Different Trench. Still a Trench.
Australian troops set sail in 1914 for the trenches of the European battlefield.
Then somebody had the great idea of breaking the bloody stalemate in Belgium and France by landing those forces on the shores of the Gallipoli Peninsula and driving northward. Brilliant in its conception.
Six months later those soldiers were dying in trenches in Türkiye.
Unless an organisation is creative, brave, and honest enough to be better - any innovation, change, or strategic direction project - inevitably ends with the troops doing what they know best: sheltering in a different trench, but still a trench.
Welcome to Freedom.
We grow up learning that if we do this, it leads to that, and if we do that, it leads to this, and this, and this … and … success.
Our story is one of causation in which we are at the helm of our ship of Life, steering a course to better shores.
It’s ingrained in us from the moment our parents pin our crayon scribble on the fridge door. When we’re flipping burgers the boss incentivises us with Crew Member of the Month awards. Everything leads to something better.
It’s reinforced in every year of school - literally - that we progress to. If we do this - then we get to Year 2, 3, 4, 5 … 12 … Uni … job … promotion … pay rise … Masters Degree … promotion … head hunted … promotion … Doctorate …
Such that if (more like when) we tap the accelerator and … nothing … When we land that great client and the other bloke gets the promotion … When we do that course that says Leadership means doing X and we do X and … nothing.
Our first instinct is to think - what did I do wrong? Why didn’t I get the mid-life equivalent of Crew Member of the Month?
Welcome to Adulthood. Welcome to Freedom.
Once the initial shock passes (it may take a while) - we should realise that there is no law of the universe that says my work, my efforts, my integrity, my honesty, my … anything … automatically leads to a reward - or causes anything. (Admit it. You always expect something.)
You do good things for their own sake. Nice to get an attaboy from the boss or a client or that woman in the other department who benefitted from your cleverness. But don’t expect it. Don’t assume it. Most importantly, don’t interpret the silence or even criticism as evidence your work isn’t good. Or that you’re no good.
You do it because it’s what you do. If it’s acknowledged - Bonus.
If it’s criticised - Learn. Then do it better.
Whatever you do - don’t hand your happiness or sense of progress as a human to someone else to decide.
Just do good work because you’re a grownup now.
You Want the Curious and Malcontents.
You want some followers drifting or wandering off the path you’ve plotted for them with (ideally) you up front.
You want the curious, the malcontents, or the creatives or the simply distracted followers deviating off road.
You want some stragglers lagging off the pace.
You want some of those people rejoining your line of followers mindlessly strung out behind you, quietly affirming for everyone to see by their return from their exploring that yours is the better route. Or perhaps jogging up to you up there at the front of your procession of disciples and saying ’Hey boss! Good job! We checked out some other paths, and reckon you’ve chosen the best one!’ Or maybe even ‘Hey boss! We found another way we reckon you might be interested in!’
You have then given those people - and yourself - the greatest gift of Leadership:
Choice.
You are only truly a Leader if people choose to continue following you. You are only truly a Leader if you give that choice - with the authentic, sincere desire that those who leave you are better off for it.
When that happens, you transform from a ‘You Must Follow Me Because This is the Way’ leader into ‘This is the Way Because You are Following Me’ one.
Which will you choose?
Leaders Need Rebels.
You don’t pull over for a police officer because of their leadership.
You don’t pay your water bill because of the leadership qualities of the CEO of the water utility company.
You didn’t attend school for a dozen or more years because the government led you.
You didn’t sit up straight with full body listening because your teacher was a leader.
A person with positional power doesn’t, by definition, get people to do things the person otherwise wouldn’t because of their leadership. This is one of the great myths of organisations who bang on about the subject, even christening roles as ‘leadership positions’.
If Leadership is persuading a person to do something or go somewhere they otherwise wouldn’t have done or gone - then Leadership most often appears in opposition to, or the absence of, positional power.
