CEO Today - May 2023

LESSONS IN LEADERSHIP 54 Inverting the pyramid of empowerment More than ever, businesses must invert the pyramid of empowerment. CEOs should be working out how to allow others to make more decisions in a safe environment so that they, as leaders, can focus on only the most important calls. True empowerment is making one decision so that others can make their own decisions in safety. There is a subtle difference between that situation and what most people think they should do to empower others. For instance, a parent can say that if their teenage child returns home by midnight, they can do what they want before that time. That is empowerment. The teen can make 100 decisions themself, so long as they respect the curfew. But if the parent starts to dictate that their child must take an Uber ride to McDonald’s and go out with certain friends, it establishes new control boundaries. Ultimately, this approach is counter-productive and damaging in the long term. It limits the development of the child, who must be allowed to earn trust, build resilience, and make better decisions for themselves. And similarly, the parent will find it even harder to let go of that control and risk their teenager not nearly fulfilling their potential. want information articulated in their own best interests, with plans and options to meet preagreed targets and outcomes. And when this is not the case, they push back, disengage, or ask for endless reworks. The challenge is that if our plans are based on the latest realistic view that does not meet this ambition, then the maturity of executive response is critical to drive the right conversation. By extension, if you are going to create an environment where anecdotes and research holds equal weight for decisions, then the message being sent out is that it doesn’t make a difference how much effort those who want a CEO’s attention put in, as they think leaders will only listen to their closest and most trusted allies. In this environment, informal opinions can destroy information faster than any tool, system, or process. And if leaders do not respect the process that generates the information, or the resulting decisions, then the morale of those working hard to maintain complex solutions is also impacted. Linked to this is the infrastructure for decision-making. It is as much about building formality in the way we engage as leaders as it is about the information we share. Understanding how and where we make key decisions, how we need to prepare information, and how we facilitate this for accuracy and relevance is as important as the actual information itself. Organisations can splash out on the best technology solutions and embrace the latest AI and machine learning, but these are all utterly worthless if key executive decision-makers have not evolved their decision-making processes to ensure the right access and focus when required. While we marvel at the speed of technological advancement, the way leaders make business-critical choices has, by and large, stayed the same. Indeed, decision-making remains as much a behavioural science as an information science, often driven by factors that even the best information cannot solve. There is a view that providing CEOs with better information and dozens of different options, often supported by complex and expensive technology, will make them more engaged whilst making significantly more and better decisions. While technically correct, experience has shown that the reality is often very different. The challenge is behaviour. While non-emotional information can speak for itself, it is our behaviour as leaders that influences the way we digest data and drive decisions. In a world where leadership culture still influences the way an organisation behaves, it is not surprising to see that it is executive behaviour that ultimately dictates the way information is prepared and presented. One of the key issues we see is the impact of ambition. Often leaders

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