Ever feel like you're navigating a leadership labyrinth without a map? Let John Ballinger and Douglas Ford be your guides through the intricate maze of decision-making and leadership adaptability. In a riveting exchange, we dissect the essentials of guiding teams and organizations, revealing how adaptability is essential when making decisions that impact your team and/or your organization. John starts off talking about Newtonian science—the science of absolutes—before moving on to the Cynefin framework for context-based decision-making and categorization.
We help you explore your options when making high-stakes decisions as we introduce robust frameworks and theories designed to empower leaders under duress. While experience stands as a stalwart ally, we discuss the pitfalls of relying solely on intuition, advocating for a mental cache akin to a computer's cookies—enabling leaders to pull from past insights for agile and effective responses to new challenges. The Cynefin framework takes center stage, providing a compass for navigating the varying landscapes of simple to chaotic contexts. Our conversation promises to equip you with the ability to spot the 'known knowns' in your professional life, turning routine into a strategic advantage. The five different situational contexts of the Cynefin framework include decision-making that can be categorized as Simple, Complex, Complicated, Chaotic, or Disorder.
As we wrap up, it's not just about reflection—it's about active improvement. We encourage you to dissect your recent decision-making milestones, applying the Cynefin lens to categorize and comprehend the multifaceted nature of each challenge. This strategic exercise isn't just about looking back; it's about sharpening your skills for the decisions that lie ahead. By tuning into this discussion, you'll leave with a fortified toolbox for decision-making that promises precision and confidence, no matter the leadership obstacle. Join the 1st Lead U team on this transformative journey where keen adaptability and incisive critical thinking converge, setting the stage for adaptable leadership excellence.
Ever feel like you're navigating a leadership labyrinth without a map? Let John Ballinger and Douglas Ford be your guides through the intricate maze of decision-making and leadership adaptability. In a riveting exchange, we dissect the essentials of guiding teams and organizations, revealing how adaptability is essential when making decisions that impact your team and/or your organization. John starts off talking about Newtonian science—the science of absolutes—before moving on to the Cynefin framework for context-based decision-making and categorization.
We help you explore your options when making high-stakes decisions as we introduce robust frameworks and theories designed to empower leaders under duress. While experience stands as a stalwart ally, we discuss the pitfalls of relying solely on intuition, advocating for a mental cache akin to a computer's cookies—enabling leaders to pull from past insights for agile and effective responses to new challenges. The Cynefin framework takes center stage, providing a compass for navigating the varying landscapes of simple to chaotic contexts. Our conversation promises to equip you with the ability to spot the 'known knowns' in your professional life, turning routine into a strategic advantage. The five different situational contexts of the Cynefin framework include decision-making that can be categorized as Simple, Complex, Complicated, Chaotic, or Disorder.
As we wrap up, it's not just about reflection—it's about active improvement. We encourage you to dissect your recent decision-making milestones, applying the Cynefin lens to categorize and comprehend the multifaceted nature of each challenge. This strategic exercise isn't just about looking back; it's about sharpening your skills for the decisions that lie ahead. By tuning into this discussion, you'll leave with a fortified toolbox for decision-making that promises precision and confidence, no matter the leadership obstacle. Join the 1st Lead U team on this transformative journey where keen adaptability and incisive critical thinking converge, setting the stage for adaptable leadership excellence.
Speaker 1:
The speed of decision-making is not just a single wronged approach. As a leader, you have to be able to take different circumstances that are coming at you with one decision and think, all right, this person's in front of me, I need to make a decision that they're asking me about, and it's going to affect these four departments.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to First Lead you, a podcast dedicated to building leaders, expanding their capacity, improving their self-awareness through emotional intelligence and developing deeper understanding of selfless leadership.
Speaker 1:
Hello, america, and welcome to First Lead you where we believe selfless leadership. Hello America, and welcome to First Lead you where we believe selfless leadership is essential. America is suffering a leadership crisis. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence is the key to developing selfless leaders.
Speaker 2:
Now here is personal growth coach John Ballinger.
