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How to Manage Better With Tactical Decision-Making

Hear the phrase “tactical decision-making” and your first instinct is probably to frame it in terms of its strategic counterpart. This is not an article about strategy, but there is an important habit we need to bring with us from setting strategy when we think about tactics: thinking. No one reading this would let strategy decide itself or claim that strategy emerges from reacting to crises. Management by exception has its place, but it won’t set your strategy for you. Neither, more to the point, is it appropriate to let our reflexive reactions to events dictate our tactics.

What Is Tactical Decision-Making?

Put simply, tactical decision-making is thinking through your day-to-day operations, with an emphasis on taking responsibility and control over improving the way you and your team get things done.

Tactical decision-making is easier to understand in terms of what it is not. If you are running on autopilot, spectating your metrics, or responding reflexively to events, you are not engaging in tactical decision-making.

Running on Autopilot

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds …” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Running on autopilot” is doing what you did because it is what you have done. Maybe you looked at your metrics first, or you see that your customers and team are happy, or perhaps you’ve thought through what you’re doing extremely well, and that’s why it works. But nothing works the same way forever. And was it not tactical decision-making that led you to such a smooth-running operation in the first place?

Responding Reflexively to Events

We must respond to events, but if we’re letting events dictate our reactions, repetition will turn those reactions into policy. When we find ourselves reacting to the same crises, know that we are creating policy whether we think it through or not. A leader sets policy with intention; a follower is led into policy unaware.

“Fear is the mind-killer.” -Frank Herbert, Dune

Nothing sets the reflexes in gear and the mind in neutral like fear. Despite the note of urgency of the metaphor of putting out fires, most leadership crises aren’t so critical that we can’t afford to think before we act. One way to create some space is not to fight the fear but embrace it as problem-solving urgency. When you feel that pit opening in your gut, stop. Take a moment to absorb the situation. Consider your options, pick one, and then proceed. If your “fight or flight” response is set to “fight” and the way you fight is to “solve,” you’ve set yourself up for problem-solving over panic.

It also helps to try to anticipate time-constrained problems before they arise. Of course, no one can predict everything. The best we can do is learn from experience and never be taken by surprise twice.

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A Spectator to Your Metrics

You’re close to tactical decision-making, but you’re not quite there. You’re looking at your financials, tracking your project’s critical path, and checking your metrics. You’re keeping track of your progress, whatever form that takes. Fantastic! How are you acting on those metrics? Running on autopilot? Reacting reflexively? Or are you really using your tools to make good decisions?

Tactical Decision-Making

You have the metrics and the mindfulness to actively choose to make or remake operational decisions. You’re looking at your processes, policies, and methods and asking yourself, “How can I make this better?” You’re thinking and acting, not responding reflexively. This is tactical decision-making.

Balance: Management by Exception vs. Tactical Decision-Making

We have many duties as leaders, and no advice we take or method we employ should ever draw us away from keeping our responsibilities balanced. Tactical decision-making should never be a reason not to give prompt attention to immediate needs and emerging problems.

When Tactical Decision-Making Is an Excuse

Everyone has worked with — or worse, for — a Laputan so wrapped up in abstract ideas you can count on this person to do no actual work. Such a person might even hijack a meeting to discuss a concept in uselessly abstract terms or quibble over issues not related to the work at hand. The Laputan will also talk a lot about “vision,” “strategy,” and perhaps even “tactical decision-making.”

Obviously, a good leader has to dig in and do the work. A good leader must respond promptly to crises, particularly those involving customers or legal affairs. A good leader needs to be in the moment when the situation demands it. “Don’t bother me; I’m thinking,” isn’t an acceptable excuse when you are needed. When we lead a meeting, we need to justify every minute we hold the floor to justify the time cost for every person there, including ourselves.

When Management by Exception Is an Excuse

The customer walks away happy, the dispute between the employees dissolves before your wisdom, the blockage in the production line bursts open at your command, and you feel pretty good about that. “I’m doing a great job!”

