Issue No. 566 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a graduate-level baptism in decision-making. Was your last meeting an input meeting or an output meeting? And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 550 book reviews, and click here for my review of The Experience Mindset: Changing the Way You Think About Growth.
“The start or any new phase of a project is characterized by unknowns,” writes the author of Decision Sprint. “They are like puzzle pieces when you first open the box. Plentiful and unclear how they all relate.” Perhaps like The Clearly Impossible Puzzle with 1000 clear pieces (and no colors)!
“Caught in a Cycle of Inertia”
Raise your hand if your job and/or personal life involves making numerous decisions. (I see those hands!)
Now raise your hand if you’ve ever read a book, attended a seminar, or listened to a podcast or TED talk on effective decision-making. (Hmmm.)
Confession! After college, I had been a decision-making zealot (or so I thought) for almost 20 years before I attended Steve Holbrook’s “Effective Decision-Making” course. Embarrassing! (I’m still so grateful for Bob Kobielush’s vision for what we called the Leadership Development Institute back in our CCI/USA days.)
How about you? Ready for a graduate-level baptism into the art and science of decision-making? It’s here, thanks to Atif Rafiq:
Last week, over at the Pails in Comparison blog, I gave you a sneak peek and promised that Decision Sprint will revolutionize your meetings (and more). How important is this book? I underlined nearly every sentence in the first four pages.
Atif Rafiq was the first Chief Digital Officer in the history of the Fortune 500. After serving at Amazon, he became McDonald's first CDO. (One problem: “When I arrived, we counted no fewer than 25 apps for McDonald’s in the US app store.”) He describes his first executive project briefing. He was at the head of the table—conscious of first impressions—with about 30 people. Another problem: “We were heavily resourced, yet everyone was operating in silos.”
RAFIQ’S CONFESSION! “Reflecting on that first meeting, I had one regret. A single question I could have asked would have changed the entire tenor. A question that would challenge people to think differently and begin to shift the norms of the company: “Is this an input meeting or an output meeting?”
Yikes! Like you just now, I wandered back through hundreds of meetings in my mind—wondering, were those input meetings or output meetings? Yikes, again.
Decision Sprint will be your new go-to resource for improving meetings and clarifying issues. (Oh, my. I could have used these insights every day. But even the author notes that it took him 10 years to wrestle these concepts into this book. Refreshing!)
I’m calling this review, “Part 2 of 2,” because I labeled my sneak peek, “Part 1 of 2.” In that blog post I asked five questions and threatened to list 44 more—and not give answers—so you’ll actually do the hard work of relearning and rethinking decision-making. My fifth question bears repeating:
#5. SMILE. The former president and CEO of Volvo Cars says that “Asking why with a smile five times is very efficient.” Why?
After McDonald’s, Rafiq became Chief Digital Officer and global CIO at Volvo. He notes, “I had never run an IT department before, yet Hakan [Volvo’s CEO] gave me 1,500 IT people to manage.” (Not a typo!) I think that may have involved a higher level of decision-making! Yikes. Anyway…here goes. I’ll pose a few more questions if you’ll read the book and deliver the answers? Fair?
#6. NO TITLES. Why did Volvo “do away with titles and replace them with what each executive believed was their main contribution” to the company?
#7. CLARITY. At the time, Volvo’s executive management team replaced their job titles with “a variety of pithy descriptions.” The CEO’s new title: “clarity of thought.” What other Fortune 500 CEO believed that was his main job?
#8. MBO. In a fascinating five-page Q&A between the author and Hakan Samuelsson, now former president and CEO of Volvo Cars, Hakan says, “I don’t like management by objectives.” (A famous guru said, “Management by objective works—if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you do not.” Who said that and who invented MBO?)
#9. DIFFERENT PLANETS! At McDonald’s, the author immediately observed that working at Amazon was akin to living on one planet, yet McDonald’s was on another planet! “There was no language to connect the planets.” Finally, over the next 10 years, Rafiq “developed the language, words, and methods to connect the planets: “Upstream” and “Downstream.” How would you define “upstream work” and “downstream work”—and where should senior leaders engage? (See the chart on page 25—another bullseye for my “Page 25 Takeways” rule of thumb.)
#10. AI MANAGEMENT. Part Four of Decision Sprint (48 pages) “will stretch your thinking on the future of management and the role of artificial intelligence (AI), once companies and teams are working effectively upstream.” (See Chapters 12-14: “Digital Tools,” “AI as Mission Control,” and “The Upstream CEO.” Gut check! “Grammatical errors are fixed as you type. Can we leverage this concept into the world of management?”)
Atif Rafiq writes about “Management Fueled by AI” including “AI as Error Correction.” Decision Sprint is a must-read! (Read Issue No. 565 to learn why a robot may be CEO of the Year in 2050!)
AI BOOK REVIEW NO. 1. And just for grins—thinking about artificial intelligence—I asked AI, “Write a book review of ‘Decision Sprint’ by Atif Rafiq.” In the blink of a robot, ChatGPT delivered an insightful 517-word response. (Go to the bottom of my blog here.)
