beware of optimism bias

Beware of optimism bias: the expectation that the best possible outcome will emerge. This accounts for why divorce rates in the western world are around 40 percent, yet when you ask newlyweds to rate their likelihood of divorce they are most likely to put it at 0 percent…. It also explains why, as our colleagues Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit describe, “One of the most emblematic outputs of the dreaded strategic-planning process is the ‘hockey stick’ forecast – the line that sails upwards on the graph after a brief early dip to account for up-front investment. These hockey sticks, confidently presented by executives pitching their new strategy, are easy to draw but they don’t score many goals. What tends to happen in reality is that the strategy fails to meet the bold aspirations and is replaced by a new one. 

Being aware of such biases doesn’t help one avoid them. As Dan Ariely, one of the foremost thinkers in the field, declares, “I am just as bad myself at making decisions as everyone else I write about.” Fortunately, however, there are a number of proven and practical tools to minimize biases in decision-making. These include, among others, the following: the “pre-mortem” (generating a list of potential causes for failure of a recommendation and working backward to rectify them before they happen); “red team-blue team” (assigning one person/group to argue for, and one to argue against, a decision); “clean-sheet redesign” (developing a system from only a set of requirements, free from considerations related to current investments or path); and “vanishing options” (taking the preferred option off the table and asking, “What would we do now?”). Importantly, simply ensuring you are engaging a diverse team in decision-making will reap significant rewards – which research reveals can improve decision-making quality by more than 50 percent.

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019

PowerPoint makes us stupid

PowerPoint has been slowly killing the U.S. military from the inside. As this 2010 article from The New York Times explains, from generals down to frontline officers, America's military staff spend their time making, giving, and listening to PowerPoint presentations instead of, you know, preparing for war.

The money quote from that piece actually comes from none other than Gen. Jim Mattis, who said at the time that "PowerPoint makes us stupid."

For example, PowerPoint reduces everything down to bullet points and inane charts. This "stifles discussion, critical thinking, and thoughtful decision-making," officers in the Pentagon have said.

It's also a huge waste of precious time. Indeed, junior officers are nicknamed "PowerPoint Rangers" for all the time they have to spend making slides. As The New York Times reported: "...when a military website, Company Command, asked an Army platoon leader in Iraq, Lt. Sam Nuxoll, how he spent most of his time, he responded, 'Making PowerPoint slides.' When pressed, he said he was serious."

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

"General Mattis, save the U.S. military. Ban PowerPoint." The Week. January 17, 2017

what if

Life is full of decisions. From seemingly small decisions like what to eat for dinner, too much more consequential ones such as choosing a career to pursue, we are all faced with numerous choices on a daily basis. It’s human nature to look back at the roads we didn’t take and wonder, “What if?” Yet a new survey conducted in England has revealed that a staggering amount of people are unhappy with the way they’ve lived their lives.

According to a survey of 2,000 British adults commissioned by UK charity consortium Remember A Charity, four out of ten people regret how they have lived their lives so far. Spending too much time at work and not traveling enough were among respondents’ biggest regrets.

Other common regrets among those surveyed included neglecting their health and not spending enough time with their family. Many wished they had been a better parent to their children. All of that regret seems to be a big motivator as well, with 40% of respondents claiming that they want to make some positive changes in the near future...

Interestingly, close to half of those surveyed said they regret focusing so much on financial success as opposed to more meaningful endeavors.

John Anderer

"Hindsight Is 20/20: 4 Out Of 10 Adults Regret Their Life Choices". StudyFinds. July 22, 2019. 

a call to solitude

Jesus modeled for us the spiritual discipline of solitude as an essential habit for spiritual renewal...

Here are some examples when Jesus engaged in external solitude as a means of fortifying His inner solitude of peace and purpose:

• When preparing for the tests of leadership and public ministry, He spent forty days alone in the desert. (Matthew 4:1-11)
• Before He chose the Twelve, He spent the entire night alone in the desert hills. (Luke 6:12) 
• When He had to choose between continuing to heal the sick or move to another place to teach the Good News. Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed (Mark 1:35).
• When He received the news of John the Baptist’s death, He withdrew from there in a boat to a lonely place apart. (Matthew 14:13)
• After the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, Jesus “went up on a mountainside by himself...” (Matthew 14:23)

By “solitude” we mean being out of human contact, being alone, and being so for lengthy periods of time. To get out of human contact is not something that can be done for a short while, for the contact lingers long after it is, in one sense, over.

