Leaders In London

Over at Slacker Manager, Phil Gerbyshak has been blogging about how to improve decision-making. As we are in a less forgiving economic environment, it’s all the more important that your decisions as a leader are mostly right. So, here are a few quick ’sources of power’ on making better decisions:

1. Don’t assume the best decisions come from you. ‘The leader as decision-maker’ who answers everyone’s questions and makes the final decision at the end of every meeting, is old hat and based on the outdated notion of the infallibility of leaders.

2. Gary Klein’s book Sources of Power, despite its title, isn’t about power, but is actually about decision-making. It’s a powerful analysis of decision-making by people in life or death situations - firefighters, soldiers, doctors - and the techniques (often sub-conscious) they use. Klein experimented with getting a bunch of marines to work in a trading pit, applying the military’s decision-making system for battlefield situations. The trader who were also part of the experiment trounced them. No surprise there. However, when he took the same traders and the same marines and put them in a war game exercise…the traders trounced the marines again. Their use of 80% information plus instinct in a fast-moving situation beat the military’s need (at the time: they’ve learnt since) for 100% information before making a decision.

3. Take your time when you can. Yes, I chose the ‘trader’ example in 2., on purpose. The turmoil in the financial markets shows that what looks like great, fast decision-making - if you’ve been in the bearpit of a trading floor, you’ll know how fast and furious it is - can, when scaled up and cumulatively, be disastrous for overall strategy. It can even de-stabilize the structure. So, our third and last thought on this subject comes from Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York, who is coming to share his leadership insights with us at Leaders in London in a couple of months (naked plug: book by tomorrow - Friday 26th - to save up to £500).

Giuliani advises us not to make decisions until you have to. The ability to reflect and ponder outcomes before acting is a sign of strength, not weakness, he stresses:

“One of the trickiest elements of decision-making is working out not what, but when. Regardless of how much time exists before a decision must be made, I never make up my mind until I have to. Faced with any important decision, I always envision how each alternative will play out before I make it. During this process, I’m not afraid to change my mind a few times. Many are tempted to decide an issue simply to end the discomfort of indecision. However, the longer you have to make a decision, the more mature and well-reasoned that decision should be.”

One of the biggest hits with the audience at our last Leaders in London was futurist Andrew Zolli. Andrew is many things, one of which is curator of the brilliant poptech!

Fast Company magazine ranked Andrew number 10 in its Fast 50 (the top 50 people going places, doing new things, breaking new ground).

One gem I remember from his talk last year is that a large part of the future is not unknown - we only need to look at the demographics to know what the people profile of the world, our market, our region, our country, etc. will be at any given time in the future. But, almost no large companies employ a demographer or have demographics in their skillset.

Andrew’s company, Z + Partners has just launched a new foresight service called First Word, that looks interesting in helping you navigate the future. You can find out more about it here: First Word from Z + Partners

So, you’re thinking ‘What quiet time?’ Leaders are always busy, right? Well, when do you think deeply, then…Make quiet time and use it to reflect. One reason leaders actually avoid quiet time is the question ‘reflect on what?’ It’s actually easier firefighting than taking head time to shape the agenda.

Captain D. Michael Abrashoff, who is coming to speak to us later this year, says you should use your quiet time to reduce risk by working through ‘what if’ scenarios. It’s particularly true in these tough trading conditions , where the environment is more unforgiving of error or miscalculation. On his website, Grassroots Leadership, Capt. Abrashoff answers a question, explaining how to use quiet time to reduce risk:

Memo from Capt. D. Michael Abrashoff

“It was very perceptive of you to link quiet time with risk taking. If you are constantly fighting fires, you don’t have the time to contemplate all that is going on around you and to think about the “what if” scenarios. After we instilled sound processes and procedures on the ship, it took about three months to get to a point where I was no longer continually fighting fires.

“I came to have the ability to carve out some quiet time for myself to reflect and re-dedicate. I found I was best able to do this when sitting in the Captain’s bridge wing chair and staring out at the ocean. On the bridge of a ship, there are only four chairs. Inside the Pilot House, there is a chair for the Captain and one for the Executive Officer. And, on the two bridge wings, there is a chair for the Commanding Officer only (so the Captain gets three of the four chairs!!!) . Everyone else must stand.

‘What if’ scenario planning

“This is really the one trapping of command that can’t be violated: only the Captain sits in the Captain’s chairs. These moments of reflection and quiet time enabled me to consider my “what if” scenarios and then subsequently the action we would need to take to prevail if faced with these situations. For example, what if we detected a missile coming toward us, set to impact in 30 seconds?

“I would go through what my initial actions would be and then I would mentally go through what I thought the actions of my watchstanders should be. Later, we would discuss and war game all the scenarios I could think up and then I would test the watchstanders to see what their responses would be under real circumstances. If there were deficiencies, then we could train to strengthen our weaknesses so that we would be experienced should any of my “what if” scenarios actually came to pass.

“The situations that we dreamed up were all worst-case scenarios. That way, we were always prepared to deal with the worst and still come out on top. Many times during the wargame discussions, the crew would come up with new and different angles to a scenario enabling us to see situations from everyperspective. We would analyze what it would look like if everything that could go right actually went right. And…we would also consider the downside and
what it would look like if everything that could go wrong actually went wrong.

Risk reduction through scenario planning

“We would examine where the critical points were, so that I could be there at these times to make sure everything was going right and that safeguards were put in place to ensure the desired outcomes. It was this thorough preparation that let me know what my limits were when taking risks.

“So…risk taking does not mean taking a leap into the unknown. You must first be prepared for all the possible scenarios and the upside potential, as well as the downside potential. That’s what I call taking “prudent, calculated risks.” ”

Posted on behalf of
Leaders in London
by
Phil Dourado