3 cont. Leading by Example 3
3.1.10 OODA Loop
In military circles there is the OODA loop:
Observe
Orient
Decide
Act
This is used in highly kinetic situations (ie: conflict with an enemy), but this framing is useful in other less time pressured situations as a way to frame the decision making process and important leadership elements to enable decentralized decision making.
OBSERVE We start the loop by observing the environment in which we are acting, the resources available. Situational awareness is vitally important here, and this is where, from a leadership perspective, detachment becomes really important. If you are stuck in action, you are unlikely to be observant of your surroundings. This is where there is a danger in leading from the front and getting in the trenches doing the actual work. If you have your head down in the work your field of vision narrows and you will not be as observant of larger more important strategic events happening in your environment.
ORIENT Next we orient with respect to where we are, enemy positions, our desired objective (ie: the strategic objectives in our plan). This is a critically important step that is often poorly executed in decision making and especially in delegated decision making. When delegating an assignment that requires independent decision, it is vitally important that as full a context as possible be provided to the actors so they can orient themselves appropriately after new observations are made about the situation at hand. This enables team members to execute decision making independently.
DECIDE Now a decision is made. This may not need to be a decision to make some grand action, in fact incremental decision making where decisions to act in a smaller incremental fashion allows for exploration of territory prior to making a major commitment with a larger risk. Willinck often advocates for this in his writing and podcast.
ACTION: We execute the decided action.
OBSERVE: We start the loop over again seeing the results of our actions and changes in the environment.
A leader must NOT get stuck in any of the positions in the OODA loop. The fight will pass us by and we will lose or we may fail to take into account changing conditions and blunder into a really bad situation. The OODA loop proceduralizes situational awareness in the process of thinking and acting. This way of framing decision making is useful in not only the highly kinetic situations it was developed for but is a good reminder for leaders in day to day, week to week, month to month decision making; the reminder to look around and be observant of changing conditions and to make adjustments accordingly. Some of these adjustments could include changing strategic priorities.
Effective observation and orientation in this leadership context requires a level of detachment and ability to get out of the weeds to be able to see the larger emerging strategic picture as well as what is immediately in front of you.
Not all of your observing and orienting will be direct; many of your inputs in this decision making process are second hand at best. It is imperative that you are getting accurate information from your sources. Perhaps the most important source of information is the people around you. You can not shoot the messenger. You should not be in the habit of discounting people if they present you with information that you may not want to hear, but that you need to hear. If you are disrespectful to the person that presents you some of this undesirable information you set off a cycle of discount and revenge. In a very short time they will stop presenting you that information you need. In the mind of the discounted person they will be thinking something along the lines of “Oh yeah, you think I’m stupid, well fine, I know you won’t listen to this information. Let me get my popcorn for when you step on this landmine.” Be grateful for the information provided, especially when it is critical feedback, or negative information, then dig deeper and feed this into your OODA loop.
3.1.11 The Leadership Capital Account and Leading with Minimal or No Authority
A good aphorism is:
“Lead with minimal use of authority”
This is consistent with the law enforcement doctrine of minimum force necessary.
Willink discusses this core concept extensively in his works. We are energetic beings and the wielding of pure authority (ie: the threat of punishment for non-compliance) is a negative energy phenomenon causing a net decrease in the energy level (in the medium and long term) of those on the receiving end. In some extreme circumstances with imminent threat to life and safety and immediate action is needed authority can be wielded with the after action follow up of why this was done.
A useful way of looking at this negative energy aspect of using authority is the idea of Leadership Capital: there is an account in which deposits and withdrawals can be made. Use of authority is one of the main ways this account can be depleted. Ethical persuasion based leadership generally makes deposits to this account. Actively contributing to the development of your peoples’ competency makes large deposits to this account. Leading by example does so as well. In general, positive energy actions make deposits to this account.
The negative emotions of hatred, anger, envy, resentment and especially fear can be very powerful motivators but their use by leaders constitutes withdrawals from the leadership capital account. They are also antithetical to good decision making be it tactical or strategic. The emptier the leadership account, the greater the risk that the use of authority will set in motion a cascade of these negative emotions, especially fear. When feeling fear, the rational part of the brain will set in motion the fight-flight-freeze-fawn response (Olivia Guy-Evans, 2023) impairing your peoples’ ability to make independent decisions and narrowing the scope of available decisions. See Appendix 6 for a discussion of fear. Fear is corrosive to respect when it is the dominant emotional state of a person in relation to their leader. This person will then be likely to adopt fear-based leadership. The level of mutual respect in the organization is intensely corroded and productivity will suffer greatly.
