Highlighting strategic decisions

Whether you make strategic decisions or not, your decisions benefit from strategic thinking. When you think strategically, you look ahead to the direction you’re heading, and you weigh risk, consequence, and other aspects of the decision-making process. In short, strategic thinking allows you to work with the uncertainty of the future and use the details you pay attention to day by day to set a direction for your company. When you think strategically, you take the big-picture view as you move from your current position to the desired possibilities.

In this section, we focus on strategic thinking because, without it, the chances that your company will fail increase.

Avoiding the perils of micromanaging

Anywhere along the path to increased responsibility, you may be tempted to hang on to control, thinking that it’s part of being “in charge.” Actually, letting go of control is the basic skill needed. If you don’t learn to let go, you run the risk of micromanaging. As a micromanager, you direct every action and must verify the accuracy of every decision because you don’t trust that your employees are competent.

Micromanaging is a really good way to demoralize staff. It shows that you don’t trust your staff or that your need for perfection compels you to retain control over everything. Can you say, “Control freak”? To solve the problem, you have to first recognize that you’re micromanaging and then shift your approach to a more strategic style. You do so either by identifying the tendency on your own or by asking staff.

Overcoming your micromanaging tendencies offers many benefits:

• You reduce your stress levels and gain engagement with your staff.
• Delegating lets you see the big picture, which gives you the perspective you need to think strategically.
• You can accomplish more when you work together with your team than you can by doing everything by yourself.
• Realizing that you’re human and need the support of staff to get the job done makes you a more compassionate and better leader.

Moving from specializing in one area to working across functions

Several forces are pushing decision-makers to hold an expanded view not only of their businesses, but of their roles as well. Here are the highlights:

• The shift away from the old notion that you’re either a specialist or a generalist: You may specialize in a function, but you’ll always need to know where you fit in terms of the company’s success and how the company dovetails into the rest of the world. Understanding what the higher purpose of a company is helps employees stay engaged while achieving that purpose.
• The trend toward combining complementary functions into one role so that all can function more cooperatively: Internal functions, such as sales versus marketing, for example, used to compete with each other. But businesses can no longer afford to waste productive energy on unproductive competition among staff members or company divisions. The idea behind combining complementary functions is to serve the employee community and the customer, not feed competitive conflict.
• The shift away from centralized decision-making, in which decisions are made by a few, to decentralized decision-making: This structure fosters collaboration and timelier responses to change, and everyone contributes to the company’s success.

As a decision-maker, how can you prepare for these changes? By taking the actions we outline here:

• Seek out opportunities to work in different areas of expertise. Working with others whose expertise differs from yours makes you a well-rounded individual and gives you insight into other areas of the company. This exposure to multiple areas gives you a new, broader perspective that can inform your decisions and help you predict what impact your decisions will have.
• Participate in decision-making related to the best projects to move forward on. Quality, not quantity, of projects aids success. You’ll gain experience in seeing how projects bring together expertise from within and beyond your company’s boundaries. Even if you’re working on a joint venture, you’ll gain insight into how very different values, criteria, and beliefs guide decision-making.
• Practice empathy. Use every conflict or misunderstanding to see through someone else’s eyes. Doing so lets you use your team’s diverse outlooks to your advantage. Plus, this capability is an essential quality for anyone paying attention to the workplace culture and customer relationships. Your greatest ally is your ability to listen.
• Embrace the idea that you don’t know everything there is to know. Don’t believe everything you think. There is more knowledge, excitement, and opportunity waiting, and the only thing required to tap into it is curiosity! Through social media and other resources, information can flow instantly around the world. This new reality expands what is available, and it opens new relationships from many different sources.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall: Taking a close look at yourself

How can you tell where you stand, character-wise? Use the Waiter Rule. Basically, this rule says that how you treat a waiter reveals who you are as a person. According to Bill Swanson, a now retired CEO of Raytheon, “If someone is friendly to you (someone higher in authority) but rude to the waiter, he or she isn’t a nice person.” In addition, saying things such as, “I know the owner and can get you fired” speaks volumes about how a person uses his or her personal power. Someone who throws the power of his position around doesn’t respect his position or the power it holds and doesn’t embody the traits of a good leader.

