Leader's Digest #32 (October 2019)

LEADERS ISSUE 32

OCTOBER 2019

DIGEST

DECISIVENESS IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY

LEADERS

DIGEST

Publication Team EDITORIAL

Editor-in-Chief Ismail Said Assistant Editor Yvonne Lee Graphic Designer Awang Ismail bin Awang Hambali Abdul Rani Haji Adenan

* Read our online version to access the hyperlinks to other reference articles made by the author.

Contents

ISSUE 32 I OCTOBER 2019

16

WHY YOU SHOULD BE RATIONAL ABOUT THE EMOTIONAL WHEN MAKING DECISIONS

DO YOU MAKE GOOD DECISIONS?

19

TRUST YOUR GUT: THIN-SLICED DECISIONS MAY BE BETTER THAN DELIBERATED ONES

10

UNCONSCIOUS BIASES IN YOUR ORGANISATION

22

HOW YOU INFLUENCE THE GAME OF LIFE

BY THE DECISIONS YOU MAKE

12

ARE YOU RELENTLESS IN PURSUING YOUR DREAM? AKIO MORITA’S VISION ENABLED SONY TO SOAR

24

HOW TO USE ANXIETY AS A DECISION MAKING TOOL

14

MANAGING BY FREEDOM WITHIN A FRAMEWORK

25

WHY THE RIGHT DECISION IS BETTER THAN THE BEST DECISION

04

MAKING WISE DECISIONS

07

Read this issue and past issues online at bit.ly/LEADSCS Scan the QR code below for quicker access:

Content Partners:

Leader’s Digest is a monthly publication by the Leadership Institute of Sarawak Civil Service, dedicated to advancing civil service leadership and to inspire our Sarawak Civil Service (SCS) leaders with contemporary leadership principles. It features a range of content contributed by our strategic partners and panel of advisors from renowned global institutions as well as established corporations that we are affiliated with. Occasionally, we have guest contributions from our pool of subject matter experts as well as from our own employees.

The views expressed in the articles published are not necessarily those of Leadership Institute of Sarawak Civil Service Sdn. Bhd. (292980-T). No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the publisher’s permission in writing.

2

Issue 32 I October 2019

LEADERS

DIGEST

Issue 32 I October 2019 3

LEADERS

DIGEST

MAKING WISE DECISIONS How to improve your odds of making the right decisions for the right people at the right time!

BY PETER J. WEBB

Think about your thinking Making decisions is a bit like driving a car. You think you’re pretty good at it until you experience an accident or a near-miss. In that moment, you realise you’re not so skilled after all. In the same way, we make hundreds of decisions every day, big and small, and we seem to manage without too much trouble. Yet, it turns out that most of our decision making is unconscious, as David Eagleman wrote in ‘Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.’ We think we’re in control but actually, we’re on autopilot. Our brains are very good at learning patterns and following routines to conserve energy, which means we’re more likely to make the same decisions over and over even if the circumstances are different.

Intuitive “What am I feeling about this decision?”

“What does my experience tell me?”

Considerative “Who will be affected by this decision?”

What are the likely consequences of the decision for them, in the short-term and the long-term?”

Value Relativism “What personal values are critical for me to uphold?”

“What cultural values or significant other’s values might be implicated?”

Compassion “What do I feel inspired to do to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others?”

4

Issue 32 I October 2019

The reason why we find it hard to change our minds is that it’s easier to accept whatever we hear. To reject what we hear requires an extra step of thinking, and thinking is hard work! So, we typically follow the line of least resistance and that means our decision making is easily biased. Here are the top four biases that cloud our judgement: • Self-serving bias: We tend to attribute success to something inherent in us, “I was successful because of who I am”. And we blame failure on the external situation, “I failed because of something or someone else out of my control”. It’s important to maintain strong self-esteem but we need to be vulnerable enough to learn from our mistakes.

• Cognitive fluency:

Deliberative “What do I know (and what don’t I know) and what can I find out?”

“What is the best way to analyze this?”

Lifespan Contextualism “How does my own life and the lived example of others help me in making this decicion?”

The easier it is to process and understand an idea, the more likely we are to unconsciously trust it. Yet, whether something is easy to process has nothing to do with truth and can lead to an “illusion of truth”. When you hear something that “sounds about right”, that is exactly when you should question it!

• Sunk cost fallacy:

Common Good “What is the best possible outcome for everyone involved, and for society?”

“What is the wisest thing to do?”

Mindfulness “What am I aware of when I take the time to relax and bring my mind to a place of stillness?”

We have an intense aversion to loss and so if we have invested time, money, or effort in a movie, a stock, or even a relationship, we’re reluctant to walk away from the investment even when it’s clearly a lost cause. It’s better to focus on the future costs and benefits and not let your past losses influence your decision.

LEADERS

DIGEST

• Confirmation bias:

Think about outcomes

We have a tendency to only search for evidence that confirms our beliefs, since it requires far less cognitive effort to stick with what we know. However, it helps to actively search for contradictory evidence.

Making a wise decision means fully utilising all three modes of information processing. It should also be evident in the way we act when we are faced with a complex, poorly-defined problem in business or in life.

How do we make a decision when there are no clear guidelines or procedures and where the outcome is uncertain or unknown (i.e., it might be as viewed as the wrong decision now but the right decision in the long term, or vice versa)? A wise decision ought to be recognised by general consensus to be wise, and by implication to bring about the most benefit to self, others, and more broadly the common social good.

To avoid these flaws in decision making, it helps to think about our thinking. We think fast and slow, as the Economist and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman showed in ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’. The fast, intuitive information-processing mode operates automatically and stems from what we know based on our experience.

We get a ‘gut feeling’ of what to do, even if we can’t explain it. The slower information-processing mode tends to be more deliberative, more logical, and to operate in a more rational way. Both modes have been found to operate simultaneously in the solving of complex problems.

Yet this doesn’t explain why smart people can make foolish decisions! Recent research confirms a third mode used in our processing of information – the considerative mode as shown by Barry Partridge and Peter Webb in ‘The Decision Processing Survey’. This is a slower, more reflective process, taking into consideration competing interests, moral and ethical dimensions, and potential long and short-term consequences. Without this mode, we may make calculated, intuitive decisions but fail to fully comprehend how our decisions affect others and even how we might cause a net negative social benefit.

Here is a framework to help you think about your thinking (see Table 1).

Information Processing Mode

Self-Questions

Intuitive Use your innate or gut feel to quickly arrive at a decision that “feels right”

1. “What am I feeling about this decision?”

2. “What does my experience tell me?”

Deliberative Draw on your knowledge to analyse the information and deduce a solution.

3. “What do I know (and what don’t I know) and what can I find out?”

4. “What is the best way to analyse this?”

Considerative Think about how to balance the various interests in the short and long term

5. “Who will be affected by this decision?”

6. Whar are the likely consequences of the decision for them, in the short term and the long term?”

Wisdom is perhaps best defined by the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm as “deep knowledge and sound judgement about the essence of the human condition and the ways and means of planning, managing, and understanding a good life”, as expounded by Ursula M. Staudinger, Jessica Dörner, and Charlotte Mickler in ‘Wisdom and Personality’ in ‘A Handbook of Wisdom: Psychological Perspectives’.

Do you have to be smart to be wise? Well, it helps. And it also helps to have experienced life and to know stuff.

These things are necessary but by no means sufficient.

Being “the smartest guys in the room” is certainly no guarantee of making the right decisions for the right people at the right time for the greatest common social good, as Bethany McLean and PeterElkind noted in ‘The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron’.

The Berlin Wisdom Paradigm, through the measurement of “wisdom-related performance”, has discovered that relatively simple social interventions can enhance wise decision-making performance. For example, asking participants to focus attention on cultural relativism and tolerance caused them to express higher levels of wisdom-related knowledge. Discussing the problem with another person, or engaging in inner dialogue with a person of their choice also resulted in improved performance. Even asking participants to address the question, “what is the wisest thing to do?” significantly boosted wisdom-related performance.

Issue 32 I October 2019 5

LEADERS

DIGEST

Here is how to use the Berlin Wisdom paradigm to think about your decision outcomes (see Table 2).

Wisdom-Related Knowledge

Self-Questions

Lifespan Contextualism Draw on your experience and understanding of human development to achieve a good life

7. “What does my own life and the lived example of others help me in making decision?”

Values Relativism Uphold your deepest values yet recognise the cultural differences of others in relation to the decision

8. “What personal values are critical for me to uphold?”