Sure, a person holding positional power can still display leadership qualities. Just as a person can ignore the lift to their tenth floor office and choose to take the stairs. Or cycle to work instead of driving. Or wake up at dawn and go for a ten kilometre run. The longer a person seeks or holds positional power, the more any leadership muscles or tendons they may have had, atrophy. Why make all the effort that fills libraries of books on Leadership - when you can just tell people what to do?
Anyone can direct a person whose mortgage or ego or sense of self-esteem relies on being paid this fortnight.
Which is why people with leadership aspirations, or who hold positional power yet consider themselves leaders, should welcome the Rebel.
The Rebel - the person who says ‘Your way is wrong - mine is better’ - is like weights on the gym floor. The Rebel is the resistance that builds leadership muscle. The Rebel forces the leadership aspirant to draw on deeper, more nuanced dormant strengths - or to begin doing the reps to build them. The Rebel speaks the words most others are often thinking. The Rebel reveals the weaknesses and flaws and inefficiencies in the path the aspiring leader wants others to take. The Rebel asks ‘Why?’ If you can’t answer in a way that leaves the Rebel at least to ponder, you have no business calling yourself a Leader.
If you don’t have a Rebel - you should create one. Like the Catholic Church did in the advocatus diaboli - the devil’s advocate - whose job it was to argue against canonisation of a candidate for sainthood to reveal any flaws before the crowd did.
Sure, I don’t want a Rebel in the cockpit of my international flight. I do want them in the seat controlling the flight simulator.
Rifle Fires. Rifle Stops.
Rifle fires. Rifle stops.
Cock, lock, look.
Rounds in the magazine. No rounds in the chamber.
Release the action and continue firing.
This drill was known to the soldier as ‘Immediate Actions’ or IA. It was designed to teach how to instinctively identify and remedy a weapon stoppage.
Habits, routines, customs and rituals are springboards for creativity, innovation, and improvement.
They are the beginnings - not the ends.
They need practice and maintenance as much as a soldier needs to rehearse IAs.
But a soldier’s job is not to execute drills. A soldier’s job is to engage with the enemy.
Beware the ritual keepers who are put in charge.
They will fiercely resist progress and those who seek it as enemies of tradition and thus threats to their power and ego.
The Logistics of Leadership.
Each soldier in the D-Day landing in June 1944 required ten tonnes of supplies and an additional tonne for every month they were in action.
(It’s said that amateurs talk strategy whereas professionals talk logistics.)
The further we venture from home, the longer our supply lines, the more we rely on others to supply us with the essentials of life, or we must resort to hunting and foraging for ourselves.
This is why many bosses never grow up and leave home, and punish those who dare attempt to draw them out.
Breaking Cover.
His camouflage is good.
He says the right things. Nods when his boss’s boss says the right things.
Ladies with prams and their mothers whisper as he passes by.
Shrouded in a smokescreen of incense.
Then something happens.
He unwittingly breaks cover.
The matrons gasp and look away while children laugh at the nudity.
Your Most Effective Response Ever.
“I hear where you’re coming from.
I used to think the exact same thing.
But here’s what changed my mind:”
- Your most effective response ever.
A Lesson from the Back Yard.
As 11 year olds go, I was a reasonable cricketer.
A few summers of front and back yard cricket with and against my Dad, older brothers and neighbourhood mates and their siblings had honed me into a decent all rounder who could routinely bowl my brother and his mates out. No quarter was given nor sought. Any flaws in style or technique were quickly and bluntly pointed out and humiliated into self-correction.
It was with this quiet confidence that I found myself bowling to my best friend from school in his back yard while his dad kept wicket behind an upturned bin and his younger brother stood at first slip.
I sent one down without a warm up, and while my action felt a little weird, the tennis ball turned on the uneven grass and my friend swung his bat and missed. His dad gasped. ‘Wow! Did you see that! What a ripper! Did you see how he disguised it out the back of his hand, boys!’ My friend scowled and tapped the ground, ready to make amends with my next ball. ‘Disguised?’ I had no idea what my friend’s dad meant. However, I registered that my ball had been effective, felt affirmed and buoyed by my friend’s dad’s enthusiastic response, and decided to try and replicate it.
