Leadership has
many traits to enable and support. The author of this blog post covered many
such traits in an earlier blog post. Reference may be made to the post, “Leadership Qualities and Skills:
Opportunities, Challenges and Enigmas”, Strategy Musings, November 6, 2010
(http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2010_11_01_archive.html). Amongst such several
traits, decision making, or decisiveness, is a key trait; so much so, decisive
leadership is referred to as a distinct category of leadership. Decisiveness is
the ability to take decisions quickly, resolutely and firmly. Decisiveness does
not mean taking random or snap decisions. Decisiveness means, in a leadership
practice, taking considered decisions. Leadership is all about converting a
vision into reality through an organization, which requires decisions to be
made by leaders all the time.
While there are
several leadership styles, leaders are required to be decisive in all the
styles. Only the style of decision making varies across leadership styles. One
stream of thought says that apart from being focused and agile in decision
making based on available information, one can be flexible (adaptive to
situations), hierarchic (taking hierarchy based decisions) or integrative
(taking into account multiple points of view). The first approach makes use of
little or minimal information while the last approach tends to get weighed down
by enormous amount of data and information. The other two fall in between based
on the dynamics of context and the extent of hierarchy, respectively. While
there could be other ways of linking decision making styles to overall
leadership styles, decisiveness can be seen as being prompted by ten different
dominant competencies.
Decisive by nature
Certain
personality traits such as emotional dominance, self-belief, self-worth, social
boldness and task orientation imbue certain leaders with a natural tendency to
be decisive. Such people use internalized data and their personal predilections
to make immediate and compulsive decisions when they encounter new situations
or problems. They may not be intolerant but they will be certainly impatient. Such
leaders are unlikely to retract decisions or retrace their actions. Their nature
makes them pile up decisions on their teams in general. The unique nature of naturally
decisive leaders is that they can be decisive even in the face of little
information; a situation not too infrequent in real life situations. It could turn out to be a big advantage in
such situations.
Decisive by authority
Some leaders
wield, and live by, abject power. Authoritarian leaders are almost like
military generals; whether they have strategized their actions objectively or
not, they make it appear that all their mandates stem out of their authority. They
are very conscious of their formal and informal boundaries of power. Authoritative
leaders struggle with millennial employees and knowledge workers but could excel
in domains marked by wide and deep spans of control, like infrastructure
projects by virtue of their resonant leadership. They are unlikely to be very
collaborative but could excel when organizations are structured to clearly
reflect boundaries of power and authority.
Decisive by intellect
Some leaders
are very intellectually driven; they possess knowledge and respect
knowledge-seeking. They look to validate the data they receive, the
interpretations they make and the decisions they take through the knowledge
they possess; and if they find the knowledge at their disposal to be inadequate
they do not hesitate to collect additional knowledge to validate or modify their
decisions. Their nature makes their decision making slow but they tend to make
exceptionally sensible decisions in areas driven by intellectual matters such
as product and manufacturing innovation, patenting and futurism. They could do
exceptionally well in technology-intensive industries.
Decisive by experience
Most leaders
have loads of experience. Only some, however, make their decisions purely out
of experience. Leaders who decide based on their experience are visualizers and
extrapolators of what it takes to achieve a goal. Such leaders are well suited
to taking follower firms on paths taken by pioneers successfully. Leaders of
this ilk are pretty quick in decision making but could also be failing to
respond to new situations due to their preoccupation with their previous
experiences. They could be needlessly biased by their experiences, both
positive and negative. Most leaders are likely to belong to this class,
thinking and behaving through their prior experiences.
Decisive by
intuition
Intuition is
one of the important hallmarks of successful leadership. Leaders are able to
stand by their visions mainly due to their intuition. Leaders acting by their
intuition may be intellectual, experienced and task oriented but they may not
using any of these faculties unless they feel intuitively supported. Such leaders
surprise their teams as well as competitors with their intuitive decisions,
which not surprisingly pan out fruitfully. The author has posted a perceptive
post on intuitive leadership earlier: ”Educated and Experienced versus
Instinctive and Intuitive: From Conflict to Synthesis of Four Leadership
Essentials”, Strategy Musings, May 10, 2015 (http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2015/05/educated-and-experienced-versus.html).