Silence is a natural part of solitude and is its essential complement. Most noise is human contact. Silence means to escape from sounds and noises, other than the gentle ones of nature. But it also means not talking, and the effects of not talking on our soul are different from those of simple quietness...

Solitude and silence give us some space to reform our innermost attitudes toward people and events. They take the world off our shoulders for a time and interrupt our habit of constantly managing things, of being in control or thinking we are.

One of the greatest of spiritual attainments is the capacity to do nothing. Thus, the Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal insightfully remarks, “I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they are unable to stay quietly in their room.”

“The cure for too much to do is solitude and silence, for there you find that you are safely more than what you do. And a cure of loneliness is solitude and silence, for there you discover in how many ways you are never alone.”

Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges

The Servant Leader: Transforming You Heart, Head, Hands & Habits. 2003. J.Countryman.

avoid language that implies you're a victim

Saying things like "I have to work 60 hours a week," or "I had no choice but to say yes" infers you're a victim of unfortunate circumstances. While there will certainly be consequences for the decisions you make, acknowledge that you always have choices.

Amy Morin

"9 Ways to Avoid Giving Away Your Personal Power" Inc.com. Dec. 21, 2015

a giant waste of time and money

[Internal meetings] can be a "giant waste of time and money," [JPMorgan CEO Jamie] Dimon wrote. If a meeting is absolutely necessary, the organizer needs to prepare a focused agenda and send around materials in advance; and the meeting participants have to reach clear decisions.

Sound familiar? Other business leaders have expressed the same squeamishness around unnecessary meetings.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, for example, often starts meetings with a period of silence so that everyone can read over the materials and think about what they want to say. That way, the rest of the meeting is more productive.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk reportedly tells people who stay quiet in meetings: "You haven't said anything. Why are you here?"

Shana Lebowitz 

"Jamie Dimon says bureaucracy is 'a disease' — and JPMorgan takes 5 steps to combat it" Business Insider. Apr. 5, 2018

no longer cutting it

One of the biggest mistakes a manager can make is leaving people in positions for which they’re no longer suited. [Jeff Weiner, CEO of Linkedin] uses a sports metaphor to explain his perspective... 

“The most important lesson I’ve learned in the role of CEO is to not leave the pitcher in the game for too long,” Weiner says. “You know, when you’re watching a baseball game, sometimes you’ll see a star pitcher on the mound, they’re having a great game and as the game continues to go on, you can see their arm starting to tire and you can see the opposing team start to hit the ball a little bit harder.”

Whenever this happens in baseball, the manager approaches the mound to check on the pitcher, who inevitably says some variation of: “I’m fine. I got this.” Weiner says the same thing happens in business.

“In 20 years of managing people, not once has anyone ever come to me and said they couldn’t do their job. Not a single time,” he says. “It’s not their job. That’s the role of a manager.”...

With Weiner’s corporate philosophy relying so much on managing compassionately, it may seem unusual to suggest letting go of an employee who is no longer cutting it. But, as he explains, it’s not.

“People just assume ‘compassion’ means not making hard decisions, not making hard choices, not transitioning people out of roles,” Weiner says. “It’s the exact opposite: The least compassionate thing you can do when someone is not equipped to be doing what they’re doing is to leave them in that role.”

When those employees are left in their roles, Weiner continues, it takes a toll on them.

“They lose confidence. They’re losing self-esteem by the day. They’re taking that back to their teams, people are seeing that you’re leaving them in the role ― which is undermining your ability to lead ― and the worst of all is that individual that no longer believes in themselves, that’s losing their sense of self, they take that energy home,” Weiner points out. “They’re taking that energy home to their families.”

There’s only one way to stop this vicious cycle, he says.

“The most compassionate thing you can do in that situation is take that person aside and say, ‘This isn’t working out right now. Here’s where the bar is set. I’m going to do everything I can to get you to the bar or above the bar. And we’re going to set a timetable,’” Weiner says.

In some cases, the employee may need to be transitioned out of the role, but that’s not a foregone conclusion.

“There’s probably a reason you put them in that role, so there may be the potential for them to be able to take coaching and learn how to do the job more effectively,” Weiner says. “It’s a question of how much time you’re going to give them and how much work you’re willing to put in.”

