The New Boss.
Yeah
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss.- Pete Townshend
The new boss begins.
Spends 90 days listening, observing, learning.
Tick.
She meets with you, and while you’re wary about disclosing too much about your frustrations with the incompetence and dysfunction, her discerning questions reveal she gets it.
Tick.
A friend from the new boss’s old organisation confides in you that the new boss gets your workplace, but can’t make any changes yet.
Tick.
Four months in and the new boss asks your advice and you’re reassured that she gets it, and values your opinion on how to make changes.
Six months in and you’re in a meeting where the new boss asks some good questions and you see the other bosses subtly shut the new boss down. You sense this is not the first time the old bosses have put the new boss in her new boss place.
Nine months in and the new boss has a new car.
Twelve months in and the new boss is leading some projects with the old bosses and making decisions needing old boss approval and cooperation - and her ‘teamwork’ is publicly acknowledged by the old bosses.
Eighteen months in and the new boss is identified with many decisions made with the old bosses and your friend says he doesn’t speak much with the new boss and therefore can’t offer any insight into the new boss’s thinking these days.
Two years in and the new boss is an old boss and has ‘Chief’ added to her title.
The Five Steps.
Step 1: Step Back
[In our head]: What did I do to deserve this? Why are people so stupid? Why am I working here? Why aren't I paid more? Why aren't I lying on a beach somewhere? Why don't I quit and write a novel? Why don't people listen? Why do I keep getting let down? Why didn't I make myself clear? What did I do wrong? Who can I blame? What If I'm to blame? Am I any good? Do people take me seriously? Can I put up with this any more? Why didn't I get enough hugs as a child?
Step 2: Define the Issue
What’s my Widget? What’s my boss’s Widget? What does my boss want me to do? Do I have the power to make that decision? If not - who does?
Step 3: Assess the Information
What policies do we have relating to the information that I have? Do I need to get more information? Who might have that information?
Step 4: Check for Bias.
How am I feeling about this information? Am I able to make a decision that serves my Widget? Is there something that's distracting me from that outcome? Do I have a personal interest in the outcome that may be at odds with my Widget?
Am I open to persuasion? Do I have a prejudgement that the evidence can change? Is there any lingering remnant of personal angst I didn’t shed in Step 1 that means I need to step back again or pass the decision onto someone else? Am I open to the better argument?
Step 5: Give a Hearing
Who might be adversely affected by my decision? Who has a stake in it professionally such that their perspective may help me?
Epaulettes.
We defer to a stranger with a set of epaulettes.
Badges, baton or thing to point with are optional.
See him on the streets re-directing vehicle and foot traffic, in building foyers controlling visitors, on the edge of merry-go-rounds scolding small children.
People and organisations pin epaulettes on sentences as power symbols.
Vigorously defend.
Zero Tolerance.
Committed to.
Totally committed to.
Dry clean only.
Do not wash or tumble dry with the Truth.
Untruth.
“Even if every individual possessed the truth in private, yet if they came together into a crowd ... untruth would at once be let in. The crowd is untruth.”
The organisation continues to act consistently with its fictional story of what it is, in spite of evidence to the contrary.
If the reality organisation and fictional organisation passed in the street they would not recognise each other.
If the organisation was a person, it would be diagnosed with a mental disorder.
Supreme Court Gardens 1989.
““Learning is finding out what you already know.
Doing is demonstrating that you know it.
Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you.
You are all learners, doers, teachers.”
― Richard Bach”
It was 1989.
Shaun and I were chatting on a bench in the Supreme Court Gardens.
Sometime during our conversation, we co-created the idea of designing and delivering training that would give a student the knowledge and skills to do something.
That ‘something’ was whatever it was that the student had to do as a result of the training.
By working backwards, a trainer should go to the workplace, observe what workers do - or more correctly produce or perform - and teach students how to do those things.
In 1989, Shaun and I Discovered Objectives.
Later, we also discovered that Peter Drucker wrote about Objectives in 1954.
Maybe he thought it up sitting on a park bench.
For Shaun and me, it didn’t matter. Indeed, knowing that a world-renowned management guru (and no doubt many lesser-known experts) had already written about ‘our’ idea, only strengthened our sense of competence and creativity.
Leaving us to remind our students that they know as much as we did.
Engage the Enemy.
