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"prudence"

BlogLeadership

He Makes Good Decisions

by Ron Potter February 4, 2021

I happened to come across a National Football League (NFL) scouting report of a young college student who wanted to be drafted into the NFL.  The Scouting reports were not good.

The college student also took part in the NFL Scouting Combine where they test physical attributes.  The results of that were not good either.  The reports said he had poor arm strength and athleticism and his sprint times for the 40-yard dash were terrible.

In his report, one longtime analyst said, “I don’t like him. Smart guy. That’s it.”  The only positive part of another report said that “He makes good decisions.”

In spite of these poor reports, this young college student was drafted in that year.  Of the 200 drafted, he was taken at 199.

He Was Prudent

Prudent is not a word we see anymore.  In fact, it doesn’t really sound very flattering.  But the definition of prudent is: The perfected ability to make right decisions.  That seemed to be the only positive thing in his scouting reports and physical analysis.  He was Prudent.

The Perfected Ability to Make Right Decisions

There are two points that you need to pay attention to in that definition.

  1. Right.  It’s easy to make decisions.  It’s not easy to always make “right” decisions.  “Right” in this case means right for the individual, organization, country, and the world in general.
  2. Perfected.  Perfection comes with practice, patience, and wisdom.  It takes time.  You must work at it.  I’ve spent a lifetime trying to perfect my golf swing.  It’s far from perfect but it is better.  Even the pros who will hit thousands of balls a day are trying to perfect their golf swing.

Practice Makes Perfect

We’ve all heard that old adage.  But it’s not true.  Practice doesn’t make perfect if you not practicing the right things or the parts that need to be practiced.  Back to the golf pros, they not only have coaches but lots of technology to help measure and visualize their practice.  They get almost instantaneous feedback on each practice swing.

Feedback

This is why instantaneous feedback is so necessary.  I heard someone once say, if you swat your dog with a newspaper for something he did wrong yesterday, he’ll have no idea what he’s being punished for.  He will only become afraid of newspapers.  This is one reason why annual assessment sessions with employees are so useless.  There may have been an instance several months ago that needs to be fixed.  But by now each participant has formed a memory in their head that satisfies their own needs and ego.  Memory is powerful.

A college professor once had the students in his class write down everything about the day before when the space shuttle Challenger exploded during take-off.  Ten years later, the professor tracked down as many students from that class that he could find.  He handed them their own written record of that day to read over.  One student who had written 14 pages read it through and then tossed it to the side and said to the professor, “That’s not right.  Let me tell you what really happened!”  Ten years later his memory of the incident was more powerful than his recording of the incident the following day.  Memory is powerful.

Prudent Decision Making

Prudence is a process.  It has well-defined steps that will need to be practiced to reach perfection.  The Prudence process requires Trust, Diverse Points of View, and a Good Process

Trust

In my book, “Trust Me” I list the eight elements of trust.  Those elements are self humility, development of others, commitment to learning, listening and creating unity, focus on the issue, compassion for others, personal integrity, not avoiding constructive disagreement, and finally endurance to stick with it to the end.

Diverse Points of View

We hear the word diversity used a great deal these days.  But diversity by itself is worthless unless there is trust.  Trust must be established first.  Without trusted diversity of thought, there is no perfecting of the decision-making process.

Good Process

Prudent decision making is not haphazard; it is a well-defined process.  It can be simplified into three words: Deliberate, Decide, Do.

Deliberate.  Because “time is critical”, most corporate teams don’t do enough (or any) deliberation.  Other reasons I’ve encountered for not deliberating well include:

    • “We already know the answer.”  This happens because of ‘group think’ and ‘selective attention’.  If we don’t have the trusted diversity of thinking, it’s easy to fall into these traps that make us think we already know the answer.
    • This is only one right answer.  This means that all the other possible answers are wrong.  Leadership teams shouldn’t waste their time on truly right-wrong decisions.  Leadership teams should be spending their time on dilemmas.  This means they are dealing with right vs right decisions.  These are the hard decisions.
    • I believe what I see or I remember.  (See the “Feedback” section above.)

