Life is a stream of decisions. Some big, most small. Some slow, most fast. Our ability to judge whether something is good or bad, safe or dangerous, is vital to our survival.
As an individual you can rely on instinct and react as quickly or slowly as you like. It happens in your head. It doesn’t mean you make the right decision but at least it’s yours.
Teams don’t run on a single brain, so decisions are more complicated, and slower – even if the leader makes all the decisions! Instincts just don’t work for teams – there has to be something else.
How does your team make decisions? How does it know what’s right, or wrong?
The answer will tell a lot about the culture of the team, and therefore it’s leadership.
Our sense of right and wrong, safety or danger depend mostly on patterns we remember in our subconscious brain. We learn them through life, especially in childhood. When a new situation arises, we quickly decide what stored pattern or situation we’re in and react according to habit. Of course we think carefully through some decisions – but not most.
If you’ve ever experienced culture shock – that’s your brain getting confused when your set patterns don’t get the response they normally get at home. Your patterns not working in a different place.
Even the most creative teams or chaotic situations rely on set patterns. Writers write at regular times in familiar themes, often in the same place. Military or emergency services use practiced drills or procedures to help them decide what to do in a crisis. Training is mostly storing away patterns.
The team leadership question is – how dependent are you on patterns and rules?
When a team looks mostly for yes/no answers, and shades of grey are discouraged, they are outsourcing leadership to a rule book.
When the reaction to something going wrong is to create new rules, or make existing policies more complex, there’s an underlying assumption that more rules will lead to fewer mistakes. Again, leadership is reduced to following rather than steering or creating.
It’s not to say that there is no place for policies and rules, but should that place be at the top of your decision tree?
When a team sees it’s role as following the rules, rather than aiming for an objective, it can mean that there is no objective other than following the rules. The rules become our leaders.
Even critical things like safety – where rules are important, can’t be achieved by rules alone. Many major accidents have been caused by teams who just follow rules and lose sight of the reasons behind them. The safest teams set objectives that their rules support. When teams and leaders know why they’re doing something, they’re always safer.
The link between objectives and rules is critical to achieving results, and enables a balanced discussion when mistakes happen. The flexibility to get a better result by bending the rules is a critical part of successful teams culture.
Great teams know when to follow rules and when to achieve objectives.
“…When a team looks mostly for yes/no answers, and shades of grey are discouraged, they are outsourcing leadership to a rule book...“
What things get a lot of discussion and debate in your team? How many things are just decided or given because they’re rules, or policies, or just the way they’re always done?
Do you talk a lot about rules or the objectives behind them?
When something goes wrong, is the reaction automatically to change some rules, or add new ones?
Is performance measured by conformance or achievement of goals? Does your team believe they can prevent problems by restricting behavior?
Or is there an acceptance that not everything can be controlled by restricting behaviors and choices?
Are people judged on their conformance to rules, or norms?
Do team leaders see conformance to their opinions as performance issues, or differences of opinion?
Are rules seen as supporting objectives, or objectives in themselves?
Is it ok to bend or break a rule if the objective is achieved?
How do you know what’s right?
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“I might be wrong, but at least I’ve thought about it…”