When Information Doesn’t Flow, Leaders Make Bad Decisions

Consider:

“When people don’t feel safe to share, information does not flow, and leaders make poor decisions which lead to poor outcomes.”

I’ve been re-watching the TV show Silicon Valley recently. I love shows about work and this one does a great job of capturing the challenging dynamics that appear in many systems.

The premise focuses on a scrappy startup that goes up against a tech giant – a classic David vs. Goliath story. In keeping with the narrative, Pied Piper (David) is nimble, a small team with a singular focus, and Hooli (Goliath) is cumbersome, with many organization layers and product diversity.

In one episode, to stay ahead of Pied Piper, Hooli CEO Gavin Belson announces a public demonstration of their version of the technology that the two companies are competing to perfect.

What follows is a classic example of a leader out of touch with the reality on the ground.

Watch the clip here.

Following Belson’s announcement, we see a quick cascade of reactions from employees at ever lower levels in the organization, each with longer delays expected than their superiors.

Each superior’s response: they would not be the one to tell the boss.

What happens next is predictable, the product demonstration fails and Hooli is humiliated publicly.

This example illustrates the perils of poor information flow across organization layers:

When people don’t feel safe to share, information does not flow, and leaders make poor decisions which lead to poor outcomes.

Facilitating Information Flow

To avoid this issue, leaders should be open to learning, source information from diverse perspectives, and build systems for continuous improvement.

Across five conversations with guests from the Land and Lead Podcast, these activities come to life.

Openness to Learning

In conversation with Robert Robinson of Thermo Fisher Scientific, he shared that “one of the key, I call it assets that I have, I think it's my ability and willingness to learn.” His view is that leaders are natural students who should be learning across every interaction. Making learning deliberate, in the early days of joining Perceptyx, Charles Newnam shared his experience of getting close to the work to understand it: “I'm just jumping right into the customer calls, listening, guiding teams, rolling up my sleeves, getting dirty with the teams. I think one, it helps me learn.”

Robert’s view illustrates that learning is constant and an asset to be leveraged and Charles’ illustrates that learning should come from the source, a powerful element for accurate information flow.

Source Information from Diverse Perspectives

On the point of the source of information, John Harrison of WebMD Health Services and Ben Banks of BNSF Railway discussed the power hearing from multiple sources.

As John explained, “you want to be open to hearing those things and not be biased just by the four people that tell you what those things are, that there's more to learn from the rest of the organization.” A keyword here is bias, that we can be led astray when we don’t have enough voices in the room. To that point, Ben shared that leaders should be “as inclusive as you can possibly be. Drive yourself towards seeking wisdom because you're going to need it.”

These leaders illustrate the importance of getting a fuller picture, to fill in the blanks and capture what’s missing.

Build Systems for Continuous Improvement

Finally, these activities can be systematized into a program of continuous improvement. As Rima Alameddine of BD shared on the show, leaders should “build a learning system. Make sure that you are creating mechanisms to ensure that your teams are constantly learning, getting customer feedback, the market signals, internal data. The learning system is about, laying out a strategy, implementing it, measuring it.”

Rima’s approach shows that learning does not end with the leader but should extend to teams and be embedded in the way the organization works. From this vantage, much can be done to ensure things are not falling through the cracks.

Importance of Information Flow

Each of these activities enforce important factors that facilitate information flow. Robert’s willingness to learn, Charles’ closeness to the team, John and Ben’s pursuit of inclusivity, and Rima’s learning system all promote circumstances for people to share their views and for leaders to see the reality of the situation.

These activities are critical for both leader and organization success. Because, as the Hooli example illustrates, where there is poor flow, there is poor performance.

If you’re leading a complex system, chances are not all information makes it to you. In many circumstances, that’s okay. Not everything should land on your desk. However, information that influences the success of your decisions should absolutely be flowing to you.

Three things you can do to help ensure the right type of flow:

• Organize regular cross-level and cross-functional panels to get perspective on all things relevant to the way forward (e.g., barriers, opportunities, etc.). This will help surface issues that are impacting system-level functioning.

• Role model the process of taking new information, actioning on what’s relevant, and sharing back the outcomes of the choices you made. This will show others that it is safe to share and that what they share is considered and addressed, if necessary.

• Map information flow in your system to identify gaps and opportunities and devise ways to optimize, given your strategy. This will help you not only understand your system and make updates but will enable you to work on things that impact flow, such as culture, structure, processes, and more.

No leader wants to find themselves on the back foot. With these approaches, you can create environments where people feel comfortable sharing so you can learn what you need to learn for you and the organization to succeed.

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