Delegating decision making
Shane Parrish, in his recent book, Clear Thinking, highlighted the dilemma of delegating decision-making for leaders. One of the challenges for leaders is to enable their teams to make critical decisions in their absence. Leaders don’t articulate to the team the most important criteria they use when they make the decision. While this sounds intuitive, it was insightful to know that most leaders lacked awareness of their criteria for decision-making. The roadblock was not articulation. It was a lack of awareness of why they do what they do. Leadership is not about telling the how, it is about sharing the why of what needs to be done.
“When we know WHY we do what we do, everything falls into place. When we don’t, we have to push things into place.” – Simon Sinek, Author of Start with Why
Making progress visible
On my trip to Japan, I came across many automatic vending machines that made coffee. The customers could watch how the coffee was made inside the vending machine as they waited for their cup. The customers were patiently waiting as the progress was visible to them. Behavior Scientists may use the term illusion of effort to explain such customer behavior. In any initiative, giving visibility to progress is as important as communicating the end success.
1) It helps outsiders to become more compassionate when evaluating the effort involved
2) Stakeholders would like to support a project that appears to be moving rather than one that is invisible
Lesson from marathon
Running in Tata Mumbai Marathon event taught me some vital lessons. The most important one came from the death of an athlete who was an ultra runner. He collapsed and died at the event. His reports indicated 90% blockage in his heart. We runners like to believe that we are healthy due to our involvement in high-endurance sports. It shattered my assumption that being fit meant being healthy. I realized no one is immune to any medical risk. Being in denial can be fatal. Our ego stops us from seeing what we need to see until we witness something happen to someone who is closer to us or whom we think is better than us.
“If I had to name one factor that dominates human bad decisions, it would be what I call denial…If the truth is unpleasant enough, people kind of — their mind plays tricks on them, and they think it isn’t really happening.” – Charles Munger