“Leadership can be a heavy burden. It is also a compelling, crucial challenge. In grey areas, your job isn’t finding solutions; it’s creating them based on your judgement.”
Every leader has to make tough decisions, and that’s part and parcel of his job. The toughest of them comes in ‘grey areas’ or situations in which one isn’t sure what to do, despite gathering all facts or having incisive analyses to go by. It’s not unusual for the finest of leaders to occasionally experience such uncertain times when figuring out the right course of action and moving forward become immensely challenging.
Identifying or pinning down the key parameters of any judgment can be daunting. At best it can be thought of as a combination of thinking, feeling, experience, imagination, and character. However when data appears to obfuscate more than lending insight, when answers elude the seeker and opinions are divided, searching for answers to the following five questions can improve one’s odds of making sound decisions:
- Whatare the net consequences of the options available to me?
- Whatare my core obligations?
- Whatwill work in the world as it is?
- Whoare we?
- Whatcan I live with?
The expertise and experience of a super team along with insightful data may be readily available to a leader, but in the end it is left to him to make the critical decsion. One cannot be absolutely certain about having made the right judgement call when it comes to grey- area decisions, but proceeding by way of answering the above questions can ensure that the problem is approached suitably.
Net consequences: The first in the series of five questions requires the decision-maker to consider every course of action, analytically and holistically, besides taking into account the real-world, human consequences of each. Solution to a grey-area problem may not emerge “in a flash of intuitive brilliance from one person”, but must be the result of a group of trusted advisors and experts resolving what could be done and who could stand to gain or take a beating from each of the options. In today’s complex and volatile business climate, none can predict the future accurately, yet assembling the right team and cracking grey-area problems by approaching them broadly, deeply, imaginatively, concretely, and objectively can be the way forward.
Core obligations: We all have responsibilities as family members, employees of an organization, or citizens of a country. Managers also have duties to stakeholders and shareholders – to honour and safeguard their lives and rights. So, how does one know specifically what obliges one to do in a given situation? The answer lies in what philosopher’s would term ‘moral imagination’, which requires one to step out, recognize one’s biases and blind spots, and put oneself in the shoes of the various key stakeholders, especially the most vulnerable ones. A manager’s mandate must not override the wider and inherent cause of the workers, customers, or the community in which he operates.
The world as it is: This question compels one to approach a grey-area problem in a clear- eyed, pragmatic way – seeing the world as it is, not as one would like or ideally want it to be. At the end of the day, one needs a viable plan to drive results, move a team or an entire organization through a grey-area problem responsibly and successfully. Much of what happens is simply beyond our control, and leaders too lack unlimited resources or liberty, so they must often play hardball or make painful choices. But what’s important is not to misinterpret this question as an excuse to doing what’s safe or expedient, instead of what’s legitimate or right.
Who we are: This question requires that we step back and think about the consequence of a decision in terms of relationships, values, and norms – what really matters to the team, company, or caters to the marketplace? While writing a chapter in the company’s history, which decisions would impact the stakeholders most or best express what the organization epitomizes or upholds? Unlike the first three questions that require an outsider’s objective perspective on the situation, this one addresses one as an insider at risk for adopting an insular, limited view because we are naturally prone to being governed by our values and beliefs. So the first three questions must counterbalance this tendency.
Living with the decisions: A judicious decision is the outcome of two things: first, superior analysis of the situation, and second, the feelings, values, ideals, vulnerabilities, and experiences of the decision-maker. Eventually, one must choose and live with the consequences of the choice. It reflects a manager’s perspective of what matters and what doesn’t, it reveals the person behind the manager. The five questions help us take “a sound decision regarding a hard problem with high stakes for people”. Finding solution to a grey-area problem may not be easy or effective, rather creating one based on judgment could be the solution.ting integral emotion from incidental ones, which in itself is the first proactive step towards positive outcomes.