Speaker 1:
Hello world. My name is John Ballinger. I'm here with First Lead you and I'm here with my trusted co-host, mr Douglas Ford.
Speaker 3:
John, how are you this week?
Speaker 1:
I am well. I actually had a good friend of mine call on Saturday and said, hey, I didn't know you were doing a podcast, really, because we talked about it in the past. He said, yeah, I knew you were working on one, but I didn't know you really did it Like, yeah, we're on like episode 45 or 46 or something like that, and he's like really. So he listened to it and he called me back and said, man, that's good stuff.
Speaker 1:
So shout out to that business owner that now has found us and is listening to us and, uh, we're kind of creeping around and getting the first lead you word out. Uh, to people. And so it's been fun talking to people after they listened to the first one, you know. So, um, but today's, uh, I feel like I have to say this a lot and I've got to figure out how to not say it is a. This is a tough subject. It seems like being a leader is just tough and we're we're trying to retrain brains and emotions and ideas and things like that. But today's a tough because the topic is how a leader should learn to make decisions.
Speaker 3:
Well, that's great. I mean, that's good. We need to learn to make decisions. I think if we're just left to our own independent devices, sometimes that works out. That works out for us, Sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 1:
Well, and and I I've said this for years, and when I say this, business owners cringe, leaders cringe, executives cringe. I said there's a psychology in being a leader or psychology to that. They're like I don't say that word. Let's talk about anything else but the psychology of leadership or the psychology of business. But the psychology of leadership or the psychology of business, the reality is there is when you have multiple personalities and multiple generations, with multiple things going on in the company and multiple departments. I mean you get the, you get the picture. That's a lot of psychology that the leader has to work through in order to lead effectively.
Speaker 3:
Well, yeah, there's probably a lot of psychology that's needed throughout our experience in life, and we just choose not to apply it very often, and so, but specifically when you're trying to accomplish a task, you're working with a group, a team, and you're trying to mature a business, grow a business, there needs to be some psychology involved, because you need to address different people in different ways and different issues, and some of the things that we're going to talk about today is like how do you make decisions? You make different types of decisions based on the situation that you're involved with.
Speaker 1:
Correct, speaking of that, our word for the week, the word for the week, is adaptability. Adaptability, yeah, and the uh definition of that is the quality of being able to adjust to new conditions, and the number two definitions the capacity to be modified for a new use or purpose. So one of the things that we're talking about is today's leader needs to be very adaptable to the current social environment. The different generations like we talked about I believe it was in the last podcast or a couple of podcasts ago we talked about a business owner may have two or three or four generations working inside their company and they have to learn to adapt to each one of those different generations on how they communicate and how to be motivated, how to be corrected. All those things are part of adaptability.
Speaker 1:
And one of the questions I had for the audience to just kind of ponder on is do you, as a leader, assess the decisions you make and how they impact your team? Because when a leader's making decisions, normally it's coming at them quick. They came in today with a calendar and a schedule, because when a leader's making decisions, normally it's coming at them quick. They came in today with a calendar and a schedule and we all know that the day can not go as calendared or scheduled, and so how do you, as a leader, how do you adapt to and how do you assess in the decision-making process? And one of the ways that I would encourage a leader to start thinking through that is through a process that is thrown around but I really don't think people understand the nature of it is critical thinking. So if you use the word critical thinking and I actually want to talk about the definition of critical and thinking separately and then put those together- Are we going to get two more sound effects?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, we're going to need it.
Speaker 3:
Okay, there's so much on this topic we could, it could be exciting.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, but here's the definition of critical Inclined to find fault or judge with severity. You want to read that again Inclined to find fault or judge with severity. That's the critical part. Now think about this the thinking part, the process of using one's mind to consider or reason about something. Now I want to read those two definitions back to back and think about critical thinking Included to find fault or judge with severity, the process of using one's mind to consider or reason about something.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I would say that's not really something that happens on a regular basis with most people. I mean, you just don't. We've kind of gotten lulled in this. False security is not really the right word, but this false sense of decisions should be easy. Or we just make these decisions or we default to the easy decision. We don't want to make the hard decision because it's going to take us out of our comfort zone and we're just very kind of like we don't want things to change too much and so, uh, otherwise it would require more critical thinking on our part.
