I have to admit. I’ve been a part of the problem. Through the era of TQM, Lean Sigma, Management Science, I was leading change to make better decisions with data. Unfortunately, as access to data has exploded and processes are being automated, much has been lost. Data allows for better quality decision only when it accurately addresses a significant knowledge gap, a real risk. We have to know what risk we are addressing - what question we’re answering - for data to be helpful. Unfortunately, what has been reduced to practice is that we should get more data, any data, and it will erase risk. Wrong.
In addition, it turns out our decisions aren’t as rational as we’d like to think. Recent research on decision making as discovered that the firing of emotional circuits is more aligned with the point of decision making than the firing of cognitive circuits. This suggests analytics offer support what the decider feels good about. We use data to further create satisfaction, pleasure, and lessen exposer to potential pain and threat. Leaders of dynamics integrate intellect, cognition, emotion, purpose, and relationship to make robust decisions, accepting there will always be uncertainty. They manage their anxiety on the inside rather than push it out into the organization.
Leaders who have mastered their dynamics receive dissenting views and lean into the discomfort of holding them alongside their own thoughts. The goal is to make the most robust decision, not be right. They can lean into uncertainties and play out implications and potential future pivots to gain comfort with ambiguity to make timely decisions. Data have never made decisions; people make better decisions with the right data, diverse perspectives, and techniques that integrate emotions and unknowns.
Similarly, these leaders are comfortable with their team members continually pursue new ways to do their work more simply and effectively. Timelines focus on decisions and deliverables with systems, connections, and digital transformation reshaping tasks as fast as people can learn them. They recognize when it is their own discomfort prompting a directive, seek to avoid limiting employees’ talents and growth for their own comfort, and course correct.
Experiment:
Identify a decision that you could make today but are ‘hostage’ to waiting for information or tasks to be done.
What is your mindset and emotional state about the decision?
What are the implications if you trust yourself?
What are the risks that would be eliminated by waiting for information or tasks?
Who could offer you diverse perspectives about those risks? brainstorm potential future pivots?
What’s the opportunity cost of waiting?
What is your energy state? Is it driving you to prescribe the use of time - yours or others?
Is it holding back talent because you believe there’s a right way for someone else to do their work or make their contribution?
When a leader’s inner dynamics are not integrated, the risk most often managed in decision making is nonconscious personal risk that someone, in the future, will deem the decision ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’. It’s an avoidance of feeling future pain. There are healthier ways to deal with that risk – for the company and for the leader.
Through harmonized growth coaching, I provide a simplified, personalized learning journey so you can be more effective in your dynamics with others through navigating the dynamics within yourself. I’ve done the work to dig into the complex so you can reap the benefits simply!
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And stay tuned…there’s more to come!
Number Three: Manage growth not stress.
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