Musings at Altitude

In continuing the discussion and thinking on leadership, I’ve been most impressed with leaders I’ve worked for that had extreme confidence in their actions, even when sometimes they were wrong.  The good leaders that ended up being wrong  (in some specific instance) were very open to being guided away from that wrong decision or course of action – but they demanded very good staff work or a clear understanding of why they were wrong in order to change their mind or change their course.

I get very discouraged when I end up working with leaders (either organizational or functional) that need lots of time consuming input and coordination to make otherwise no brainer decisions.  I do believe there are times where coordination and shared decision making are critical – that’s when the business is on the line or the decision is so significant that shared responsibility for that decision at the senior executive level is critical.  But how many decisions in normal business activities really fall into that category?  It’s not that many.

Leaders need to be decisive.  Leaders need a level of confidence that warrants their leadership roles.   Leaders need to have an incredibly rapid OODA loop on all business decisions.  No brainers shouldn’t even enter the OODA loop cycle – instead of OODA they should just be OA!  Those that aren’t very effective as leaders spend a lot of time in the OO phase getting others to give them comfort regarding an issue, and they only get to DA if they have mutual support of lots of others or the decision is so obvious they aren’t at risk in making that decision.

Business is incredibly complicated.  If it’s easy, you don’t need leadership for success.  If it’s typical of most business, you need leaders that have great confidence in their abilities to quickly observe, orient, decide, and act.