Speaker 1:
Well and I've said this in a previous podcast leaders do not want to make the hard decisions, they don't want to critically think, and so when the problem comes at them, they will default to the easiest decision that gets that person away from. And what happens when they just default that?
Speaker 3:
Well, and sometimes the easy decision is warranted because of the context in which the decision is being made, but quite often we run into other contexts that we're going to talk about later today. That requires some more additional thought and some critical thinking for sure.
Speaker 1:
Well, and the leader should know the difference in the two. Like this decision's come to me yeah, I can make that decision. It's easy, I can contextualize it, Like I've seen this before and I know what happens. And so you create this database in your head as a leader as you grow on. Oh, I've seen this before and you know the circumstances behind the problem. We're going to go through that and it's really to me. Once you understand what we're going to show you through this show, what we're going to talk to you about through the show, you'll start seeing the patterns that we see in businesses and can pick up on them.
Speaker 1:
So the speed of decision-making is not just a single wronged approach.
Speaker 1:
As a leader, you have to be able to take different circumstances that are coming at you with one decision and think, all right, this person's in front of me, I need to make a decision that they're asking me about and it's going to affect these four departments and this potential supply chain issue or this potential vendor issue, and there's a cost associated with it.
Speaker 1:
So I'm thinking accounting and all those things have to be thought about at one time while you're talking through the issue, and a lot of times it may be so complex like you can't give an answer right there, right, and so you've got to be able to say you know what? This is really too complex for me to give you an answer right now. Let me get back to you on that and then actually do it. But in today's society and the the uh, I think, the challenges that are coming at you as fast as they are, you have to learn how to prioritize, how to come up with a response to an issue that's coming at you quickly and give them good information which they can go work with so they're not idle or it doesn't cause another issue tomorrow because of the decision you make then.
Speaker 3:
And one of the things that we're going to talk about or a good bit, and we've already mentioned is this idea of context and one of the things that you can use as you're thinking about it. I mean, the same question could come from two different people and the context will totally change, and you, as a leader, need to be aware of like, even though it is the same question, maybe even the exact same words, but depending on who's asking you that question, it has completely different context, right?
Speaker 1:
Right, so I was. I was, I was doing preparation for uh uh, this podcast. I was doing some research and I came across an article. But let me tell you before then, I started looking for articles that were consistent with what I was trying to explain, and that was framework of decision-making and how to. And I had to go back to a Harvard business review article from November 2007 to find something I felt like put some good context around it, which made me pause and think, hmm, why'd I have to go that far back? Why weren't there more articles through progression after COVID, all those things? But I couldn't go, I couldn't. I looked at some, but I don't think they did as good a job as this article from November 2007,.
Speaker 1:
Uh on, and the article title is a leader's framework or decision-making, by David J Snowden Snowden and Mary E Boone in Harvard Business Review.
Speaker 1:
But they give a description at the beginning of the article about January 1993, a gunman murdered seven people in a fast food restaurant in Chicago and the deputy chief of police suddenly had to cope with several different situations at once and he's quoted in this article said there would literally be four people coming at me with logistics and media issues all at once, and in the midst of all this, we still had a department that had to keep running on a routine basis.
Speaker 1:
And so can you imagine, in the firefight of all those people coming at you, they're, they're wanting you, they need information what I'll do next, boss, you know when? When do we send these people? Want to talk about X or whatever it is? Uh, they want to, um, they want to have some kind of media place to set up at All these things are coming at you. And oh, by the way, we still have a police department to run and he's trying his best to manage all that, and he talks about the demands, and not all leaders can function in that world. Can you imagine some of the people you know having that kind of pressure put on them, what they would do?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, they would just sit down.
Speaker 1:
They would.