To discover how you view power, ask yourself these questions:

• Do I think I have all the answers, or can others offer a view that I can learn from? Reflecting on this question reveals your approach to learning. If you think you have all the answers and need to be the resident expert, incorporating the wisdom of the team will be tough. Take this mind-set to the extreme, and you could qualify for dictator!
• Do I treat those who report to me with the same respect I treat those in higher positions? If you treat everyone with the same respect, regardless of his or her position, you’ll know you’re comfortable with authority. If not, you’ll know that you attach authority to power and so might not respect its use.
• Does my confidence shrink when I am confronted by an authority figure? Do I feel I need to manipulate to get what I want? If your default, go-to strategy is to exert control over others or use manipulation to get your way, there’s a good chance your self-esteem needs a boost. Low self-esteem leads to lousy decisions. Building confidence in yourself can help you increase trust.
• Do I feel more powerful when I am delivering orders or when I am collaborating to achieve a team goal? In other words, what floats your boat: being in charge or working collaboratively toward a common goal? Perhaps you’re comfortable doing both. If you need to be in charge, can you step back and let others take the helm without feeling you’ve lost control?

Out of all the questions listed, the last one points to the ego. In this context, ego refers to your concept of self and your relationship with yourself. Most business folks still hang onto the old and generally inaccurate belief that an overblown ego is a prerequisite to achieving success. The younger generation, on the other hand, doesn’t subscribe to this idea, and these “kids” are leading companies that are growing like crazy. Many people who have poor relationships with their egos protect the ego by trying to make themselves feel better by putting down or comparing themselves to others, but this is a career limiting mind-set, especially in environments where collaboration is critical. When your concept of self is low, your decisions suffer because making yourself feel better becomes more important than making a better decision.

Using defining moments to build character

In the same way that career-defining moments of a company’s leader shape the company’s future, personal defining moments build character. In these defining moments, you’re typically presented with two equally held, highly important values that you must choose between.

Suppose, for example, that you discover you’re booked to meet a potential new client at the same time you promised your daughter you’d attend her school play. What do you do in this situation? There is no going back and no right answer, and your response may uncover something you didn’t know about yourself or another person involved. Do you do what you believe is more important or what you feel obligated to do? Cumulatively, tough decisions build character. They also change relationships.

How can you use character-revealing conflicts to transform character? There are two ways:

• Find out what is important to you and then identify the underlying values. Look at a conflicting feeling not as gut wrenching, even though it may feel that way, but as tension between two equally acceptable values. To identify the conflict, ask yourself what is important to you about each demand. Then chose the higher, more difficult path that is aligned with what matters more to you.

• Take your mind off what is immediate and in your face to allow your creative side to go to work. Step out of the workplace “noise” and do something you love to do: ski, hike, bike, knit, garden … whatever, but before you do so, ask yourself for insight. Then, when you’re out doing the thing you enjoy, insights will pop up when you least expect. Notice when the light bulb goes on to reveal deeper values.

  The idea is to free your mind, not numb it. So step away from the TV, remote control, and mini-bar.

Handling yourself when things go wrong

You may have heard the saying, “Conflict builds character, but crisis defines it.” Sooner or later, something you’re working on will not go as planned — perhaps with disastrous results — and you’ll have to deal with it. How you handle yourself in such situations is a defining moment in the development of your leadership ability.

As a leader and decision-maker, you must be prepared to handle unexpected crises with honesty and integrity. Following are some actions you can take to prepare for, deal with, and learn from when the going gets rough:

• Plan ahead. If you don’t have a team plan for a crisis, put one together and make sure that all members are on the same page regarding the following:
  • An explanation of what constitutes a crisis for your business
  • How to address all legal issues
  • How to address public perception of what happened and what it means
  • The people responsible for putting the plan into action to ensure that, when bad things happen, the plan is brought forward to guide immediate action

• At the time of the crisis, take action. Move immediately to address risks to public or employee safety and offer clear information about what is going on.

  Crisis experts traditionally give less than 48 hours to provide information to the public or to staff, but with the advent of social media and its capacity for instant communication, you have much less time than that. Without information, expect people to speculate.

• Show true compassion for the people affected. Due to the violence people are exposed to every day — violent TV shows and video games, ongoing military operations, and so on — the public psyche is often numbed to general tragedy. However, when loss is experienced at a personal level, it’s very real. Therefore, when you take action during a crisis in which your business or product harms the public — whether that harm is physical or to the public trust — you must speak from your heart and put yourself in their shoes. Otherwise, your response comes across as insincere.
• After the dust has settled, find out what happened and then share that knowledge. Your goal after the crisis is not to seek someone or something to blame, but to learn from the situation. Put together a team of employees from throughout the organization and give them the job of collectively reflecting, documenting, and then sharing what is learned. Remember, sound organizational judgment comes from learning and then sharing.