Lisa Capretto

"One Of The Biggest Mistakes A Manager Can Make, According To LinkedIn’s CEO". Huffington Post. Jan. 9, 2017

eyes on, hands off

There is clearly risk associated with empowering your team to make more and faster decisions at a lower-level than was previously the norm. As you take your hands off the wheel, you need to be more vigilant and aware than ever about the decisions your team is making. Provide your team with guidance on the decisions that you want to maintain, and then expect them to handle the rest by leveraging their increased connectivity internal and external to their team. Encourage an environment of transparency where the expectation is for people to be self-aware of when they need help, and are comfortable asking for it. Use every challenge your team faces as an opportunity for organizational learning, and you will quickly build trust in this new way of working.

Chris Fussell

"Eyes On, Hands Off: How to empower your team and get out of their way" Medium. March 15, 2017.

de-centralized empowerment

Oftentimes leaders believe they want to create a flexible and high-performing team, however balk at the realities of doing so. You are, quite literally, trying to work your way out of your job by creating a team that doesn’t need you in the way that you are used to. This is an uncomfortable journey, and before you embark on it be sure you are ready for the outcome. It helps to be clear on your objectives for this shift. Most leaders will want their team to be moving faster, making better decisions, and doing so more independently. But why? Is it to give you bandwidth to focus on more strategic aims? To enable them to better serve clients and customers? To help them grow and be prepared for the next step in their careers (enabling you to take the next step on yours)? Your reasons may be a combination of the above, but keep in mind that you are starting a journey to unleash your team’s capability to accomplish this objective. It’ll be hard, but it’s time to get out of their way.

Chris Fussell

"Eyes On, Hands Off: How to empower your team and get out of their way" Medium. March 15, 2017.

habits = 40% of all actions

One paper published by a Duke University researcher in 2006 found that more than 40 percent of the actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. Random House. 2012.

the shock of that truth

Not telling others what you can see with your own eyes is the first step towards an early grave. When the business environment shifts and the accustomed approaches stop working, the last thing any business needs is a leader who suggests everyone keep calm and carry on.

Disruptive leaders are always testing to make sure their companies’ strategies are still effective–and say so when they aren’t. The more rapidly changes take place, the more crucial it becomes for leaders to take all their employees with them on the journey. The truth sometimes hurts, but it’s often the shock of that truth that prods people into taking actions and making decisions they might not have contemplated otherwise.

Faisal Hoque

"5 Habits Of Truly Disruptive Leaders" Fast Company. November 9, 2015.

what other decisions can they handle?

[GM CEO Mary Barra said,] “A lot gets set aside when you’re going through a restructuring process, so it was an opportunity to really define our culture. So, brainstorming with the HR department, I said let’s change the dress code. Let’s make it ‘dress appropriately.’

But the HR department ironically posed my first hurdle. They started arguing with me, saying, it can be ‘dress appropriately’ on the surface, but in the employee manual it needs to be a lot more detailed. They put in specifics, like, ‘Don’t wear T-shirts that say inappropriate things, or statements that could be misinterpreted.'” 

“What does inappropriate, in the context of a T-shirt, even mean,” she asked the audience, half-jokingly. ”So I finally had to say, ‘No, it’s two words, that’s what I want.’ What followed was really a window into the company for me.”

After replacing GM’s 10-page dress code treatise with a two-word appeal, Barra received a scathing email from a senior-level director. ”He said, ‘You need to put out a better dress policy, this is not enough.’ So I called him—and of course that shook him a little bit. And I asked him to help me understand why the policy was inept.”

The director explained that occasionally, some people on his team had to deal with government officials on short notice, and had to be dressed appropriately for that. 

“Okay, why don’t you talk to your team,” Barra replied. ”He was an established leader at GM, responsible for a pretty important part of the company, with a multimillion-dollar budget. He called me back a few minutes later, saying, ‘I talked to the team, we brainstormed, and we agreed that the four people who occasionally need to meet with government officials will keep a pair of dress pants in their locker. Problem solved.'”

“What I realized is that you really need to make sure your managers are empowered—because if they cannot handle ‘dress appropriately,’ what other decisions can they handle? And I realized that often, if you have a lot of overly prescriptive policies and procedures, people will live down to them,” she said.

“But if you let people own policies themselves—especially at the first level of people supervision—it helps develop them. It was an eye-opening experience, but I now know that these small little things changed our culture powerfully. They weren’t the only factor, but they contributed significantly.”

Leah Fessler

"GM’s dress code is only two words" by Leah Fessler. Quartz. April 3, 2018.

5 P's of ethical power

One of my favorite books is The Power of Ethical Management, written by Ken Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale. In their book, Blanchard and Peale discuss the five principles of ethical decision-making which they call the “Five P’s of Ethical Power.”...

