Effective decision-making for scientists, inventors and innovators
“Everyone’s always talking about what needs to get done, but no one is willing to do what it takes. That’s where I come in!” – Clint Eastwood aka Dirty Harry.
It’s been a while since I’ve written about leadership, but as you can tell from my last post, I retain my love affair with great leadership. At this time, I want to focus on the kind of leadership needed from people like you: great scientists, inventors and other innovators – the “men of the mind” as Ayn Rand called them (even though she herself and many of you are in fact women.) In this post, I’m focussing down on the first trait correlated with great innovative leadership — powerful decision-making. How does a great leader make great decisions in the face of great uncertainty?
This includes huge decisions such as the direction of the whole company, decisions to move ahead with a particular technology, specific design or research decisions, decisions of who to hire, down to mundane tactical decisions. They all share essential elements that correlate with success in an innovation environment.
The problem of course is that we are, at our core, thinkers rather than doers and relaters. It’s hard for us to get into action, and it’s hard for us to work on teams. So the question becomes, how do we translate our ideas into action and into teamwork when action and teamwork are not natural to us? The more innovative we become, the more essential it is that we strengthen our ability to translate thought into action and teamwork.
The rest of this post gives the process successful leaders use to empower succesful action. I’ll get into the most important aspect of building a team next time.
Getting into action
Here’s what I’ve discovered over the years by observing successful innovators: Effective action is really about a mental process called “effective decision.” Effective decision converts ideas into actions that deal effectively with the problem or opportunity at hand. Without “effective decision,” action is just impulse, reaction, or worse habitual repetition. “Effective decision” is an essential aspect of your inner game. But what does effective decision actually look like?
Napoleon Hill (famous author of Think and Grow Rich) says this: “Analysis of several hundred people who had accumulated fortunes well beyond the million dollar mark, disclosed the fact that every one of them had the habit of reaching decisions promptly, and changing these decisions slowly, if and when they were changed at all. People who fail to accumulate money, without exception, have the habit of reaching decisions, if at all, very slowly, and of changing these decisions quickly and often.”
Another Napoleon, Bonaparte, says this:
“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.” I’m sure he meant “decide effectively.”
Effective decision is moving into action like a tiger with 1) urgency, 2) forcefulness, 3) clarity of the end-state, 4) personal ownership and 5) persistence. Not easy when uncertainty dominates the environment.
Ineffective decision is (in the extreme) moving into action like a sloth, with casualness, hesitation, fuzziness of intention, victimness and fatigue.
Great leaders know that the risks entailed in any action cannot be eliminated through endless preparation and analysis. Great leaders seem to have cultivated the ability to know when preparation and analysis have reached the point of diminishing returns and have become an excuse for hesitation. This is especially true when rapidly changing circumstances make preparation and analysis rapidly obsolete.
Steve Jobs was an example of a brilliant man of action, who relied upon his instincts for great design far more than market studies. The same reliance on instincts may not apply to other areas of innovation such as the life sciences, but there is a lesson to be learned to avoid excessive analysis.
“Effective decision” is a great leader’s decision to move into action even when he/she doen’t have all the data and all the preparation theoretically needed. This is the only way successful innovators rise above chance and select their destiny in the world.
I think of effective decision as a boat slicing through water; without forceful forward motion in a particular direction the boat is easily buffetted and moved around by any passing wave. Effective decision is forecful and persistent action to move the boat forward toward a distant goal.
Beware, ineffective decision is neither peaceful or safe; ineffective decision looks like random motion not controlled, motion driven by outside forces, habits and impulses not resolute action. The kind of motion produced by indecision or ineffective decision is not only random, it is commonplace, uninteresting, mediocre. Is that what you want as a creative even disruptive leader? Yet it’s what the most intelligent often choose, and for seemingly good reasons.
We carefully consider the pros and cons of each decision. We ask others to contribute their points of view. We seek validation from the market — asking what customers really want –before we scale up. We prepare, learning as much as we can, and doing studies, spreadsheets, projections, plans and analysis. In technology development, we make sure every variable is understood. And yet analysis can turn into paralysis. Effective innovative leaders get past the preparation and analysis stage quickly and move into experimentation and market testing earlier than most mediocre leaders.
