The Good Lieutenant.
Every bad boss relies on a good lieutenant.
The good lieutenant decision launders the bad boss’s work.
The bad boss rewards the good lieutenant, and the followers appreciate her shielding them from the bad work of the bad boss.
The good lieutenant’s good work enables the bad boss.
Better to do the right thing badly than the wrong thing well.
TEWT.
The Army has a practice called a TEWT: Tactical Exercise Without Troops.
Participants use a sand table or computer model or paper and pen to simulate decision making - friendly and enemy - in a battle. The TEWT allows everyone to see what is potentially in everyone else’s mind, including the enemy. Participants show Friendly Course of Action, Enemy Courses of Action, and the likely responses to each.
The Five Steps to Good Decision Making - or any decision making process - is like a TEWT in that it makes decision making visible - if only to the decision maker. By doing so it does two things:
Invites a better course of action.
Shows faith in the followers.
Assess the Information.
Like every battle, the Battle of Arnhem was chaos. A lot happened at once.
Historians attempt to piece together eyewitness accounts from participants, their diaries, or other contemporaneous records. Reconciling the versions is further complicated by people’s tendency to experience time differently in periods of fear, panic, confusion, noise and mayhem.
Yet almost every witness has the same account of one event.
The Royal Air Force dropped desperately needed supplies. Everyone looked up - friend and foe. Everyone saw the same thing. Everyone’s accounts of it overlapped.
The second step in the Five Steps to a Good Decision is Assess the Information.
Unlimited.
Decision making is commonly explained as comparing and then choosing between at least two options.
The problem with this model is it assumes the pre-existing options are the limit of our world.
The Five Steps to Good Decision Making opens us up to unseen possibilities.
By Stepping Back, we acknowledge, wallow in, then purge ourselves of, our emotional reflex: our selfishness.
By Defining the Issue, we remind ourselves of our Widget that we may have forgotten.
By Assessing the Information, we become the naive inquirer and open to new evidence.
By Giving a Hearing, we listen to the best argument from anyone with skin in the game.
By Checking for Bias, we again remind ourselves of our Widget.
The Five Steps - or any process we design - gives us the best chance of finding a previously hidden doorway. Or otherwise affirming our previous options.
Divine Inspiration.
The immature boss fears sharing achievement of a common aim with someone else.
The immature boss needs the world to know that success was due to her leadership.
The immature boss wants us to think she is god-like in her wisdom.
She does not need, let alone follow, any mortal Five Step process.
Success is because of her divine inspiration.
The Helicopter View.
The Five Steps to a Good Decision draw us out of the weeds and ascends us into the helicopter view.
A good decision forces us to see the bigger picture.
Our part in the whole.
How our decision will affect - and be affected by - the whole.
That’s called Situational Awareness.
That’s called Leadership.
That’s called Humanity.
Humility.
'Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet...'
Gospel of John 13:3-6
For non-believers, substitute ‘the most powerful entity imaginable’ for ‘God’.
This passage is the ultimate lesson in servant leadership.
Jesus’s immediate response after affirming he is the son of God, and soon to return to God, and has all things under his power - is to do what the lowest of slaves do: kneel before each of his followers and wash the filth of walking the roads of first century Palestine off their feet.
No words. Action.
How many so-called ‘leaders’ are confident enough in themselves and the source of their authority that they are willing to risk humiliation to practically serve others?
When was the last time your boss risked public humiliation to serve you?
When was the last time your boss stooped to clean off the excrement you’d walked through in the course of following them?
When was the last time your boss come into your office and sat down for a chat?
No?
No words. Deeds.
Real leaders are rare.
The Sentry.
We stand before the making of a decision as we stand before a sentry.
The decision challenges us as it impedes our forward momentum.
‘Halt! Who goes there?!’
We stop and answer.
‘I am an Ego!’ (Step 1 - Step Back.)
‘Here’s where I’m headed!!’ (Step 2 - Define the Issue.)
‘Where am I?!’ (Step 3 - Assess the Information.)
‘How can you help my progress?’ (Step 4 - Give a hearing.)
‘What have I missed?’ (Step 5 - Check for bias.)
Modern Pharaoh.
The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt took some of their household slaves with them to their tombs.
Some bosses are like that.
They have learned all they think they need to learn, and know all they think they need to know, and are therefore dedicated to preserving the status quo, lest something new makes them redundant.
They are dead.
In death, they take their obedient workers with them.
A Critical Juncture.
We have now arrived at a critical juncture. The thing that separates life from non-life is information.
Paul Davies
Good decision making is a process of collecting information.
About ourselves - Step One.
About our Widget - Step Two.
About others - Step Three.
About our effect on others - Step Four.
About our integrity - Step Five.
Good decision making is life-giving.
Wrong Way. Go Back.
“... Each person is fully entitled to consider himself a part-owner of the great workbench at which he is working with every one else.
Pope John Paul II”
The names, the titles, the rituals, the rules, the policies, the manuals, the meetings, the acronyms, the buildings, the hirings, the firings, the promotions, the values, the hierarchy, the board, the organisation, the corporation, the entity, the decisions, the ‘it’, the ‘they’, the ‘we’, the ‘our’…
Exist to serve you.
To amplify you.
To dignify you.
To liberate you.
Not the other way around.
Compensation.
We don’t sell our souls each day at work.
We mortgage them. Hand over title to the boss - knowing she can increase interest rates, add fees, or foreclose.
So we do as we’re told.
We mortgage our souls to pay our mortgage.
There’s a reason Americans refer to salary as ‘compensation’.
Three Challenges.
The first challenge to an assumption should arouse curiosity leading to an inquiry into a new understanding of the world.
The second challenge should arouse excitement about the opportunity to kick the tyres of the new understanding of the world.
