Leadership Cheat Codes
A Sneak Peek into a Long-Simmering Project
THE AIM for this post is to finally put some words to screen about a very old project I’ve been working at on-and-off after a bit of a hiatus while I finished work on PBC Analyzer PRO and a Kanban Method teaching aid app you can see here. It is to put together a condensed handbook of management proverbs or truisms that have percolated in my mind for a number of years, inspired by my deep study of Deming’s philosophy and the thinking of his contemporaries like Scholtes, Ackoff, and more.
My hope is to collect the best cheat codes into a book along with some short stories drawn from real experiences that help to set them in the reader’s mind, especially those who are on a path to leadership—although, they will benefit anyone to know. What follows is a sampling of the first five cheat codes for your review.
Origin Story
In the preface to Peter Scholtes’ The Leader’s Handbook he describes a conversation he had with an attendee to a workshop he was delivering to a large org in Sao Paolo, Brazil. One of their VPs approached him afterward and with great earnestness looked him in the eye and said, “YOU SHOOK MY BRAINS!”
As Scholtes retells it, he wasn’t sure if this was a compliment until the VP smiled, and he credits them with inspiring his book which has the aim of giving readers “a troubled mind and shaken brains” — in other words, to shake them out of the stupor of the prevailing ways we think about the correct order of things.
He then lists some examples of “brain shakers”:
More than 95% of your organization’s problems derive from your systems, processes, and methods, not from individual workers…
Changing the system will change what people do. Changing what people do will not change the system…
Current buzzwords like empowerment, accountability, and high performance are meaningless, empty babble…
95% of the changes undertaken in organizations have nothing to do with improvement…
The greatest conceit of managers is that they can motivate people…
Behind every incentive program lies management’s patronizing and cynical set of assumptions about workers… [that] implicitly say, “I’m okay, you need incentives.”
(pp. ix-x)
From Shaken Brains to Cheat Codes
These “brain shakers” have stuck with me for years, and I began to collect my own based on Scholtes, Deming, Ackoff, and others as quick shorthands for communicating deeper concepts to coachees. As I played with them, I realized I needed a way to also express what they do to a younger generation of future aspiring leaders. So, while on a run, which is where I do most of my deep thinking, it occurred to me that these ideas don’t just alter the chemistry of the brain with new neural connections, they also confer an “unfair” advantage to those who understand them, kind of like a cheat code in a video game.
For those not of the culture, a video game cheat code is a way to get extra advantages that make winning the game or progressing through tough challenges easier. You don’t have to contend with trying to take out the Big Bad Evil Guy at the end of a level with a pea shooter but a BFG 9000 rocket launcher.
Similarly, these “cheat codes” let you rocket through challenges in management to get to the good stuff. They let you peer through the veils that cloud the vision of your peers to see things they cannot, and so do things they cannot understand— until they see the results and ask for your cheat codes.
Cheat Code #0: No Instant Pudding
So, we begin with the zeroeth stage, and this one comes straight from Dr. Deming when explaining why he could not replicate the Japanese Miracle in North America overnight, as was being demanded of him by the captains of industry in the early 1980s. The Japanese had too far a head start and would not stand still to wait for the Americans to catch up, but they had to start somewhere, and in this case it is the realization that there’s no substitute for learning.
With this understood, the lessons beginneth.
Cheat Code #1: Management in Any Form is Prediction
Another from the good Dr. Deming is the appreciation that management is properly understood as a lens through which phenomena is interpreted. In other words, a theory. A common question I ask new management coachees is “explain your theory of management to me”, by which I mean what are the rules, assumptions, heuristics, and knowledge you use to guide your decisions every day. These form the basis of unlocking further levels of knowledge.
Cheat Code #2: Good Predictions Depend on a Systems View
This is my own synthesis of multiple inputs from Deming, Dr. Bill Bellows, Ackoff, and others. It expresses the “why” behind learning Deming’s theory of management, like the System of Profound Knowledge: to make better predictions on actions (or inactions) to take based on an appreciation of what you’re managing, which is a system.
Systems do not respond linearly to management fiats and diktats, and much of what describes current approaches can be best described as superstitious learning where causes and effects are organized in the mind based on apparent rather than confirmed correlations. There is, as Dr. Deming notes, a temporal spread between an intervention and a feedback, which can take time to become apparent. We also need to appreciate that in a system, interventions aren’t additive, meaning they don’t stack and amplify, but can sometimes do the opposite.