Purpose—Your purpose is the road you choose to travel, the meaning and direction of your life. It’s the driving force of why you do what you do. For some it may be rooted in their spiritual faith. Others may find their purpose is something they feel called to do, such as serving those in need, raising responsible children, or leaving the world a better place than they found it. Aligning the activities of your life according to your purpose gives you a clear sense of direction, so when you’re faced with challenging circumstances or difficult decisions, you’re able to filter those occasions through the lens of your purpose and make choices that keep you on track.

Pride—Unlike false pride, which stems from a distorted sense of self-importance that causes people to believe and act like they are better than others, a healthy sense of pride springs from a positive self-image and confidence in one’s abilities. A proper sense of pride mixed with a good dose of humility is the balance you’re seeking. Being driven by false pride causes you to seek the approval and acceptance of others which can overly influence you to take the easy way out when faced with a tough situation.

Patience—Patience is in short supply in our culture. We live in a hyper-connected, instantaneous world where virtually anything we want is just a click away. Blanchard and Peale describe patience as having a faith and belief that things will work out well, as long as we stick to our values and principles. Giving in to instant gratification is one of the biggest temptations we face and it causes us to make decisions that aren’t in alignment with our purpose and values. Enduring the struggles and challenges life throws our way helps develop the strength of our character. Much like prematurely opening a caterpillar cocoon leads to a weakened and under-developed butterfly, choosing the path of expediency leaves us with an under-developed character and weakens our ethical power.

Persistence—This component of ethical power is about staying the course and remaining true to your purpose and values. Persistence is about commitment, not interest. When you have interest in something, you do it when it’s convenient. When you’re committed, you do it no matter what! One of my favorite “Yoda-isms” from the Star Wars movies is “Do or do not. There is no try.” When it comes to making ethical decisions, there is never a right time to do the wrong thing. Persistence keeps us on the straight and narrow path.

Perspective—All the other elements of ethical power emanate from the core of perspective. Perspective is about having the big picture view of situations and understanding what’s truly important. Too often we make snap decisions in the heat of the moment and neglect to step back and examine the situation from a bigger perspective. Maintaining the proper perspective is also about paying attention to our inner-self and not just our task-oriented outer-self. Taking the time to enter each day with prayer, meditation, exercise, or solitude helps foster self-reflection which is needed to help us maintain the right perspective about life.

Randy Conley

"Got Ethics? The 5 Principles of Ethical Leaders" Leading with Trust. 6/12/2016

Taken from the book The Power of Ethical Management by by Ken Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale. Harper Collins, 1988

trust employees

In this world of intense scrutiny, where everyone is looking at what you do...one reaction is to create management systems, more process, more controls, and more bureaucracy. Relying on traditional supervision, process and controls would inhibit serving clients responsively, and stifle employees' creative energies. We cannot apply Industrial age management systems to address post Industrial age needs. There is a better alternative, which is to trust employees. Values are the glue, the bond that binds us together in the absence of controls. These must be genuinely shared values; they can't be imposed top-down. Values provide employees a framework to make decisions when management systems and procedures are unclear. It comes down to judgment, based on shared values.

Sam Palmisano

"The Future of Leadership" by Samie Al-Achrafi. The Huffington Post. 10/30/2015

the institutional imperative

My most surprising discovery: the overwhelming importance in business of an unforeseen force that we might call “the institutional imperative.”… I thought…that decent, intelligent, and experienced managers would automatically make rational business decisions. But I learned over time that isn’t so….For example:

1. As if governed by Newton’s First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction
2. Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds
3. Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and
4. The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated.

Institutional dynamics, not venality or stupidity, set businesses on these courses, which are too often misguided. 

Warren Buffett

"Warren Buffett on Business" Leading Blog. 12/21/2009

awakened leadership

Awakened leadership is reflective. When you reflect on things, you consider them from multiple angles, and think deeper about them than a superficial thought or two. Your job, position, work relationships, the industry you are involved in, the very purpose of your performance, your private or social connections, the things you say, the things you do, and those you refrain from saying and doing: reflecting on all of the above can help you understand yourself better, and make you more mindful from here onward....