Speaker 3:
And like I don't know and not do anything. Yeah, I mean it takes a certain amount of, I think, experience and expertise to be able to handle those situations effectively, because it can easily overwhelm people if they've not been in a position where they have to routinely make multiple decisions from multiple requests at one time.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, In the article it says all too often managers rely on just common leadership approaches to try and tackle situations like that. And you're like and so the article talks about, why do they always fail? If you're trying to use just the basics you learned in school and leadership in situations like that, that's not going to work. And so the answer in this article says the Newtonian science is something that needs to really be understood by leaders, which is the science of absolute. If this happens, that happens, right, and a business owner really needs to understand that. They need to create a database in their head of if this happens, that happens. And you and I were talking as we were preparing for this and it was kind of like cookies with a computer and kind of give the audience kind of that synopsis.
Speaker 3:
Well, and this is probably a little bit of an amateur view of cookies, but it's typically when you go to a website it'll ask A lot of times. Now they have to ask and can they put these cookies on there? And you have to approve settings and things. But let's say, prior to it was you would go to a website, it would leave little pieces of information on your computer that when you came back to that website it already knew certain things, like maybe you knew which pages you looked at, maybe it knew which images you looked at. It may leave on your computer a little piece of that image so that when you come back that image starts to load faster so that you have a better experience when you come back the next time. So it's just leaving these little kind of breadcrumbs cookies that are there. So when you come back the experience can be better. They personalize the information so that you don't have to wait so long to get that information to your screen.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it responds faster, absolutely. And what we're trying to do with the leaders is we're trying to have your brain respond faster to situations that come in front of you. Two reasons One, because it's going to help you with your leadership, with your team. They're going to see that you have confidence in your decision-making and leadership, but also it doesn't stop the team from doing what they need to do to continue moving things forward. So when we come back from the break, we're going to talk about another theory that would help you understand how to better make decisions.
Speaker 3:
Welcome back to First Lead View. Today we are talking about the context in which leaders make decisions and how leadership decisions are made, or how decisions are made by leadership. And we left with talking about Newtonian theory, newtonian science, which is a science of absolute, which means if this happens, then this happens and that's great a lot of times for simple decisions, and certainly you should have a database of those decisions and the experience that you've had with them in mind at all times as a leader. But John's going to introduce us to another type of decision-making, kind of schematic or process framework. Maybe that should be used as the types of decisions we make become more intricate.
Speaker 1:
Right, and this word is a Welsh word, kind of an means. The place of multiple belongings is what the definition of that word is in Welch. And so if you take about the Newtonian theory of the science of absolutes, if this then that, then you throw in the Kenevan, which is the place of multiple longings. Now you can see, I know these things are going to happen. If this then that. But then what about all these other circumstances that could fall along with that? And it really makes you start having to really think.
Speaker 1:
So that critical thinking we talked about of the five things that you need to be aware of, the five different type of causes that come in decision-making. And there's simple decisions. That's one. Number two is complicated decisions. Number three is complex decisions. Number four is chaotic decisions. And then the fifth disorder is the context of possibly two or three or four of those all at one time, and that's where you really got to start thinking critically. Or four of those all at one time, and that's where you really got to start thinking critically.
Speaker 1:
And I want the audience to understand that when you have decisions coming at, you learn to put those in categories. Oh, that's a simple one. I've seen that. It's easy. To the person coming to you it may be difficult, they may not know the answer, but for you it's like bam. I got that out and know the difference in simple, complicated, complex, chaotic or a combination of those. And as I started processing through that, what should happen as the business owner, if you use the kind of cookie illustration that you use before break and those two theories something's going to happen and those are called the known knowns. Like I theories something's going to happen and they're those are called the known knowns. Like I know this is going to happen. I told you I was going to throw you a curveball in here. Uh, with here's a known known. Is it a fact that if you have your garbage picked up on a certain day every week, that you're going to automatically know that you need to pull the garbage can down to the curb?
Speaker 3:
Well, you should, but that's not always the case.
Speaker 1:
It's not, but, normally speaking, if Tuesday's garbage day, you can drive through your neighborhood.
Speaker 3:
Monday night there's garbage cans everywhere.
Speaker 1:
All that down through the neighborhood. That is a known known and it's so known that we know if we miss it. Guess what's going to happen to the garbage, can it?
