By Rick Van Arnam
Bagram, Afghanistan
Not many organizations make as many decisions as the Army. The Army, I think, is pretty good at making decisions if not at least very comfortable. I was thinking about this during a recent Battle Update Brief (BUB) to the commander and just how routine it has become to brief him and ask for a decision. Last night’s BUB was particularly succinct comparable to a pitchers’ duel in baseball marked by both efficiency and effectiveness.
The staff’s success at mastering the decision making process as instinct made we wonder about one of my Eleven Principles of Character Development. The Three Decisions Principle states that, “Making a single decision requires you to make two more.” These latter two decisions address the when and how surrounding a single decision and are summarized by asking the question, “When and how will I act on the decision I made?”
It is not that we endeavor to make wrong decisions, but the realization that even when we make the right decision, the outcome can be limited because we made a mistake in timing or an error in execution. So if you have ever asked yourself, “What was that person thinking?” chances are good that he or she did not understand that every decision requires two more. Let’s dig deeper.
Kathryn Schulz is the author of the book, Being Wrong, and also writes a blog called The Wrong Stuff. She has a “credible claim as the world’s leading wrongologist” according to her homepage description and is consumed with doing forensics on decisions. In a recent interview with Peter Norvig, an engineer and director of research at Google, he reminds us that to be a good engineer requires failure. It is a prerequisite to learning, refinement and improvement on things consumers like to buy or services customers like to use – like Google.
I am not an engineer, but have believed that in order to be a good leader, I have to be willing to make decisions even if a decision may be wrong. It is perhaps the best way to learn as well as a fast way to make progress – as long as a quick, corrective decision is made subsequently. For years I have reminded my team that I’d rather be seven out of ten, with three wrong decisions, than to be two out of three with only one wrong decision. Seventy percent is better than sixty-seven percent and I generally believe that progress results from making decisions, not in avoiding them. I don’t encourage hazard by this, I am encouraging progress – and I recognize that there are those decisions that are major or strategic and require more time, more analysis or more input because there may be lives at stake or require a major investment.
But aside from the decisions of business or the military, I am even more interested in personal decisions that affect a person’s character development. And I think there are parallels that can be drawn in analyzing Google’s engineering philosophy and decisions that shape who a person is becoming.
At Google, Peter Norvig talks about two kinds of errors. He says, “One is, there's a clear error in the code: It's supposed to do one thing and it does something else. In that case, you know when you've got it wrong, and you'll know when you've got it right.” I speculate in this case, the fix includes a re-write of the code, which even I understand from taking a very basic programming course a long time ago.
The second kind of error, according to Norvig, occurs when the code may not necessarily be wrong, but it is not providing the best or most effective result. And that is the purpose of correctly answering the when and how questions in the Three Decisions Principle. Assuming a person makes the right initial decision, the when or how can either make the initial decision wildly successful or marginally effective.
Let me provide an example. Jackie Robinson’s story has always captivated me as one of the best displays of personal courage in human history. His ability to be one of the best baseball players of all time required tremendous restraint amidst both on and off the field hate, prejudice and threats and is beyond modern day understanding for most. It is fitting that his number “42” has been retired by Major League Baseball in honor of one of the greatest human achievements in baseball’s history.
Jackie’s ascension to the Brooklyn Dodgers was led by Branch Rickey. Rickey was the president and general manager of the Dodgers when he signed Robinson to a minor league contract in 1945. Basically, Rickey had already made the initial decision – that he would break a long standing policy and allow an African American to play in the Major Leagues in order to desegregate baseball. Once that decision was made, Rickey likely spent far more time deciding on the when and how decisions that followed than he had in deciding to sign Robinson in the first place.
During spring training in 1947, Rickey was asked by reporters about his plans for Robinson and replied, “If Robinson merits being with the Dodgers, I’d prefer to have the players want him, rather than force him on the players. I want Robinson to have the fairest chance in the world without the slightest bit of prejudice.” This quote, from Arnold Rampersad’s biography titled, Jackie Robinson, provides great insight into both the consideration of timing and the skill with which Rickey handled the execution. The rest, of course, is history. Robinson debuted for the Dodgers that year on opening day and went on to win the first-ever, Rookie-of-the-Year award commencing a Hall of Fame career. But Rickey’s precise execution, which included moving the Dodgers’ Spring Training location to Panama and Cuba from the South, led to a very effective result.
In the development of a person’s character, the ability to think through the latter two considerations may be just as important than making a right first decision. You have probably made an important decision in the past and were confident that the decision was correct. In that case, you may have confided to someone, “I want to do this, but I don’t the best way.” It is that habit, that curiosity and that mental exercise that leads to better results by making three decisions, rather than just one.
Maybe I have a little wrongologist in me or that all of us like to engage in dissecting high-profile decisions like that of President Obama’s to relieve General McChrystal this summer or watching how LeBron James handles his free agency decision. Regardless of why, I think the purpose of analyzing decisions is to reduce the cycle time in learning. This is what Peter Norvig referred to when he mentions “failing faster and smaller” to describe how a public company like Google can tolerate errors and actually become stronger. A large part of reducing personal cycle time is being able to answer, “When and how am I going to act on the decision I have made?”
RVA
Credits
The Wrong Stuff, Kathryn Schulz, 3 August 2010 (www.slate.com)
Rick:
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed this piece.
I think you're right about the military. The "main loop" of any organization has much the same steps: Envision, plan, prepare, execute, learn, adjust (which is really just planning with more input), go around again. The military does it better than most. Why is that?
Certainly part of it is that in times of peace, a lot of resources can be devoted to the envisioning, planning, and preparation steps. The whole notion of deterrence is based on getting potential enemies to believe that a nation does these steps pretty well. So, as the computer said in “War Games,” the only winning move is not to play. Not much opportunity to be in that mode outside the military; every day is spent on the battlefield, and your competitors never let up.
Another part of why the military is good at decision making is that the stakes are so high. It’s one thing to get fired for a bad decision. The consequences are much different when bad, or merely late, decisions are made in the military.
This is not to say that every military decision is a good one, or that every military decision maker does it well. But I think the military puts a lot more emphasis on making decisions than weighing possible outcomes. By all means, it must be “Ready, aim, FIRE,” and not “Ready, aim, aim, aim….”
I once read a book written by a retired Navy officer who had held command at sea. In a scene involving a weasely Admiral who was advising a young protégé, the Admiral told the young officer that if he wanted to have a successful Navy career, the youngster needed to “avoid exposure to command.” That phrase has stuck with me. The author probably modeled that Admiral after a senior officer he had once encountered and not particularly respected – someone many would call a “ticket puncher,” who wants to have the right command billets on the resume, but seeks to get “promoted out” before anything bad happens.
We run into people like that – both in the military and in the civilian world. Those who look to gain success by minimizing the number of occasions in which they can screw up in very visible ways.
And then there are those who, as the Marines say, run to the sound of gunfire. They seek the opportunity to lead, and will attempt to fill a leadership vacuum when it exists. While we can debate the nature/nurture composition of a good leader, there is no question that a corporation with a culture that values your 7/10 behavior will be much higher performing versus one that is so risk adverse so as to see 2/3 as failure.
Pablo