decisions | change-effect

Mistakes are the things that make us

One of the questions I often ask in interview is around mistakes in the past that have made people who they are. The way in which people talk about them, the way in which they react and the learning they take from them is often fascinating. Of course, I’m not really interested in the mistake in itself, what I’m really interested in is firstly the sincerity with which they talk about the issue and the way in which they incorporate it into their leadership and management style.

How you handle mistakes can be fundamental to how you develop as a leader. There are two clear mistakes that I see people make;

Applying a kind of cognitive dissonance that seeks to apportion blame to others and absolve yourself of personal responsibility. Whilst this can be a useful tool in certain circumstances, there are very few situations that we can’t learn something from if we are willing to hold our own actions and decisions up for assessment.
Dwelling on a decision or issues to the point that it prevents us from being able to move onwards. People get stuck on a particular situation or moment and that makes them act differently or inhibits them without having really processed the learning.

It can be hard in the moment to get the right balance of reflection and self assessment without becoming stuck in the moment, so here’s how I think about it for myself.

Deal with the issue at hand first. When things go wrong the first thing is to try and rectify the issue and provide a way forward for whatever it is you’re facing into. There is zero benefit to be gained from over analysing whilst there is still an outstanding issue or problem to be solved.
Give yourself time to properly assess what happened. Our brains can make simplified versions of past events pretty quickly and sometimes that skips details or moments that we genuinely learn from. The shorthand is useful to get us through the immediate issue, but when we have time we need to unpack the full unadulterated version.
Be ok with identifying things you both could and couldn’t do differently. As with any action planning, you need to be able to own and take those steps, so be equally clear with the things that you wouldn’t be able to change in the future as those that you want to build into your leadership going forward.
Put it in a box. Once you’ve kicked it around and figured out the learning, put the experience into a box, put it at the back of the mental cupboard and close the door. Only hold on to the learning not the event or moment itself, it won’t serve you well.
But, hold onto the feeling. Remembering how you felt when you made a mistake is a great way of using your whole body to help you to achieve better outcomes in the future. When I ask people the question in interview, I can immediately see those that held onto the feeling.

One thing we can all be sure of is that mistakes happen, they will happen to all of us throughout our working lives. What we do with the experience, how we use it to drive us forward is the thing that makes the biggest difference. And sometimes that also means moving on.

Poor decision making doesn’t get better in time

Posted on March 17 by Blog

Five years ago in the UK, on 16 March, the Prime Minister of the UK uttered the following words, “…now is the time for everyone to stop non-essential contact with others and to stop all unnecessary travel. We need people to start working from home where they possibly can. And you should avoid pubs, clubs theatres and other such social venues”. It was a call for the country to support the Government in facing into the global pandemic and many organisations duly followed that advice. Five years on, whilst the majority of us are happily frequenting pubs, clubs, theatres and other social venues, we are still getting ourselves in a pickle over working from home. So what went on?

I’ve written so many times about this topic and I always feel I need to make the following caveat clear – I am not making a value judgment about where people work or the decisions that organisations take. Where I get a little grumpy around the edges is the inference that “everyone is working from home” – this is just plain wrong – or that not allowing people to work from home is somehow “old fashioned” or “lacking in trust” – again this is factually wrong and as intellectually limited as saying that anyone who works from home is skiving.

But I don’t want to talk about the pros and the cons, those have been well debated to the point of exhaustion. I want to talk about how decisions are made, and how we get them wrong.

In every day up to 16 March 2020, most organisations had a pretty stable work pattern. Lots had flexibility built in to that in different ways, others didn’t. Organisations were based in different locations around the country and the globe and job seekers made decisions about where they’d work depending on where they lived, how they could travel and where they were willing to move to. It was by no means perfect, but it was understood by all involved.

Then the world got complicated for a period of about a year and we had to make changes, show flexibility, behave in different ways in order to support the collective need. Roll forward five years and most of those aspects of our lives have pretty much returned to the “normality” of pre pandemic operations and whilst I’d love people to continue ton socially distance (but that’s just me being anti social) that isn’t going to happen any time soon.

Where people work, however, is still a bone of contention for lots of organisations. So what happened in this debate that made it so different to all the other temporary changes? Lots of organisations announced very quickly that they’d were making permanent changes. Why?

HR leaders advocated for policies that suited their own working preferences rather than business need and suggested this was a market trend (“the future of work”) as more announced the change that became a self fulfilling prophecy.
Finance leaders saw an opportunity to reduce the cost of property on their businesses by either disposing of real estate or exiting leases. Meaning that there was less space in their premises even if people wanted to work there.
Employees, at least the vocal ones, announced they were more productive and generally happier. Let’s not forget that the weather in the summer of 2020 was particularly nice too. Dissenting voices or those that questioned the direction were judged to be modern luddites.