Following on this is an understanding that if we see our organizations as systems of interrelationships, we begin to appreciate that its proper functioning depends on everyone working together to advance the aim of the system. This means, inter alia, that an ethos of “I did my job, you do yours” does incredible harm, and it is management’s lot to design a better system that fosters caring about how one’s work will be used by others.
Cheat Code #3: The Majority of Problems (and Performance) Belong to the System
Straight from Scholtes’ and Deming’s lips to my ears comes this next cheat code which builds on the previous one. This one unlocks many superpowers because it frees the leader from the urge to micromanage people. It carries the following corollary:
Thus, NO Amount of Skill Nor Care Can Overcome the System’s Design
A quote frequently mis-attributed to Deming says that your system is perfectly designed to obtain the results it is getting. Ergo, if you are dissatisfied with how your organization or department is working, look first to the system, then special causes of problems, then last of all, people.
As the Red Bead Experiment teaches us, a Willing Worker cannot draw three red beads or less no matter what bribes or threats or rewards we use to induce a change because the system is rigged against them. There is a ceiling to their efforts that can only be overcome by improving the system.
Cheat Code #4: The Performance of Any System Will Vary by Some Amount Routinely, and by Some Amount Extraordinarily
Regular readers and students of Deming will grok this one straightaway: it’s about common and special causes of varation, which I think leapfrogs leaders who understand it well beyond their peers. It carries the following corollary:
Good management depends on knowing how to distinguish one from the other.
This is, of course, a direct reference to the two classic mistakes of management that Dr. Shewhart related to Deming in the 1920s: Over-reacting to common causes of variation and under-reacting to legitimate special causes.
This cheat code has motivated me more than any other as I see all roads leading to and from its foundations, which is also why I developed PBC Analyzer PRO as a teaching/coaching aide.
My Vision for the Book
They say good art is opinionated, and I think this extends well into the world of writing and even software development. So it will be with this book that won’t appeal to everyone. I’ve more or less given up persuading older leaders to change and have instead directed my efforts at those not yet jaded and still full of enthusiasm to learn. This is why I’ve deliberately chosen to call it “Leadership Cheat Codes” as this is a well-understood concept to those in Gen-X and younger.
The Leadership Cheat Codes will be wrapped in an RPG-like story where the hero moves through a video game landscape acquiring keys that unlock levels that help them unravel the mystery of Profound Knowledge. It will draw upon familiar video game tropes and mechanics to propel the story forward and help the reader learn-as-they-go.
Here’s an excerpt I’ve been working on for Cheat Code #3 - it’s a sketch of how I want to frame things, not set in stone:
After loading and starting a new game your character begins in maze-like village. From muscle-memory, you effortlessly navigate your character through the maze of streets to a secret door in a dead-end that everyone else overlooks. You click “A” on the controller and appear in a new space. It looks like an office of some sort with bookshelves and stacks of papers.
Within is a wisened old man in spectacles sitting behind a desk who gives you a golden skeleton key. He explains in a word bubble above his head that with this key you can unlock doors that others cannot even see. Suddenly, they key appears enlarged in an insert on the screen. It is sturdy-looking and functional with words inscribed along its shaft:
The majority of performance (and problems) belong to the system.
As soon as you read the words, the old man disappears. While odd, you know what comes next: a faint outline of a doorway appears in the bookcase with a door and keyhole. You understand that this is part of the visual language of video games called signposting: in-game cues designed to intuitively guide you toward actions instead of telling you: “go over there, open that door”.
You press right on the D-pad of your controller to move your character over to the doorway that now solidifies. A word bubble appears over your character’s head that says “WOW!” as you briefly pause before reaching the door. You press “A” to insert the key triggering a pleasing chime as the door glows briefly around the edges before disappearing. You walk through and into a whole new level…
Thoughts?
And so, this is my thinking for how to translate Dr. Deming’s philosophy to a new generation of leaders, not by dumbing it down, but by contextualizing it as advantages from learning new things in a fun format. In this way, it is opinionated, and I’m certain like Scholtes describes in his book, won’t appeal to everyone.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
I am already compiling the stories for each cheat code in a Notion notebook that I will begin sharing when I feel it’s in good enough shape to warrant reading - much the same philosophy I have with my software efforts. First reviews will go to paid-tier subs as a thank-you for their continued support.
