Anteambulo.
In Ancient Rome, the Anteambulo was an artist or writer who, in return for support by their patron, walked ahead of them and cleared their boss’s way - either literally or by communicating their boss’s approach or intent.
There’s a lot written about the role of the leader - clearing the way for followers.
We should pay more attention to the valuable and under-appreciated work of the anteambulos in organisations.
It’s not easy paving a path for a boss without the boss’s positional power.
The anteambulos in organisations attract snipes from those who are either jealous of their relationship with the boss, or assume the anteambulo purports to assume the power and status of the boss - which some do. The anteambulo can unwittingly be like the boss’s body double: drawing fire from those too cowardly to take on the boss.
I for one appeal to the United Nations for an International Anteambulo Day.
7s Hire 6s
It’s said that if you grade workers with 10 being the highest competency, that 10s, 9s, and 8s are competent, while 5s and below are easy to identify and therefore to either develop to be 8s, or sack.
It’s the 6s and 7s who create all the problems in your organisation.
Worse: It’s said 7s hire 6s.
7s (who all think they’re 9s or 10s) hire 6s (who, being 6s also think they’re 9s or 10s).
In the first few weeks and months after new hire 6s join your organisation it’s harder to spot their underperformance because you give them the benefit of the doubt and attribute error to them finding their feet.
The 7 boss is also both not competent to identify the 6s’ incompetence, and unwilling to do so anyway because they hired the 6 and don’t want to admit their error of judgement.
If any 8s, 9s or 10s slip past the 7s’ hiring of 6s, they spend six months feeling confused before resigning.
If they’re 10s, their skills and leadership may start to rub off on the 6s, and develop them towards 7 and 8.
The 7s realise this, and feeling threatened, flex their positional power to make life difficult for the 8s and above, deterring the 6s not to get above themselves. Most 6s are happy to lazily comply and remain mediocre. The 7s then reward the fawning 6s with ‘promotions’ and other trinkets.
The aspiring 6s, and 8s and above, eventually resign in frustration and despair.
Any 8s and above gradually leave either through natural attrition or dissatisfaction with having to manage the growing numbers of 7s and the 6s they’ve hired.
Before long, 7 becomes the new 10 for the organisation.
It becomes an employer of choice for 6s and below who are attracted to work there and be remunerated with status and high pay for being mediocre. Eventually nobody knows what Excellence looks like - much less how to strive for it
In a small to medium business, the Market responds to the incompetence, and the organisation folds.
If market forces are not in play or muted by government funding, the demise takes years or decades.
Damaging clients, customers, workers, families, communities, and sometimes societies in the process.
Meetings are Like Uni Tutes.
Tutorials in first year university.
Three out of the ten students have done the reading.
Two who’ve prepared, and who have the most to offer, are lacking in confidence to speak.
One who has not done any of the reading holds forth on his personal opinions.
Another of the unprepared begins arguing against his opinions with her opinions.
The tutor attempts in vain to bring the conversation back to the sources of expert authority.
The remainder glance at their watches and occasionally pull out a device.
Opinions keep being kicked around the table.
Nothing of value is achieved.
Who says uni doesn’t make us work ready?
Our After Action Report.
In our After Action Report, we must tell ourselves a story that makes us the hero. If not the hero, then the victim of a freak series of unforeseen events or grave injustices.
The best way to make ourselves the hero is to follow a process.
A process makes it easier to recall the details that show us in the best light.
If we choose victimhood, then the process proves we did the best we could, before Fate intervened.
Even in our victimhood, we see we had hold of the control column and bravely fought in vain against the gods.
You Get Away With It.
Infant: You don’t get away with it.
Child: You get away with it. You don’t get away with it.
Adolescent: You get away with it. You got away with it. You don’t get away with it.
Bad Boss: You got away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it.You get away with it. You get away with it. You get away with it.You get away with it.
Frame. Claim. Explain.
Three steps to transform your organisation.
Frame.
Define what you do.
Claim.
Do what you do.
Explain.
Communicate what you do.