And after a turbulent period of time, it felt like a win-win-win. What was lacking was any real strategy, any data or evidence, any proper business case or evaluation of alternative outcomes. Whether you agree with the outcome or not, the decision making process was woefully poor and counter to the way that organisations would make any other major change.

Five years on and some organisations are rowing back on their positions and with it there is more grief, more upset and hurt, more conflict with parts of the workforce. Understandably, employees feel they were told one thing, promised one future, and are now being delivered another. One day, becomes, two days, becomes three or four – even Sainsbury’s are noticing the change and signalling the return to the “weekly shop”. All of this could have been avoided by more thought, better decision making processes, and a little bit more sangfroid. Poor decision making happens, no one is immune, but the one thing we can almost guarantee is that when they do, they never get better with time – no matter how long you leave them.

It’s probably more complicated than that

Posted on July 17, 2023 by Blog

My mum used to have a t-shirt that read, “it’s probably more complicated than that”. As a guiding mantra when entering into a debate on anything in life we could all do worse than adopt this, yet at the same time there is an alluring pressure to make things simple. Above my desk, as I write this, I have a schematic of the cognitive bias codex as a reminder to myself of the complexity of the human brain. Of course it doesn’t stop me from falling into the traps, it just reminds me that I probably have.

We know that in times of stress and pressure we can rely more on our unconscious brain and that it can also be the place where some of the biases are held, to help make sense of information quickly and simply. And of course, most of us have lived through a period of sustained stress and pressure, so it is perhaps unexpected when we are so tired, so consumed with the pressures of life, so run down as a society that we want to make other things simpler.

Right. Wrong.

Good. Bad.

With. Against.

Fair. Unfair.

Politicians, media and campaigners understand this well. They’ve learnt the tricks of manipulation and use them freely. We call them out on it when they are suggesting something we disagree with, yet we lap it up when used on something that we agree with – the bandwagon effect. And at the same time our confirmation bias allows us to label “facts” as misinformation when they disagree with our argument, but accept “misinformation” as facts when they prove our case. And the funny thing is that most of us, if we take a little time to reflect, know this and can probably recognise when we have done this.

There was a lovely example of this recently with the launch of Threads in the battle between Facebook and Twitter. I watched as people moved across to the new platform and proclaimed how wonderful it was to find a platform where there was none of the hate or noise, a pure place like back in the early days. And then I watched as the same people, started to exhibit the same behaviours as they denounced on Twitter, sharing misinformation and biased political commentary. Of course, it isn’t the platform that makes the culture it is the people, what they were celebrating was the temporary loss of “the other lot”.

So what do we take from this? I don’t know. People are tired, we’ve been through (and are going through) a really difficult period in society. We all have a need to make things easier for ourselves and that might mean more judgment and less curiosity. We can’t stop that in society, but we can observe it in ourselves and our behaviour. And at the end of the day, it probably is more complicated than that – so maybe we don’t have to have an opinion right now or at all. Maybe that’s a start.

When leadership calls

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Blog

Throughout our careers, there will occasions when we are asked, more than ever, to demonstrate our worth as leaders. Whether through a change, a significant challenge, or indeed a crisis. Any of us that manage people will be asked to step up, to step into the light and to do the thing that we talk and theorise about so often. To lead.

In these circumstances, great leaders put their own concerns aside. They may be worried, concerned or unhappy, but they understand that their role requires them to put this aside. They are there in the service of their people.

They understand that they need to be calm and reassure, that it is only normal that in uncertain times people worry and they look to those in positions of authority to tell them it will be ok. They don’t rush around creating drama, no matter what they may feel inside.

Great leaders understand the importance of simple, clear communications and the need to repeat it more than ever. When we are worried, stressed or concerned we can find it hard to take in multiple complex measures, simple and clear messages make it easier for us to digest and process.

They also know that it is important to play by the rules that they set. That it doesn’t matter how clear and simple the messages are, by contradicting them with behaviours we send out complex messages that confuse. Actions need to match and reinforce messages.

And they recognise the human at the heart of each decision, seeing the impact that each and every choice we make has on people, thinking about how it feels for them and being clear of the why as well as the what. Which means sometimes we can do the right thing and be unpopular.

Finally, great leaders know sometimes they get things wrong in the heat of battle and they are humble and recognise fault. People will forgive you for getting things wrong, they rarely do for denying it or apportioning blame.

When leadership calls, we need to show up as the best version of ourselves. Remain mindful of how we are feeling, what we are thinking and ultimately why we are there. Every day is a chance to practice, sometimes you’re called on to perform.