9. “What cultural values or significant others’ values might be implicated?”

Common Good Imagine the greatest common good that may be derived from the decision

10. “What is the best possible outcome for everyone involved, and for society?”

11. “What is the wisest thing to do”?

Making wise decisions takes practice, and courage. It takes years of developing self awareness, experiencing life lessons and learning from them, thinking about our thinking and seeking to overcome biases and error, fully appreciating the different contexts, values and motivations of people across the lifespan, and seeking to make a contribution to human flourishing with compassion. Yet, it is possible to enhance our wisdomrelated performance through thinking about our thinking, thinking about outcomes, and finally thinking about wisdom itself.

So, when you’re faced with a really big decision or a dilemma for which there are no right or wrong answers, stop and think. Ask yourself, “what does it mean to make a wise decision here?”

Think about wisdom What makes a decision truly wise? The intention behind our decision counts, and how well we have thought about and considered the outcomes of the decision for all concerned definitely counts. But perhaps what counts at an even deeper level is the mindful expression and practice of compassion for all people everywhere, and a sincere desire to bring our lives to a place of meaning and service. We can’t know whether this or that action will really matter in the end, but we can seek to imbue every decision, in business or in life, with compassion.

Here are two important practices to help you think about wisdom (see Table 3).

Wisdom practice

6

Self-Questions

Compassion Act on the deep wish for everyone affected by the decision to know happiness and the cause of happiness.

12. “What do I feel inpired to do to make a meaningful difference in the live of other?”

Mindfulness Develop sustained, focused attention, with deep awareness, and relaxation

13. “What am I aware of when I take the time to relax and bring my mind to a place of stillness?”

Issue 32 I October 2019

Peter J. Webb Author of ‘Coaching for Wisdom: Enabling Wise Decisions’ in The Philosophy and Practice of Coaching (2008), Peter has more than 30 years’ experience facilitating conscious and long-lasting change in business leaders, teams and organisations across the Asia-Pacific region.

LEADERS

DIGEST

Do You Make Good Decisions?

LEADE RSHIP = DECISION-MAKING

BY ROSHAN THIRAN

Every time I am invited to speak on leadership, I allude that the crux of leadership is decision-making. The best leaders always make great decisions.

Andrew Groove made a big risky decision to move out of memory chips and focus Intel on microprocessors. Jack Welch made numerous bold, somewhat “crazy” decisions early on in his tenure as CEO at GE which resulted in its amazing growth story.

Walk through the life of any great leader and you will find that the outcome of their critical decisions made or broke their organisation.

However, if you study people, you will find that on the majority, people make really bad decisions. People make bad decisions about relationships, money and health all the time.

Lovallo and Sibony surveyed 2,207 different business decisions and found that bad decisions were as frequent as good ones. We all make bad decisions from time to time.

Why leaders fail?

Bad decisions are generally the reason why leaders fail. Leadership and decision-making are intertwined.

Leaders rise to the top primarily for their ability to consistently make good decisions. And usually, their fall from grace hinges on one bad decision which possibly got compounded by more bad decisions made to mitigate this one bad decision. Leaders are only as good as their last decision.

Lovallo and Sibony’s study concluded that bad decisions are made not because of lack of analysis (most of the bad decisions had sound analysis) but because of a bad decision-making process.

They cited that “process mattered more than analysis by a factor of six.” Most of the time, we have data overload before we make decisions. Yet, these decisions may not be good ones. Let me start with my favourite reason why leaders make bad decisions – assumptions!

Issue 32 I October 2019 7

LEADERS

DIGEST

Bad assumptions = Bad decisions

Question everything

A few months ago, I had lunch with Sanjeev Nanavati, CEO of Citibank Malaysia. Sanjeev is a fascinating leader.

Another reason why we make bad decisions is that we trust the “experts.” Again, we assume the expert knows it all. Even doctors get it wrong amazingly often. A study in the United States and Canada estimated that 50,000 people die annually in hospitals due to misdiagnosis.

Although he has worked in various countries including the United States and is extremely experienced, he has a childlike curiosity and displays this by constantly asking questions.

I am equally inquisitive and our lunch discussion started to move into a discussion of assumptions.

Sanjeev started telling me a story of his two kids. (Great storytelling skills are another important part of great leaders – but that’s for another article!)

His story involved him asking both his children a simple math question. He obtained two very different answers. The question was simply this: If Mary had read 10 books and John had read five books, how many books would John have to read to catch up with Mary? Sounds simple enough. His older child quickly answered five books.

Most of us would clap and applaud the young kid for his mathematical prowess. His younger child started thinking and then looked up to her dad and said “John will never catch up with Mary!”

Most of us in business build our entire decision-making process around assumptions. In this simple math example, we assume that Mary will stop reading. But why do we assume that? If Mary reads 10 books a month and John reads five, he will never catch up to Mary. That will only change if John starts reading 15 books (assuming Mary remains on 10 books a month).

This same anomaly happens in business. Many business leaders are looking for that “magic” product or service or process re-engineering that will enable them to “catch-up” with the industry leaders.

For some reason, we all hate to challenge experts. But according to researchers at Emory University, this is normal.

In an amazing experiment conducted where an MRI scanner was used to gauge brain activity of participants while they made decisions with an expert and without an expert present, the independent decision-making parts of many subjects’ brains pretty much switched off when an expert was present.

“Results showed that brain regions consistent with decisionmaking were active in participants when making choices on their own; however, there occurred an offloading of the decision-making process in the presence of expert advice,” says Jan B. Engelmann the first author of the study.

“This study indicates that the brain relinquishes responsibility when a trusted authority provides expertise,” claims Gregory Berns who led the experiment, adding “the problem with this tendency is that it can work to a person’s detriment if the trusted source turns out to be incompetent or corrupt.”

And in many cases, much to our disadvantage experts can be very wrong.

Why do we cede control of decision- making in the presence of “experts?” Many times with experts around, we become lazy to keep asking questions and probing. Asking questions can become a very tiring affair especially for our brain, we so we shut off in the comfortable knowledge that someone else is making the big decision for us.

Many boards fire CEOs hoping that the right person will conjure up enough tricks to enable them to catch-up with the industry champions. But they forget an important element – they assume that the companies in pole position will do nothing. And usually, these assumptions will cause us to make bad decisions.

Decision fatigue

Likewise, if we are at the top, we make assumptions that the industry will always be the same and assume the competing factors will remain the same.

Most of us would assume judges would be influenced by the type of crime – murder, rape or theft. What they found was that the judges were affected by the time of their judgment.

But these very assumptions dethroned airlines when Southwest Airlines and later AirAsia changed the key competing factors or when Google and later Facebook changed the Internet with extremely different competing factors.

At the beginning of the day and after lunch break (when the judge was fresh), a judge was likely to give a favourable ruling 65% of the time. However, when the judge was tired from making too many decisions (in the late morning and late afternoon), the probability of a criminal getting a favourable

8

Issue 32 I October 2019

Bad decisions happen more often when we are tired. In a landmark study on judges in 2011 (Danzinger, Levav and Avnaim-Pesso), researchers examined 1,112 judicial rulings over a 10-month period.

LEADERS

DIGEST

ruling dropped to zero! This trend held true for all cases examined regardless of the crime. Decision fatigue is a huge monster derailing us all the time (not just judges).

So, if you have a big decision to make, take some time to destress, unwind and be fresh.

Finally, another area I suffer personally from is optimism.

Optimism bias = Bad decisions I am a naturally optimistic person. According to neuroscientist Tali Sharon, I am extremely susceptible to making bad decisions. Optimism apparently harms good decisionmaking. In fact, she estimates that 80% of people are like me – we are more optimistic than realistic. On average, we expect things to turn out better than they end up being.

According to her study, people hugely underestimate their chances of being robbed, losing their job or being diagnosed with cancer. We even overestimate our likely life- span (sometimes by 20 years or more).

In Engelmann’s experiments, volunteers were given information about the probability of them dying of a disease that was better than they hoped or expected.

Immediately, they adjusted their bias up closer to the new risk percentages presented. But if the information given was worse than they imagined, they tended to ignore this new information. She termed this “optimism bias”.

This “optimism bias” could explain why many of us make bad decisions. We under-estimate budgets and end up going over-budget. Smokers will ignore making a good decision for their health regardless of how overwhelming the evidence.

They would simply quote a story of a friend who smoked 10 packs of cigarettes a day and lived till 100. Somehow we are immune to issues.