Engage the enemy and see what happens.
Napoleon
A good decision is one that advances us towards where we want to be.
‘The enemy’ is an infinite number of futures.
Closed doors.
Engage one.
Open it.
See what happens.
Reveal what other enemies and doors await to take its place.
For you to engage.
And see what happens.
Identical.
Chaos. Conflict. Dissent. Low morale. Staff turnover. External criticism.
Transformative stewardship looks almost identical to Dysfunctional leadership.
Leaders are rare.
Leaders are brave.
Leadership is hard.
Pie Warmer.
Pie Warmer (n.):
A person in a position of power, adding no value who simply maintains the status quo.
Translated from the French:
Bain-marie.
Attaboy!
In the act of praise, there is the aspect of it being ‘the passing of judgement by a person of ability onto a person of no ability.’
- Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, ‘The Courage to Be Disliked’
The ‘Attaboy!’ is a standard currency of every organisation. The reflex taught in school of rewarding progress by certificates and public acknowledgement segues into our workplace parent-child dynamic.
The same blush of pride we felt when the teacher returned our work with a gold star is repeated when the boss says:
Attaboy!
Thus gently reminding us who is in charge of our mortgage and our self-esteem.
Positional Power.
We never credit the undercurrent for carrying us so swiftly; we credit ourselves, our talents, our skills. I was completely sure that it was my swimming ability that was carrying me out so swiftly that day. It did not matter that I knew in my heart that I was a very average swimmer, it did not matter that I knew that I should have worn a life jacket and flippers. On the way out, the idea of humility never occurred to me. It was only at the moment I turned back, when I had to go against the current, that I even realized the current existed.
Shankar Vedantam
You work.
Progress.
Get promoted.
Get rewarded.
Work harder.
Get promoted.
Watch others stagnate, fall back, leave.
Feels good.
Life’s good. You’re good.
A small slight. An injustice. A boss dumb decision.
You speak up. You question. You turn. You paddle.
Next thing, you’re treading water. Then going backwards. You paddle harder. You’re tiring. Why is it so hard just to stay afloat when it used to be so easy to move ahead?
As you sink, others effortlessly float past - riding the rip of positional power.
Killer.
The etymology of ‘Decide’ has roots in the Latin verb caedere, meaning ‘to cut’, or even ‘strike’, with ‘ide’ having its origins alongside ‘homicide’ and ‘suicide’.
When we decide, we kill other futures.
Open Loops.
Open Loops.
Not following up. Not taking ownership. Not giving advice. Not making decisions.
Everything stops.
Anyone trying to do good work is forced to chase and attempt to close open loops.
Like playing frisbee without a partner.
Tossing a stick without a dog.
It’s exhausting.
Fancied Situations and Imaginary Problems.
Professional ignorance is often the real source of the ethical problems that men feel. For with more knowledge … men know instinctively what they ought to do and they do not conjure up fancied situations and imaginary problems.
- Sir Owen Dixon, Chief Justice
You’re not a bad person.
You’re not devious or corrupt or seeking personal gain.
You were professionally ignorant.
You felt embarrassed and ashamed.
You sought to hide your ignorance.
You spoke on, or advocated for, or decided upon - a subject not within your expertise.
It went badly.
You felt more embarrassment and shame.
You covered it up with fancied situations and imaginary problems.
And your positional power.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
You’re the boss now.
Cover and Move.
‘Cover and move’ describes the tactic soldiers use to advance (or withdraw) through a battlefield or hostile space.
One soldier directs suppressive fire towards the enemy, forcing them to keep their heads down, while another soldier moves across open ground. Once the soldier has reached safety, they provide suppressive fire allowing the other soldier to join them. Each solider relies on the other to achieve their objective, leap-frogging via cover and move.
It’s a simple example of teamwork. Yet like all good teamwork, it’s selfish.
Each solider uses the other to advance further than the soldier could alone.
The individuality of each solider is literally preserved (they don’t die) and enhanced (they move towards their objective) by covering the other soldier.
‘Teamwork’ is another word for regression to the lowest common denominator. You join a team, and are forced to listen to every opinion, wait your turn, and slow down to the pace of the slowest or most disengaged member. Your skills and expertise are diluted as you are forced to integrate with, or at least indulge, other team members’ skills. You become stuck in a traffic jam of mediocrity.
