to the President
Those of us who advise decision makers must know their Widget.