I make it a point whenever there is a big decision to make, to talk it over with a few people. If almost all of them feel strongly that I am overly optimistic, I relook at my assumptions and thinking. Sometimes, I change my decisions but even if I do go ahead, I usually change my plans or strategy.

Final thoughts So, what does this all mean? I’ve showcased four villains of decision-making – bad assumptions, lack of questioning (especially experts), decision fatigue and optimism bias.

There are possibly other factors but I think that if we can focus on enabling these areas of our lives to be optimally leveraged, we may just see the quality of our decisions soar to the skies.

One of the best advice I received regarding decision-making was to plan for minor decisions as much as possible. Making decisions drain us, so the best way not to exhaust yourself is to plan ahead and decide quickly on “daily” decisions.

Decisions such as what to wear to work, where to eat breakfast and other “daily” decisions should not consume and exhaust you. Better still, outsource some decisions. I try to let all trivial matters be decided by others. This enables me to focus on the key decisions that will add value to my business and will keep me fresh when I need to make them.

Decision-making is leadership. Management guru Peter Drucker once said that “whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”

All great endeavors began once as a wise decision. Are you making great decisions? If not, start making them. Your legacy will hugely depend on your decisions.

This positive bias can lead to calamitous blunders – make us less likely to get health check-ups, save for retirement, or do any form of contingency planning. We are also prone to making shoddy investments and impetuous bad decisions for our business.

All of us show bias when it comes to what information we take in. We typically focus on anything that agrees with the outcome we want.

So, the next time you are about to make a big decision, check if optimism bias has got the better of you. Better still, check in with a friend or colleague. As 80% of us are caught in this “optimism bias” trap when making decisions, the ideal way to overcome it is to discuss your decision with someone else.

Roshan Thiran

Roshan is the founder and CEO of the Leaderonomics Group. He believes that everyone can be a leader and make a dent in the universe, in their own special ways.

Issue 32 I October 2019 9

LEADERS

DIGEST

Unconscious Biases In Your Organisation

BY CHRISTINE COMAFORD

One of the key topics I’m asked about frequently these days is unconscious bias training.

More and more studies come in every day that show diverse and inclusive teams (more on what that means later) consistently outperform teams made up of people who are very similar to each other.

So, it’s time to bust unconscious biases in business.

And that’s the tricky part.

While millions of training dollars have been spent over the past 30-plus years on diversity, there is surprisingly little proof of results.

In fact, the gender and racial diversity training we might be familiar with from the late 80s and 90s was widely reported to have had an adverse effect!

It raised awareness of people’s differences but didn’t provide behavioural change strategies.

10

Issue 32 I October 2019

A study of 829 companies over 31 years showed that diversity training had ‘no positive effects in the average workplace.’

We are all unconscious – and a bit biased

At best, the study made some people more open to hiring those of other races, genders, and ethnicities. At its worst, it shamed people ‒ resulting in some leaders banding together and enforcing their world view.

It’s a natural state of the brain that evolved from the days when we needed to be able to calculate very quickly if something was like us and thus friendly, or unlike us and possibly dangerous.

Fortunately, in the past few years, research based on organisations like the NeuroLeadership Institute have been studying not only how the brain creates biases but also what strategies successfully mitigate them in organisations.

One thing they have noticed is that while a group of similar people feels better for its members, a diverse group consistently performs better, making it clearly worth our while to figure out the bias conundrum.

All human beings are biased.

In fact, the brain has far more (three to four times as much!) real estate devoted to identifying threats, than to identifying opportunities and rewards.

There are over 150 different types of biases ‒ and all have their roots in the structure of the brain.

Biases are part of what keeps us sane and able to process the enormous amount of information that we are bombarded with at any point in time.

In a Google presentation on bias, they estimate that at any point in time, our brain is processing some 11 million bits of information and we can only consciously process 40 bits

LEADERS

DIGEST

‒ which makes us 99.999996 per cent unconscious.

The rest gets handled by our unconscious mind.

That part of us has learned the unconscious biases to delete (ignore some information and not make it conscious), distort (emphasise or fade other information), and generalise (Gosh! That switch looks just like the switch I used to turn on the lights in the other room, so, it too is a light switch).

If we were not able to form unconscious biases and delete, distort, and generalise accordingly, we would probably go crazy pretty darned fast.

Since we are all naturally biased, there’s no need to feel ashamed of it.

And there’s a very profound business case for ensuring that we mitigate or entirely remove our biases in certain situations.

Diversity plus inclusion Many people think that diversity is simply about having a diverse team, one that has representatives from different genders, races and ethnicities.

While that is a start, according to Heidi Grant-Halvorson PhD of the NeuroLeadership Institute, “Diversity is getting asked to the party, while inclusion is getting asked to dance at the party.”

Human infants have a very long period of being dependent on the adults of their ‘tribe’. If we are socially ostracised from the group, we feel physical pain.

This is instinct, and we automatically mirror the behaviours of others from birth in order to belong and therefore survive.

When our belonging is threatened, when we are ostracised or excluded, we enter what I call ‘Critter State’. When the brain is under threat, it literally cannot function in the same way that it does when it feels safe, when it is in the ‘Smart State.’

When we feel under threat, studies have shown that we release an enzyme that has been found to attack the hippocampus which is responsible for regulating synapses.

So, our brain: • reduces the field of view and focuses only on a narrow span of what it must do to survive.

Myelin sheathing increases on existing neural pathways and we are less likely to try new solutions.

• shrinks its working memory, so that it is not distracted by other ideas, bits of information, stray thoughts… Think of a student panicked by a pop quiz, the information is there but they cannot access it. This means they cannot problem solve optimally.

• is less creative. With less grey matter and modified synapses, we experience fewer ideas, thoughts, and information available to ‘bump into each other’ so the capacity to create is reduced.V

To get the benefits of diversity, we must promote the ‘Smart State’ by including, including and including.

And here’s the catch:

Humans never communicate as clearly as they think they do It’s actually quite a miracle that we understand anything about each other at all.

How many times a week, a day, or even an hour have you had the experience of thinking you understood or were understood, only to find a complete disconnect?

So, you may think you are including, but if you are not consciously including someone who is not confident about their place in your inner circle, they may feel rejected or not welcome.

To truly promote diversity and inclusion, it is absolutely critical to train your team in effective communication skills.

Techniques like rapport, inquiry mode and feedback allow people to get to know each other as individuals, not as ethnic, race or gender groups.

And that, my friends, is the secret to having diverse teams with lots of inclusion ‒ and to busting bias.

Awareness alone doesn’t work, but structures which prevent biases and the creation of skilled communication patterns and habits do.

• enlarges the amygdala, the area of the brain responsible for fear processing and threat perception, making us more likely to be reactive rather than controlled.

• is less likely to connect with others. Fight, flight, or freeze is not really a sharing kind of activity. When the synapses have been modified in this way, we appear grumpy and unsociable

Christine Comaford

Christine Comaford is a leadership and culture coach. She is best known for helping her clients create predictable revenue, deeply engaged and passionate teams, and highly profitable growth.

Issue 32 I October 2019 11

LEADERS

DIGEST

Are You Relentless In Pursuing Your Dream?

Akio Morita’s Vision Enabled Sony To Soar

BY ROSHAN THIRAN

“Our plan is to lead the public with new products rather than ask them what kind of products they want. The public does not know what is possible, but we do.” Most will ascribe this quote to Steve Jobs. But this was a statement made by Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony, years before Jobs.

Sony is an amazing story of how Morita’s determination and relentless pursuit of his vision enabled the “Made in Japan” tag, a symbol for substandard products and shoddy imitations in the 50s, to be reinvented into a highly respected, premium identifier.

In 1999, when he died, a poll conducted listed Sony as the No. 1 brand name among US consumers, superseding American companies like General Electric (GE) and Coca-Cola. But how did he take a tiny radio repair shop and turn it into one of the most innovative global electronics and entertainment giant?

It begins with a vision

Morita was born to a wealthy family involved in the sake brewing business for 14 generations. As the eldest son, he was groomed as successor at an early age, attending board meetings from the age of 10 and was taught the science of the sake brewing industry.

However, as a teenager, he realised that he was more interested in mathematics and physics, becoming a passionate electronics hobbyist. Morita passionately studied electronics in his spare time, succeeding to build his own radio and phonograph.

He somehow convinced his father to allow his younger brother to run the sake brewery and studied physics at the Osaka Imperial University. Upon graduation, Morita joined the Japanese navy and was assigned to the Naval Research Centre, where his passion for electronics was enhanced.