The World Keeps Turning.
When we Step 1: Step Back - the world keeps turning.
While we retreat into ourselves, wallowing in our feelings of self-pity, injustice, unfairness, frustration, disappointment, despair … Life goes on.
People move on. Reconsider. Recover. Forget.
When we emerge into Step 2: Assess the Situation, we often find it’s different to what it was when we retreated into ourselves. That’s partly because it is different. But also because we’re different. We’re looking at the circumstances that demanded a decision from us more objectively and calmly.
By tending to ourselves, we allowed the world to do some work without us.
Reminding us that we see more clearly outward if we take the time to look inward.
Not Just Yet.
Implicitly, only time will quiet the passions and allow the feelings of being overwhelmed to subside. This wait for quiet, however, must not be understood as thoughtlessness, which is for her willed nonthinking: it is, rather, not thinking just yet.
- Deborah Nelson on Hannah Arendt
Step 1: Step Back must not be confused with inaction. Indecisiveness. Hesitancy. Self-doubt.
Pausing to allow the passions stirred by the stimulus demanding a response to quiet before turning our mind to the content of the decision at hand is a deliberate act of courage and service of both self and other.
The Turnkey.
The system failed in allowing the situation to develop on HMAS Success over some years, rather than in not having a turnkey solution when the problem was revealed. - Roger Gyles AO QC, Commission of Inquiry into HMAS Success.
If I’m untruthful, I tend to avoid truth tellers.
If I’m untruthful and lacking in competence, I tend to avoid competent truth tellers.
After a while, I find myself seeking the company of people who I can relate to and understand: the untruthful, incompetent, or both. In organisations, I find that combination in those who are junior to me. So I seek power.
Once I have power, I promote those who are untruthful (often in their glowing, sycophantic assessments of me), or incompetent (enough to make me look good in comparison without jeopardising the work). The untruthful and incompetent are attracted to my me and my workplace.
Eventually I become skilled at managing untruthful and incompetent people.
‘He is good at management!’ they say of me as they see me ‘mentoring’ the untruthful incompetents. Some of the applause comes from other untruthful people who know the game and cheer me on with a knowing wink. Other applause comes from the incompetent who do not recognise competence and join in because I’m senior..
Meanwhile, the truthful and competent look above them, see me and my untruthful incompetent sycophants, and leave.
Ten years pass.
Catastrophe. Inquiry. Recommendations. Apology. Changes.
Long after I’ve gone.
Your Chief Weapon.
Your chief weapon to improve your decisions is turning the stuff you don’t know into stuff you know.
- Annie Duke, ‘How to Decide’.
It’s natural to look at a decision that didn’t give the expected outcome and rule it as a ‘wrong’ decision.
Or worse.
A waste of time.
If we categorise a decision as a waste of time because it got us ‘nowhere’, then we’re more likely to hesitate at our next decision, or avoid making a decision at all.
And yet.
Every decision we make tells us more about the stuff we don’t know. Or maybe even just tells us there’s stuff we don’t know. Like … why didn’t that decision turn out?
It’s all about what we’re measuring.
A good decision is one that advances us towards where we want to be.
Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances us towards where we want to be.
If our response to a ‘bad’ decision is despondent criticism of our judgement, and then an aversion to making decisions, then we’ve denied ourselves the opportunity to turn stuff we don’t know into stuff we know.
We’ve holstered our chief weapon to improve our decisions.
Writing Our Autobiography.
Nobody likes to make a decision. Everybody likes to criticise.
- Roger Ury, Negotiation expert.
I’ve worked in organisations where the only way to get a decision from the boss was to create something provoking criticism. Occasionally from the boss. More often via one of their courtiers. It helped refine my understanding of the boss’s intent.
We’re often more enthusiastic editors of another’s story than authors of our own.
All the while our criticisms are ghostwriting our autobiography.
The Ability to Explain.
One of the hallmarks of a great leader is being able to explain your decisions.
- Alyssa Mastromonaco, Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff
When was the last time your boss showed her working out?
