Thinking is strange. On the one hand, we need it. Yet the more we think, the more our heads hurt. If we don’t think enough, we don’t understand situations properly. Yet when we think too much, we instantly over-complicate things. So what is the ‘right’ balance – a ‘healthy’ amount of thinking to do? Just as importantly, what role should thinking and ‘brains’ play in leadership? Is good leadership about doing things in a clever way? The journey to the answer lies in how many X’s you can handle.
The impact of our brains on our behaviours shouldn’t be underestimated. So how do we feed our brains? Here’s what many of us do.… we experience things which we use to create perceptions… then we create ‘information’… then we find a way of understanding this information… we react to it… we make assumptions… then we have a very private response to all this that creates what we call ‘opinions’. Sounds like a straight-forward process, but what does thinking do for leadership?
This last week, the British Defence Minister Dr. Liam Fox has been torn to pieces by the press. The story has gone a little like this… the minister has a close friend. This friend has described himself as an advisor to the Minister when meeting important people in business and around the world. Though not an official representative of the British Government, this man has participated in extensive discussions concerning Government relationships and decision-making. Who was this man? How much did he influence his friend the Minister? Was his presence good or bad? How do we work out ‘right and wrong’ in this situation? Just as importantly, given that the Cabinet Minister – a very clever chap with a PhD – sits right at the core of Britain’s political leadership, how should his boss – the Prime Minister – be a great leader here? What and how should a Prime Minister be thinking during this?
The Minister resigned. But hang on. How many assumptions are we making? How reliable was the information that led to this scandal? How planned was the role of the media? Who benefits from the Minister being removed and replaced by someone else? How certain can we be that what we have now is ‘better’ than what we had before? How powerful is human reaction to incoming information and how easily-to-manipulate do these many sources of information make us? Managing response-to-information is an interesting challenge.
A document released by the British government[1] shows how clever the British Government used to be at managing spies. In 1939, Britain’s leadership created something called “Security Intelligence Middle East” (SIME). It was run by MI5 officers based in Cairo. This was rapidly followed by the creation of the “Inter-Services Liaison Department” (ISLD), run by MI6 Officers based in Istanbul. Both organisations work to protect British interests. Broadly speaking, MI5 stops people getting up to mischief in Britain, whereas MI6 is responsible for conducting mischief abroad. Of course, these lines sometimes became blurred, so the political leadership then created something called “SIME Special Section”, which contained officers from both services.
SIME Special section created a leadership group called the ‘Twenty Committee’, also written as the “XX Committee”. This contained some very clever people. As you might be able to guess, the role of this “XX Committee” was to devise clever ways of getting enemy spies to “Double-Cross” (XX) their own people. In other words, they used to catch the spies of their enemies (Nazi Germany then later the Soviet Union etc) then ‘turn’ these agents into ‘Double-Agents’, meaning that these enemy spies instead began serving Britain while pretending to be Britain’s enemy. These Double-Agents clearly betrayed those who trusted them. All the time, they had to pretend to hate Britain.
Imagine what would have happened if the Media had got hold of this, received only half the truth about this and splashed the half-news across TV screens. Like headlines, how many Leadership decisions are made and opinions formed with only part of the needed information?
The Thirty Committee (“XXX Committee”) took things even further. More than ‘Double-Crossing’ their enemy, the XXX Committee ‘Triple-crossed’ the enemy. They did some really clever disinformation. When Britain’s own spies were captured and the enemy tried to turn them into Double-Agents working for Britain’s enemy, Britain would then turn them back again. In other words, the enemy would THINK the spy was originally working for the UK, they’d THINK the spy had been convinced to betray Britain, but all the time, the information being passed by the spy to Britain’s enemy was created by British Intelligence in such a way that the enemy would make poor decisions, while THINKING they were being really clever. Britain’s XXX Committee was blooming clever. They came up with the sneakiest of ways of saving British lives by disinforming Britain’s enemies. They created false spy networks and ways of disinforming the enemy that make your head hurt. One of their operations (“Operation STIFF”) even involved them dressing a corpse in a military uniform and breaking the corpse’s neck, before strapping the corpse into a faulty parachute and throwing it out of an aircraft over enemy territory. The corpse was armed with ‘real’ codes which enabled the enemy, once the body had been discovered (and assumed to have been killed while parachuting), to intercept “secret” British communications. The communications were of course entirely false, but the enemy didn’t know that. The enemy made decisions based on false information and lives were saved.
In the world of Defence and Security, Secret Agents need to cross (X) people. Double agents need to double-cross (XX) people. And Triple Agents need to triple-cross (XXX) people. How much farther can this go? And just as importantly, how many of these X’s can your head deal with?
Few of us are spies, but how much information and thinking do we allow ourselves to get bogged down with? How many X's do we introduce into our lives? What happens when we think? And when we think about what others are thinking? What about when we think about how others think we might be thinking? And should we be thinking about how to influence how others could possibly be made to think if we just start thinking a bit differently? Thinking about thinking provokes thought.
Head hurting yet? Leadership isn’t about thinking, so what’s the best way of leading people? What else is it that makes some people great at leadership?
Forget the X’s. Stop thinking. Turn off your mind. Ditch the words. Throw your postgraduate Degrees away. Stop reasoning. Bin the balanced consideration. Put down that Sudoku… give up trying to explain, justify or riposte.
Just be you.
There’s nothing quite like you. The way you are, the ways in which you behave, they all make the biggest difference. Your instincts are exceptional. Just forget using language to describe them. Don’t think about it. Forget the interpretations, descriptions and perceptions of others. Just be.
If you’re a leader and want to do a great job, it’s easier than you think….
Be what you want to see. It’s a no-brainer.
:-) Jonathan X
[1] PRO KV4/197