Yes, you did a great job and have every right to feel proud. But you’re a leader, and a leader has many responsibilities. If we never think about tactical decision-making, if we never think about underlying processes, some of which might well be contributing to the fires we’re constantly putting out, we are neglecting one of our duties as a leader. It costs us time, but intelligently addressing the cause of a problem saves us the time of repeatedly solving that problem.

Conclusion

Tactical decision-making is as important as responding promptly to the immediate challenges of our leadership environment. A wise leader understands and carries the burdens of both planning and execution. Find the right balance between responding to events as a leader and taking time to think through the day-to-day work processes so that “emergencies” and “exceptions” become fewer as our plans for dealing with them become better.

The Eighth Mile offers an online leadership training course to help find balance and think and act like a leader. Get in touch to find out how to can improve decision-making processes.

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How Leaders Behave

This is the fourth of a four-part series on the role of values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior in leadership. 

If you are already asking yourself “how do I change my behavior,” then you have already decided your behavior needs to change. For some behaviors, that is obvious. If you’re late all the time, for example, you should probably take steps to correct that.

When it comes to how a leader behaves, however, the decision about what behavior does and doesn’t need to change is not as simple. If you were to ask ten people in your company whether you dress too casually or uphold rules too strictly, you will likely get ten different answers. That’s because every manager is different, as is every management situation. As you will see from this article, the answer to the question “How should leaders behave?” is, as is often the case, dependent on you, your leadership style, and your team.

What Good Leaders Have in Common

Before you can unleash your individual style as a leader there are some fundamentals you need to cover. “Leader” is a profession with some prerequisites.

Drive

How leaders should behave requires having and demonstrating drive. Internalize drive and many other shortcomings never have a chance to surface. You can’t have a problem being late if your drive pushes you to always be early. A leader decides and acts on the premise, “This will happen,” and has the drive to work toward that goal every day.

Expertise

An incompetent leader with drive quickly becomes either a hated taskmaster or the subject of ridicule. How a leader should behave if they are not qualified to be a teacher is, quite simply, to be a student. If you as a leader are honest about what you do not know, your team will likely respect you more for saying so than if you pretend to be an expert. Listen to your team to see where your level of expertise ranks among them, and raise your level of competence at every opportunity. If you’re learning, your team will notice over time.

Positive Attitude

The previous article in this series covers what it means for a leader to have a positive attitude. It doesn’t mean always looking on the bright side or constantly lifting your team’s spirit. In the context of how a leader should behave, a positive attitude means that you believe your team is capable of completing its goals and that you reinforce that belief at every opportunity. “Positive” doesn’t necessarily mean “happy”, but it does always mean “determined”.

Fairness

A fair leader inspires the team. An unfair leader at best divides, or at worst, alienates the team.

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Every Management Style Is Different

“How do I change my behavior?” is a dangerous question if you’ve already covered all the fundamentals. You must find a comfortable style or risk coming off as insincere. You may decide to borrow from leaders you admire, but your team will notice if you’re just imitating some other person. Be comfortable with yourself, and stay out of the Uncanny Valley.

Within the limit of your style, you must also adapt. When you find your balance, it will be your balance–one that is right for you and right for the job.

Consider the following areas and how you might handle them as a team leader.

Casual vs. Formal

This issue is fairly self-explanatory, but it might not be as simple as it first appears. For example, let’s say you’re leading a team of graphic artists or filmmakers, but you yourself do not have a creative background. How should a leader behave in this situation? Should you dress more artistically to fit in, or should you wear your normal business attire to clarify that you are not a creative professional? To put it another way: will your team appreciate your effort to fit in, or will they see it as trying too hard? Only you can know the answer.

Rule Enforcement

How tightly do you enforce rules? Be cognizant of which rules are absolute and which you should bend. Also, be aware of how well your natural style is meshing with your team’s expectations — and don’t break the law, whether or not compliance provokes eye-rolls from the team. How a leader should behave is to protect the team, even from itself.