A crisis can be the catalyst for doing things differently for greater benefit. It breaks up patterns and gives you an opportunity to replace useless or ineffective habits. But you don’t have to wait for a crisis before you decide to think creatively about your processes.

Differentiating between leadership and authority

Despite their similarities, being a leader is not the same as having authority. Knowing the difference between being a leader and being in a position of authority is necessary for operating in a world where collaboration is essential. Here are some basic definitions:

• Authority refers to officially possessing, often through a position, decision-making power.
• Leadership refers to the quality that inspires others to move toward a common goal, to overcome hardship or difficulties, and to work together to achieve the objectives placed before them. Leadership combines vision with inspiration and telling the truth.

You can see the confusion anytime someone asks, “Who is the leader?” and everyone points to the person in charge. That isn’t leadership. It’s where authority resides. Now that same person may also be a leader, but it isn’t a forgone conclusion.

Although authority specifies which decisions you have the power to make, authority does not necessarily make you a leader. Plenty of people in authority have been ineffective leaders, and plenty of important leaders have come from the ranks of those without official authority.

Using your power for good

Leaders inspire. They turn the mundane into the meaningful and motivate others to pursue this higher purpose. They don’t have all the answers, but they ask the right questions. Leaders are decisive and visionary.

Anyone can be a leader. The notion that people fall into one of two groups — either leaders or followers — just isn’t accurate and has been debunked in the last place you’d expect: marine naval vessels. Even in strong command-and-control structures such as the military, each person can demonstrate leadership because it doesn’t have anything to do with authority. It has to do with responsibility. People are encouraged to take the initiative, come up with solutions, and act on them. This kind of trust in the capabilities of people up and down the chain of command is vital for success, not only in the military but in the civilian world, too. In fact, sustained high performance depends on it.

In environments where people are expected to take the initiative and act on the solutions they devise, the person in authority — you, as a business owner or manager — plays a completely different role: Your role is to facilitate the emergence of leadership. To foster leadership in your team, ask your employees what solutions they have to the issue at hand, and keep asking them for their ideas, even when they turn to you for direction. Then help them think through the solution (a mentoring role) and support implementation.

Some people in positions of authority wield power inappropriately just to boost their self-esteem, ego, and confidence. Doing so undermines staff morale and contribution. How you handle power and personnel when in a position of authority says everything about you.

Being a leader good enough to ask the tough questions

Groupthink — when people feel they need to conform to one view without question — is toxic for effective teamwork. It leads to important issues not being addressed and creative ideas not being offered. It preserves the status quo and leaves you and your company vulnerable.

If you move forward without clearing out the hidden issues, your leadership and your company’s growth get stuck in a holding pattern, and moving forward will feel like running waist-deep in glue. You’ll miss breakthrough moments in personal, team, and organizational performance.

Fortunately, effective leadership can overcome groupthink. Leaders must have the courage to ask the tough questions of themselves and their teams. Doing so puts the “unmentionables” on the table. By asking tough questions, you ensure that routine thinking doesn’t block achievement of your goal. The best time to ask a powerful question or two is when things are at a standstill or when agreement has come too easily. What is a powerful question? Here’s one example: “Is there something we’re missing here?”

To profit from powerful questions, do the following before finalizing the decision; this exercise is especially important when you’re making big, strategic decisions, such as whether to accept an offer to sell your business:

1. Take a time-out between discussions.

   The purpose of this time-out is to give everyone a chance to ruminate on the issue at hand. Team members can take a walk together or alone. Don’t give specific instructions (you don’t want to lead them to a conclusion), but you can say, “Let’s take some time to think about this.”

2. When you reconvene, ask for questions or offer one yourself.

   Breakthroughs can often result when you open up the conversation to explore alternatives not usually on the table. If allowing space for reflection hasn’t produced any questions, you can move to conclude the decision.

Adapting your management style

Management by fear works against sound decision-making and performance. It creates an emotionally charged workplace that is not conducive to rational or intuitive decision-making. Although productivity is possible in such a workplace, this type of environment is bad for a few key reasons:

• It makes creatively adapting to changing conditions impossible. People will follow the rules before achieving goals or taking risks.
• It compromises innovation. Innovation requires creativity and risk-taking. In fear-based decision-making environments, people watch their backs and avoid taking risks.
• It impedes seeing ahead. Vision for the future requires intuition and empathy, two things that are in very short supply in fear-based environments.