LOL! AI BOOK REVIEW NO. 2. And for more fun, I then asked AI, “Using the writing style and humor from 'John Pearson’s Buckets Blog,' write a book review of 'Decision Sprint' by Atif Rafiq." This time, ChatGPT thought it was auditioning for a standup comedy gig! Click here to enjoy the 545-word over-the-top parody of my writing style! LOL! (AI rated the book “5/5 Buckets!” Love it!)
I could have easily Pop Quizzed you with another 39 questions, but then you’d miss the joy of the journey. Watch for:
• “The work of management will be transformed in a way that would make Peter Drucker roll in the grave.”
• The three components of Decision Sprint: “exploration, alignment, and decision-making” and why exploration (asking questions) is so critical.
• The 13 workflows (brilliant!) including: 1) Initiating an Exploration, 3) Sourcing Questions, 13) Conducting Decision Meetings.
• Could the author have done more at Mickey D’s? “Could McDonald’s have become Uber Eats before there was one?”
• Why spontaneous interaction might be more productive than scheduled meetings. “It’s very difficult to be creative at an 8:00 in the morning meeting.”
• Why “questions are critical.” (This reminded me of my 2020 book-of-the-year, The Advice Trap. The author just released his latest book this week, How to Work With (Almost) Anyone. Watch for my review.)
• Why publishers were caught flat-footed and “ceded total dominance of e-books to Amazon.” Post this on your office wall: “They were likely caught in a cycle of inertia.”
OK, you’ve been warned! Will your next meeting be about inputs or outputs? Are you working upstream or downstream? Why? Of the five elements of a workflow (participation, purpose, inputs, outputs, and format)—what did you miss in your last meeting? Who should read this book first?
To order from Amazon, click on the title for Decision Sprint: The New Way to Innovate into the Unknown and Move from Strategy to Action, by Atif Rafiq. Listen on Libro (available July 11, 2023). And thanks to the author for sending me a review copy.
P.S. BONUS PODCAST! Click here to listen to Tiffani Bova's podcast interview with Atif Rafiq about his new book. (Bova is the author of The Experience Mindset which I reviewed in Issue No. 565.)
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) In Chapter 9, “Hack Today’s System,” the author of Decision Sprint writes: “My promise is there will be fewer and more effective meetings for everyone at all levels.” Pipe dream? Or could reading this book enrich our decision-making and our meetings? What might be the ROI of a meeting audit?
2) When, where, and how often should senior executives jump into the decision-making progress? First, read Decision Sprint. Then, communicate your style. While tossing old files last week, I ran across an inter-office memo template from 1999 that I titled, “Hands Off Memo From J.P.” It read:
You get a dollar every time you think I’m being too “hands on” and you want me to be “hands off.” I get a dollar every time you ask me to be “hands on” and I want to be “hands off!”
(Billings at month end!)
Mastering 100 Must-Read Books - Part 6: The Mount Rushmore of Leadership Legends
Book #37 of 100: The Daily Drucker
For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by spotlighting Book #37 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books.
The Daily Drucker:
366 Days of Insight and Motivation
for Getting the Right Things Done
by Peter F. Drucker with Joseph A. Maciariello
Books #22 through #40 spotlight 19 books I named to “The Mount Rushmore of Leadership Legends” group—featuring Patrick Lencioni, Jim Collins, Ken Blanchard, and Peter Drucker. Part 6 features five books by/about Drucker, including this book with daily management morsels such as, “People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.”
• Read my review.
• Order from Amazon: The Daily Drucker
• Download the 100 Must-Read Books list (from John and Jason Pearson).
With 366 daily doses of Drucker, each page includes a memorable “Action Point.” On April 11, “The Four Competencies of a Leader,” Drucker summarizes the sermonette from his one-year management bible with this: “Set aside ten minutes every Friday afternoon to give yourself a weekly report card on all four skills:
• Listening
• Communicating
• Reengineering mistakes, and
• Subordinating your ego to the task at hand.”
The authors of The Future Normal asked AI to change the lyrics to a song. “The lyrics ... came back in three seconds. No human, not even the world’s best songwriters, could produce something this quickly. And most people would agree that the lyrics are distinctly passable.” Whew! Another must-read: The Future Normal: How We Will Live, Work and Thrive in the Next Decade, by Rohit Bhargava and Henry Coutinho-Mason. For more book reviews, visit the Pails in Comparison Blog.
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Boards Asleep at the Wheel!
There are three times, especially, when “boards fall asleep at the wheel,” as Dan Busby and I wrote in More Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom: Effectiveness, Excellence, Elephants! Watch for: 1) Misreading the landscape, 2) Inability to see the forest for the trees, and 3) Becoming mired in the weeds. Read Lesson 36 here. Read the blog by Steve Altick. Order the book.
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PEARPOD | TELLING YOUR STORY. Stumped on the appropriate (and legal) use of artificial intelligence (AI) at your organization? Your storytelling will be enriched—and your graphic designers will save time and money—if you leverage AI effectively. (See this WSJ article, “The Best AI Apps to Try Now.”) We’re using it right now. For help, contact Jason Pearson at Pearpod (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).
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