What Hillary R. Clinton tells….

….about focussing on the “developing process” when making decisions for the world –

I mentioned this in my last blog-post and already gave you 1 example from the Corporate World.  The German engineer and hobby biologist Robert Bosch (*1861 – 1942) had the idea to implement the heredity process into his small workshop in Stuttgart …… which was the trigger to build his Industrial Empire.  He used this model-process to pass-on the internal knowledge to the next generation of leaders.  It was the unforeseeable but expectable start of the actual Bosch Standard of offering permanent internal trainings to the employees and leaders who work for the Robert Bosch Corporation worldwide. It became a relevant part of a stable corporate structure which allows growth and change.

Today I get back to the book “Hard Choices” by Hillary Rodham Clinton and will give you a different example.  During her role when working with President Obama she was facing many difficult decisions and the team devided those into 3 categories:

1. “well known” = existing problems they had to take over as a successor
2. “unknown”    = unexpected incidents with involved dangers
3. “solutions”    = opportunities which pop up from being fully connected with the world

She dealt with decision standards like:

• men argue that any potential win of another success is more valuable than the involved risks
• the more both sides of a decision process look for opportunities to arrange their interests of different perceptions the more the likeliness to reach a connecting progress
• avoid surprises and allow a certain predictability
• open communication channels reduce the likeliness that a huge misconception may lead to serious tension

We can also read that for world-effecting political decisions it´s relevant to show strength & stability by keeping the credibility when standing up for the American core values.  But back to the topic of slowly developing processes – I choose the China trip example:

One of her goals was to increase the opportunity of American students to study in China.  To reach and evaluate this goal she added numbers:  increasing the current N° of students up to 100,000 students within a period of 4 years.  The potential of this exchange program is the positive influence of future Chinese- and American-Managerial Personalities which no other initiative could offer.

This goal set a clear signal that the United States are truly serious with the extension of the collaboration with China, long-termly.  One core element helped setting this goal:  to lead, you need to look at the bigger picture.

I think we can learn from both examples I wrote about:  when you try something new then focus on the developing process which appears after a while and – know your goal!  Either know the decision problem well or know the goal which shall be supportive for both or all attending parties.

BE A DECISION MAKER.  BECOME OUTSTANDING.

rita jaskolla – Leadership Architect –