Speaker 3:
could fill up by next week it could fill up.
Speaker 1:
Right. And so we will know mentally it's garbage day in our mind. Well, that same process can go into multiple things in your database that this is going to happen. And if I don't do this, here's the result If the garbage can doesn't go down to the curb on Monday night, then Tuesday they can't pick it up. That means I've got that garbage plus all the other garbage to deal with, and so I mentally know it garbage day. Right, that's a known, known. What you do as a leader is you've got to sense, categorize and respond. So think about those three things. I've got a sense for this issue that's coming. I've got to categorize it into one of my fives and now I know how to respond to that situation and I think it's important for our listeners to understand so they can take these things so the Newtonian, the Kahneman, those five and the known-knowns and start making kind of their own chart and guess what they could actually journal decisions each week that come up.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, just in case you're wondering, because it doesn't necessarily look the way it sounds. The way you spell. That is C-Y-N-F-I-N, c-y-n-e-f-i-n and kind of an.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 3:
So if you're looking that up and you're interested and you want to get a little more in depth into this, decision-making metrics or framework, that's how you spell it. So it's the kind of in framework C-Y-N-E-F-I-N.
Speaker 1:
Right, and as you do this, guess what's going to happen. You're going to be able to start anticipating challenges that go on in your business every day. You will have less surprises that take place because there will be a consistency in how you see and deal with things inside your company and how you see and deal with things inside your company, and that means that you'll be able to more quickly make good decisions for your team. They can go do their business and you can continue doing the business that you need to do. One of the things.
Speaker 1:
We've talked about this in the past and we've never I don't think we've done a deep dive on this, but normally speaking, business owners and leaders like to have 80% of the information to make a decision in their company. That's a general statistic that's out there when asked, and a lot of the reasons is they don't want to make a bad mistake or the wrong decision or make a mistake with a decision. Some of it's a control thing. You're like I got to have all this information where I make a bad mistake or the wrong wrong decision or make a mistake with a decision. Some of it's a control thing. Yeah, I got to have all this information where I make a decision and I've I've talked in one of the podcasts just kind of, I think, surface level, on going from an 80, 80.
Speaker 1:
So I need 80% of the information and I I have to get 80% of the people that I'm dealing with to give me that information in order for me to make the decision. And I teach leaders how to go to 30-30. I'm helping them reduce 50 percent of their people and 50 percent of the information needed in order to make a decision. Now, that doesn't happen overnight. I can't just take you from 80-80 to 30-30. But using these principles you've heard today, that's what I use Because of all the multiple things I have done with me all day long. I have trained myself on how to use the 30-30 rule and that's what 30% of the information I need to get for the decision and what 30% of my team to get it from. Even in the multiple organizations that I work with, I know in those organizations who to get what from to make decisions.
Speaker 3:
So let me ask you a question, just as a kind of point of clarification and to help maybe bring all this together.
Speaker 3:
So, when somebody comes to you with an issue and one of the things that you do internally, mentally, initially, as they're starting to ask the question, or maybe you even start to do this as they're approaching you, which would be helpful, like you know this person's coming to you. They're not coming to you with a simple problem, like if they're coming to you like this is automatically going to be something other than a simple problem, which you said was the first level, but you start to categorize this in terms of like. Is this a simple problem? That I know the answer to, cause we've dealt with this multiple times, either in this organization or another organization and and it's an easy answer, or it's a complicated issue, which was the second thing, and the interesting thing about that is it's followed up by complex, and so to me, we always and we've had this conversation a couple different times about the idea of complicated versus complex, and I did look that up to try to make sure I had a good definition of that.