Decide.  One element of good decision making is described in something called Triple Loop Learning (Originally developed by Gregory Bateson and extended by Chris Argyris and Peter Senge).  The first step in triple loop learning is to share openly and honestly your beliefs and assumptions about the topic up for decision.

Do.  Having reached a decision through this process, the do part becomes much easier because all the parts of the team are working together.  There is full commitment from each member of the team.  I cover  “Prudence” in previous blogs–take a look to get more detail than we covered here today.

So who was that young college student that was drafted 199 out of 200 that year?  Tom Brady.

No other quarterback has appeared in more than 5 Super Bowls, let alone claimed over 4 rings.  Tom has played in nine Super Bowls and won six of them.  This weekend he will play in his tenth Super Bowl with the opportunity for his seventh win.

He makes good decisions!

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Commitment: Decision Process

by Ron Potter June 27, 2019

Understanding and using the right process is one key to decision making.  It also helps assure that you’ll reach full commitment to the decision rather than compliance.

There have been a number of decision types identified but one simple list includes:

  • Unilateral
  • Consultative
  • Consensus
  • Unanimous

Unanimous

Leave that to the courtroom.  It doesn’t really happen in a corporate environment.

Unilateral

This decision type has the advantages of speed, simplicity, and clarity.  However, it will waste a groups intelligence, invites resistance and lowers motivation.  It should be used when speed and time are paramount and there is a real danger in not making a decision immediately.  It can also be used when one person or team’s decision has little effect or impact on another person or team.

But the real cost of Unilateral decisions occurs with wasted time because of lack of clarity.  I have observed team time wasted by putting a “unilateral” decision on the agenda for a team meeting.  Unilateral decisions should be made and then the rest of the team informed.  Informing is more effective through other means (memos, emails, reports, etc) than making it a topic of a team meeting.  Once a decision hits the agenda, it is assumed or at least treated as if it is up for questioning, discussion or debate.  If a decision is unilateral, do not put it on the agenda!

Consensus

After observing and working with leadership teams for thirty years, I am convinced that business teams never make consensus decisions.  They may talk as if it was a consensus decision but most decisions are unilateral or consultative.  Don’t kid yourself.

There may be one or two decisions that must be made by consensus because they are so crucial to the future health and well being of the corporation but you cannot run a business by consensus.

Consultative

Almost all decisions are or should be consultative.  However, one major key to consultative decisions is that there is a clear decision owner.   I have seen hours wasted in team meetings trying to make a decision when the real issue that is being sorted out is who really owns the decision.  Unfortunately, that issue is either ignored or never stated out loud.  Consultative decisions must have a clear decision owner.  Sort that out first before you continue with the decision-making process.

The second most important aspect of good consultative decisions is a clear process.  The consultative decision leader or a good facilitator must help the team through a good process that includes more listening than talking.  One of the best processes to learn is the concept of Prudence.

Prudence

Prudence is one of those ancient words that doesn’t get much use today and most people would tell me that it doesn’t fit in today’s modern business world.  However, listen to the definition of Prudence:

“The perfected ability to make right decisions.”

As a leadership team, your goal is to perfect your ability to make “right” decisions!  Learn to follow the process of Prudence.

The Prudence process is described as Deliberate, Decide, Do.

  • Deliberate well.  Most teams either don’t do it well or skimp on the deliberation process in order to get to a quick decision.
  • Decide but be sure to use the proper decision type.
  • Do.  Execution of the decision will be much crisper, clearer and faster if the first two steps are properly followed.

Debate, Discuss, Dialogue

Deliberation can be in the form of debate, discussion or dialogue.  Let’s take a quick look at each:

  • Debate.  If you’ve ever been on a debate team you know that the goal is to win.  Often debaters are asked to take a position that they themselves don’t believe is true but the goal of winning remains.  Debate creates winners and losers.  Commitment will not be achieved when a portion of the team feels like they lost.
  • Discussion.  The idea of discussion may sound more civilized but the root word for discussion is the same root word for percussion.  In other words, he who can beat his drum the loudest will win the discussion.  Once again, discussion creates winners and losers.
  • Dialogue.  Dialogue is part of the Socratic method.  The Greek origins are “through discourse or talk.”  The Unabridged Dictionary says to “elicit a clear and consistent expression.”

