Proceed Until Apprehended

Our organizations are typically filled with power and fear. Solutions are not thoughtful and democratically generated, they’re stamped with “draft” for fear of being overuled or they’re laden with ego and personal perspective. People get more points for looking smart than they do for building a more efficient, sustainable organization.

We need to examine our styles. We’re all afraid of coming off looking like Chicken Little, so we act like the king. It’s not helpful in the long term unless you’re putting on a show to justify your throne.

I’m trying to be a voracious reader. More realistically, I’m a persistent reader. I stick with it, page by page, until I finish.

This dogged determination has paid off with the completion of “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki. The concept he brought to life had considerable real-world applications and he examined some very important implications. I wish I could capture what Surowiecki so expertly describes and download it into the brains of my colleagues. In short, it has the potential to revolutionize the way we work.

TWoC does an excellent job of describing the reasons and manner in which a group of people can make consistently better judgements than individuals, even so-called experts in the field. Please think about that for a second. For most challenges, with the right conditions and framework, a collection of average minds is always more trustworthy than the one mind that is a focused expert on a particular issue. The crowd won’t always be right, but they will be more often than the individual. When we’re all looking at a loose set of variables and don’t know what’s next, statistically you should go with the crowd’s wisdom, not the guy that looks confident.

The implications of this are enormous. We get caught up in status, appearances, experience or some other social signal and defer judgement to the individual we’re confident will make the best choice. We’re wrong. We’re placing confidence in the wrong source. Surowiecki acknowledges in his afterword that, even after writing the book, he still felt anxious entrusting a crowd to make the right call. The conventional wisdom that’s been burned into us has a powerful pull.

This illogical, gut feeling that makes us hesitate instead of openly inviting diverse opinion on matters of significance is a clue as to why we’re stagnating. If you agree with the book, it still takes a “mind over emotion” persistence to put it into practice. That’s hard work, and I’m not talking hours at your desk, I’m talking introspection.

My posts lately all seem to fall into a common pattern:

• name an issue
• ask if it’s a problem
• if yes, summon the courage to change behaviour.

Are you deferring significant issues to an indivdual? Do they have the information to make good decisions? Do you have greater access to diverse perspective? Are you part of the crowd that could do better? Are you the individual that’s convinced you know best? What happens if you engage some diverse perspective?

I don’t know about you, but I get a little nervous when I ask these questions.

I’m sometimes accused of being an advocate for “bottom-up” organization solutions. I think I’m only accused of it because I advocate for it so often.

I don’t think there’s enough acknowledgement of the capabilities of your staff. They are severly under-utilized. If you’ve got staff then yes, I’m talking to you.

Good decisions get made when there’s lots of diverse thought and consideration, not when an expert determines they know best. Diversity trumps specialists every time.

But there I go again, arguing for bottom up.

In this post I wanted to say something nice about top-down.

Our organizations need structure. They need purpose – a pre-defined understanding of what we’re going to do together. Organizations can be aided tremendously by having someone clarify how things are going to get done. Employees desperately would like to know what success looks like. That’s top down and it’s valuable.

The big mistake is using top-down authority on the wrong topic. Top-down isn’t to manage behaviour and the way people work. It’s to define broad boundaries and to TRUST staff.

In Covey’s 7 Habits, he shares power and discretion with his son by allowing him to maintain the lawn. Instead of dictating how to do it, the senior Covey establishes an expectation of “Green and Clean,” allowing the junior to determine his own method to delivery.

I was inspired by this. I realized the equivalent for me in a policy-reliant organization were the 3 Cs: Concrete, Credible and Compelling.

Concrete: recommendations must be specific, actionable and unequivocably clear. Ambiguity causes problems, so don’t be ambiguous in the slightest. You can explicitly state the who, what, where, when and how of implementation. Assuming the reader will know what seems obvious to you is a fatal flaw in recommendations. It may feel patronizing when you write it. I assure you, it’s not.

Credible: recommendations must be founded on research and analysis that is trustworthy.

Compelling: The recommendation must be readable and actually able to influence. It’s not enough to just be right. You have to sell it, too.

I think this code has been empowering for policy staff. They can clearly see the expectation of what they need to deliver on to be successful. I’ve seen a marked improvement in recommendation quality since implementing this about a year ago.

This code definitely straightens me out. I still have that impulse on a daily basis to dictate a “better” recommendation than the one presented to me. I force myself to respond based on the 3 Cs. Are the recommendations not concrete enough? Is the background lacking credibility? Is the entire package just not selling?

I respond with feedback that coaches. I present an examination of the effort rather than the outcome. The funny thing is, I’d say four out of five times, the recommendation stays as-is. While I thought I had a better way, when I discuss it on merit, not on conclusion, it rarely changes. The way I’m engaging is allowing the staff person, the person that put in all that thought before it came to me, to bring the right recommendation forward. It’s not all that much of a surprise when you think about it. They know my expectation, they’re smart and they’ve had way more time than me to think about it. I really should get out of the way.

It seems so small, but I think establishing expectations and coaching on the mechanics, not the outcome, is the key to fighting the top-down mindset.

One of the lingering items for me starting a blog is asking if it will get me in trouble. Am I giving an insider’s look into my organization that shouldn’t be shared? As I start this, that fear is outweighed by my desire to speak truths.

With non-specific language, I’m probably not going to get in trouble, either.

I could see myself becoming more relaxed, though, and wanting to express ideas based on that day’s events.

I’m thinking of a code that says:

I’ll never name my co-workers

I’ll use generic examples

I won’t talk about confidential projects

But also, I will:

Acknowledge that the public service is a huge bureaucracy

That huge bureaucracies are slow to respond to obvious trends

That there is a significant leadership deficit in the public service

That an organization that has elected individuals as its decision makers is prone to a top-down culture