There, he met Masaru Ibuka, who shared a similar passion for technology. With an initial capital of 190,000 yen (about US$500) the Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corp) was formed.

Whilst Ibuka and him were both passionate about electronics, Morita felt another burning desire – to help change the image of Japan in the eyes of the world. He saw a defeated Japan and believed that his company could help restore Japan to a triumphant nation once again. And his vision for his nation started being implanted into the vision of his new company.

12

Issue 32 I October 2019

In the 50s, Morita established that their core purpose was to be a pioneering company, which did the impossible. Additionally, the future they envisioned included the following: • Become the company most known for changing the worldwide image of Japanese products as being of poor quality. Made in Japan will mean something fine and not shoddy • Create products that become pervasive around the world • Be the first Japanese company to go into an American market and distribute directly • Fifty years from now, the brand name will be as well-known as any on Earth Morita then worked tirelessly to make this vision a reality. In October 1999, he died after a severe attack of pneumonia. Like Jobs, tribute after tribute was poured out on the man who took Japanese technology to greatness.

A key analyst remarked, “He had personally played a leading role in transforming Japan’s economy from post-World War II shambles to a superior player in the global marketplace.” Fifty years after this vision statement was crafted, Japan had risen from the ashes of disgrace to a new leader in technology. Morita realised his vision.

No sacred cows

So, how did Morita achieve the impossible? The best leaders are single-minded and relentlessly focus on their vision. Morita knew that if he was to make Japan great again, he would have to emulate the great economies of the West.

In 1952, he decided to take a trip to the United States and Europe to explore the gap between Japan and the West. During the trip, he learnt that nobody could pronounce Tokyo Tsushin Kabushiki Kaisha (his company’s name). He decided he needed to change the name.

This may seem like a simple thing to do, but it was frowned upon by everyone. A name is a sacred cow. But Morita knew this had to be done. After considerable research, the duo decided to use the name “Sony”, derived from the two words “Sonus”(Latin for sound) and “Sonny” (English slang for bright and young boys).

LEADERS

DIGEST

Morita recalls,

We made basic rules for adopting our new name. Firstly, a name must be international. Secondly, it must be simple, short, easy to remember. Thirdly, it must be pronounced with the same sound all over the world.

Finally, we found some Latin word, ‘sonus,’ which means sound, and also English word, ‘sonny,’ used as ‘sonny boy,’ for a cute boy. We thought we were a group of sonny boys handling the sonus products.

He then broke from tradition by not using a company symbol on his products but used just the name “Sony”. The “cute boys” with their determined hearts then set about achieving the next part of their vision – first ensuring they had breakthrough products, and then “going to America”.

Vision under fire

Morita knew Sony had to make great products that had to be successful in the United States and not just Japan. After developing Sony’s first transistor radio, he went out to American distributors to sell his product. Yet, months went by and not a sale in sight.

Morita was at the point of giving up when finally Bulova, a watch company, saw the radio and said they would take 100,000 units provided it was marketed under the Bulova name. This meant that Sony would become an OEM and Boluva would be the brand of the radio.

For Morita and Sony, this was a colossal order, worth more than Sony’s total market capitalisation. The Sony board members were ecstatic and together with co-founder Ibuka urged Morita to quickly sign the deal. Instead, he ignored his board and refused to sign the deal. In his mind, his vision for Japanese brands to become global would be diluted if he was a mere outsourcer for Bulova. He stayed firm to the vision.

His relentlessness finally paid off when he found a distributor who agreed to his terms – sell the radio under the Sony brand.

And Americans loved Sony and its radio.

The great products at Sony played a huge part in transforming the worldview of Japanese products. Morita believed that the only way to develop innovative products was to always break the rules of the game and stay two steps ahead. And so Sony worked tirelessly to introduce various innovative products ensuring it became the Cadillac of electronics.

Going to America

The hardest challenge was winning in America. In 1961, Sony became the first Japanese company on the New York Stock Exchange. But Morita felt that for him to win over America, he needed to be there. So, in 1963, he packed his bags with his whole family and moved to the United States.

Here was a CEO who truly believed that he needed to experience first-hand how to sell and win in the US market himself. Morita was personally dedicated to ensure the Sony vision was realised.

He rationalised that to sell to Americans successfully, he would have to know more about them and how they lived.

But Morita knew that to win big in the United States required something different, adding “I knew we needed a weapon to break through to the US market, and it had to be something different, something that nobody else was making.” Morita moved to the United States primarily to learn. He adds “Carefully watch how people live, get an intuitive sense as to what they might want and then go with it. Don’t do market research.”

His observations led him to notice America’s love for music. He saw Americans listening to music in their cars and even carrying large stereos to the beach or the park. Enter the Walkman– a product that offered high quality sound but was incredibly portable. Akio had significant resistance in Sony to develop such a product. But he knew that he had to create a product that would revolutionise the world.

And he pushed his team extremely hard till they finally created it. Many of his leaders had reservations about the awkward name but again, he mandated every Sony subsidiary to use that name.

The Walkman was a big bonanza for Sony because its technology proved to be difficult to duplicate. It was more than two years before others could introduce competing models. By that time, Sony reputation and brand recognition had soared globally. The Walkman announced the arrival of Sony, changing the world’s perception of Japanese products.

Final thoughts

This never-ending relentless focus on achieving “the vision” is a key ingredient of leaders. Firstly, they are clear what the vision is and then they are single-mindedly focused on execution to ensure the vision becomes a reality. Morita had an impossible vision. Trying to “reinvent” Japan in 50 years would have been something that most people would have laughed at. But he was undeterred and kept the faith. And he pursued that strategy with his relentless brand of energy and passion.

There were so many obstacles to overcome. Sony’s beginnings were extremely turbulent. Sony’s first product was a rice cooker, but it burned the rice. But Morita never gave up his dream. He kept fighting till the Walkman and the Discman changed the world.

What’s your vision? Are you clear on the vision and its timeline?

And are you executing with a single-minded focus on achieving your vision? Keep the fight. You will get your “Walkman” if you pursue it relentlessly.

Roshan Thiran

Roshan is the founder and CEO of the Leaderonomics Group. He believes that everyone can be a leader and make a dent in the universe, in their own special ways.

Issue 32 I October 2019 13

LEADERS

DIGEST

giving him?” She thought about it for a minute then said probably about an 8 out of 10.

“I’m not a micromanager. I like to give my people freedom,” Olivia smiled sheepishly.

Managing by Freedom Within A Framework

BY DR THUN THAMRONGNAWASAWAT

I drew a diagram like the picture below in front of her. One axis is labeled Alignment of Values/Purpose and the other is labeled Freedom. I explained briefly what each zone means in context of Freedom Within A Framework. (For those interested, my colleague Michael Kossler’s article Give Your Employees Freedom Within a Framework can give you further details).

We placed on the chart the coordinate this manager has assigned her subordinate: 4 for alignment of Values and Purpose and 8 for Freedom.

“Dr Tan, I’m really fascinated by the Freedom Within A Framework idea.” Olivia, a manager who recently attended our Iclif programme shared with me. We were having a follow-up reflection conversation.

“And there is your problem,” I told her. “You have been giving him too much freedom.”

“But the problem is, I don’t know how to put it into practice.”

She continued: “I manage 15 people. I can’t just give everyone freedom to roam – the risk is just too high.”

“Would you like me to show you something to see if it helps?” I asked. The manager nodded enthusiastically.

I gave Olivia one yellow Post-It note and asked her to think of a subordinate from her team. I then asked her to write down her best guess of the person’s Values & Purpose. The concept of Leadership Energy was discussed at length during the programme she attended, so Olivia knew exactly what I meant. (For those who are less familiar, here is a supporting article that may be useful to read Are You a Boss or a Leader?

By Rajeev Peshawaria).

It took her about 10 minutes to come up with 1) Harmony 2) Integrity 3) Security 4) Family and 5) Accuracy, as the Values.

For Purpose she wrote, ‘To be a good father and a responsible worker’.

On another piece of Post-It note – a blue one – I asked Olivia to think of the Values and Purpose she would like to see in her team. This time she quickly wrote 1) Integrity 2) Results 3) Excellence 4) Customer Centric and 5) Teamwork. Her team’s purpose was ‘To become the number one branch in the region’.

“Good. Now, please overlay the two pieces of the notes,” I told her. “You can decide how much they overlap – ranging from a small area to a complete coverage.”

Olivia looked at the information on the two notes. She decided they were about 40% overlapped; particularly around Integrity and Harmony/Teamwork.