Decisive by goals
Goals are the
critical drivers of company performance. Leaders who swear by goals tend to be
obsessively focussed and occasionally missing wood for the trees, especially
when business contexts keep changing. Such leaders are appropriate to drive
turnaround as well as growth in stable economic environment. Such leaders are
unlikely to be respectful of lead times required by diligent processes.
Decisive by incentives
A whole lot of
leaders belong to this category. With emergence of variable pay, performance
bonus, profit commissions, stock options, and long term incentive plans as new
ways of incentivizing leadership performance, leaders tend to take decisions
and pursue actions which are incentive friendly. Leaders belonging to this
class tend to take speedy decisions and be oriented towards short and medium
term. Such leaders tend to excel in turnarounds and priming growth stories. Per
contra, it is unclear if such leaders help companies build long term value in
their businesses.
Decisive by process
Leaders who
still have strong legacy of structured management stand profoundly committed to
processes. They believe in structured planning, guided execution and programmed
management. For them, process integrity is paramount; they believe that right
results follow right processes. Process oriented leaders particularly excel in
quality and compliance oriented industries such as pharmaceuticals, food
processing and semiconductors. Process oriented leaders also excel in ensuring
high standards of corporate governance in their firms.
Decisive by
recognition
Some leaders
are inspired by the opportunity to carve a place for themselves in halls of
fame. While they are driven by some of the various faculties and traits
described above, and are motivated by goals and incentives etc., they are
literally actualized by the potential of standing out in the crowd of
leadership. Dhirubhai Ambani, who established the Reliance Group, belongs to
that rare breed of entrepreneurs who liked to leave a legacy of bringing equity
culture to the common man, dwarfing all other Himalayan achievements of his.
Decisive by
people
And finally,
there are leaders who are decisive standing by the people. Mahatma Gandhi is
the unparalleled example of leadership dedicated to people, and seeking final fulfilment
in serving people. Socio-economic equity, social harmony and equitable
distribution of wealth are their primary drivers. Nelson Mandela. Martin Luther
King, Mother Theresa, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda are other
notable leaders of this worthy, and hard to follow, leadership. Eminent entrepreneurs like Jamsetji
Tata established industries to generate employment.
Leadership mix
Just as no two
businesses are identical, no two leaders or two leadership styles are also
identical. Logically, multiple businesses require multiple leadership styles;
the same business may require different styles in various phases of evolution. All
of the ten decisiveness templates discussed are appropriate in one context of
the other. Admittedly, being decisive is only one, albeit very important, link
of the leadership value chain. Anticipating, evaluating, interpreting,
deciding, detailing, resourcing, aligning and executing are the other links of
the leadership value chain. It is worth noting that all the other links too
entail decision making in one measure or the other. A major responsibility of a
leader is not only being decisive but also ensuring that the rest of the
organization is decisive. Individual leaders always find it a challenge to
tackle institutionalized indecision. Optimal leadership mix lies in ensuring that autocracy and
authoritarianism are not deployed to break indecision or discussions and
debates do not stymie decision making.
Leaders should
not only set the tone but also utilize a whole set of traditional corporate
structures and systems to reflect a culture of decisiveness throughout the
organization. Structures such as executive committee meetings and processes
such as strategy and budget reviews can be utilized by leaders to demonstrate
how it pays to be decisive. Decision oriented dialogue, rather than either
hypothesis or theory oriented discussion, is a great way to embed a culture of
decisiveness in an organization. Boards and Founders who select leaders,
internally or externally, must be savvy to select leaders whose decision making
style matches the business context, in each case. A seasoned leader must also recognize
that he has as many as ten great endowments in him or her to be decisive. By selectively
and contextually deploying them he would make great contributions to a firm.
Posted by Dr CB
Rao on May 09, 2016
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