Teach Judgment

Rules are made to be questioned. Questioning and testing the rules is how we learn the guidelines and guardrails in life and work. The development begins when we expect unquestioning obedience and learn to live with disappointment. We make these rules to keep people safe and productive, and we find that the ability and willingness to comply really requires understanding the why behind the rules.

Those who are dependent on rules to govern behavior must be hypervigilant in monitoring for compliance. It is a drain on patience, productivity, and the retention of team members. Most of us are resistant to rules in general, and to those that appear arbitrary in particular. In many cases, our rules, in the form of policies and standard operating procedures, are created reactively to prevent the reccurrence of a costly mistake. We mandate that product for a certain customer should be triple-checked, thinking we can inspect quality into the product rather than teaching people to build quality into the process. When we do this, we make our own jobs more difficult; what we really desire is that people would exercise judgment. The problem is that teaching judgment requires investment of time and attention.

People who exercise judgment are highly valued because they take on responsibility for outcomes rather than tasks. They adapt to changing conditions with methods that align with the company’s values and strategy. These people want to be trusted with responsibility and authority that will challenge them and advance their careers. When we invest the necessary time training and providing graduated degrees of responsibility, they have the opportunity to practice judgment. As they develop prowess, their jobs get more engaging, and their mentors are freed to focus on higher-value activities fitting to their level of experience. We miss these benefits when we address the lowest common denominator and respond to noncompliance with rules alone.

People fail to comply because they are either incapable, unwilling, or inexperienced. If we are incapable, it may be a matter of personal limits. I may be a highly motivated printer, but the challenge of my colorblindness is career-limiting. If we are unwilling, it may be due to a contrary nature. Americans’ pioneer spirit admires those who question authority—we probably ask for the reasons behind a rule more than any other nation. Unwillingness is also characteristic of an entitled percentage of the workforce that believes employers hold unfair advantage and that resistance to authority is a virtue. It is those who lack experience who deserve our investment in teaching judgment.

Each day we neglect opportunities to develop judgment in our team members. To reverse this, I will recommend a number of strategies. First, if we are to succeed in becoming a learning organization, an incubator of judgment, we must do it intentionally. This will require us to show our work, as the algebra teacher said. It is not enough to plan in private and get the right answer. People will develop their own decision-making as they see your process and get involved. A second valuable opportunity is learning from every win and loss. Author Jim Collins called this discipline the “autopsy without blame.” It is a simple protocol requiring self-control and paying huge dividends. In the AWB, the team reviews the positive and negative results while temporarily dismissing the rank involved in the hierarchy of the company and honestly addressing four simple questions:

1. What was our objective, or what was supposed to happen?
2. What happened?
3. What was the positive or negative disparity?
4. What can be learned?

With this simple method focused on what happened rather than who did it, we can more effectively replicate winning means and prevent the reccurrence of losing methods.

Development of standard operating procedures is completely ineffective when done without input from the people who will use them to guide their behavior. Rules that are made in isolation without user understanding and involvement will, at best, result in compliance in the presence of authority (e.g., I drive the speed limit when I sense the presence of law enforcement). If we want people to do the right thing when no one is looking, they must first share our goals. When they work together to establish an our way rather than the company way, the likelihood of best practices becoming common practices increases dramatically.

Clarifying flowcharts of decision-making on key processes requires trust and time, but the task is well worth the effort. In many companies, tasks such as pricing or machine routing are a bottleneck because only a few people are qualified. This constraint can be removed with the investment of an afternoon in front of a dry erase board with those who currently do the task and those we would like to train.

Using the example of machine routing: Begin by flowcharting your approach. What question do you first ask when presented with a project? If question one is carton style, then what options does the company have in converting this box? The subsequent questions regard panel size, or number of print colors, or substrate, until the questions are exhausted. The IF/THEN flow is then prioritized and reordered. The resulting decision tree will be a guide that will allow 70 percent of routing to be done by the trainees. The final box on the decision tree will be IF yes, then route accordingly; IF no, call me.

It is a blessing when we hire a person prepared to exercise judgment. Rest assured, they did not arrive on the planet with any better judgment than did you and I. If they have not developed the wisdom and skills of experience though the investment of parents, teachers, drill sergeants, coaches, or past employers, then I recommend the above strategies. Cultivation of these skills will grow your leadership and your company.

Scott Ellis, Ed.D., is a partner in P-Squared (P ²) focused on leadership and process improvement. He co-authored AICC’s Welcome on Board and recently released Changed People Change Process: Build a Continuous Improvement Culture Where People Act Like They Own the Place. He can be reached at 425-985-8508 or scottellis@psquaredusa.com.