“Last question, what is the degree of freedom have you been

14

Issue 32 I October 2019

The coordinate placed us in Zone 4: Too much Freedom. This zone describes a mismatch between Low Alignment of V&P and High degree of Freedom. In laymen’s term, this means the person has not earned the right to be completely trusted by his manager.

In Olivia’s case, this is because the subordinate has not shown – at least to the boss’s eyes— his sharing of the team’s Values for Results, Excellence, and Customer Centric. If given a lot of freedom, he could make decisions that violate the team’s Values. For example, he could choose to attend his daughter’s recital and not submitting his work on time.

“So, I can’t give him the freedom?” She frowned.

“Well, no and yes.” I smiled and shared with her the following points.

• Alignment of V&P is proportional to Freedom. The more your people show that they will act according to your team’s Values and Purpose, the more you can trust them to do the right thing. Mary Barra, the current CEO of General Motors, said this amidst her difficult decision to recall over 1-million GM cars due to manufacturing defects: “We quickly defined our guiding principles based on our values… If the company sees you do the right thing, and your people know you are going to do the right thing even when it’s hard. That, to me, is so important

LEADERS

DIGEST

for me to trust that we are doing the right thing at all levels, every day.” (Power Moves: Lessons from Davos (2018) by Adam Grant) Therefore, as a leader, you should aim to maximise your team members alignment of V&P. Achieving this starts with 1) to define clearly and communicate what your team’s V&P are; and 2) to observe and understand each of your team members’ V&P. In Olivia’s case, her team member needs to learn that while it is okay to value Family, he must also respect the other important values of the team, e.g. Results and Customer Centric, as well.

This means that even if he chose to attend a family event, he must also deliver work on time and excellently. Olivia may need to have a conversation and move him to Zone 2, i.e. lower freedom, until she sees the behavioral alignment.

• Give freedom to those who have earned it. Shape those who haven’t. Interestingly, many managers I have interacted with say that they have a great team; with members clearly aligned with the team’s V&P. In fact, ‘Alignment to Organisation Culture’ had the highest score in one of Iclif’s 360-degree Leadership Readiness Surveys of a 30,000-employee organisation. Yet, these team members are managed with a lot of rules and policies, i.e. no freedom. The combination of a high degree of alignment but low degree of freedom is described in Zone 5: Not enough freedom, which leads to unnecessary delays, frustrations, and distrust.

In Iclif’s most recent book, Open Source Leadership (2017), the author Rajeev Peshawaria highlights the fact that in today’s business environment, speed is everything and the ability to remain agile and nimble in an ever-changing landscape is critical. Unfortunately, many of today’s organisations still operate as if it were 1990 by not trusting their employees and imposing strict internal rules, policies, processes, and procedures. The result is a bureaucracy which is anything but agile and nimble. Organisations and leaders should relook at how they are managing their people by Freedom Within A Framework and adapt their approach, especially if they have earned it.

• Be careful not to give Freedom simply based on performance. V&P alignment and performance may not necessarily go together. Don’t make the mistake that some managers do by simply giving employee freedom based on performance. This may breed a toxic culture because there is a right and wrong way of delivering results. Instead, the organisation should always act in accordance with their Values & Purpose, even if it means reprimanding their top business performers.

In his book The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t (2007), a Stanford University professor Robert I. Sutton wrote about a case at a company called The Men’s Warehouse. It fired a selfish and difficult employee even though he was one of the company’s most successful salespeople, and as a result, the total sale volume in the store increased. Another example cited was a fortune 500 company where the CEO fired people who acted against the

organisational Values. According to Sutton, the firm benefited from firing these Zone 6: Separation employees and had risen to become one of the top firms in the industry.

What may be counterintuitive is that even those who may be perceived as a ‘low performer’ can also be given freedom if they had proven themselves to act in alignment with the team’s Values & Purpose. In another chapter of Open Source Leadership (2017), Rajeev shares a view that to give everyone in the organisation a ‘stretch’ goal is unproductive. The manager should instead have an honest conversation about expectations. For example, the employees should be allowed to choose the lower end of the bell curve if they agree that a lower performance is fairly linked to lower renumeration.

This is a perfect example of Managing by Freedom Within A Framework – the parties are aligned on their values & purpose, leading to working with a high degree of freedom, i.e. Zone 3.

“Wow, thank you Dr Tan. This is very helpful!” Olivia exclaimed.

“The chart really helps me to see the relationship between Values & Purpose and Freedom. I can already begin to see where some of my people sit in the different zones, and how I should support them to move towards earned Freedom.”

Here’s a recap of what Olivia and I did together: 1. Think of 1 member in your team, e.g. reportee, colleague, or even boss 2. Decode her/his Values & Purpose; write them down on a Post-It note 3. Pick another Post-It note, write down the team’s/ organisation’s Values & Purpose 4. Decide how much the two notes overlap – place them accordingly 5. Assign the current degree of Freedom and map onto the chart 6. Examine the corresponding Managing by Freedom Within A Framework Zone 7. Think about how you can improve / optimise the current situation 8. Have a discussion with the person to manage the current status while developing the relationship towards Zone 3 What do you think?

Try Managing by Freedom Within A Framework with your team and do let us know how it works out!

Dr. Thun Thamrongnawasawat

Director, Research & Curriculum The Iclif Leadership and Governance Centre

Issue 32 I October 2019 15

LEADERS

DIGEST

Star Trek fans will immediately recognise the above quotes as attributed to Mr. Spock, the science officer aboard the starship Enterprise in the sci-fi series. Spock is the embodiment of logic in the series, often seen projecting a stoic demeanour through preference for facts and data.

Why You Should Be Rational About The Emotional When Making Decisions

For most of the part, he is the paragon of rationality on board the Enterprise, refusing to allow any trace of emotion to influence his decisions. Importantly, Spock serves as the antipode to the intuitive and emotional James Kirk, captain of the Enterprise.

Much of Spock’s statements place emotions as being illogical, disruptive – foolish even, in the face of decision-making.

BY DR EUGENE YJ TEE

Emotions are antithetical to rationality, representing the disruptive to the ordered, and as such, ought to be relegated to a silent corner where important decisions are concerned.

Important decisions, like those made in organisations on a daily basis, are to be approached on basis of facts. Tangible, concrete data and not fleeting, unpredictable sentiments should be the basis for our decisions.

Financial seminars tout the value of eliminating emotion from investment decisions. Employee performance is evaluated using numerical anchors, with numbers quantifying judgments of effectiveness and efficiency.

Do emotions, however, deserve to be cast under such an unfavourable light?

“Your highly emotional reaction is most illogical.”

“Where there is no emotion, there is no motive for violence.”

“May I say that I have not thoroughly enjoyed serving with humans? I find their illogic and foolish emotions a constant irritant.”

16

Issue 32 I October 2019

To some extent, yes. Emotions do interrupt decision-making, but, they are simply doing what they are meant to do: disrupt your thoughts and drawing your attention to immediate demands.

Could we all be like Spock – completely unemotional, reasondriven entities with brains optimised for prioritising logic and data when faced with decision-making demands? Definitely not! Should we? Probably not.

For the simple reason that we need emotion to make decisions, eliminating emotions from decision-making is not merely impractical – it is impossible.

How much we choose to rely on emotions when making decisions, however, is within our control. We can be rational about the emotional in decision-making.

LEADERS

DIGEST

The curious case of Phineas Gage

A slight historical detour is necessary if we wish to understand why emotions are central to decision-making.

Having a less favourable mood causes us to hesitate, to be a little more deliberate in our actions, and to nitpick on details we would otherwise miss in a more pleasant mood state.

In 1848, a foreman working on the construction of railway lines in the United States suffered a most unfortunate accident.

The foreman oversaw the demolition of rocks and rubble, in order to pave the ground for railway tracks to be laid.

There have been new studies suggesting that emotions precede reason. That means we could very well be making a lot of our decisions on the basis of emotion, before we find reasons to justify those decisions.

One careless distraction later, and the foreman packed gunpowder into the ground without covering it up neatly for remote detonation.

Disaster ensued.

Emotions shade so many of our decisions and judgments that we are oftentimes unaware of how influential they are in our jobs.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

He struck the ground with a sharp metal pole, the resulting friction igniting the gunpowder and launching the tamping iron out of the foreman’s hands and right into his skull.

Miraculously, the foreman survived, but his behaviour changed dramatically. He could no longer control his emotional impulses. He made poor judgments and decisions that seemed unusual and out of character.