Speaker 3:
Um, we have to hit the button no, we're not going to do that right now, uh, because I'm going to lose my train of thought if I do. But so complicated, let me start with complex. So complex means there's multifaceted parts to something, so it's a complex issue. There's a lot of things to take into consideration when you're dealing with it, like you talked about earlier. This person is going to ask me a question but what if the answer I give them is going to affect multiple departments? And so that's a complex issue that you're dealing with, and what we often mistake is complicated issues or complex issue. And so the idea of and if you look up the definition, they basically use this word back and forth with each other, right, so they use one word to describe the other. This word back and forth with each other, right, so they use one word to describe the other. But kind of, the nuance of that is a complicated issue is when you try to make something complex, like it's not really complex, there's not really multiple facets to it, but for whatever reason, it has gotten that way through, somebody's gone and got multiple people involved that didn't need to be involved, or there's been misinformation that's put out. Now several people have misinformation and you're trying to unwind that. So that becomes a complicated issue, not necessarily a complex issue.
Speaker 3:
And so one of the definitions I saw was if you take a Ferrari, a mechanic can take a Ferrari apart. That's a complex piece of machinery. It's not necessarily complicated because you can put it all back together and it still works, but it is very complex. There's a lot of parts to it. But complicated would be if you kind of mixed in a whole bunch of other parts that didn't belong and you tried to put it back together and you were trying to put parts in the Ferrari that weren't Ferrari, parts that didn't belong, and you tried to put it back together and you were trying to put parts in the Ferrari that weren't Ferrari parts. So, but anyway, and so the last one, the last segment of this, is chaotic. So you're looking at. So those are four key areas simple, complicated, complex and chaotic. You're assessing that as people walk up and start asking you questions.
Speaker 1:
How they approach me, what their facial expressions are, how quickly. I mean all that's coming on immediately and knowing that person. So knowing your team, you know if that person's coming at you hard but normally speaking they're a very lackadaisical, nonchalant person. But they're coming at you hard and you're like this is not going to be good. And as a leader you need to understand that. Body motions, body language, tone, tenor all that stuff helps you start categorizing what to put that uh response in yeah, and, as you said, maybe multiple of the multiple versions of those are coming at you at one time.
Speaker 3:
That basically creates disorder, like there's no, there's no rhyme or reason to why any of this is coming. It's just all coming at one time and now you've got to start making some decisions.
Speaker 1:
So right, uh, but the leaders from the 80, 80 to 30, 30,. You have to outline a plan to reduce your percentages of information that that just doesn't happen. You know, doing some homework and some journaling and saying if I want to learn how to make faster decisions, who are the people I'm going to make these decisions, that I need to help make these decisions in the different departments, and what type of critical information do I need in order to make those decisions? Again, you're looking at the known knowns. You're looking at multifaceted things inside your organization that affect the Newtonian, as if this then that. And so you look how we just started working this way and now we've taken our theories and worked backwards to just if this then that inside your organization. Then there's this other principle man, we got all kinds of theories and principles.
Speaker 3:
We got multiple principles today.
Speaker 1:
The Pareto principle states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Now I'm going to tell you there's a lot of truth to that. If you take what we just talked to you about and wrote it down on a piece of paper with the Newtonian theory, the Kahneman theory, and you do this Pareto principle, you will start seeing the consistency inside your organization of things that happen every day. And now you've got to start putting decision-making processes in place which will allow you to move faster and the team to move faster. If you want to make a real difference in your business, you need to spend the most time focusing on those 20%. That's what you're going to be dealing with a lot of the time. It will give you 80% of your results and less worrying about everything else.
Speaker 1:
Pretty simple we, as business owners and leaders. We tend to complicate things by not knowing how to take complex issues and dissect them and give responses to them. I've heard this many, many times. They just overcomplicate things, and so you've got to be able to take complex things, work through them so that they don't become a complicated issue.
Speaker 3:
And we've talked about this before as well in terms of people making these decisions. You know, 20% of the people do 80% of the work and if they spent time on this 20% of the things that really matter and not get distracted by the other 80% their business would be so much more effective and efficient. Their business would be so much more effective and efficient and it would be a better brand organization in terms of what they're doing.
Speaker 1:
Right, right. So one of the things that I would have the leader do through all this know who you are and what help you need in making decisions. Don't be vulnerable. Talked about that. And what help you need in making decisions. Don't be vulnerable. Talked about that. Take time to know the people that you're asking to help you make the decision. Know their strengths and weaknesses. Do some premortem scenarios.