I’ve found that a key element in being effectively decisive is holding the desired end-state in mind with great clarity, precision and detail. I hold the details of the desired end-state in mind in written form, verbal form, visual form, and most powerfully how it will feel to be in the desired end-state. I spend a significant amount of time every week writing down and describing the detailed end-states of my projects with great positive impact on my ability to act with deciveness and persistence.
Much has been written about this aspect of goal setting, beginning with Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and generations of followers. However, I’m in no way proposing that holding a desired state clearly in mind will by itself accomplish a goal, that the universe will somehow hear my intention and reward me with results. Successful leaders demonstrate that forceful and persistent action (effective decision) is essential. The point here is that forceful and persistent action in the real world is enabled by an inner game – by holding the desired end-state in mind with great clarity, precision and detail. Conversely, lack of foreceful action seems to correlate with fuzzy imprecise mental images.
Another correlate of successful innovation leadership is remaining in a state of persistent action even as circumstances dictate that the desired end-state can’t be achieved in the form originally envisioned. It may be that the winds changed direction, requiring a change in tack (change in direction) in order to achieve the original goal. It may be that the goal itself has to be altered in form, while retaining the essence of the original goal. What seems to correlate with innovative success is continuous persistent motion in the general direction of the desired goal. All sailers know this is true: they reach their goal not be sailing directly into the wind but by tacking first left then right. Most important: they always remain in a state of forward motion, otherwise the boat stalls and takes a great deal of effort to get moving again.
What I’m about to describe next is so basic and huge a concept for innovative leaders that it’s often neglected in writing about leadership — “ownership.” Ownership is personal surrender to a goal or mission beyond simply making a commitment. By exercising “ownership”, a great leader permits the goal or mission to shape his or her character. For example, if the goal requires greater decisiveness, then the leader allows that trait to express itself. If the goal requires greater teamwork, then the leader allow that trait to express itself. I’ve found this state of mind of “ownership” of surrender to a goal or mission to correlate highly with success in innovative ventures because so much is unknown at the outset.
A proposed decision-making form
Successful leaders make effective decisions that are precise as to Way of being, Why, What, When and How. One recommended form is “I resolve this day, inside a context of __________________ (give the spirit, attitude or way of being surrounding the decision) to take effective action by means of a detailed plan to ahieve _____________________ (describe the desired end-state including measurable aspects) by ____________________ (day, month, year), so that ___________________________ (give the reason why in terms of the change you want to see in the world), and to stay the course until it is done regardless of changes in the plan or the specific form of the end-goal.”
Then you must work out the detailed strategy and plan, but do it quickly and be open to changing it along the way. It’s true that the winners do a lot of experimenting and testing before scaling their companies and spending a lot of money. (See https://www.startupcompass.co). Experimenting and testing is a form of decisive action, not analysis. Don’t confuse experimenting and testing with indecision.
You’ll notice I’ve used the term “effective decision” where other writers would use the term “effective goal setting.” This was purposeful, to emphasize the element of forceful and even risky action implied by “decision.” The same ideas can be applied to every-day tactical decisions (who to call? whether to make or buy something?) and to long term strategic decisions (goals, visions, missions).
Notice that the above form for a statement of decision includes the elements of 1) context (attitude or way of being surrounding the project, 2) purpose (long-term change desired in the world), and 3) results (the desired end-state with measurable aspects). This group of three essential elements is sometimes abbreviated “CPR” in leadership literature.
Going further, once a CPR statement of decison is completed, along with a strategy and plan of action, successful leaders make sure that the whole decision statement along with strategy and plan is understandable to others (both those involved directly as well as advisors.) If others don’t “get it” or are confused, then chances are the decision, strategy and plan won’t work in the real world. Successful leaders don’t count on their greater intelligence to justify not being understandable.
Then you bring in other people to support you on you team. That’s when the real fun begins. More on this next time.
Tags: Alice M. Sapienza, Ayn Rand, decision making, effective decision, Leadership, Managing Scientists, Napolean Hill, Startup Genome, Steve Jobs, Think and Grow RichLeave A Comment
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