Practice Notes

Welcome to the September Practice Notes

What’s new in the world?

Difficult conversations: nine common mistakes we make

We continue to be interested in the importance of conversation.  Spend a minute looking through these nine common mistakes we often make in preparing and holding difficult conversations.  They’re outlined simply in this PowerPoint presentation.

Here’s a summary of the nine mistakes:

• We fall into combat mentality.
• We try to oversimplify the problem.
• We don’t bring enough respect to the conversation.
• We lash out or shut down.
• We react to thwarting ploys.
• We get “hooked”.
• We rehearse (your pre-prepared script may hamper you).
• We make assumptions about our counterparts’ intentions.
• We lose sight of the goal.

What are your ROTs (Rules of Thumb)?

What are your Rules of Thumb (ROTs) for making decisions?  It’s worth spending time articulating them and referring to them when making decisions.

Modesto A. Maidique, Visiting Professor at the Harvard Business School researches decision-making and the reasoning behind how and why CEOs take decisions.  Intuition plays a key part in those decisions, but according to Maidique intuition is not really intuition at all.

Instead Rules of Thumb (ROTs) are the fundamental elements of CEO decision-making. They’re the building blocks that underlie what CEOs describe as "intuition" or "gut feel."

Maidique argues that analysis plays a role, but intuition was a major or determining factor in 85% of thirty-six major CEO decisions studied.  Some were good decisions, some were not, but regardless, intuition seemed to always rule the roost. But what is it?

After persistent and deft questioning, CEOs identified, sometimes to their surprise, judgmental heuristics — ROTs — go a long way to explain their major decisions.

After CEOs identified a few ROTs, a torrent of supplementary ones often followed.  Some CEOs maintain they use values for guidance, not ROTs.  But values alone don't provide clear guidelines. Only when they are articulated as ROTs do they serve as decision-making tools.

 

Here’s an example of one set of ROTs formulated by Bill Amelio, former President and CEO of Lenovo.

Strategy:
1. Identify and concentrate on the critical few decisions.
2. A call is better than no call.
3. Give your decisions a short leash. Quickly pull back in case of mistake.
4. Trust your intuition.

People:
1. Communicate the critical few decisions effectively and repeatedly.
2. Don't tolerate jerks.
3. Build a team of people you can trust and rely on.
4. Trust your intuition.

Self:
1. Get feedback early and often and act on this feedback.
2. Earn the trust and confidence of others.
3. Demonstrate vulnerability to gain credibility.
4. Play to your strengths.
5. Trust your intuition.

 

So, what are your Rules of Thumb?