The third challenge should either corroborate the new understanding or - we repeat the first challenge.
Hanlon's Razor.
Robert J Hanlon devised a theory: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence or stupidity”. It’s known as Hanlon’s Razor.
Like the male insects who mate with other male insects.
Not gay - just struggling to do their best within a complex environment.
Like most humans.
The Criterion.
Scientific knowledge is not restricted to the initiated. Curiosity is the only criterion.’
William J Lines
Good decision making in two words:
Be Curious.
The Emperor's New Clothes.
Our fear that we too are naked is the elastic holding up the emperor’s new clothes.
Daily Conversations.
'The Divisional Commander's creed is: 'The key character here is the Red Army soldier. He sleeps in the snow and is prepared to sacrifice his life. And it isn't easy to sacrifice one's life. Everyone wants to live, including heroes. Authority is gained through daily conversations. A soldier must know his task and understand it. One has to speak to soldiers and sing and dance for them. But authority shouldn't be cheap, it is hard won. I learned this in the frontier units. And knowing that soldiers trust me, I know that they will fulfil all my orders and risk their lives. When it is necessary to take a little town or block a road, I know that they will do it.'
- Colonel Zinoviev, Soviet 37th Army in 1942 as reported by Vasily Grossman in 'A Writer at War'
'Authority is gained through daily conversations.’
In 1942 the Soviet Army numbered around 7 million people. It was engaged in a fierce and ruthless war for survival against the invading Germany Army.
And yet - there was time for daily conversations.
The boss ‘sang and danced’ for his soldiers.
When was the last time the boss ‘sang and danced’ for you?
In today’s workplace, the boss’s executive assistant schedules regular one-on-one meetings - if you’re lucky. The boss does a course where she’s encouraged to MBWA - manage by walking around. So she does. Because she learned it on a course.
There are other larger meetings where there is little time for more than the most perfunctory and token acknowledgement of personal worth. The ‘people stuff’ is left to HR, or whatever name is given to the department attending to things too unimportant or technically complex for the boss'; ie her people.
And thus, in the absence of daily conversations, the source of the boss’s authority is almost solely the dormant spectre (cue the theme from ‘Jaws’) that she can terminate your employment if you displease her or don’t do what she says.
Because the boss assumes you will sing and dance for her.
Blink of an Eye
Your brain forms feelings in response to complicated issues like euthanasia within 200 to 250 milliseconds after hearing a statement about the subject.
That’s literally in a blink of an eye.
In a quarter of a second, we feel something about a complicated subject.
And that’s okay. That’s human.
Our response needs to be respected.
Like the Air Traffic Controller who is trained to have an instant, rote reaction to de-conflicting aircraft, our feelings give us an immediate opinion if we need it quickly.
Also like the Air Traffic Controller, we have the option to put aside that response and investigate whether there is a superior one.
We can Step Back.
If one second, thirty seconds, a minute, an hour, a month, a lifetime later … we have not found a better argument.
We can revert to our blink of an eye reflex.
If we routinely and consciously step back in our decision making, we will gradually improve our immediate emotional response to a range of subjects, to be a thoughtful one.
Commissioned, Curious, and Critical.
‘You’ll know you’re a good leader when people will follow you… if only out of curiosity.”
-General Colin Powell
‘President [Lincoln] never appeared to better advantage in the world …. Though he knows how immense is the danger to himself from the unreasoning anger of that committee, he never cringed to them for an instant. He stood where he thought he was right and crushed them with his candid logic.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
By far most people who call themselves Leader or hold ‘leadership positions’ are Commissioned. Either someone anoints them to ‘lead’, or they dub themselves ‘leader’. These people almost exclusively rely on positional power to get others to follow. In exceptional cases they may bring leadership qualities to their job, or develop some over their tenure. But the absence of any need to do so means they are unlikely to do the ‘push ups’ necessary to develop their ‘leadership muscle’, or any they had will atrophy due to lack of use. The Commissioned leader dominates organisations. Most of our experience and therefore understanding of leadership is via the Commissioned Leader. Thus, should we reach a leadership position, sadly we will most likely emulate the behaviour of the Commissioned leader.
Then there is leadership spawned by Curiosity. Someone sets off to seek the answer to something. If at least one other person follows them - they’re a leader. The Curiosity Leader is also rare. They are almost never found in organisations, because they operate outside hierarchies and don’t wear the badge or title of leadership, nor seek its formalities and burdens. Their followers are usually unknown to them; following their writing or research without acknowledgement.
And the third source of leadership is Criticism. The Critical Leader draws their followers from those either converted by the Critical Leader’s response to criticism, or the Critical Leader’s criticism of another. As with President Lincoln, the logic in the response to criticism, or even the strength and poise of the Critical Leader’s character in the face of the criticism exchange, attracts disciples. The Critical Leader is even rarer than the Curiosity Leader, and is also almost exclusively found outside organisations. Only an exceptional organisation can accommodate a Critical Leader in its midst.
And yet organisations pride themselves in engaging and paying and celebrating the use of a Critical Friend to help them see their blind spots.
Successful start ups will have a disproportionate blend of Commissioned, Curious, and Critical Leaders. The Curious are the boffins who discover and develop a new product. They attract and welcome the Critical, who challenge the assumptions of the Curious, and either convert to the thinking of the Curious, or the Curious convert to the Critical Leader’s position. The start up needs people to administer the company, and thus the Commissioned Leader is appointed. If the organisation is successful, it grows to the point where Curious and Critical are overwhelmed and almost eliminated by the Commissioned Leaders.
It’s a matter of time before the organisation either fails or is bought out.
The exception is if the organisation is not exposed to market forces - in which case Commissioned Leaders dominate, and attract workers who seek to be told what to do.
This is the military, public service, religious institutes, and any organisation reliant on government funding.