I bowled and my friend again missed, and his dad was even more rapturous. ‘Gee whiz! Another beauty! Boys! Did you see that?! Fantastic!’ My friend and his bother exchanged glances, and I sensed they were annoyed that their dad was using my bowling action as a style for them to emulate. So I bowled again, trying even harder to reproduce the action of the two previous balls. Another swing and a miss, and more compliments and applause from behind the wickets. ‘What a googly!’ their dad shouted. ‘Unbelievable! I don’t think that was playable! So good!’
I was feeling a mixture of quiet pride, with sympathy for the two boys that they could not match my brilliant medium pacer skills. I was straining to restrain my smile and keep my face in the intense scowl that I thought all serious cricketers maintained. And then my friend’s younger brother said it - in a loud whisper that children use when they’re caught between politeness and the truth.
‘Dad! What are you saying? Look at his arm! He’s not bowling! He’s chucking!’
My friend’s dad, bless him, quickly responded with claims that I was an ‘unorthodox right hand swing bowler’. But it was no good. I felt my face flush red. I realised that my instinct about my clumsy first ball was correct. I had bent my arm and thrown it. My friend’s dad, having never seen me bowl, mistook my ragged first ball for my best work and sought to encourage me with his ‘attaboy’ response. Instead, he’d affirmed my error, and so I’d repeated it - even trying harder to emphasise my illegal action - meaning I committed the cardinal cricket sin of being a chucker for almost an over.
I remember that day often. The lesson I learned from my friend’s dad’s well-meaning but unhelpful attempts to make me feel good about my lack of ability by lying to me. But for the blunt honesty of a nine-year-old, I would have continued, blissfully unaware of how badly I was bowling, how my style was illegal, how unfair it was on my friend batting, and how much I was embarrassing myself as I fell far short of my capabilities and potential. Whose needs were being met?
I mostly think about that day when I see mediocrity and even incompetence in the workplace being celebrated and rewarded.
Thus, it is so!
We are naturally reluctant to share information that could encourage others to find fault in our decision making.
- Annie Duke
Positional power should only be deployed to adversely affect another when the circumstances do not allow for information leading to the decision to be shared prior to it being made.
Such circumstances are exceptional.
So is good leadership.
Bad leaders invest in insulating themselves from the consequences of their decisions. They see no advantage in sharing their thinking prior to a decision that might reveal any flaws. Indeed, they think doing so shows weakness. They roll the dice or toss a coin and declare: ‘Thus, it is so!’
Leaving their fawning minions to pervert the truth a little more to align it with their boss’s whims.
Stops Working.
What creates the illusion of a changed human mind is a simple pattern what once worked stops working.
- George Saunders
We can wait for each driver on our roads to work out for themselves, either through personal experience, or by word of mouth, or what they read or watch - what speed to drive through suburbia.
We can wait for each driver to hit a pedestrian or lose control on a wet, slippery road, or even have a near miss, and from this one event, calculate for themselves what is the optimum driving speed that balances arriving at their destination with being able to respond to the driving conditions.
Or we can pass a law that limits the speed and erect signs notifying of that speed and occasionally place a police officer to detect, stop, and fine people travelling over that speed.
Most people have patterns of negative behaviour that stop working for them at age five, or fifteen, or twenty-five due to some life experience. We change our minds and adopt new behaviours. Others live selfish or corrupt or fraudulent, or manipulative lives that, but for some minor scratches, continue working for them. In the absence of a force imposed on them - a boss, spouse, friend, tragedy, or the law - they don’t change. And the rest of us suffer because of it.
Some of those people become bosses.
The Courage to Step Back.
‘For those who had the courage to step back.’
- Serhii Plokhy’s dedication in his book ‘Nuclear Folly - A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis’
Step 1 of the Five Steps to a Good Decision is Step Back.
Stepping back can take nerves of steel.
Stepping back saved the World.
Always. Never.
It’s easy to accuse someone of ‘always’ or ‘never’ behaving a particular way that offends us.
