The Campbell Academy Blog | Colin Campbell (61)

70% then go..

When or if you look into characteristics of leadership in Harvard Business Review (perhaps you're not quite as sad as I am), you can learn of different traits that characters have or different skills that people develop and use to be better in roles that involve guiding, mentoring, and supporting people to better places. One of those is 'executive function'.

Executive function is the ability to make a decision, and in particular, the ability to make a decision quickly and under pressure or stress to improve things for you, for everyone, for the organisation, and for the tribe.

Executive function, time and time again comes up as being one of the critical mindsets and psychological behaviours that really successful leaders have.

It's been studied in great detail in journals such as the Harvard Business Review and other management research centres. What is obvious is that good leaders never wait for 100% information before making a decision, particularly in times of stress.

Good leaders surround themselves with people they trust, who have more information than they do in specific areas (the specialists).

So they know that there's a pretty good chance that once they get that information from the specialists, about 70%, it's time to make a decision and go. Then, they use their personalities, charisma, or overall sales techniques to bring people with them on the journey towards a better place, away from the trouble, strife, or pressure or into the opportunity that exists.

Leaders are generalists almost always, and they should be; even if they have a specialist qualification, they evolve into generalist status.

They have a broad view of everything, not a detailed view of anything.

Leaders use specialists to give them information at the 70% level, to make decisions, and to make things better.

Interesting, isn't it?

For a long time, we all considered being a specialist was the pinnacle, it turns out that all we do as specialists is work for brilliant generalists.