Relying on coercion isn’t logical or rational, yet it’s the prevailing leadership style around the world. If you work in a complex decision-making environment, you (and your managers) need to access leadership styles that are more appropriate to creating better decisions. Managers who follow management styles that free up employee creativity and open communication to difficult conversations share these characteristics:

• They engage employees to creatively find solutions to issues.
• They focus decisions on achieving business goals rather than personal career aspirations.
• They engage in difficult conversations aimed at understanding the situation instead of seeking fault.
• They care about employee well-being, do not judge, and approach issues with open minds and hearts, enabling open and honest communication that springs from a genuine place.
• They inspire trust in the working relationships.

Workplaces that don’t work for the employees don’t work for the company’s sustainability. A healthy, trusting work environment lets you go beyond your current productivity goals and quotas to achieve much higher performance. It really is that simple.

Taking steps to improve the quality of the working environment

One way to address negative aspects in the workplace and ensure that employees can work well together as a team is to pay attention to working relationships. The world may be unpredictable, but the quality of working relationships provides stability. In workplaces where trust, a sense of belonging, and genuine care for each other are cultivated, employees can focus on giving the company or the project their absolute best.

When the environment doesn’t support high-quality working relationships, your employees spend more time dealing with office politics or covering their backs to reduce personal risk. If your goal is to create high-quality working relationships among employees, supervisors, and upper management, give the items we discuss in this section prime consideration.

Being the leader you expect to see in others

When morale is low or the thinking small, small issues end up looking pretty big and people act out their frustration and lack of control. One cause of low morale is often unaddressed bad behavior — bullying, threats, and intimidation, for example — in the workplace. If you truly want your company or department to succeed, you need to address these issues.

Staff look to your actions to find out what the unwritten rules are. The unwritten rules are the de facto rules that govern behavior and expectations in the workplace, regardless of what the stated policy is. Often, the term refers to the difference between what is said — “We value respect in the workplace,” for example — and what is done — managers overlook bullying behavior. Although no one may be running around the workplace waving a sign that declares, “Bad behavior is permissible!” not doing anything about bad behavior pretty much amounts to saying that it’s acceptable.

Being a leader means you must firmly, yet professionally, confront tough interpersonal issues, including bad behavior in the workplace. Here’s how:

• Challenge bad behavior, including bullying and overtly expressed prejudice. Bullies tend to be people who feel that they lack power and use anger and aggressive behavior to reclaim it. Have no tolerance for inappropriate behavior or judgment of others, but offer professional coaching or personal development opportunities so the individual can gain better interpersonal skills. In the workplace, holding people accountable for their behavior reinforces your commitment to higher standards.

  Deal with prejudice differently because it is a hard-wired belief. To deal with prejudice, pair people up so that the successes resulting from the working relationship transforms the belief.

• Draw clear boundaries around what is acceptable and respectful and what is not. When dealing with an interpersonal issue, take the individual aside, and, if the employee is receptive, provide a coach.

  You can also try a game that builds empathy. One such game is Know Me, developed in the thick of apartheid reconciliation, as a means to respectfully disagree, learn, and forge better solutions. For details about this game and others, go to http://knowmegame.com/johari_window.html.

• Reject pervasive negativity. In some workplaces, grumbling could qualify as an Olympic sport. Pessimism and crankiness can be momentarily useful, but if they become persistent habits, they bring everyone down.

  Negativity is not the same as critical thinking. Critical thinking is required as a check and balance; it doesn’t have to be negative or punitive.

• Tackle difficult issues. Many issues negatively affecting the workplace are left unresolved for fear that careers will be in jeopardy if the problem is reported. When you encounter a difficult issue, openly gather the facts, skip blame or judgment, and involve all parties to develop options and solutions. Be hard on the problem and soft on the people. When you face a difficult issue head-on and with integrity, you open up confidence and reinforce that all people matter, not just the ones considered to be of higher value.

  It takes courage and strength to deal with adversarial or difficult situations in the workplace, but when you do, you display — and inspire — integrity and are more likely to make ethical decisions and engage in the kind of risk-taking that saves companies.

• Establish clear expectations about what are and aren’t acceptable behaviors for everyone in the workplace, including contract employees. When the expectations you set aren’t being followed, you must follow up and put your foot down. Trust is breached otherwise.

Management guru Edwards Deming said, “Managers talk about getting rid of deadwood, but there are only two possible explanations of why the deadwood exists: You hired deadwood in the first place or, you hired live wood, and then you killed it.” Nonperforming employees are often created when you don’t pay attention to how workplace conditions affect performance. You can change the workplace conditions to make them better.