A person we’ve just met, perhaps in a meeting, enthusiastically prosecutes a view we don’t agree with. Or they’re late. Or they make a mistake. Or they are directly critical of a position we’ve taken; perhaps constructively and reasonably, perhaps not.
If you met President Kennedy during the Bay of Pigs fiasco, you would come away thinking he was weak - as did President Khrushchev of the Soviet Union. If you sat with him amidst the Cuban Missile Crisis - you would think him cool under pressure.
Sadly, many of us, often unknowingly, are characterised by others, and characterise them, based on a single experience. We are denied, and deny them, what the Law calls ‘procedural fairness’ - the opportunity to hear and address the adverse case against us. We go through life with both them and us robbed of the opportunity for a relationship, and to learn and mature from our first impressions.
Because of ‘Always’ or ‘Never’.
Name, Rank, and Browser Activity.
During the Second World War, Axis spies scoured local newspapers to glean anything about a serviceman’s life that, if the sailor, soldier, or airman was captured, might be used during interrogation to trick or coerce them into revealing military secrets.
Spying in the next war will be a doddle.
A Lot of Learning.
There’s a lot of learning between ‘It fell’ and ‘I dropped it’.
- Anonymous
There’s a lot of maturing between ‘the car stalled’ and ‘I stalled the car’.
Natural Debriefers.
The group of children drops their stand up paddle boards and runs to the grass to towel off.
Each competes with the other to describe their experience on the water. ‘I was about to stand and then this small wave unbalanced me and I went in!’ ‘I couldn’t stand and hold my paddle!’ ‘I almost stood, but slipped!’ Each is breathless in their excitement to share how their experience was different or the same as the other children in the group. Everyone eagerly listens.
Over the age of two when they’ve overcome their selfish stage, children and young people are natural debriefers. They spontaneously, and eagerly share and compare with their peers and sometimes adults perceptions of what happened to them during an activity.
Until we become adults, and revert to being selfish, petulant toddlers.
The Corporate Gate Crasher.
Reading much of what’s written in most workplaces evokes many emotions. Or worse - none.
One feeling is sadness.
We write our job application. Accept the invitation to contact our potential future boss (or HR if we’re unlucky) and ask more information about it. We research the position and company. We go to the interview. We are introduced to our potential boss. We hit it off. We like them. They like us. We leave feeling hopeful and quietly excited about the potential for us and our boss.
Perhaps another interview as part of the ‘short list’. And then the letter to say we’re offered the job.
Induction. Staff meetings. Some external consultant comes in and we do tests to identify our ‘type’ and the ‘type’ of our boss and what we both need to do to get along and be productive and avoid conflict. We share Birthday cakes and charity runs and dress up for good causes and toss a gold coin in with the boss’s and then maybe Friday drinks after we’ve dressed casually.
All this effort to get to know each other. Perhaps there’s one or two FTE positions whose job descriptions include Wellness and other responsibilities designed to make us more human and authentic and therefore a little vulnerable in our workplace.
Only for a stranger to gate crash and destroy all the carefully crafted relationship building.
The corporate letter.
The written correspondence bearing no resemblance to the banter and small talk as we waited for the kettle to boil or the microwave to ping. Written in a style, tone, and level that we would never recognise and identify in a line up of our bosses. Like the annoying stranger with no emotional intelligence who interrupts your deep and meaningful conversation at a party. The corporate letter, email, policy, memo, Powerpoint deck, meeting script, media release, marketing propaganda, performance review.
Nope. Sorry, officer. None of those verbose, cold, officious, empty, meaningless string of words fits the description of the warm and humorous and chatty human beings I’ve got to know since I applied for the job. Can’t help you.
The way many people in organisations write is why artificial intelligence is quietly thinking: ‘Hold my beer’.
We Need a Story.
That was the moment I gave up on decision analysis. No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.
- Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize Winner
When we follow a good decision making process we commission ourselves as authors of a story.
At the end, we are led by our narrative to a decision.