Best Possible Outcome

CHAPTER 4TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS

As a business leader, part of your role is to know when something does not ‘smell’ right.

As a company director, your role is to interrogate board papers looking for that clue that foreshadows something amiss — the expenditure decreases on a line item in the cash-flow document; the spike in workplace accident near misses; the resignation of an executive prior to an external audit. Each of these could mean nothing, but as a leader it is your job to be attuned to any signals that could indicate financial, cultural or compliance issues.

The same is true for management. Read your environment and listen to your gut. Use your intuition to challenge the status quo and drive innovative thinking. Intuition can be a powerful tool for understanding when a risk is being realised — an unusual call from a journalist; a spike in absenteeism; finances not reconciling accurately; even just the hint of an adversarial environment in the lunchroom.

By the end of this chapter you will understand how important it can be for you, as a leader, to trust your gut.

ONE WE GOT VERY RIGHT

As a junior commander I often looked at the world through an overly optimistic lens. The result was that I went against my gut instinct and believed the best of a situation — to my own detriment. But in Baghdad in 2006 I trusted my gut instinct, and it led to the best possible outcome — lives were saved.

I talk a lot in this book about what we got wrong and what can be learned from these ...