The episode explores the complexities of executive decision-making, discussing the role of emotional intelligence, the pace of change, and the importance of making decisions at the appropriate organizational level.
In this episode of the Definitely, Maybe Agile podcast Dave and Peter dive into executive decision-making. We discuss what can happen when powerful, informed people with a lot of authority and responsibility try to come together to make decisions.
This week's takeaways:
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[00:00:00] Peter Maddison: Welcome to definitely maybe agile, podcast where Peter Maddison and David Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale.
[00:00:13] Hello, and welcome to another exciting episode of definitely maybe agile, with your hosts Peter Maddison and David Sharrock. How are you today?
[00:00:20] Dave Sharrock: I'm doing very well. How are you doing Peter?
[00:00:22] Peter Maddison: I am absolutely terrible. Came down with COVID, feel awful. But I'm recovering so now I feel much better. So good energy, right. Energy.
[00:00:30] Dave Sharrock: I think the irony is we both are coming through the same journey, at the same time for very different reasons. Yeah. And from very different locals. Anyway, we were talking just in preparation for this, a little bit about decision-making with executives, with the leaders in an organization. And some of the headaches that can happen when powerful, informed people, with a lot of authority and responsibility, all try and come together to make decisions. Maybe you want to tell a bit of a story about that or explain what you're thinking in terms of those.
[00:01:04] Peter Maddison: So, I'm thinking of... and, and there's always these in large organizations, where, once a quarter, the committee of whatever gets together. And that committee consists of all the powerful people and other stakeholders who have to agree and make some decision about something that will be presented to them, or has in theory has already been presented to them in a lot of cases. And and very often, the committee gets together and somebody out of that powerful group of people, maybe all of them sometimes, hasn't read any of the pre-read material. Is going into this blind and immediately just kiboshes is the whole. Says " we can't do this because... I never heard of it before. Go away and do your homework". Or they come up with some objection to it.
[00:01:49] So I thought it might be fun to explore today. What are the things we can do as business agility coaches to help organizations overcome.
[00:01:58] Dave Sharrock: What you are describing there, Peter is actually a human condition of whether it's the fight or flight response. The imposter syndrome is another way of looking at it. I'm unprepared. I have a position of authority, and therefore I'm going to re respond in a way that protects where I'm at. I always think of this as the bluff and double bluff. We're going to throw something to distract from the fact that maybe I'm not as prepared as I could have been walking in.
[00:02:21] I think, we need to be a little bit careful because there's two elements to that, right? One is that personal attack of being put on the spot and how do I deflect and handle that situation. The second part of it is continually challenging a conversation until we reach a decision that is in line with what my intuition says. The second one is more of a critical thinking problem, and the first one is more of an emotional intelligence problem.
[00:02:45] Peter Maddison: Yeah. We are talking about the conversations where it goes sideways. It's something that comes out of left field that wasn't expected, versus the legitimate questions that are exploring something that actually is a problem with that needs to be solved.
[00:02:59] Dave Sharrock: There's loads of different ways of describing this vernacular that we bump into. And one of the ones that gets referred to a lot is this hippos concept of Highest Paid Person's Opinion as a decision making model. Which is basically whoever has the biggest, best title gets to call the shots. But you are describing something which is slightly different to that, which is there's a number of different people vying for the decision making crown. The decision making authority. The first thing that I would point out is that this is actually much more destructive today within an organization than it has been for decades. If you go back a few decades. Let me put it this way, if you go back when I entered the workforce, that was just the way decisions got made. Very strong hierarchical structure, and the decisions move up that tree. The politics of decision making was something that you either observed or you waited for, and that was it .Today that's incredibly disruptive or very dangerous model for a number of reasons.
[00:04:01] The two reasons that jump out immediately, one is speed of change. We're gonna put a little graphic up. There's a wonderful graphic about how quickly different products took to hit 50 million users. I just came across this image. I was at a conference last week. There was a really interesting talk about a transformation, and they were just talking about this pace of change, and the number of years it took to reach 50 million users. Even when you look at things like Facebook, it still took three years to hit 50 million users. But that is minuscule compared to the amount of time it took cars to reach 50 million users. Even cell phones, which we think of as being a massive change, took 12 years to hit 50 million users. So the pace of change now is exponentially more rapid, which makes decision-making super, super critical. And let me pause there, because I'm sure you have plenty to add into that particular story.
