In a School Yard Somewhere.
Watching a loud, petulant, rude, and selfish child making demands on their parent and throw tantrums when they don’t get their way.
You know that in a school yard somewhere, another child is waiting to sort them out.
Boundaries.
A Commanding Officer came to me for advice.
‘I want to do this thing - without the Law getting in the way…’
A Senior Officer came to me for advice.
‘I looked up the Defence Law Manual, and I couldn’t find where it said I could do this thing…’
There’s often an assumption that the Law builds the roads for us to drive on.
That the Law gives us the permission and the rights.
But in practice, the Law does something subtler — and harder to appreciate.
It doesn’t pave the way for every possibility;
It fences off the cliffs.
It defines the edges, the hazards, the places where power would overrun the common good if left to its own momentum.
In Defence, in schools, in companies — everywhere people lead — the real work is in the unmarked space between those fences.
That’s where judgment, morality, and prudence live.
Where culture carries what rules never can.
Where we decide not just what we can do, but what we ought to do.
Law is a boundary line.
Leadership is how you play the game within it.
Mirror.
We declare:
‘I acknowledge my humanity and my weaknesses and vanity and my selfishness - all of which may obstruct or blind me to the decision I must make.’
We say:
‘I will scrutinise myself with a higher degree of judgement so that I can then turn my mind to potentially judging others.’
What Evil Looks Like.
‘Come with us! We will share the glory and the loot!’
That’s what Evil looks like:
The Crowd.
The Belonging.
The ‘Yes/No’ choice.
The Momentum.
The Security.
Easy.
The Purpose of an Argument.
The word ‘argue’ comes from the Latin verb arguere, meaning to make bright, or enlighten.
The purpose of an argument should be for all sides to have the benefit of the same information.
Once this is satisfied, and agreement cannot be reached - the purpose of arguing has been reached and a decision must be made by whoever needs to make it.
Which in turn makes new information available.
Thrilling.
One of the most thrilling experiences is watching as a smart person changes their mind.
Five, Two, or Twenty.
Whether it’s Five Steps to a Good Decision or Two Steps or Twenty…
Breaking down our decision making into discrete parts does the following:
Brings the unconscious into our consciousness
Slows us down
Demonstrates we care about the decision
Steps us out of ourselves into more of an observer
Allows Life to go on - often dampening the initial anxiety and sometimes fixing the issue
Makes our thinking and work visible to others to emulate or improve
An Inadequate Ideal.
“‘One is apt to think of moral failure as due to weakness of character; more often it is due to an inadequate ideal.’ ”
The Widget should be an ideal - bonus if it’s a virtuous one.
Regular moral failure should cause us to review our Widget.
A Bit of Step 4
“Trying to make such a distinction, the first thing that’s required, as Socrates told us long ago, is a bit of self-knowledge. And the variety of self-knowledge that’s especially valuable here is knowledge of your own personal investments. ”
Step 1 of the Five Steps to a Good Decision is:
Step Back.
There’s a little bit of Step 4 (Check for Bias) happening in Step 1, too.
In Step 1 we wallow in our own selfishness and take everything personally.
If we do a good job, we ultimately purge most, if not all, of our bias.
Such that when we come to Step 4, our only bias is towards anyone we serve.
Bias.
The Fourth Step of the Five Steps to a Good Decision is:
Check for Bias.
Being biased isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
A Principal should be biased towards their school community.
An employer should be based towards the safety of her employees.
Checking for bias includes confirming you’re serving those who depend on you.
Make the Work Visible.
Good decisions often look like nothing is happening.
Which is why a leader must make their work of leading visible to their followers.
Modelling the Five Steps is one way.