Safety Consciousness

If you’re used to leading air traffic controllers, you might find transitioning to an outfit where safety hazards are largely abstract a bit difficult (such as lost work hours vs lost lives). How a leader should behave toward risk does depend on the situation. If you’re moving into a role with a hazard level that is vastly different from your last position, you may need to give yourself time to adapt.

Mission vs. People Oriented

While all leaders must be mission-oriented, how leaders behave also requires good people skills. Some teams respond better to people-oriented leaders, so you may need to strike a balance. If your team members resent “being managed” when they just want to get the job done, you might lean into the mission more and the people less. But if your team members need a little small talk in order to get going on their work, then you should do what you can to get it for them.

How Leaders Behave: Metrics for Management

If you’ve done the work and decided that the question “How do I change my behavior?” isn’t getting to the heart of your issue, then you may need to dig into some other metrics to determine how your leadership style fits with your team. You may need to adapt your style or adapt your team.

Are You the Carrot?

The clearest sign your leadership style is working is that your team’s primary incentive is to please you. You need neither sticks nor carrots. You are the carrot. Your team looks up to you and wants to please or impress you. This is your best-case scenario. However, beware there is nowhere to go but down, and you must mind your fundamentals to stay on top. How a leader behaves should ultimately be directed to this apex goal.

Balkanization

Has your team split into camps, some for you and some against? If you’re treating your team fairly, your style might naturally play team members off against each other, and not everyone responds positively to a competition. After a self-assessment, you might need to either change the personnel on your team or change your style.

Debbie Downer

Is one person responding poorly to your management style? What looks like Balkanization might be a much more personal problem. How a leader behaves in this situation is one-on-one and personal, but beware: your team will be watching. Your reputation is on the line. It might be wise to bring your team on-side and even solicit their help. In the end, it might be necessary to simply remove the disruptive downer from the team. The opinions of your team raise the stakes for how a leader behaves in this situation.

Conclusion

How a leader behaves has no easy answers; neither are the questions impossible. Separate your behaviors into style and fundamentals, don’t miss the fundamentals and use your metrics to uncover any mismatch of style. The Eighth Mile has a leadership training course to unlock the potential of your leadership style. Learn, and lead.

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How Attitude Affects Leadership

This is the third of a four-part series on the role of values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior in leadership. 

Let’s say you believe that keeping your teams motivated requires inspiring a positive attitude. Why do you believe that? “It’s obvious–because motivated teams perform better,” you might answer. But what about your motivation and attitude? Shouldn’t the best attitude for leadership be the same one you’d like to inspire in those who follow you?

Do you believe in the mission? Do you believe in your teams? Do you believe in yourself? In order to inspire, you must act the part of the motivator. To act the part, your attitude needs to align. You are your first audience whom you must motivate.

A Leader’s Attitude Affects Everyone

As a leader, your attitude is important because your team instinctively reacts to it. A highly motivated leader lifts the spirits of their team. Conversely, if your attitude is poor, your team will either mirror you and join your downward spiral or hold you in contempt and sideline you. A great leadership attitude is about demanding more from yourself to better serve your team and organization.

Mirroring: A Direct Example of How Attitude Affects Leadership

Teams who respect their leaders will naturally take their leader’s side. If a leader is unhappy, their loyal team will be unhappy as well. The team might even become hostile toward whatever or whomever they perceive to be the source of their leader’s problems.

What about the work? A loyal team might react to your attitude by taking on more responsibility, which might actually be a positive change. However, increased workloads can also lead to a decline in morale. Everything pivots around the leader. Your visible attitude is a fixed point around which your team bends all other variables to fit.

Understand how attitude affects leadership: only you can change your situation to get the team back to work on the job rather than on you. Be thankful for such loyalty, then promise yourself not to abuse it.

