The Highway to Hell
As The Boss, you’re very aware of the LACK of time you have during your busy day. Like a young parent, everyone seems to be pulling on you, wanting something from you. It’s stressful and requires you speed up your decision-making and critical thinking.
Which can be very dangerous.
Because life is busy, our coping skills require us to look for patterns that predict situations that we can easily handle. If we’re not careful, we might end up making assumptions that can be very wrong.
As a frequent Southwest Airlines customer, I know both the written (open seating) and unwritten (no saving seats) rules of boarding. A few years ago I was on a flight up to Connecticut and noticed two old ladies in the section one row up and next to me. There was an empty seat between them. Now according to the flight attendant, this was to be a completely full flight but these two old ladies kept insisting their empty middle seat was “saved.”
This annoyed me, so much so that I loudly commented to my seatmate that “you can’t save seats on Southwest.”
Then, one of those two old ladies looked over at me and held up a purple placard.
“My friend is disabled and we bought this middle seat, so yes, it’s saved!”
I was incredibly embarrassed and spent the rest of that two-hour flight thinking about the assumption I made.
I captured this process on a new model I call the Highway to Hell.
- It all begins with a look at observable data. No assumptions here, just what you can see with your naked eye.
- Then, we select parts of the data to contend with. Normally we focus on something negative (two old ladies saving seats).
- Next we make assumptions about what we see (those old ladies are probably con artists. I’ll bet they probably poisoned their husbands to get their life insurance.)
- We then make a decision (I am going to passive-aggressively slam those two old ladies).
- AND then we do it. And of course in my case it turned out poorly.
I assumed. I didn’t listen. I didn’t empathize.
But that’s me. How about YOU?
The Highway to Hellis the easy road. It requires no questions or reflections and, when we’re busy, it’s the fastest way from point A to point B.
But you know where it often leads right?
So this week, listen more. Assume less. And, take time to empathize with your direct reports. In this case, slow is fast. Less is more. Think about it…