Looking through Erik Berne’s Transactional Analysis lens of the three hungers of recognition, stimulation and structure a leader can gain understanding of an individual’s (including your own!) motivators and help you to be a more persuasive leader by enabling you to tailor rewards to the needs / hungers of the individuals you lead. This is important in without authority. (There are three other hungers that are not appropriate to use in the workplace in my opinion: Sexual, Incident, Physical Contact)
Robert Cialdini’s excellent book Influence (Cialdini, 2021) is highly recommended, and his premise is that persuasion and influence are grounded in seven key principles:
Reciprocation: People feel compelled to repay what others have provided; give and take.
Example: You help someone move into a new/different house, and they will feel obliged to help you move when you are moving.
Liking: People tend to say yes to individuals they like. Building positive relationships is an important aspect of persuasion.
Example: The inverse is true as well. It is not often that customer facing sales people have annoying habits or other dislikable characteristics. Often they are considered physically attractive by others…ie: liked, and can convince other people to say yes.
Social Proof: Decisions on what to believe or how to act often hinge on what others are doing or believing. Following the crowd.
Example: Very often when discussing adopting a newer technology or engineering approach with a client the question will come up: what are other people doing?
Authority: The power to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience influences our choices.
Example: The surgeon general recommends against smoking therefore it is a good idea not to smoke.
Scarcity: We assign more value to opportunities that are less available. The fear of missing out drives action.
Example: The old “going out of business” sale!
Commitment and Consistency: People have a strong desire for consistency in their words, beliefs, attitudes, and deeds. (this is similar to the alignment between Spiritual-Emotional-Mental-Physical and runs deep)
Example: Someone will want to commit time and/or money to causes that have a similar commitment and consistency to their own and how others may perceive them. So, someone who believes in drug abstinence may not want to donate or be seen to be supporting drug harm reduction programs where drug use is tolerated.
Unity: Shared identities and togetherness play a role in persuasion.
Example: Support for charities; There are certain charities that do inarguably good work, like the United Way. Barry Sherman, a man widely admired by Apotex employees and people in Apotex’s support network including me, would match employees charitable contributions to the United Way. This helped to create a sense of unity and do something good in the world at the same time.
While these techniques are certainly powerful, caution is advisable due to their possible unethical use and the noteworthy overlap of these persuasion techniques with logical fallacies:
Ad Hominem: The inverse of Liking, attacking another person’s character to discredit their position.
Appeal to authority: Believing something simply because a person in authority says so.
False Dilemma: Presenting something as being scarcer than it really is. Either you get this or the opportunity is gone forever.
Confirmation Bias: Seeking information that reinforces, and discarding information that refutes, a previously held belief
A leader must also be a good bullcrap detector. You need to sniff it out in adversaries, in your own people, and, most importantly, in yourself. Leaders should read up on and understand logical fallacies.
When using persuasion techniques, it is important that they are done so ethically which is probably the topic of a whole other book.
Being an engineer, I have leaned heavily on leading by example as the most powerful of all persuasion techniques for our internal team for which I was fully accountable as this presents no ethical pitfalls. I still used persuasive techniques from time to time conscientious to not be manipulative or unethical. In cases where I was leading larger groups of people from outside the organization or in a volunteer organization then leading by example was typically not enough and persuasion techniques came into play.
3.1.12 Get Detached and Beware the Streetlight Effect
There is a good saying for business leaders that they need to be working on the business and not in the business. For the small and medium sized business this is often easier said than done and the reality is that leaders need to do both. When working in the business, in my case doing actual engineering work on projects or managing projects, it is really difficult to dedicate time to look around, see, think and work on bigger picture things like:
overall market conditions
technology trends
processes in the business that need changing to be scalable
relationships with other new clients
building partnerships with collaborators
It is essential that business leaders give themselves the time for rest and reflection as part of doing these things. Even when in the thick of working in the business it is still important to detach and see what is going on around you in that work to inform your decision making. Otherwise, it may be like you are walking down the street while looking at your mobile phone and walk right into a light post. In business this light post could be a significant set back that would have otherwise been easily avoided.
Willink’s works and podcast are excellent and highly recommended for further exploration on this topic.
There is a well known phenomena in investigations called the streetlight effect: you are searching only where the light is, even if you know this is unlikely to be where you will find what you are looking for. The good leader will realize they are in need of a flashlight and will start looking outside the halo of the streetlight into the poorly lit areas to find what they are looking for.