Your only escape is to become a ‘leader’.
No.
Teams should only be formed, and people forced to join them, if each person’s skills will be enhanced by achieving the team’s objective. A person should not be included in a team without evidence of this. There is no ‘must’ in ‘team’.
Lazy or incompetent people love teams because they can hide in, or behind them. They contribute little or nothing to the team. Or they use the work of the team to explain why they have not done their job. Bad bosses use teams as alibis for their failure to execute.
If discovered, the lazy or inompetent person can rely on the misguided kindness of at least one team member to ‘support’ them, further depleting the team. It’s like a crack combat unit carrying a wounded soldier on a stretcher.
Teams are mostly formed for administrative convenience to serve the needs of HR or accountants or a boss who needs followers to justify their position or salary.
Sometimes it’s just geography. A group of people share an office or building or floor or cluster of cubicles, and so they are a ‘team’. A team needs a leader, and thus one is appointed, further reinforcing and calcifying an artificial construct.
Teams are rarely the result of someone carefully selecting skills that allow a person to cover and move.
Teams are another example of how most organisations herd racehorses and race sheep.
Decision Laundering III
Decision laundering is the process whereby the corrupted intent of a higher level decision maker is cleaned by each subsequent person in the chain of advice or execution applying their professional judgement. The original stain of the lie or fraud is removed by the good work of faithful subordinates who correct, execute, and defend the decision, usually (but not always) ignorant of the cause of the stain.
The result is one decision or many that, individually, have integrity.
Except when it isn’t.
There are always people who are inside enough, or smart enough, to know the original stain, and therefore their boss’s nudg-nudge, wink-wink dark beneath the white. They were at the meeting or read the report where the truth was spoken and labelled a risk and so the boss crafted a cover story. Those people know the organisation’s tolerance for lying.
The stain, and the process of cleaning it, weaken the threads binding an organisation - literally its integrity. Those threads include its people.
Decision laundering - while cosmetically strengthening an organisation by removing blemishes - weakens its fabric in multiple ways.
First, at least one person knows their boss, and even their boss’s boss, is a liar.
Second, those who know of the stain are often the ones to exploit their knowledge to rise higher in the organisation and exert more influence. They usually do so without the talent or skills to operate at their level of promotion. Their incompetence amplifies across the organisation, including through those they recruit. As the saying goes: Sevens recruit sixes and fives.
Third, the good and faithful servants running the laundry, initially buoyed by the challenges of bleaching those stains and getting their boss’s attaboys, grow tired and disillusioned, particularly as they see those sixes and fives joining and being promoted ahead of them, and making life harder.
Finally, and most dangerously, are those on the front line who see the shadow of the original stain as permission to exploit the corrupted intent in their actions. This is most catastrophic in organisations with noble missions who decision launder.
Faith organisations whose members exploit vulnerable people.
Governments whose bureaucrats overwhelm a dissenting citizen with red tape.
Defence forces whose combatants bend or break the laws of war.
Parents who burden their children with intergenerational guilt, shame, and fear.
The antidote to decision laundering is constructive subversion. At every opportunity reminding the organisation and its decision makers of their Widget. Not the small ‘w’ widget that may justify laundering if isolated from the Capital W Widget.
A good decision maker applies the Widget test every time.
Leaders stand back far enough to ask that question of their subordinates, and support the difficult conversations that follow.
Those good and faithful people down the line who put their livelihoods at risk by asking the same question, albeit without the positional power of the leader.
An organisation with some stains is more human.
More like you and me.
The Amendments.
Few non-citizens know anything about the United States Constitution as written by its wise authors.
We all know of its ‘errors’, though. Bits those smarty-pants left out.
Freedom of Speech aka The First Amendment.
Carrying guns aka the Second Amendment aka Another Bit Left Out.
Taking the Fifth aka the Fifth Amendment.
We know more about United States people, culture, and history through the ‘mistakes’ made in its source of authority.
Think about that next time someone red pens your work.
An Invitation.
A Special Forces soldier told me that they were banned from conducting night raids in Afghanistan, even though doing so under cover of darkness was less dangerous.
The soldiers boarded helicopters in the pre-dawn darkness, ascended 5km above the earth … and launched their mission the second the sun lipped the horizon.
Every rule is an invitation to break it.