Now why on earth did they decide to do that?!
BY STEVE HEARSUM
Ever been left bewildered by decisions your company makes? Curious as to what possessed the CEO to propose that strategy, when everyone knows it is barking mad? Baffled as to why you have just spent three hours in a meeting that was supposed to come up with a cunning plan, and all you are left with is a set of vague and fluffy actions requiring yet more interminably long strategy meetings?
Decisions! Decisions!
Most life changing events in our careers have at their root someone, somewhere, deciding something. Sometimes we may be present to influence that, others not. Either way, what, if anything, can we do about it? And how actually do humans make decisions? I mean, it’s a rational process, right?….
When I researched how executives bought and sold businesses, one intriguing thing to emerge was the role desire played in decision making. In other words, emotion was in full swing, not just cool calculation around facts and figures. How so? Well, behavioural neurologist, Antonio Damasio, has demolished the idea that emotion can, or should, be kept out of decision making in order to get the best results. And the more neuroscientists inquire into human decision making the greater the significance of the interplay between the emotional (animal) and rational sectors of the brain.
Gardiner Morse, a senior editor at Harvard Business Review, summarized it in ‘Decisions and Desire’:“Brain regions that respond to cocaine or morphine are the same ones that react to the prospect of getting money and to actually receiving it. It’s perhaps no surprise that chocolate, sex, music, attractive faces, and sports cars also arouse this reward system.”
So just maybe your sales team really are high?
Part of the problem is we (over) value decisiveness, and leaders who can act John Wayne style, relying on gut instinct and intuition to act swiftly. The issue, as Gary Klein – the author of several books on intuition – says, is “you should never trust your gut… you have to consciously and deliberately evaluate it.” In other words, think critically, check out your assumptions, look at what is actually happening.
So what can be done practically to ensure that decisions are made that make sense and meet the needs of all those involved?
Well, there is no guaranteed answer, but here are some suggestions that may help to improve the quality of meetings. I advise clients to work out beforehand:
• What are the questions the meeting is designed to answer?
• What outcomes are they looking to walk away with?
• How will they reach a decision? e.g. consensus, majority vote etc?
• What do people need to have read beforehand? (to avoid wasting time on briefing rather than dialogue)
Are you strong enough to value dissent?
The most robust decisions emerge from groups that are able to be straight with each other. And sadly this is one area many leaders are weak in, namely they are intolerant of challenge.
Stage the untimely demise of the Big Idea!
Hold a pre-mortem, a technique Gary Klein came up with, and one way of making it safer to voice that dissent. He describes thus:
“You say: ‘We’re looking in a crystal ball, and this project has failed; it’s a fiasco. Now, everybody, take two minutes and write down all the reasons why you think the project failed.’
“The logic is that instead of showing people that you are smart because you can come up with a good plan, you show you’re smart by thinking of insightful reasons why this project might go south. If you make it part of your corporate culture, then you create an interesting competition: ‘I want to come up with some possible problem that other people haven’t even thought of.’ The whole dynamic changes from trying to avoid anything that might disrupt harmony to trying to surface potential problems.”
It may seem counter-intuitive to focus on the negative, but what is interesting about the pre-mortem is how it helps surface issues that may otherwise lurk in the shadows and are never discussed.
Putting dissent to the test…
In writing this guest column for OfficePolitics.com, I went back and forth with site founder and editor, Franke James, many, many, many times discussing meeting strategies. She sent me this candid feedback on my article and suggested I consider Dr. Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats
The Six Thinking Hats: WHITE: Facts and figures RED: Emotions and feelings BLUE: Control and thinking GREEN: Creativity and new ideas YELLOW: Positive constructive BLACK: Logical and negative
Franke wrote,
“On your blog post — I like it a lot… BUT I question the wisdom of surrendering the floor to the naysayers. Black Hat thinking is all around us. Corporations don’t need more encouragement to squash ideas. They need brave people with foresight who can champion innovative ideas and make them work. De Bono’s system is brilliant because it balances the forces of optimists, so-called realists and naysayers.
“In ‘Six Thinking Hats’ de Bono teaches a method for conducting meetings that I have found extremely effective. De Bono assigns a different color, and different thinking style to each of the six hats. It encourages groups of people to think in one direction at a time, to allow optimistic ideas to grow, and also negative ideas to be aired. It’s a very systematic style of meeting that can effortlessly control the naysayers in your group. The naysayers will want to speak up — but if their comments are negative they can only speak when everyone is wearing the Black Hat. This gives them an incentive to think with the full spectrum of Thinking Hats.
“Ideas that you might have missed by going through a more conventional meeting style come to the surface. Everything is considered because you are methodically going through a checklist. Everyone gets to have their say. The Six Hats system generates a wealth of ideas from 360 degrees. It works to build consensus and make better decisions.”
So there you have it. Two differing opinions thrashed out virtually across the pond.
What do you think?
Which process do you like better? The pre-mortem or the Six Hats? And why?
Let us know in the comments.