Awakened leadership is the continued awareness in your thoughts, actions, and communications that: 

1. You have to make your decisions by reflecting on your lessons learned from past experiences, but even more by reflection on your wishes for the future and the possible effects these decisions will have on that. 
2. You should consider the perspectives of others, and keep an open mind to potentially different ideas, which as they may enrich your understanding, insight, and consequently, the directions you will choose going forward. 
3. You should question, even doubt, established patterns and procedures, as many of them were created when times, expectations, circumstances, goals, and mindsets, were entirely different. If you find that the old patterns and procedures still suffice, you can continue with them, but if you find that there is room for improvement or drastic change, you should implement that. 
4. You should keep in mind that, while details are important to safeguard quality in everything, you also have to keep the big picture in mind, so that you can focus on what really matters in the long run. 
5. You should make mindful leadership your new habit. Your mind is a wonderful instrument, but it has the tendency to lead you astray at every opportunity it gets. This is the time to step up in awareness and regain control over the directions your mind moves into. 

Restore your priorities in the right order, and realize the impermanence of everything, including yourself. If you can keep yourself mindful of the fact that you want to leave this world a better place than you encountered it, you have set an important step on the path to awakened leadership.

Joan F. Marques

"Awakened Leadership: A behavioral roadmap" HR.com. August 2015

myopic misery

We hypothesized a phenomenon that we term myopic misery. According to our hypothesis, sadness increases impatience and creates a myopic focus on obtaining money immediately instead of later. This focus, in turn, increases intertemporal discount rates and thereby produces substantial financial costs….

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), the English poet and philosopher, experienced profound bouts of anxiety and depression throughout his life. This life experience may have given rise to his famous phrase “a sadder and a wiser man”.  More recently, beginning with empirical tests of depressive realism (Alloy & Abramson, 1979), hundreds of studies have found support for the sadder-but-wiser hypothesis: Sadness and depression make individuals wiser than nondepressed or happy people. For example, sadness tends to be associated with careful, deliberative, System 2 thought (Kanhenman, 2011) as opposed to heuristic, impulsive System 1 thought (Keltner & Lerner, 2011). Sadness has been shown to reduce a range of otherwise robust cognitive biases, including having overly optimistic views of one’s importance, reputation, and abilities (Alloy & Abramson, 1979); relying on stereotypes (Park & Banaji, 2000); and overattributing causality to individuals (Keltner, Ellsworth, & Edwards, 1993)….

[Yet,] sadness makes one myopic. Although sadness may make people more accurate in some contexts (Alloy & Abramson, 1979), it also makes them prefer immediate gratification – and that preference is not an attribute associated with wisdom….


Jennifer S. Lerner, Ye Li, and Elke U. Weber

“The Financial Cost of Sadness” Association for Psychological Science. 2013

never protect your past

Over the course of IBM’s ongoing evolution, Chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty has abided by the motto, “never protect your past.”

“That’s what reinvention is. This is why I’ve divested—even in my time—$8 billion of businesses of ours,” she said on stage at the Fortune Global Forum in November.

Claire Zillman

"IBM Is Blowing Up Its Annual Performance Review" Fortune. 2/1/2016

challenge your certainty

Our beliefs and assumptions are skewed by personal biases and not to be fully trusted. Often they haven't been tested or revised based upon new information. They reflect partial knowledge and are only partially wise. Resist acting instinctively on your beliefs and assumptions, and open your mind to the subject's potential complexity. Before registering your opinion, enter into a state of not knowing. Zen Buddhists call this the "beginner's mind." Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey (Immunity to Change, Harvard Business School Publishing, 2009) would describe this as moving from the "self-authorizing mind" to the "self-transforming mind." 

Once you learn to distrust yourself, it's easier to trust others. The goal isn't to locate the most trustworthy or least fallible individual and hand all decision-making to this person; the goal is to share the load and get everyone to feel ownership in the organization's direction and operations. This doesn't mean that everyone should participate in every decision, but decision-making needs to be more evenly distributed. 

Gary B. Cohen

"Leadership: How to Ask the Right Questions" Bloomberg Business. 9/29/2009

rectitude

Bushido refers not only to martial rectitude, but to personal rectitude: Rectitude or Justice, is the strongest virtue of Bushido. A well-known samurai defines it this way: ‘Rectitude is one’s power to decide upon a course of conduct in accordance with reason, without wavering; to die when to die is right, to strike when to strike is right.’ Another speaks of it in the following terms: ‘Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. Without bones the head cannot rest on top of the spine, nor hands move nor feet stand. So without Rectitude neither talent nor learning can make the human frame into a samurai.’

Tim Clark

"The Bushido Code: The Eight Virtues of the Samurai" The Art of Manliness. 9/14/2008