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You may be able to “buy” a person’s back with a paycheck, position, power, or fear, but a human being’s genius, passion, loyalty, and tenacious creativity are volunteered only. The world’s greatest problems will be solved by passionate, unleashed “volunteers.”
I felt I was at my best when given specific goals but broad latitude in how to accomplish them.
competence could not rest solely with the leader.
One of the things that limits our learning is our belief that we already know something.
It didn’t matter how smart my plan was if the team couldn’t execute it!
As long as you are measuring performance over just the short run, it can be effective. Officers are rewarded for being indispensable, for being missed after they depart. When the performance of a unit goes down after an officer leaves, it is taken as a sign that he was a good leader, not that he was ineffective in training his people properly.
Another factor that makes this leadership approach appealing is the induced numbness. It absolves subordinates of the hard work of thinking, making decisions, and being responsible and accountable. You are just a cog, an executor of the decisions of others. “Hey, I was only doing what I was told.”
If you walk about your organization talking to people, I’d suggest that you be as curious as possible. As with a good dinner table conversationalist, one question should naturally lead to another. The time to be questioning or even critical is after trust has been established.
The best way not to make a mistake is not to do anything or make any decisions.
people always make mistakes. Thus, they always feel bad about themselves.
Have you let error-reduction programs sap the lifeblood out of initiative and risk taking?
Directed empowerment programs are flawed because they are predicated on this assumption: I have the authority and ability to empower you (and you don’t). Fundamentally, that’s disempowering. This internal contradiction dooms these initiatives. We say “empowerment” but do it in a way that is disempowering. The practice outweighs the rhetoric.
distributing control by itself wasn’t enough. As that happened, it put requirements on the new decision makers to have a higher level of technical knowledge and clearer sense of organizational purpose than ever before. That’s because decisions are made against a set of criteria that includes what’s technically appropriate and what aligns with the organization’s interests.
“caring but not caring”—that is, caring intimately about your subordinates and the organization but caring little about the organizational consequences to yourself.
What are some of the costs associated with doing things differently in your industry?
"But that's the way we've always done it"
"Don't like change"
Do you play “bring me a rock” in your organization, where vague understanding of the goal results in wasted time?
Short, Early Conversations Make Efficient Work
It was a classic case of the workers’ being technically competent but unclear about what we were trying to achieve.
Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
We had no need of leadership development programs; the way we ran the ship was the leadership development
What causes us to take control when we should be giving control?
Do you like to help your people come to the right answers? I did, and that made matters worse.
How many times do issues that require decisions come up on short notice? If this is happening a lot, you have a reactive organization locked in a downward spiral. When issues aren’t foreseen, the team doesn’t get time to think about them; a quick decision by the boss is required, which doesn’t train the team, and so on. No one has time to actually think through the issue.
If everyone thinks like you, you don’t need them.
as authority is delegated, technical knowledge at all levels takes on a greater importance. There is an extra burden for technical competence.
Control without competence is chaos.
how you look at things makes a difference. Instead of looking at a task as just a chore, look at it as an opportunity to learn more about the associated piece of equipment, the procedure, or if nothing else, about how to delegate or accomplish tasks.
Look at your structures for awards. Are they limited? Do they pit some of your employees against others? That structure will result in competition at the lowest level. If what you want is collaboration, then you are destroying it.
ENCOURAGE A QUESTIONING ATTITUDE OVER BLIND OBEDIENCE is a mechanism for CLARITY.
