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|In: Cognitive Enterprise|Last Updated:

Authoritarianism is on the rise.

No, this isn’t one of KJR’s occasional thinly disguised political rants. I’m talking about private-sector authoritarianism.

As you might recall if you’ve read Leading IT, you have five ways to make decisions:

  • Consensus: We all agree to it, even if we don’t all agree with it.
  • Consultation: Everyone with a stake in the decision shares their knowledge with the decision-maker and then trusts the decision-maker’s decision.
  • Authoritarianism: The decision-maker makes the decision and announces it.
  • Voting: There’s safety in numbers, so let’s just tally them. Nobody can blame the decision-maker for the wisdom of crowds.
  • Delegation: Turn the decision over to someone else and ask them to make it using one of the remaining four ways to make a decision. It’s the remaining four because delegated decisions shouldn’t be re-gifted.

These five decision styles aren’t a matter of preference, or shouldn’t be. They have very different characteristics. Consensus maximizes buy-in; authoritarianism is quick and cheap; consultation strikes a balance between the two. Done right, delegation puts decisions in the hands of those better-qualified to make them.

Voting has little to recommend it, other than providing a way out when no one person has the authority to make a decision that has to get made anyway.

A couple of decades ago, consensus decision-making became popular in executive circles, pulling consultation and delegation along with it. The theory was that more employees felt empowered … they felt more influence over decisions that affected them … and so would bring more energy and commitment to their work.

It wasn’t a bad theory as these things go. So far as I can tell, though, it’s falling out of favor. Authoritarian decision-making appears, based on my entirely subjective perception that’s the result of an at best accidentally non-random sample of What’s Going On Out There, to be increasingly popular. Consensus and consultative decision-making, in contrast, are more and more associated with group hand-holding coupled with Kumbaya and the singing thereof.

My sense is that this shift away from high-involvement techniques is due to one or another of these three factors: (1) impatience (let’s get on with it); (2) arrogance (I know the right answer so let’s get on with it); and (3) ego (I’m smarter than anyone else involved, so no one has anything important to tell me about the subject that I don’t already know. I know the right answer so let’s get on with it).

Meanwhile, delegation continues to be used but not really. I’m seeing an increase in de-delegation as a fraction of all delegated decisions, de-delegation meaning “I’m delegating this decision to you unless you don’t make the decision I would have made or don’t make it the way I would have made it.”

Delegation, that is, is becoming little more than authoritarianism in disguise.

Is this trend, assuming it is a trend and not just an example of KJR being guilty of plausible blame, really such a bad thing? After all, we all know business is speeding up and authoritarianism’s core value is speed.

True enough. And as OODA devotees will agree, faster decisions, all things being equal, speed up the whole loop, leading to more wins and demoralized competitors.

The problem is, not all things are equal. Slapdash information-gathering (observe) and a poor understanding of context (orient) — natural consequences of authoritarian decision-making — lead to uninformed and poorly thought-through decisions. There’s nothing in OODA theory suggests that, faced with a set of possible choices, any old decision will do.

OODA theory is about speeding up each step in the cycle without diminishing its quality, so you complete the loop with just-as-good information, an undiminished sense of place, decisions that are just as smart, and actions just as disciplined and competent.

And one more thing: OODA, and for that matter most of what’s been written about the importance of speeding things up, is silent on the subject of buy-in. In the interest of filling this gap:

What’s needed to achieve buy-in might very well slow down one or two early OODA iterations.

But failing to achieve buy-in in these early iterations can slow down the iterations that follow. After all, managers and employees whose primary motivational state is apathy are, when the time comes for action, less likely to bring the energy needed for getting the desired results quickly and efficiently.

The difference, it’s said, between ignorance and apathy is “I don’t know” and “I don’t care.”

The other difference is ownership: Authoritarians own the ignorance. Apathy is the logical employee response.

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

“May I use you as a reference?”

The request, a friend (call her June James) told me, came from a strong performer (call him John Jones) who had worked for her a few years ago.

Shortly after she agreed, she received an anonymous text that said, “John Jones notes you consent to a txt msg to provide reference feedback. Txt Y to continue or N to stop txts. Msg&data rates may apply.”

My friend isn’t in the habit of replying to anonymous texts on the grounds that she isn’t an idiot. She ignored it, other than letting Jones know what was going on. Jones confirmed that he had shared her email address and mobile number (for texting).

Shortly thereafter she received an email, edited here for length:

From: John Jones <[email protected]>

Sent: <Date>

To: June James <[email protected]>

Subject: John Jones Reference Request

Dear June,

I am pursuing a career opportunity and I’m asking you, as well as several other individuals, to complete this request as a professional reference. Please complete this short (less than 30 questions), confidential, web-based survey regarding my skills.

You will not be identified as having written the individual responses because the system averages the responses from all of my references to produce one summary report that is confidential in accordance with the applicable Privacy Policy.

Please note that you will be responding as an individual, not as a representative of any company or organization. Also, I have executed a legally binding agreement that releases you, as well as any organization with which you are now affiliated or have been affiliated in the past, from any potential liability for providing this information.

The process is quick and easy. Please click or paste this link into your browser:

https://app.skillsurvey.com/?URLroutinggibberish

If you have any questions, you can contact me at [email protected].

Thank you for your time,

John Jones

Worst part first: “… less than 30 questions?” Please. Anyone with a gram of grammar savvy knows it should read “… fewer than 30 questions.”

My friend is more bad-grammar-tolerant than I am. She’s no more tolerant, though, of a claim that a 30-question survey qualifies as short. She was also hesitant to encourage a request that pretended to be from one source when in fact it came from a different source; and that concealed the identity of the hiring company.

Nevertheless, to help out someone worth helping out, she completed the thirty-three question survey, at the end of which the hiring company’s name was not only revealed — it encouraged her to apply for a position, too.

Which led to the anticlimactic piece de resistance, a follow-up email from SkillSurvey (not reproduced here because really, you and I are friends) promoting SkillSurvey’s services should she have a need for them in her own recruiting.

What, my friend asked, did I think of this approach to reference checks?

Hmmm.

First: Starting the conversation with an anonymous text in this day and age? Really?

Second: Sending an email that pretends to be from the applicant when it actually comes from a third-party agent of the hiring company suggests to me that this isn’t a company I can trust to keep my identity and responses confidential. I’d probably let the requester know, with regrets, that while I’d be happy to talk with the hiring manager directly I’m not willing to respond to the on-line survey.

But what do I think of the approach?

Hiring decisions are the most important decisions managers make. References are one of the most important tools managers have for getting a handle on what it will be like to work with an applicant over the long haul — information that’s just as importance as the applicant’s raw competence.

Not that it’s all that easy to get that information: Usually, when asked to be a reference, the requestee asks something along the lines of, “What would you like me to say?”

When speaking with a reference, hiring managers need to penetrate beyond good/bad questions (Q: “Is Fred a strong project manager?” A: “Oh, yes, one of the very best!”) to a more nuanced sense of what the applicant is like as a person and co-worker; what it’s like to interact with them day-to-day; what they’re like when the chips are down … stuff like that.

No survey will get you there. That takes a conversation between two human beings about another human being.

When you’re evaluating a job applicant would you substitute a survey for interviewing them face to face?

That’s how I look at survey-based reference checks.

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