Leadership takes practice
Narayan Pant | January 03, 2012

Imagine you are the head of Asia for a global company. For some time now you have tried to convince headquarters that resource limitations are stifling growth. Your CEO, however, sees that growth in Asian operations outstrips all other regions and expresses great satisfaction with your performance.

One day, you take another long-­‐haul flight to global HQ in New York or Frankfurt or Paris. You find a message waiting for you. Your CEO would like to see you. You’re puzzled because there was no meeting scheduled.

The CEO meets you warmly in the boardroom and says – “I’ve been waiting to talk to you. Ever since I came back from my last trip to Asia, I’ve been thinking that we need to up our game there. What resources do you need to catapult us into the top three players in that market?”

You stop dead, a bit like the dog that runs after a car every day for 3 years and then, one day, the car stops. But you have been waiting for this moment for a long time; you’re not going to mess this one up. You start going through the plans that you remember verbatim and your CEO stops you. “You’ve got it”, he says. “When can you start?”

What? It could happen. Given what’s happening in the rest of the world, this is more likely to happen now than ever before. Don’t waste time wondering whether it could happen. Focus on a much more interesting question – what if it did?
Working within the labyrinthine politics of a multinational might prompt you to think of covering your behind. And so, you commission a strategy consulting firm to develop strategy; a market research firm to research markets and an HR firm to recruit people to ramp up operations.

The reports come in and lie like gilded artifacts with gleaming plastic covers, neat colorcoded separators and the smell of laser ink on your polished mahogany desk. You now make a frightening discovery – it’s your call. No matter how smart the people who made recommendations, and how deeply they understand their subject, you can’t back away from the responsibility that goes with your position. Should you follow the recommendations entirely? Should you reject some?

And you make another discovery – you’re not sure how you should decide. Clearly, you don’t know more about these areas than the experts who have given you advice. How should you pass judgment on them?

Making calls like this goes to the heart of the leadership you have craved for so long. Should you hire the person your HR head recommends? Should you launch a product that your marketing director strongly supports? Should you fund a research project that your R&D director thinks has a great chance of success? None of these are your areas of expertise, but you still get to make the call.

Making the call requires an expertise of its own. It has nothing to do with knowing marketing or HR or technology. Leadership demands expertise in making calls where you are not the domain expert.

Right. And exactly how should you develop this expertise? It turns out that the answer is simpler than you think. You develop expertise in making “the call” like you develop any other form of expertise. Above all, you practice.

Think about that. You have to represent your company in a golf tournament. You might consider taking a few practice tee shots in the week before the tourney, might you not?

What would you tell your kids before they were taking an important exam? Answer a few practice questions maybe? So then why is it so surprising that, prior to taking some of the most important decisions of your professional life, you practice a little?
But how, I hear you ask, do I practice making decisions that I don’t know I will encounter? That’s a very good question to which I offer two possible solutions.

Some of the most successful leaders I have seen, practice all the time. Have you ever felt flattered because a successful CEO seemed to be very interested in your conclusions on some subject? Did you get the impression that she was probing your assumptions, trying to really understand how you came to your conclusions? Well, she was probably practicing making the very decision you had just made.

Try it yourself. Get into conversations with people you think know something about their subjects. Probe their beliefs. Understand how they draw conclusions and ask yourself whether you would make similar decisions. Remember, you’re not passing judgment on them. You’re just trying to understand their logic and thinking about how you would decide if you were in their shoes. You’re practicing.

A second approach is to use a decision simulator much like a flight simulator. Pilots periodically log simulator hours to keep their flying licenses. Business leaders too can periodically spend time practicing decisions. They can sit with groups of people, like management teams, and put themselves into diverse situations that need a decision. There are places where they can do this today – they are called business schools.

But business schools are so theoretical, I hear you cry, and I don’t believe what the professors say. So ignore what they say and concentrate on what they offer you – an opportunity to practice making calls. Probe the schools before you go to them. Ask them their philosophy – do they tell you their solutions, or do they allow you to explore yours? Will the professor give you the answer to the case or encourage you to find your own? Do they believe they have the answers or do they understand what they don’t know? Their answers will determine the quality of practice you will get

I understand that companies often don’t give you what you need and that’s a problem. Don’t make it an even bigger problem when they do. Don’t be like the dog with the car that stopped. Practice.

Narayan Pant is a Professor of Management Practice at INSEAD. He directs INSEAD’s Advanced Management Program where he ensures that all his participants practice.

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