Speaker 1:
So let's talk about, if we're going to do this, what could possibly take place, and then do some postmortem which we did it and here was the outcome. Could we do anything different? Assess projects backwards, then forwards, after the projects you've got it laid out, say, now let's go all the way to the end and work our way backwards and see if there's anything that could come up that could derail this project. Projects fail at a spectacular rate. One reason is too many people are reluctant to speak up about their reservations during the all-important planning phase. By making it safe for dissenters who are knowledgeable about the undertaking and worried about its weaknesses, when you allow them to speak up, you improve the project's chance for success.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I was reading something recently, and probably mostly by way of audio book, but it was talking about this idea of speaking up and the trust that put in people when they speak up, and it was somebody about the blue angels and learning to fly with the blue angels and when they first start teaching the new pilots that are coming in, there's a training process they go through and they expect them to go out and do these certain drills and processes and they said if you mess up and you do something wrong, you just need to own it, because if you mess up and you don't tell anybody, it's more severe consequences because you lose trust with the organization. And one of the reasons you need to speak up is because if you speak up, you made these mistakes that prevent somebody else from making that mistake, but it also could put somebody else in danger if you don't, and so they really encourage you speaking up. And the example they gave was they were getting ready to do a test flight and air traffic control, ground control told them to head one way, even though they had different heading to start with, and when they got ready to take off, the pilot made the heading uh turn toward the original heading and the co-pilot who was the new guy who thought, well, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about knew that they were actually going in the wrong direction and they almost had a mid-air collision as they were taking off because the pilot didn't speak up. And so once they got out of the situation and the veteran said, hey, were you aware that that was going on? He's like yeah, I heard him tell us to change headings. He's like well, why didn't you speak up? And they kind of let it go.
Speaker 3:
But when they got back on the ground, it it was a whole different story. It was like you know, you could have cost us our life that day. So you see something wrong, you speak up, but that takes a culture of not penalizing people for speaking up. You have to encourage them to share their thoughts and ideas, because people see things from all different directions and you need, when you're in the planning phase, you're trying to solve a problem, you need those different angles, those different points of views to kind of explore full depth of a problem.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it takes vulnerability for that leader to do that.
Speaker 3:
Absolutely. I think we've done a podcast on that.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely thinking. Besides these articles, there are brain games out there that you can play that are timed, that allow you to learn how to make better decisions quicker and start trusting your reaction to those. So brain game Chess is a great strategic game. It helps you think through, right. I mean you're actually thinking if my opponent moves this, if this, then that it's a good, if this, then that kind of game. And then the games that, like I said, that challenge you to compete in a set amount of time, are great. So you've got ones that are speed-driven, ones that are critical thinking-driven, strategic-driven, and then ones that have a specific like three minutes. You've got to solve this game in three minutes or you lose and all that does is it starts helping you unlock your brain from a speed standpoint.
Speaker 1:
Yes, this was a deep subject. Yes, there was a lot of psychology to it. However, if you're going to be a leader in today's time frame and you recall, there's 25 character traits that you must get proficient at part of these decision-making character traits come out of this article and from this podcast and you really need to get adept at being able to critically think through decision-making making in the simple, complex, chaotic process, or your company is going to probably come to a halt pretty quickly and people are going to be looking at you, so homework, mr Ford.
Speaker 3:
Yes, homework. So we've talked a lot about the matrix of decision making or the framework of decision making. So what we'd like you to do is to think through the last couple of weeks and the decisions that you've had to make and start to categorize those. Are they simple, are they complex, are they complicated, are they chaotic or was it just total disorder? And if you can think through some of those decisions and start categorizing those, then that will help you. The next time you get confronted with something that's similar, you'll automatically know oh, this is a complex issue or this is a complicated issue. Here's some steps I need to take to make a good decision related to that. So so the last couple of weeks three, four, five major decisions that you've made how would you categorize them? Think through what you did and what you might do differently.
Speaker 1:
All right, Very good. Well, happy thinking everyone.