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Intervention

If your team stages an intervention this is your alarm bell ringing, “Last chance.” You are on the verge of losing the loyalty of your team. Your team may not call it an intervention by name, and it might not be as formal as what you see depicted in popular media. However, you will know when your team—or your boss—is staging one. If ever there were a time to find the best attitude for leadership it would be when your team is asking, “Are you okay?”

“I’m not, but I will be.” Make this promise, and keep it.

Contempt

Worse for you, though perhaps better for the team, is contempt. Your negative attitude is pulling your team down, so the team takes charge and proceeds without you. You can do and say whatever you want, be it good or bad. The team will nod in acknowledgment, then ignore you entirely.

This is how a bad attitude affects leadership if you let it: it will stop you from even being a leader at all. Instead, you become an obstacle for your people to route around. The only way out of this situation is to try and foster the best possible attitude for leadership before a disaster occurs.

The Best Attitude for Leadership Means Taking Responsibility

Clearly, when you haven’t adopted the best attitude for leadership it’s not your team who will save you (assuming they even still want to). The best attitude for leadership—and really, the only one—is to take responsibility for yourself and your mistakes just as you do for your team.

Look Up to a Leader

If you have a leader that you admire, take inspiration from them. It doesn’t violate any sacred management code to mirror your leader if they have the best attitude for leadership. If your leader is a worthy role model, have the wisdom to model your leader as your team mirrors you.

Your role models have almost certainly endured hardships similar to your own. Be mindful of the good example they set when dealing with pressure and difficult situations. “If they can do it, so can I,” is a good exercise in perspective. But don’t be too hard on yourself if you fall down a few times on your way to success. Setbacks are a necessary part of any leader’s journey–your role model probably had more than a few before they got to where they are too.

Practice Gratitude

Surround yourself with positive influences. Mirroring isn’t just for leaders and followers but for peers and colleagues as well. Find good listeners, and be a good listener. Find peers excited about the work and reflect that excitement back. Be generous giving people credit for good ideas and they will match that generosity. To show gratitude for positive influences you must be one yourself.

The best attitude for leadership is to practice gratitude literally — as in “practice makes perfect”. Make gratitude a regular habit. The constant automatic flow of small adjustments to your attitude will keep you positive when adopted as part of your daily routine.

Take Care of Yourself

Nowhere will you find a better example of how attitude affects leadership than with your own well-being. If you’ve heard the phrase, “Mind, Body, and Spirit,” think of mind and body as indicators of wellness, and spirit as a projection of your attitude. Your self-presentation, presence, and even posture are your team’s first point of contact with your attitude as a leader. Likewise, your own well-being is your first responsibility as a leader. Lead yourself into a virtuous cycle: as you improve your well-being, your well-being improves your attitude.

The best attitude for leadership means taking responsibility for your own well-being. This means you must try to get enough rest, eat well, exercise, and commit to a lifetime of learning.

Conclusion

To adopt the best attitude for leadership, you need to understand how attitude affects leadership. Then you can start to take responsibility for your own outlook and actions. A negative attitude can drag you down and might take your team with you. With a positive attitude, you’ll inspire loyalty from your team, and they will naturally mirror your positive stance, resulting in better productivity and a more satisfying work experience for all.

If you need further assistance with maintaining a positive attitude as well as fostering strong values and beliefs among your team, check out our 8-week online leadership training course.

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The Role of Beliefs in Leadership

This is the second of a four-part series on the role of values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior in leadership. 


The role of beliefs in leadership is pervasive. Operationally, few jobs can survive the lack of a base theory or system, especially if you don’t make detailed plans. Ethically, few teams can survive a purely mission-oriented leader without a framework of beliefs to resolve conflicts and inspire cohesion. In both cases, “What are my beliefs?” requires an answer to qualify you for leadership.