When was the last time you showed your working out to someone?
Good practice for being a boss.
Those who are reluctant to show their reasoning are usually afraid it will reveal they rely on positional power - and our preference for someone else to make our decisions.
Carrier Oil.
Carrier oils are mediums carrying essential oils for topical application.
Religions can be a carrier oil for selfishness, vindictiveness, exploitation, and hypocrisy.
The military can be a carrier oil for manipulation and authoritarianism.
Organisations can be a carrier oil for cowardice and fear.
Things few of us would do on our own - we tolerate when diluted in a carrier oil.
Protect Us from Anxiety.
I’ve worked in organisations where access to information is appropriately aggressively policed and protected. The military gave me a security clearance and operated on ‘need to know’. My information security company employer did likewise. Both did so with the intent of guarding against third party harm.
Yet the majority of people in organisations who purport to ‘protect’ information do so for selfish purposes.
The most common is that information is power.
By restricting access they both anoint themselves as gatekeeper, as well as increase the value of the information by making it scarce. People appoint themselves as guardians, thus increasing their status - regardless of who needs the information the person protects. The gatekeeper attends meetings where things are disclosed and discussed that must be important if so few go. (They aren’t.)
Another common motive for restricting access to information is people don’t want to encourage others to find fault in their decision making. If we saw their working out, we may point out an error of fact or reasoning. Too risky. Keep it secret. Tell a story that confidentiality encourages candid conversations.
A third and related reason for denying access to information is people don’t want others to see how random and shallow, and often nepotistic their decisions are. If we saw the coin flip, the personality bias, the deals, the conflicts of interest, the back scratching, or the child-like fear that lie behind many behind closed door decisions - we would be appalled. Best we not see how the bloody meat is cut in the abattoir.
Thus, in an era where we can access centuries of information with a click, we accept without question that our boss can access information and use it to make decisions affecting us, and we can’t know why or how. We aren’t allowed to check their working out. We accept that the boss or executive or board can meet an never publish its minutes - not video the meeting and make it available online. We act like words need to be transcribed onto parchment by monks with quills, instead of recorded and turned into text and published almost instantly by a range of cheap software.
We choose to allow our boss to protect us from the effort and anxiety of nuance.
Those bosses aren’t protecting information from third party harm. They’re protecting it from us.
Face Reality Together.
Face reality together, not the emotions reality inspires.
- Hannah Arendt
Workplace conflict is so easily turned into a ‘personality clash’. What is often a thorny, yet clearly defined underperformance or capability issue resolvable with a bit of plain talking and adult compromise, is twisted into a soap opera of emotions.
HR types come running.
Step 1: Step Back - helps us settle our emotions.
Step 2: Define the Issue- helps us see the reality, not its consequences. See the fire, not sniff the smoke.
If the boss or HR does turn it into a personality issue, might be time for them to Step Back and then Define their reason for preferring the acting rather than the script.
They may be confronted with their own capability deficit.
Presence or Observer.
There are times for the boss to be an observer.
There are more times for the boss to be a presence.
There are few times we want to be observed.
There are more times we need a presence.
An observer boss is detached. A judge. Or at best - a neutral onlooker.
A presence boss accompanies me. Is in relationship with me. Moves in sync with me.
A presence boss knows I’m an adult. Is not dependent on me, nor I on them.
Presence bosses are rare.
Two Maps.
Imagine you’re consulting a map covering terrain you’re about to walk.
It consists only of tracks, paths, topographical features and other information you’ve recorded, either on past journeys or from books and accounts of other travellers.
You’re embarking on the journey with another, who also has a map.
Wouldn’t it make sense to show them your map, and invite them to fill in any missing detail from theirs? After all, you’re both going on the same journey.
Yet how often has someone in your organisation - an employer, or supervisor, or even a peer - made a decision affecting you, which means it affects them, without consulting with you? Without checking their assumptions with yours, to identify any gaps and potentially fill them before setting forth?
The Law calls that Procedural Fairness.
I call that Step 4: Give a Hearing.
You might call it Common Sense.