[00:04:53] Peter Maddison: Yeah. One thing I would say about that graphic is that the last four products that are much faster are all software based. The distribution method as well for products has significantly changed. This decision making problem. Does the decision that's being made actually need to go up to that level in the organization, or could it have been made sooner? The further down we can push those decisions the better. And this I think comes to, as we talked about before, the root of leadership change. Leadership pushing decision-making and accountability into the low levels organization and enabling those organizations to be able to make the decisions, is one of the things that can help with this. Fewer decisions end up being pushed up the hierarchy to these committees who have very little time to then look at, or even consider them. That's one avoidance mechanism to try and avoid the problem.
[00:05:44] Dave Sharrock: I really like what you're saying about that route of leadership change. There is a lot of buzz around the fact that leaders in a post COVID world, have to be different to the ones that we had before. It's very difficult to find exactly what those changes have to be. And I think what we're addressing here is beginning to recognize a couple of things. There's a maturity of leadership that increased maturity has two quick things. One is recognition that I'm unprepared to make a decision. So instead of the bluffing, or let me distract you with a question over here that I know you're not prepared. I'm not prepared to make that decision. That vulnerability, which is a request of leaders in today's world, is a very important. I think that's one element of it.
[00:06:24] And the second one is a realization the constriction of decisions all coming to single individuals or single controlling committees. And I think that's a leadership maturity as well. How do I get decisions away from me, deeper into the organization, because speed of decision-making is of the essence. So how do I push that responsibility and authority deeper into the organization without losing visibility into what those decisions are over the outcomes.
[00:06:51] Peter Maddison: And there is very much that style of leadership, which says, well, I actually want all those decisions to come to me, because I am the guy and the one that has to make the decision, because I'm the big boss. And I like what you're saying there, it will be different for different individuals. Different leaders will have strengths in different areas, but that understanding and pushing decision-making to where it belongs, I think is a key element of helping avoid that the lengthening of decision-making that occurs because of these large infrequent meetings that occur between executives.
[00:07:22] Dave Sharrock: I'd point out as well, there's a well understood leadership development model, almost like an adult maturity model as well. This is a psychological development model for how we evolve and develop our skills over time and think of it as leadership skill. And that one of control is an expert leadership level. A lower maturity level to the one of how do I collaboratively get decisions made. Or even how do I nurture decision-making within the organization away from me. Where my role becomes one of guidance and support, direction, but not one of authority and decision-making. That maturity is a significant shift, and it comes with vulnerability. Having the vulnerability to stand up and say, " You know, more. You make those decisions, here's the scope within which you can make those decisions."
[00:08:10] Peter Maddison: Yeah, exactly. Well, how would you sum this up in two or three points for our listeners?
[00:08:16] Dave Sharrock: I think we identified, first of all, that there are still many challenges associated with executive decision-making. That whole idea of how do you make decisions with individuals with authority and responsibility in the room. The second thing that I think we've picked up is that there's two elements to it. One is the emotional intelligence. The recognition of when me as a leader, needs to be able to come back to the table and just say, "Hey, you know what, we need more time. I'm not going to be able to contribute to the conversation here". So that's the emotional intelligence piece. And I think the other side is the cognitive, critical thinking element. And I see this as the recognition of how to make critical decisions, and what our role is in there. We talked about leadership maturity, and we talked about how do we make sure that we're saying, this decision is being made by the right people, at the right place, in an organization. We talked about decision-making as being that root of leadership change. The maturity that we are expecting to see in our leaders and what that really means. So we kind of scratched the surface on that, but there's a lot more to dig into in there as well.
[00:09:23] Peter Maddison: One of the other topics before we started that we thought might be good to bring up. Another thing that can help with those regular meetings is the taking the Amazon approach of having a 20 minute memo at the start where you read through all of the details of what's exactly going to happen so that everybody is brought onto the same page before you start the discussion around what the decisions are that need to be made.
[00:09:46] Dave Sharrock: Glad you mentioned that. It's one of my go-tos for running effective meetings. In the sense that it directly addresses some of those emotional intelligence requirements that we have to deal with. I've gone from one meeting to the next, to the next. I'm just not prepared. How do I catch my breath? While it gives everybody that space. And it ensures proper preparation, which is no bad thing at all.
[00:10:07] Peter Maddison: It's always a pleasure. I love these conversations and look forward to next time.
[00:10:12] Dave Sharrock: Great to talk to you again.
[00:10:25] Peter Maddison: You've been listening to definitely maybe agile, the podcast where your hosts, Pete Maddison and David Sharrock focus on the art and science of digital, agile, and DevOps at scale.