The foreman, Phineas Gage, would tell us a lot about how emotions are central to our decision-making.

Fast forward a century later and neuroscientists re-examining Gage’s skull found that his injuries were contained around an area of the brain responsible to help regulate, control and use emotions for decision-making.

Were it not the case that ‘reason’ and ‘emotion’ were so intimately intertwined in our brains, we would expect Gage to lack the ability to make decisions altogether.

The fact that Gage was still making decisions – albeit poor ones on the basis of emotional impulses, shows that we rely on emotion to help us reason. Damage to this part inhibits our ability to be reasonable about emotions.

The many shades of emotions

Our brains reason about emotion, employing them as pieces of information to aid decision-making. Having pleasant feelings about an individual makes us judge them more favourably, or at least less critically.

Applicant selection and the many cognitive biases associated with this process – the halo and pitchfork effects (making snap judgments about candidates on the basis of a few positive/ negative qualities), contrast effect (making relative rather than objective assessments of applications) are just two ways in which emotions alter our judgments.

Emotions provide us a shortcut to decision-making that is efficient, but not necessarily optimal. Even much of our future decisions are shaded by emotions.

Let’s say you are deciding if you should stop over to grab that croissant and coffee from your favourite bakery on the way to work. You are quite certain that taking an extra 15 minutes to pick up breakfast would leave you stuck in the midst of rush hour traffic. You expect to arrive to work late, and leave a less-than-favourable impression on your boss. You foresee that your boss will be displeased, and your tardiness might be brought up to you in your next performance evaluation.

Rewind back to the present. You decide in the present moment to skip breakfast altogether, opting instead for an early lunch.

How you can expect to feel in the future changes your thoughts in the present time. When we lack all the details and the facts necessary to make decisions in the present moment, we rely on expected future emotions to guide our behaviours.

And that is often the case with many decisions – we simply do not have every sliver of information, nor energy to consider every single possibility.

That gut feel within you – that intangible, unseen sensation that sways your decisions is trying to tell you something, attempting to steer your thoughts and behaviours in the face of incomplete information.

Even major investment decisions are sometimes made on more emotional grounds than we realise. Even when armed with tangible, factual and numerical data, there’s still that pull of emotion that tells us that we should sell, or hang on to a

Issue 32 I October 2019 17

LEADERS

DIGEST

particular stock. Our rationality is, in this sense, bounded.

Emotions fill in the gaps in our understanding to make decisions. Emotions are the imperfect necessity for making decisions in a world flooded with information.

Manage emotions prudently

Rather than try to eliminate emotion’s influence altogether from our decision-making, it’s more prudent to consider how much emotions are affecting your decisions.

Important decisions – ones that have an impact on the organisations, should of course, not be made on the basis of emotion alone.

Managers making decisions based on gut feel may take a course of action that turns out to be sub-optimal in hindsight.

Making decisions at the spur of anger or impatience may lead to rash choices in words and actions that affect team harmony and morale. Making decisions largely on grounds of positive, pleasant emotions are also problematic.

Sunk costs are incurred because of continued ‘good feeling’ commitment to ideas that have low profitability or viability.

Panic buying (or selling) is another clear example of how emotions drive impulsive decisions and actions. Market sentiments reflect the emotions of the masses; multiple individuals projecting their own hopes, anxieties, frustrations towards the purchases and selling decisions.

While such sentiments give us some indication of what the market will be like – no one is truly prescient regarding our future fortunes.

Managers and organisational decision-makers try to limit risks by studying markets, analysing trends and data, but the fingerprint of emotion is still evident in any projections made regarding the unknown future.

Parting thoughts

Having once lost a game of chess to Kirk, he admitted, “Your illogical approach to chess does have its advantages on occasion, captain.”

5 pointers to manage emotions in decisionmaking • Emotions are part of decision-making We rely on emotions to make decisions under a variety of circumstances. Consider the next decision you make on the job – to what extent are your actions, choice of words, or perceptions influenced by your emotions?

• Recognise when your emotions are biasing your judgments and decisions.

If time or the situation permits, it might be useful to take a step back from making rash, impulsive decisions. Reconsider the situation again after a period of time when you are not feeling strong emotions.

• Emotions are not inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for decisionmaking, but a necessary part of it.

Emotions provide the convenient shortcuts on which we make decisions. This is especially useful when we lack the necessary facts and data to make a decision. However, doing this may lead us to make less than optimal decision.

Understanding what pleasant and unpleasant emotions are telling you helps you consider the situation more holistically and critically, before you make a decision.

• Emotions influence snap judgments and evaluations, as well as future behaviours.

Our judgments and choices differ depending on our momentary mood states. How we expect to feel in the future has an influence on our behaviours in the present point in time. Recognising this makes you more mindful of the decisions you make, and the reasons for your choices.

• Eliminating emotions altogether from decision-making is unlikely to be helpful, or possible.

A more prudent approach is to consider both facts and the sentimentality surrounding a particular situation.

Prudence in considering both the voices of reason and emotions helps us make decisions that are ultimately more well-informed, and optimal within our limits.

We have the capacity to reason about emotions, and this, at least, is a skill that we can hone to enhance our decisionmaking. Even Mr. Spock acknowledges that the best choices were not reliant solely on logic.

18

Issue 32 I October 2019

Dr Eugene Y.J.

Dr Eugene Y.J. Tee is a senior lecturer at the Department of Psychology, HELP University. His research interests include emotions and leadership. Eugene’s second favourite way to procrastinate at work is to have water cooler conversations about the newest neuroscience research findings.

LEADERS

DIGEST

Trust Your Gut:

Thin-Sliced Decisions May Be Better Than Deliberated Ones

BY ROSHAN THIRAN

Issue 32 I October 2019 19

LEADERS

DIGEST

Researchers discovered that the higher up the corporate ladder a business leader progresses, the more he or she relies on “gut-feel” and 80% of successful CEOs have a highly developed intuitive decision-making style. Business is all about decisions. Great decision-making is the key trait of great leaders across time. Many leaders “go with their gut” on many decisions but others will make no decisions unless there was an endless parade of meetings, deliberations, expert opinions and data overload. And yet, the quality of the deliberated decisions is not superior to quick “gut” ones.

I have met many HR leaders requiring resumes, application forms and numerous interview sessions followed by longdeliberated meetings before hiring a candidate only to find that the person was not a good hire. Psychologist Samuel Gosling researched this phenomenon and found out that managers would make better hiring decisions by spending 30 minutes at the candidate’s house looking around versus spending countless hours interviewing the candidate. It seems rather odd that a 30-minute assessment without the candidate can be more accurate than judgments that have been laboured over for months.

“According to well-known author Malcolm Gladwell, “decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.”

How is this possible? Gut-feel is our subconscious mind weighing up all known factors and then making quick decisions. Gladwell calls it “thin slicing” and it “refers to the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behaviour based on very narrow slices of experience”.

The concept is demonstrated by psychologist John Gottman, who for decades analysed video-taped conversations of married couples and is able to predict with 95% accuracy whether the couples will stay together or get divorced in the next 15 years just by listening to a couple speak to each other for 15 minutes.

How does Gottman do it? He thin-slices these 15 minute conversations by disregarding expressions, tones and words, but instead zooming in on four key cues: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt. By zoning out the noise and focusing on key cues, Gottman manages to make highly-accurate snap judgments on marriages which are more accurate than any by a marriage counselor spending months with couples.

Many will feel that “thin-slicing” decisions are emotional and irrational. But they are rational! Gladwell concludes

20

Issue 32 I October 2019

“it’s thinking – it’s just thinking that moves a little faster and operates a little more mysteriously than the kind of deliberate, conscious decision-making that we usually associate with ‘thinking’”.

Thin-slicing is something everyone does all the time. In football, the most gifted strikers have “goal-sense” and greats like Gary Linekar scored goals for fun. In the military, brilliant generals possessed coup d’oeil, meaning “the power of the glance”. Researchers discovered that the higher up the corporate ladder a business leader progresses, the more he or she relies on “gut-feel” and 80% of successful CEOs have a highly developed intuitive decision-making style, even though at times there is no clear logic to prove it.

The good news is that “thin-slicing” decision-making can be learnt and practised. You can actually become better at making quick, fast, instinctive judgments through practice and experience. Stroke victims, who have lost their speaking ability, become thin-slicing experts over time by reading information on people’s faces, regardless of their competency levels.

In business, the best sales people are expert thin-slicers.

