When Leaders Can’t Decide

When leaders fail as decision makers, the consequences can be dire. As Australia approaches another federal election, it’s a good time to stop and think about what good – and bad – decision making looks like. In this post, we’ll look at an example of a time when the pressure built and a former prime minister’s decision making approach fell apart.

Paul Kelly’s fascinating book ‘Triumph & Demise‘ addresses some turbulent years in Australian politics when the Australian Labor Party faced some big leadership dilemmas. These came to a head on a winter’s day in 2010, when Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as leader of the Labor party and as Prime Minister of Australia. There were a number of reasons why Rudd’s party felt that he was unfit to lead the country, but a common concern was that he couldn’t – or wouldn’t – make decisions. Julia Gillard’s own recollection of the time described a chaotic environment:

“(Rudd’s) reaction to not being able to decide was to ask for more and more briefs and more and more paperwork that would never get read. Then he felt the pressure more and more; there was more paper and more chaos. It would get worse, not better.”

This phenomenon of indecision is often called ‘analysis paralysis’ – where we get stuck in the thinking phase and can’t make a decision. Now to be clear, this post isn’t intended as a critique of the Labor party – leadership failures happen in all political groups. And there’s no doubt that the leader of any country must be particularly susceptible to decision fatigue. But Rudd’s story offers all of us some important leadership lessons. According to Kelly and those he interviewed, there were several contributing factors that undermined Rudd’s ability to make good decisions.

Centralise decision responsibility instead of delegating

Rudd tried to micro-manage the government, trusting a small group of advisers and sidelining some of his key ministers. Effective leaders understand that they simply can’t take control and responsibility for every decision. Leaders who try to control everything end up micromanaging, which inevitably frustrates and disenfranchises their staff and reduces the quality and quantity of their team’s output. Strong delegation at its heart is about empowering and trusting others to make decisions. This includes a willingness to allow people to make mistakes, understanding that this is the way we learn and grow. A leader who doesn’t trust the people who work for her cannot function properly – in the same way that a football player who never passes the ball to teammates can not possibly win a game.

Hate being challenged

Rudd was also particularly sensitive to being challenged – and was infamous for holding grudges. How do you respond when people disagree with you? One of the best tools for making great decisions is having smart and honest people around you who are able and willing to examine your arguments and challenge them. Why? Because you will make mistakes that you will be unable to see without the help of others. If you’re humble and open to constructive criticism, your thinking and decisions can only get better by listening to the input of such people. And when they are wrong and you’re right, the testing of your opinions has helped you be sure that you’re on the right track.

In the excellent book ‘Noise’ by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein, the authors explore the phenomenon of unwanted variability in judgments and the keys to making better and more consistent judgments. They conclude that:

“It is the humility of those who are constantly aware that their judgment is a work in progress and who yearn to be corrected….this thinking style characterizes the very best forecasters, who constantly change their minds and revise their beliefs in response to new information.”

Blame others

President Harry Truman popularised the saying, ‘The buck stops here’. The meaning? Truman understood that leadership was about taking responsibility, not pointing the finger of blame at others (or ‘passing the buck’). Rudd, on the other hand, was reportedly a ‘blamer’. When things went wrong, he found others to blame. I’ve worked under managers who applied a similar approach. The result? Staff become anxious, stressed and terrified of failure. People become risk-averse, which inevitably stifles creativity and initiative. Work slows down. People hide mistakes to avoid censure, rather than examine them to discover what lessons they might teach. Inevitably, as with all leadership practices – good and bad – junior managers start playing the blame game too. The culture of blame spreads and morale plummets. And people are afraid, rather than empowered, to make decisions.

Care more about personal impact than the mission

Another criticism of Rudd – which could equally be levelled at many political leaders – was that he worried more about the political outcome of his decisions than the policy outcomes. What does this mean? The political outcome refers here to the political harm or benefit that Rudd would personally experience as a result of the decision. He worried too much about the question – ‘Would this choice strengthen my political position or weaken it?’ Instead of focusing on making strong, well-informed decisions that would support his party’s key policies, he was concerned about how those choices would play out with voters.

Lessons?

So what can we learn from this? Are you a leader? Check to see if you’re susceptible to any of these traps. Reflecting on the failings above, here are a few thoughts:

1. Making all the decisions yourself is a recipe for leadership failure. You simply will not have the time or capacity to control everything. Be realistic about your own limitations, trust the people around you, delegate effectively – and let others share the decision-making burden.
2. Welcome challenge. One of the best tools we have for making good decisions is the smart people around us. Don’t be offended when people ask you ‘Why do you do that?’ or ‘Why do you think that?’ Listen to them and challenge yourself to try and find (the inevitable) errors in your thinking.
3. When decisions don’t yield the outcomes you’d hoped for, don’t blame others. Examine your decision-making process to see if you can spot any glitches. Did things go bad because of a ‘thinking failure’ or a misplaced trust in flawed data? In addition, accept that, while we might have control over much of the decision-making process, we don’t control the outcomes. Sometimes things just don’t work out the way we’d hoped or planned.
4. Keep the mission in mind. Putting your personal interests ahead of mission goals will inevitably undermine your chances of making successful decisions. To draw from the game of darts – you can’t simultaneously hit two targets. Trying to do so is a recipe for failure.

Have you had any experiences with leaders who are great – or dismal – decision makers? Drop a comment below – I’d love to hear from you!