You should divide the role of beliefs in business into two broad categories: beliefs as tools for operational success; and beliefs as morals that are not subject to change except in extraordinary circumstances. A good leader holds solid beliefs, but a great leader knows which ones to adapt to a given circumstance.


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Beliefs as a Toolkit

If you believe in specific things, you can be a successful leader in specific situations. If you can adapt your beliefs, you can be successful in most, if not all of them. This doesn’t mean that having a preferred operational style makes you less of a leader if you have the wisdom to recognize when your preference aligns with the project. If asking the question “what are my beliefs” reveals permanent, unchangeable ideas, then at least you’ll know what projects you’re best suited to lead and which you should pass on to someone else.


Consider the following three statements. When you ask yourself “what are my beliefs,” do one or more of these resonate with you?


1) Do It Right

I believe in doing the job right the first time, even if takes longer.

This belief makes sense if even the most minor mistakes cost lives or the tiniest change adds millions to the cost. The role of beliefs in leadership in safety-critical projects is literally life-or-death. When you’re building things that you can’t afford to let fail, you’d better believe in getting things right the first time.

2) Do It Fast

I believe that the sooner I get a prototype of our minimum viable product into the customer’s workflow, the faster we can iterate toward the customer’s perfect solution.

When the customer says things like, “It’s exactly what I asked for, but not what I wanted,” you’ll be thankful you’re the kind of leader who favors speed over perfection. The key to customer satisfaction when nobody really knows what “perfection” even looks like is iteration. If you believe in speed and iteration, you’ll succeed as an Agile leader. If you’re a consummate perfectionist, you’ll be chronically over budget with a lot of unhappy customers.

3) Do Both

I believe in using the right tool for the right job.


Yes, there is a way to complete tasks both correctly and quickly. You could use an agile methodology for the early prototyping stages of a safety-critical project, allowing room for failure without putting anyone at risk. Or, instead of handing over a minimum viable product to an actual customer, you could deliver it to a QA site and run a few iterations to perfect it.


Once you’ve decided which one of these statements best matches your beliefs, does that mean you can never change your mind? Of course not. In fact, there are advantages to adapting your beliefs to the job at hand. If you can identify when the role of beliefs in leadership is a toolkit rather than an ethical mandate, changing them makes you a more effective leader.


Beliefs as Morality

If you’ve honestly and thoroughly considered which beliefs are tools in the situational toolbox, then you should have some idea of which beliefs play a more constant, moralistic role in your leadership approach. When your moral urgency is aligned with your team, it motivates them to power through rough patches and maintain their drive to succeed.


Beliefs Determine Reality

“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” -William Shakespeare, Hamlet
When your team is working late, why are they working late? Why are you? How can you all remain enthusiastic when the work has become a grind?


The ideal team plays what project manager Tom West called “Pinball”: you win one game, you get to play another. Few teams are this motivated simply by the work itself. With your inspiration, they will play to win when they believe that winning matters far more than simply getting a paycheck.


Aligning Beliefs

You can’t adapt your morality, or at the very least probably shouldn’t — morality isn’t a toolkit. This brings up the issue of alignment. If you’re a leader in a religious institution or political organization that you don’t actually believe in, you’re either deceiving your teams to keep them motivated or they’re going to see you as an outsider rather than an inspiring leader.


To motivate your team and yourself, it’s important to align your beliefs with the mission. A leader must also have a moral framework to handle internecine conflict. Otherwise, teams might turn on each other and blame you.


To be a leader, you must inspire, and inspiration comes from the alignment of beliefs and actions.


Conclusion

If you understand the role of beliefs in leadership, you can determine which are woven into your moral code and which you can possibly adapt to the situation at hand. If you ask and answer the question, “What are my beliefs?” you can motivate your team on a moral level — or identify if there is a misalignment that cannot be reconciled.
Want to learn more about the power of beliefs in leadership? The Eighth Mile offers an 8-week online training course where you will find out how your beliefs fit and inform your leadership abilities.


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