The moment they meet a customer, they quickly listen and make snap judgments about the customer’s needs and state of mind. But they also avoid the biggest mistake many salespeople make – never judge a customer on the basis of his or her appearance and assume that everyone has the exact same chance of buying from you. Similarly to Gottman, the best salesperson disregards the garbage (appearances and externalities like what a person drives), but zooms in on key cues from the customer, enabling him/her to close a sale.

A Learned Skill

So how do you learn this skill? Jack Welch, Fortune’s “manager of the century”, and famous for gut decisions, describes how he learnt to “thin-slice” – “sometimes making a decision is hard not because it is unpopular, but because it comes from your gut and defies a ‘technical’ rationale. Much has been written about the mystery of gut, but it’s really just pattern recognition, isn’t it? You’ve seen something so many times you just know what’s going on this time. The facts may be incomplete or the data limited, but the situation feels very, very familiar to you”.

Jack Welch learnt thin-slicing through countless mistakes and experiences. Expert Paul Ekman claims that with just 30 minutes of practice, you will see significant improvement in your thin-slicing ability.

There is a principle stating, “Anything can be accomplished if a task is broken down into small enough steps”. So, expertise

LEADERS

DIGEST

in thin-slicing is gained by identifying real cues that help us make good decisions and drowning out judgment bias derailers such as race, sex or appearance that get in the way of effective thin-slicing. A car salesman that judges a woman walking into his store as a non-customer simply because of his bias on women, will never amount to a great salesperson. He needs to strip those biases and focus on what the customer is truly saying and a sale will most likely happen.

Another way to cultivate thin-slicing is by spending time with people not like us. This broadens horizons and provides new perspective in growing our experience-base. Having richer experiences and context sharpens our ability to thin-slice.

project”? DuPont discovered that their product development time shortened from three years to less than three months by actively engaging employee intuition in their product planning.

The saying, “Trust your gut” is a cliché but it’s 100% true, if you have learnt the art of thin-slicing well. We are genetically programmed with a lifetime of knowledge that equips us with the ability to make GOOD decisions, quickly. Remember, information overload can negatively impact our ability to “thin-slice” effectively. So, go develop your gut and trust it!

Finally, pay attention to your emotional state. When stressedout or in a bad mood, your “gut-feel” is distorted by negative feelings. Police personnel tend to make a significant number of bad decisions after high-speed car chases, according to researcher Dave Grossman. Research has shown that bad “thin-slice” decisions are made when a person is highly stressed-up. And when your mind is relaxed, the ‘Aha’ moments occur. But people are so stressed with overloaded schedules that they lose their own innate wisdom of intuition.

Thin-slicing can sometimes throw you off too, especially if you are over-confident and lack expertise in a changing field or function. For example, some of us have an inner prejudice or pre-condition that somehow taller people are very intelligent and forceful as leaders. As a result, many CEOs are taller people despite the fact that shorter people are just as smart and capable. According to research in the book Blink, 14.5% of the US male population is six feet or taller yet 58% of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies is above six feet.

Final Thoughts

Professional speakers and trainers have long asserted that first impressions are formed within two minutes. Thin-slicing experts believe that it takes us less than three seconds to thin-slice and create first impressions. I have interviewed and hired more than 1,000 people at various organisations over the past 15 years. If I look back at my best hiring decisions, they were hires made quickly and instinctively. At times, I had no rationale for those decisions, but my gut kept telling me it was right. And when I didn’t listen to my gut, I generally had regrets.

Thin-slicing experts believe that it takes us less than three seconds to thin-slice and create first impressions. Listening to your gut and making fast decisions is also profitable to your business and drives better business performances.

Eisenhardt’s research (1989) linked rapid decision-making to effective business performance. Would you be willing to listen to an employee saying “I have a gut feeling about this

Roshan Thiran

Roshan is the founder and CEO of the Leaderonomics Group. He believes that everyone can be a leader and make a dent in the universe, in their own special ways.

Issue 32 I October 2019 21

LEADERS

DIGEST

How You Influence The Game of Life

by The Decisions You Make

BY ONG SHU YI

The life we are living right now, the person we are and the things and people we have in our lives, are all the results of the decisions we made in the past.

There is no right moment for us to act – start a business, start something we have been putting off for a long while, find the person we love or take any other decision for that matter.

Think about it. If you had made very different decisions in the past, wouldn’t you be living a very different life right now?

We must start taking action consistently, and that action comes from the decisions that we make.

Have you ever been through those life-changing moments where, if you had made a different choice, the path you are on now would be a very different one?

We need to start taking action to create an environment where opportunities start to flow into our lives even without us knowing it.

WE ARE THE PRODUCTS OF OUR DECISIONS

Opportunities only come to those who are prepared; those who are willing to get their hands dirty, and to those who are willing to take the risk.

The decisions we make, consciously or subconsciously, determine the quality of our lives. We all have choices to make.

In fact, the decisions we make today and the days after will determine how our lives will turn out 10–20 years from now. The hard truth is that the day will surely arrive.

THIS IS YOUR MOMENT Ever so often, we come across stories of people who took years to get over their situation or to change a behaviour.

My question to you is: when that day arrives, where will you be in your life? Will you be living up to your own expectations and dreams?

However, if you think about it, what made them change is not the countless years they took; it’s usually the decision made in a single moment.

Will you be truly happy about your life? Or, will you still be wandering around, seeking for what you want and waiting for the right opportunity to act?

It’s the moment you told yourself that you couldn’t take it anymore, you couldn’t live your life like this anymore, you can’t be in this situation anymore, you couldn’t bear to see the broken pieces of your loved ones’ hearts anymore.

TAKE ACTION As I go through the ups and downs in life, I realise that there is no right opportunity for us to step up.

22

Issue 32 I October 2019

“That’s the moment you decided to change; that’s the moment when you decided to commit yourself to turn things around.”

LEADERS

DIGEST

FIND YOUR MOTIVATION My mentor once told me this story. He had a client named Derrick.

Derrick had been smoking for more than 20 years, ever since he was in high school.

He was reluctant to get rid of his habit. Even though it hurt his loved ones and the people around him deeply, he kept telling himself that he just couldn’t change.

In fact, he had tried to change but ended up going back to this old behaviour every time.

Until one day, while he was smoking in his own private room, he heard a loud cry outside his door.

He was shocked to find his 9-year-old daughter standing in the doorway, and she was sobbing uncontrollably.

“What’s the matter sweetheart?”

“Daddy, I don’t want you to die. I don’t want you to leave me.”

“I’m not going to die, sweetheart. I will always be here for you.”

That’s right. Life is a game. A game of trust, excitement, adventure, joy and fun. For us to win the game of life, we must make conscious decisions that allow us to win one day at a time.

If you look at the most successful people around the globe, from Sir Richard Branson to Steve Jobs to Bill Gates, what makes winners in the game of life is neither luck nor a single major decision in life.

What makes them successful is a series of small decisions they make consistently over a period of time.

If you want to win in the game of life, the strategy is to win one day at a time. Every day you make decisions that make you happy and allow you to win.

If your days of winning in a year outperform the days of losing, you already have a head start to the best days of your life.

An appropriate metaphor I love to use is stocks trading. What determines a winning portfolio is not a series of individual winning stocks. It is a combination of winning and losing trades.

And the crucial element is this: we must ensure that the amount of winning trades we make exceed the amount of losing trades.

In short, when we win, we win big; when we lose, we lose small.

But her crying only became worse.

“Yes, you will! Mummy said that if you continue smoking, you will die. You will never see me graduate. You will never see me finding the man that I love. I want you to be at my graduation. I want you to be there at every important event of my life.”

From that day on, Derrick never lit up a single cigarette for the rest of his life. He made a decision that day to quit smoking, and he stuck to it.

Sometimes, what triggers the most effective change in us is pain.

The pain of losing someone whom we love or the things that we hold dearest to us.

IN CONCLUSION Decisions shape your destiny. The choices we make in life every day, every hour, every minute and every second is what makes us successful in the things we do.

So, if you really want to have more joy, fulfilment, excitement and confidence in every area of your life, make the decision today to commit yourself to eliminating the negative behaviours that affect your life.

But why should we wait until we are in pain before committing to change?

Wouldn’t it be better if we could realise the consequences of our actions and make the decision to change before the pain has occurred?

WINNING IN LIFE The moment we decide to commit to changing our quality of life, the game of life changes for us.

Ong Shu Yi

Shu Yi is a speaker in human development, an author and peak performance expert. He loves to speak and write, and is on a mission to educate youths and bring the best out in them.