About Steve Hearsum
Steve Hearsum is a UK-based consultant, facilitator and coach. A coffee nerd and curious as to why he could never find a decent cappuccino, Steve began searching for the perfect blend of bean, grinder, milk and steam, and the best way to combine them. The interconnectedness of ingredients and process has become a governing philosophy for him. He is passionate about sensitizing organizations to the importance of human interactions for effective performance, and is writing a fascinating book on interpersonal chemistry… For more background on Steve please visit www.deboxing.co.uk.
References & useful resources
ARIELY, D. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions, 2009
HEARSUM, S. Interpersonal ‘fit’ in Mergers & Acquisitions due diligence – unpublished Masters dissertation, 2008
KLEIN, G. Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, 1999
KLEIN, G. The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work
LEHRER, J. Decisive Moment, the: How the brain makes up its mind
MORSE, G. (2006) ‘Decisions and Desire’ in Harvard Business Review, Jan 2006 pp42-51
McKinsey Quarterly, ‘Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut?’ Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and psychologist Gary Klein debate the power and perils of intuition for senior executives. March 2010
4 Answers to “Now why on earth did they decide to do that?!”
Six Hats approach to assessing options before deciding has far more reach for diverse opportunities. Six Hats and other broad techniques bring out both the negative “uh ohs” and many positive ideas. I do think that you have to make it OK for people to voice negatives/concerns yet Six Hats teaches people to view that and all the other ideas. In a Six Hats session, a negative is more likely to come out as a
“What if” inviting discussion about the negative concern.
In a Pre-Mortem, the negatives come splaying out as negatives. Even the name “Pre-Mortem” to me means that those engaging in it are far too cautious and/or living out their negative view of life at work with potentially grave consequences to the biz.
Different views of course. Yet I must say that I do not agree at all with Gary Klein that one should never trust his/her gut. There is so much experience gathered inside those of us who are intuitive that saying “never trust” could be quite dangerous.
Thanks for sharing this post. I will RT on Twitter.
I will also share this post on Teamwork that brings deeper and more positive results. I welcome your comments there as well.
http://katenasser.com/teamwork-gems-create-startling-results/
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach
By Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach on May 12, 2010
Hi Kate,
Thanks for posting a comment. Re the pre-mortem, I find myself drawn towards it not because it is negative per-se, rather because it goes to the heart of what often is often un-discussable. Whilst I am all for being up-beat, my sense is that the drive to be positive in organisations can be such that dissent is undervalued at best, and can result in ostracizing at worst (Barbara Ehrenreich’s most recent book, a critique of positive thinking, makes this point eloquently in relation to how dissenting voices were quelled in financial organisations just at the time when the banks should have been listening to the prophets of doom….)
So it is not a question of either/or, rather I suggest it is time for the those of us who are drawn to the shadows to maybe stake a claim for the learning that can be found there.
Re Klein, he is actually an advocate of gut feeling/intuition, rather than someone who believes it should not be trusted.
Best wishes,
Steve
By Steve Hearsum on May 14, 2010
And by way of a follow up, there was an article on McKinsey Quarterly recently on ‘How to test your decision-making instincts’. It builds on the conversation around intuition, or ‘gut’, in decision making.
In essence, it offers the following advice, and an accompanying framework, for leaders to “identify situations where it is likely to be biased and then strengthen the decision process to reduce the resulting risk….This means that to protect decisions against bias, we first need to know when we can trust our gut feelings, confident that they are drawing on appropriate experiences and emotions.” Applicable to anyone who relies on their gut for decisions – so that will be all of us to a greater or lesser extent I suspect…..
A summary and link to the full piece can be found on my site if anyone is interested.
By Steve Hearsum on May 28, 2010
Your graphic reminded me of two situations like this at my first workplace. I had worked there for 4 years when the department chief decided to save some bucks by downgrading my section. We had been getting premium pay because of our skills which require a development time of up to 4 years. After he made his decision, 11 people including me jumped to other departments where we could get premium pay again. He tried to stop us but his bosses told him he couldn’t because he couldn’t prove we were more important to him than to our new departments. About two years later the premium pay got restored to my old field.
Twenty years later I took some classes in a new field that related to my job at the same workplace after I had switched into a third new field. I really enjoyed them and got good grades. I had just finished my first 9 credits toward an associate’s degree when management decided nobody could leave that department. They were bleeding personnel because of retirements and nobody was coming up through the ranks to take over because it was Defense procurement and you have to learn most of that on the job. So I kept taking courses and when I realized I could finish the degree with an 18 credit semester, I quit. On the exit interview I was told “But we have a legal department.” I said “Z told me I could never transfer there out of my department.” Yes, I named the person. The interviewer didn’t have anything else to say. That was 8 years ago and they’re still in the same fix according to what I hear on the DC news which covers Federal employment issues.
It can seem like a rational decision at the time but have consequences that management either didn’t foresee or dismissed as unimportant because they couldn’t imagine anybody taking a step that drastic. My solution was to keep the back doors open.
By Been there on Jun 6, 2010