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Choice 1
Discuss the situation “from the ground up” with your CEO. Listen to her
objections and, if necessary, throw out the original course of action and
override your team’s decision.

Commentary
It may come as a surprise, but this is probably the best decision for the
charismatic leader. If you are truly charismatic you will have built a sub-
stantial fund of confidence in your people that what you do is done for a
good reason and usually works. They will accept that you are selective
about when you accept their decisions without being arbitrary. In short
you will be seen as being “firm but fair” and your decision to override will
be accepted without undue concern. If, however, you have not built such a
reputation among your people they will believe that you are playing games
with them and that their apparent involvement is a charade. In the early
stages of developing your team’s ability to make unsupervised decisions
you need to limit the areas under consideration to low risk situations
where you can live with anything that they decide. Only pass major deci-
sions to teams that have proved their worth by making good decisions in
the past that have led to successful outcomes, but be sure to emphasize any
and all distinctions between the new situation and the old. The charis-
matic leader stretches people by demanding new ways and better ways of
doing things. This is why Jack Welch is famous for congratulating his vice
presidents on their achievements prior to demanding to know how they
propose to achieve more with less resources in future.

Third-rate training operations and third-rate managers adore consen-
sus decision-making because it satisfies a vague sense of liberal thinking
and appears to disperse responsibility and accountability. Leaders should
bear in mind that in the real world of work consensus decision-making
works best only where the team is mature and where the situation is so
novel that it is not known where expertise lies and all available knowledge
needs to be brought to the table.

Too often the “let my people go” empowerment fanatics talk about the
“tremendous up-swell of creativity” among employees without so much as
a thread of tested evidence. Unplanned, ill-thought-through attempts at
empowerment lead, in the real world to anarchy and paralysis in roughly
equal measure. Where expertise exists the quickest, most economic and
best course is to use it. In so doing you get outcomes that deliver success to
the team. They learn as a result of the process and become ready for un-
supervised decision-making when the circumstances are right.

The feel-good leader who says in effect that “the objectives will look
after themselves if we just set people free” has seldom if ever succeeded
outside of “business bodice rippers”.

Questions for discussion
1. Are there any activities in your company that result more from

unsubstantiated doctrine than from fact?

“Leadership is what leaders DO!” 99