‘Coach Kriengsak, I want to you help me improve my thinking,” Virun tells me
“Khun Virun, what do you want to achieve from today’s session?” I ask.
“I want to improve my executive judgement.”
“How will you know if our session today is successful?”
“It will be a success if I can come up with a new and practical idea to enhance my decision-making.”
“Great. How do you rate yourself now in terms of executive decision-making, on a scale of 1 to 10?”
“Coach, I think I’m about 6 out of 10.”
“Where do you want to be?”
“I want to be 8 out of 10, which is where I feel I was before.”
“Khun Virun, tell me more.”
“I’ve been a CEO for three years now. My first year, I rated myself about 6 when it came to executive decision-meeting. When I was in my second year, I rated myself at 8. This year, I’d have to rate the quality of my decisions a 6 again.”
“You feel you’re going backward?”
“Yes, I am. Coach, this year I think more of my decisions were wrong compared with last year.”
“What was the cause?”
“There are three factors I can think of: some unpredictable developments have taken place this year, I didn’t have enough information and time to make a sound decision, or some of my direct reports made more wrong decisions in their respective functions.”
“Khun Virun, if you could go back in time and do it again, how would you do things differently?”
“Well, I’d start by going back to last year’s annual planning meeting, and I would ask more risk management questions. I can think of at least three times where I should have asked: what could go wrong?
“I would also encourage my CFO to talk more. Last year she was the one who warned us about local political risk, saying it would not end very soon. But I was positive that it would end in a very short time. Hence, I told her not to be so pessimistic about local politics. She kept quiet after that, and we missed the opportunity to capitalise on her strengths in anticipating risk.
“I also need to be more decisive even in cases where I don’t have enough information. Usually, I’m able to make a sound judgement if I have enough information as well as time. But during the crisis, I had to make judgement calls even when I didn’t have enough information. I remember a quotation from Work Smart by Betty Liu. She quotes Sir Martin Sorrell, the CEO of WPP Group: ‘A bad decision on Monday is better than a good decision on Friday.’
“As for the direct reports who made the wrong decisions in their respective areas, I probably would not be able to do much about that.”
“That’s good, Khun Virun. How can I help you with your thinking now?”
“Coach, how do I go about enhancing my judgement?”
“Khun Virun, judgement is a thinking process based on the input surrounding you at that moment. To improve this mental muscle, you have to exercise your thinking more. How do you think you could simulate your thinking more?”
“What if I try to find an activity in which I can practise my judgement?”
“That’s possible. What kind of activity do you have in mind?”
“I think chess would be one. But not many of the people around me play chess.”
“Anything else?”
“Coach, do you know Go?”
“Yes I do. Go, is a board game for two players that originated in China more than 2,500 years ago. The game is rich in strategy despite its relatively simple rules.”
“Coach, I have a friend who asked me to join the Go executive club in Thailand. I’ll do that.”
“Great. Who is your role model in exercising judgement?”
“The chairman of my company. He’s 70 years old. He also sits on several other boards.”
“How can you capitalise on his strength?”
“I think I’ll ask him to mentor me on executive decision-making.”
“That’s good. How do you plan to approach him?”
“I will ask him to coach me on judgement. I think if he can spare two hours each month, that would be great. But he’s a very busy person. Would it be too much to ask for this?”
“How would you ask without disturbing him?”
“I think I’ll ask him to have a lunch with me after one of our monthly board meetings. I’ll tell him in advance that I want to talk to him about teaching me how to make better judgements.”
“How will you prepare him to teach you?”
“I think I’ll use real cases in which I made poor judgements. I’ll describe these to him and ask how he would have gone about things differently.”
“All right, Khun Virun, our time is up for this week. How do you feel about this session?”
“I got more than I expected. Thank you Coach.”
Kriengsak Niratpattanasai provides executive coaching in leadership and diversity management under the brand TheCoach. He can be reached at coachkriengsak@yahoo.com. Daily inspirational quotations can be found on his Facebook fan page: https://www.facebook.com/TheCoachinth. Previous articles are archived at http://thecoach.in.th