Make the Call

In the late 1990s, I served as an airborne rifle platoon leader with the US’s Southern European Task Force, the US’s quick reaction force for Europe and Africa.   At the time, Africa was in a tough spot, with any number of African countries either actively engaged in civil wars or on the verge of them. We spent a lot of our time preparing to secure embassies and rescue Americans caught in the cross-fire if needed. One spin-up to Rwanda stands out despite the fact we never actually deployed. 

Rwandan in the late 1990s was still reeling from the 1994 genocide, on the verge of descending back into violence and civil war for a number of years.  At one point, it got serious enough that our unit received a warning order to prepare for rapid deployment to secure the embassy, evacuate US personnel, and potentially intervene to stop any more bloodshed.  Given Rwanda’s distance from Europe, one option was to parachute onto the Kigali International Airport to seize control in order to allow for follow-on aircraft to land and stage further operations. 

We’d spun up for numerous missions before but as the satellite imagery moved from decades old to days old, I knew things were getting serious. Thus, when the task force leadership gathered for a formal operations briefing, I was excited to simply be a wall-flower among the many, far more senior officers there. It was my first time being part of a meeting with the commanding general.  

As usual, the meeting began with an intelligence update. Things were going fine until the general asked the intelligence officer, “What will the Hutu do in response to our assault?”  

“It depends,” the officer responded. He then began listing all the different possible responses. The general stopped him.  “What do you think the Hutu are most likely to do in response?” 

The officer began vacillating again, clearly uncomfortable committing to something. Now the general raised his voice. “What SPECIFICALLY do YOU think the HUTU will do?”  

When the officer returned to his list of possible options again, the general stood up, shouted a string of profanities, grabbed something off his desk and threw it at the officer. The major ducked and the item hit the wall behind him.  Everyone in the room froze, terrified for what was to come.  “Make the F*&%ing call! I know it is the future.  I know it is unknown, but your job is to tell us what you think the enemy will do.  We can’t plan without it. Do your D&%*n job.  We are not going anywhere until you make the F*&^%$ng call!”  

The officer finally gave him an answer, the general sat back down and the briefing continued.  But the moment about making the call has stuck with me.  It has served me well ever since.  

Make the call -- putting your opinion clearly on the table or taking decisive action -- is something many people struggle with. I believe the struggle comes down to avoiding risk.  There is a lot of discussion in leadership circles today about the need for leaders to be vulnerable — for them to “show up” as their authentic selves.  But one of the most vulnerable times is having to make a call or a recommendation about the future in the face of incomplete information.  The fear is understandable, of course, as being wrong is no fun. As the saying goes, The book of success has many authors while failure has only one.  In the face of such pressure, many choose the safer path to provide the decision maker (customer or leader) with the information and let them make the call.    

This is problematic for a number of reasons. 

1. It abdicates responsibility.  At its most basic, you are being asked to provide an opinion as part of your job.  If you fail to do that, you’re doing well less than 100% of your job.  More importantly, it is easy to find people to spot issues.  The real value is in turning that information into recommendations.
2. It places more burden on the leadership.  One of the biggest separators between people going places and people taking up space is the ability of people to make the lives of their leaders or their customers easier – to take monkeys off the backs of those we serve.  By only providing information without analysis or a recommendation is putting the burden of decision back on the leader or the customer.  You’re adding to their stress not taking it away.
3. It centralizes authority.  I believe companies perform best when decision making is decentralized.  By refusing to make the call and accept the mantle of responsibility, you are helping to put more authority in the hands of fewer people.  It's contributing to that leader feeling like they have to make all the calls because the people who work for them won’t.  Over time, this becomes a habit. Habits build the culture. And poor culture stifles innovation, autonomy, and growth. 
4. It creates additional risk. Most importantly – and ironically – the act of avoiding risk personally creates additional risk for the company. The person presenting the information is the expert.  To provide someone like me with a few bullet points of information summarizing huge quantities of work on a specific issue and years of experience in that specific area actually creates more business risk.  In essence, refusing to make the call replaces in-depth knowledge and specific experience with – at best – generalized business knowledge and leadership experience.  With today’s complexity, that increases risk rather than lowers it.   

If you find yourself nervous about making the call, remind yourself of the following:

1. Taking personal risk is what separates the best from the rest.  The difference in life is not between those who take a risk and succeed vs those who take a risk and fail.  The difference in life is between those willing to take the risk and those who are not.   
2. It’s your job. Remind yourself that your job is to leverage your expertise to help the business.  You’re not doing it if you’re withholding your opinion.
3. You’re the expert. You’re in the role you’re in (the reason your customer has come to you) because you have an area of expertise.  By simply providing them all the information and saying “it depends,” you are shirking your responsibility and putting the monkey on their back.
4. You are likely not the only one they are relying on. Rarely are major decisions based on one person’s opinion.  Your call is likely one of many that the person is using to evaluate a decision. 
5. You don't have to be right. Your job isn’t to be right.  It's way more fun if you are, of course, but your job is to think clearly, create a good mental model and make a call based on the best information you have today.
6. You don’t have to be 100% certain.  It’s ok to express some degree of confidence percent.  Just don’t say 50%, as that takes you right back to square one.
7. Making a call is like building a muscle.  It will get stronger with time as you get more comfortable exercising it.

Three additional suggestions:

1. Explain your reasoning.   If there is time (and there almost always is), explain your reasoning.  I was talking to some customers about the fertilizer markets yesterday.  I explained the bulls – the various factors we see that could lead prices up – and the bears – those events which could cause prices to decline. I then explained how we saw the markets shaping up over the short term and long term and where we were willing to accept risk. I finished by explaining our choices and making a recommendation of what I would do if I were them. I have no clue if I’ll be right or wrong.  But at least our customers have a clear sense of our view upon which they can test their assumptions.
2. The more specific your recommendation, the better. If you’re going to make the call, make it a good one, with details.  “I think the market will go up” is better than nothing but it is not nearly so good as “I think the market will move up $10-20 in the next 30 days but I think we’ll see it moderate for the next 30 before coming under pressure between 60 and 90 days.  We’ve bought our short term needs but are staying out beyond that due to longer-term risk.”   
3. Ask them what they think.  Now that you’ve made yourself vulnerable, it is totally fair to ask them what they think. I think you’ll find it will generate a discussion.  More excitingly, you’ll likely learn some additional facts or some different assumptions they have.  It may change your mental model. I can’t tell you how many times I have learned more about the markets through these conversations, particularly because they often have significantly more information about their local markets or area of expertise.  

Not all of the responsibility for this struggle rests with the junior leaders.  Senior leaders need help to facilitate junior leaders making calls.  The first step is to avoid jumping in and making the call when presented with the issue.  I struggle with this one a lot.  I love making decisions.  Thus, I’m working on stepping back and (without throwing objects or berating them) helping them get comfortable making the call.  The second step is to support their decision even if it isn’t something you 100% agree with or it turns out to be wrong (perhaps especially if it turns out to be wrong).  An organization where junior leaders are leading and getting it right 80% of the time is far superior to one where only the senior leaders make all the decisions and are right 95% of the time — and that assumes the less informed senior leaders actually make better decisions, something that is far from a given.  

Steve Jobs summed it up best when he said, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they will tell us what to do.”  He's right. We need more people who are willing to take the risk and make the call and more senior leaders who are willing to let them.