One of the most pleasurable moments in life is when we achieve that "aha!" feeling of understanding. Many of these moments occur when taking a look into our past experiences with a newfound perspective. My new perspective was after reading The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, specifically a chapter titled "experiment and take smart risks smartly" (Heiftetz, et al., 2009). Within this chapter, decision making when we think we should not be making any decisions is discussed. Many believe that we can only make a confident decision if the odds are in our favor. From this confidence, we are then able to put our heart and soul into carrying out our decision. The tolerable level of risk for this decision may be 90-10, or 80-20. The analogy used in the Practice of Adaptive Leadership is “getting married” (Heiftetz, et al., 2009).
 |
| Photo credit high achievers network |
When you get married you are as close to certain as possible that you are about to wed the "one", almost 90-10 certainty. The 10 percent could be the belief that somewhere out there you know, there is another person you could love more than the one you are about to marry. Would someone still get married if the ratio was 60-40? This situation may be more common in our lives than we realized (Heiftetz, et al., 2009).
Adaptive leadership requires us to take an almost “experimental mind-set”, so we do not get too attached to our decisions (Heifetz, et al., 2009). It takes bravery and courage to be confident in our actions when the odds aren't favourable, while holding a competing idea. Thinking experimentally also allows us to be open to failure, which allows the decision maker to learn, and gain valuable experience and insight into the situations they are faced with. This means negative emotions will not get in the way of taking the course of action with the highest chance of success (Mather M,. 2006).
Looking back on my time in the US Navy, I now realize I have witnessed this first hand on an almost daily basis. The military is an organization built upon following orders without question. Those who carry them out correctly are rewarded, while those who don't follow them are punished. This may seem pretty obvious at first, but after dwelling on this subject for a while, an emerging pattern began to arise.
In the military there are two tiers of authority, officers and the enlisted (grunts). The officers were trained to lead, and the enlisted were trained to carry out the requests of officers. Problems occur when the enlisted rose in rank. The higher ranking you were in the enlisted tier, the more you were accountable to the officers for the enlisted who ranked bellow you. Unfortunately there was never much in the way of leadership training provided for the enlisted as they rose in rank. Rank was normally decided purely on what you knew and your time in service. Moving up in rank with the mentality of never doing anything wrong begins to cripple many in certain situations (Mellers, et al.,1999). For example, decisions had to be made often while officers were not available to give guidance. Many supervisors would prefer not to make a choice until the officer was available to provide more insight, this often led to groups falling behind schedule in maintenance. Their level of certainty in their actions was not great enough for them to avoid getting in trouble and so they would not act.
A supervisor of mine, Nathaniel Hathaway, was a natural leader (or made it look easy). He was confident with every decision he made, even when the choices he made seemed as likely to fail as they were to succeed. He was used to it, and after a while, so were we. We became more confident in his approach, which indeed was experimental like. When things did not go as planned, he would remain impartial and immediately make alterations where necessary. Acting to the best of his knowledge at the time was imperative, not taking any action in a time that calls for action, is bound to leave you worse off than you were. We don't always have time to wait for the risks to lessen, but when we treat our actions as well planned experiments, the worst case scenario is that, you'll know what not to do next time.
Heifetz, R., Grashow, A. & Linsky, M., 2009. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. Boston: Harvard Business Press.
Mellers, Barbara; Schwartz, Alan; Ritov, Ilana., 1999, Emotion-based choice, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 128(3), Sep 1999, 332-345. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.128.3.332
Mather M., 2006, A Review of Decision-Making Processes: Weighing the Risks and Benefits of Aging. National Research Council (US) Committee on Aging Frontiers in Social Psychology, Personality, and Adult Developmental Psychology, National Academies Press ,Washington DC, USA, Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK83778/
Andrew, what a prodigious blog you have produced here, especially for such youthful emerging scientists like ourselves. I think the notion you have portrayed here of 'Trial and error' is something that should never be undermined, after all, that is the way the world has all ways worked, it’s how we cultivate, evolve and adapt as individuals and as communities. I have to admit your last sentence inspired me, because too often people are held back by the fear of failure, yet failure is just experience we learn from, which you depicted extremely well. Lastly, I would like to complement your use of your personal life in the army as an example, you described perfect settings in which risks can be taken, and ranks are strictly followed, which inaudibly connected to the concept of Leadership over Authority. Well done and I do hope to be able to learn more from your wisdom and experiences in the future.
ReplyDelete