Issue 32 I October 2019 23

LEADERS

DIGEST

How To Use Anxiety As A Decision Making Tool

BY DAN ROCKWELL

Competence earns new opportunities. New opportunities ignite anxiety.

A little anxiety keeps you on your toes.

Unease makes you alert and helps you bring your best to challenges and opportunities.

But unanswered anxiety spirals out of control. One fear cascades into another.

The list keeps growing until paralysis sets in.

I recently spoke to a newly promoted plant manager. He earned his promotion because he’s competent. But he’s also filled with anxiety about his new challenge.

Anxiety asks, “What if you aren’t enough?”

Frankly, if you don’t feel at least a bit anxious when your world shifts, you need a wake-up call.

I still don’t sleep well before giving presentations. It’s been years, and sometimes my stomach hurts before I walk on stage.

Maybe you have the gift of anxiety. You think of everything that will go wrong, worry about surprises, and struggle to prepare for an unpredictable future.

Anxiety whispers, “This really matters,” and searches for clarity and certainty, but in an unpredictable world, you feel like the lights are out.

Anxiety can be a decision-making tool.

24

Issue 32 I October 2019

How to use the fear of regret Recently, I spoke to a woman who has a choice between keeping her current job or taking one that might present better opportunities. She knows there are no guarantees.

Anxiety thrives when the future is unpredictable.

I asked her to imagine that both options will go badly. Whatever choice she makes, it won’t work as expected.

Anxiety loves this way of thinking.

I said, “Assuming both options go badly, which one will you regret not taking?”

This question helps people tap into their deeper fear.

The question, “What do I really want?” helps you shift from fear to values.

3. Finally ask, “What do I need to do to get what I really want?”

Limit yourself to things you can easily accomplish.

Choose behaviours that match your strengths.

Without hesitation she named one of the options. “I’ll most regret not taking the new opportunity.”

The fear of regret helps you find clarity.

Create an anxiety list to clarify decisions and plan.

1. Don’t fight anxiety Invite it for coffee. Dig deep.

What are your concerns? Write them down. Keep writing until you can’t think of anything else that could go wrong.

2. Look at your list and ask, “What do I really want?”

Write down the things you really want beside each item on your anxiety list.

Dan Rockwell

Dan Rockwell is a coach and speaker and is freakishly interested in leadership. He is the author of a world-renowned leadership blog, Leadership Freak.

LEADERS

DIGEST

WHY THE RIGHT DECISION IS BETTER THAN THE BEST DECISION

BY DR GLENN WILLIAMS

We can all recall moments of regret, especially when they relate to decisions we have made that didn’t quite get the results we were looking for. Perhaps it was a word that should not have been spoken, or an act that cannot be undone.

This shouldn’t be confused with decisions that have to be made where there are difficult implications for others, or where a situation demands the truth to be spoken even if we know it will be unpopular – or worse, we become the target of other people’s dissatisfaction, anger, and resentment.

For example: 1. Sometimes there are sound economic

reasons that lead us to make decisions that will impact our employees and their families, and disappoint our customers.

There is no fun in letting staff go or reducing the goods and services our customers have come to enjoy and depend on.

2. It is not easy sitting down and letting a

competent, high-performing employee know that you have chosen to fill the vacant senior leadership position with someone else because the other person has better interpersonal skills, and people gravitate to his or her leadership.

There are four classical virtues that are centuries old, and as Alexandre Havard reminds us, they are absolutely critical to leadership.

He argues that our commitment to live them out in every dimension of our lives (no matter the personal cost) strengthens not only our reputation as a leader of great character, but also begins to shape our vision of the world and desire to see people flourish under our leadership.

The four classical cardinal virtues are prudence, courage, self-control, and justice. They are called “cardinal” because the Latin word cardo means “hinge”. All other virtues hinge on, or depend on these four.

MAKING THE “RIGHT” DECISION

The first classical virtue is prudence.

This relates to the leader’s ability to make the right decision, irrespective of the situation’s complexity or simplicity, or the cost.

This is not the same as making the best decision. Often what is best for one party is not necessarily the best outcome for another.

Furthermore, if subjectivity, good intentions or the affirmation we seek from others become the primary lens from which a decision is made over the importance of determining what is right, then the virtue of prudence is not present.

It doesn’t matter where we live. We see this tension play out every day.

Whether in our political or corporate domains, or in our educational, health, and religious institutions, in the public or private sector, we are confronted with the conundrum of doing what is right regardless of the cost – personally or corporately.

Issue 32 I October 2019 25

LEADERS

DIGEST

Revelations of scandal, corruption, rumour, abuse, and cover-ups have led us to second-guess authority, and it is perfectly understandable.

Daniel Patrick Forrestor captures the importance of reflective thinking, not only for leaders, but for organisations as well.

We must rediscover the essence of leadership and redefine the nature of authority and its practice. According to Havard, there are three steps involved in making a prudent decision:

He believes it is absolutely vital that organisations promote think time in order to facilitate stronger decisionmaking cultures and to avoid the mistake of limiting key decisions to a small number of powerful leaders.

1. Deliberation – this involves gathering

all relevant information to analyse it critically. This includes sourcing information in such a way to avoid making a decision with prejudice;

2. Judgment – this entails carefully considering and evaluating the information gathered from a range of different perspectives; and 3. Deciding – making a decision.

In their groundbreaking handbook and classification of character strengths and virtues, Peterson and Seligman substitute prudence with “wisdom and knowledge” from which five character strengths or traits originate.

These are considered to be the psychological processes that define virtues, and include creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, the love of learning and perspective.

These processes help us to see that making the right decision is more than a leader merely making a spontaneous or impulsive decision.

It tells us that a leader takes decisionmaking very seriously because he or she is aware that there are often considerable implications that result from them.

He states “decision-making becomes correlated to rank and the perceived power to ‘make things happen’. Ideas that are never vetted simply get passed by, as the tempo of daily operations means that people must ‘move on’ and deal with what is before them.”

The bias towards action and activity, combined with unprecedented amounts of data to process, means that organisations must find mechanisms to force think time and reflection.

One final note concerning the virtue of prudence is that its essence is rooted not only in what is right, but that it cannot be devoid of action or indecision; good intentions or meaning well is simply not enough.

Rather than knowledge existing for knowledge’s sake, the virtue of prudence transforms it into prudent decisionmaking. If we support Pieper’s notion that prudence is interchangeable with the word “conscience”, then it is also possible for us to conclude that failure to make a decision and act on it reflects a lack of conscience and of virtue.

It demonstrates the importance of reflection, taking the time to explore alternative solutions, being open to hearing input from others, and genuinely seeking to understand the situation at hand from a range of different perspectives that help.

In his outstanding book, Consider: Harnessing the Power of Reflective Thinking in Your Organisation,

As Gilbert Meilaender aptly states, “virtue enhances vision, vice darkens and finally blinds”.

Issue 32 I October 2019

1. What is the key motivation behind my decision?

2. Do I have enough information to make a decision, and have I looked at this from a range of perspectives?

3. Have I adequately considered alternative solutions?

4. Do I have a plan to manage the implications of my decisions on others?

5. How does this decision reflect on my character?

When virtues are absent, and in this case, prudence, the opposite occurs.

Vice gradually takes its place, and a leader’s insecurities and self-interest (no matter how well rationalised or denied) catapult an organisation towards what Jim Collins calls the “Five Stages of Decline” or contribute to the emergence of what Patrick Lencioni calls “silos, politics, and turf wars” that quickly destroy the confidence of colleagues and turns them into competitors.

26

WHAT’S THE BOTTOM LINE? It is important to realise that we make hundreds of decisions every day, and many of them have significant implications for our businesses, employees and colleagues, our families and key relationships, and our customers and constituents. Some important questions you might like to ask yourself include:

Dr Glenn Williams

Dr Glenn Williams is the CEO of LCP Global Pty Ltd, an organisation that empowers leaders and organisations to grow their leadership capacity.

LEADERS

DIGEST

“

There is a big difference between motion and action.

Just because you get out of bed doesn’t mean you are making progress. Taking action requires decisiveness, dedication, and clear direction

“

- Farshad Asl

Issue 32 I October 2019 27

Building Leaders of Excellence

LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE OF SARAWAK CIVIL SERVICE KM20, JALAN KUCHING SERIAN, SEMENGGOK, 93250 KUCHING, SARAWAK. TELEPHONE : +6082-625166 FAX : +6082-625966 E-MAIL : info@leadinstitute.com.my