Dialogue begins with eliciting, questioning, listening.  Everyone must be heard and understood.  (See my short book review of On Dialogue by David Bohm).

If you do a great job of deliberation, using dialogue, decisions will be made easier.  A decision will not only be made easier, but there will also be a full commitment to the decisions that are reached.  This happens even if individuals were opposed to the decision in the first place.  Dialogue works through those differences and allows teams to get beyond compliance with full commitment.

Once full commitment has been achieved, decision execution happens.  No revisiting.  No dragging of feet.  No sabotage.  Just clean, crisp execution.

Get to full commitment by identifying your decision type and using a good process to reach commitment!

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Quick deciding vs quick learning
BlogTeam

Quick Deciding vs Quick Learning

by Ron Potter March 12, 2015
Quick deciding vs quick learning

Photo credit: Anne-Lise Heinrich, Creative Commons

I have observed what I believe to be a very detrimental shift in thinking within our corporate cultures over the last 15 years.

We’ve been inundated with instant communication that is with us everywhere 24/7 (I had one of the first Blackberrys as soon as it hit the market in early 1999). To be clear, I’m not railing against this technology. I love it and I couldn’t imagine running my business or staying in touch with my family and the world without it. But it has interjected a sense of speed and quickness that is altering the way we think and decide as we try to conduct business in a globally connected world.
However, this belief that we must decide quickly changes the dynamics of decision making in a detrimental way. Good decision making (See my post on Prudence) requires good deliberation. However, if we’re in a quick deciding frame of mind we get defensive when:

  • someone raises an issue that feels like it is not in line with the current thinking or
  • will open that proverbial “can of worms” if we entertain the idea, or
  • they simply don’t agree with the current approach.

Teams have developed all kinds of behavior to suppress, shut down or discount the questioning view point. This eliminates good deliberation and will lead to an inferior (or even wrong) decision.
The shift we need to make is back to a quick learning attitude and then use a good process to make good decisions. What’s interesting to me is that teams who have mastered this quick learning leading to good decision approach, consistently make decisions quicker than those with the quick deciding attitude (not to mention better decisions).
Get better at

    • Quick learning with a…
    • Team of diverse points of view and…
    • Practicing good deliberation techniques to…
    • Reach great and lasting decisions.

You and your team will feel more productive, less stressed and will also begin to gain the reputation as high achievers.

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BlogLeadership

Seven Deadly Sins

by Ron Potter May 14, 2009

PrudenceMost of us know about the seven deadly sins:

Lust
Gluttony
Greed
Sloth
Wrath
Envy
Pride

And I must admit that while I’m not guilty of all of the sins all of the time, I have been guilty of all of the sins some of the time. But, are you familiar with the four Cardinal Virtues?

Prudence
Justice
Restraint
Courage

I’ve been spending some time looking at the four and in particular the first of the virtues, Prudence. One of the intriguing definitions of Prudence is:

“The perfected ability to make right decisions.”

What better descriptor of corporate leadership could be found? The perfected ability to make right decisions!
As I began to explore the concept for prudence further, it presented itself as a process. Prudence breaks down into the functions of:

Deliberate
Decide
Do

These are my words, not the words of the great scholars that describe the process, but what a great process to reach right decisions.

Give it good deliberation
Use a great and well defined decision making process
Go out and execute

Since 2000, one of the “deadly sins” that I’ve seen become more and more prevalent in corporate cultures is the attitude of quick deciding instead of quick learning leading to good decisions. With a quick deciding attitude, teams will ignore, steam roll, belittle or dismiss any behavior that appears to be or feels like it is slowing down the deciding process. In other words, a quick deciding mentality approach is anti-deliberation. It just doesn’t lead to prudent or wise decisions.
What we don’t have time for in our corporations today is non-prudent decisions. We must regain the technique of good deliberation to make great decisions quickly.
Let me know what you think. What is preventing our corporate leadership teams from spending the right amount of time deliberating so that we can then make good decisions? What are the roadblocks?

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