Situational Awareness 101
Situational awareness--knowing where you are, what you can do and how to do it--is a vital to leadership skill. Here's how to hone your own.
CIO — His avionics showed that the missiles had locked on to his plane, but the pilot knew better. He was certain that he could finish his bombing run and evade the missiles. That split-second decision cost him five and a half years of his life in a North Vietnamese prison.
The pilot is John McCain, and this personal story comes from his newest book, Hard Calls, written with Mark Salter. The book explores how leaders make decisions, in particular the tough decisions, which require guts, determination and something else—situational awareness.
Determining where you are
McCain confesses that naval aviators always believed that they had invented the concept of situational awareness. The questions a pilot must ask in combat are complex and varied but come down to knowing where you are, what you can do and how you can do it. Pushing the limits is fine but sometimes, as with McCain's collision with a SAM missile, you push too far and pay for it. That's one pitfall; the other is not being aware enough of the situation. Both can be costly.
A sound sense of situational awareness is vital to leadership decision making. A leader must know context (what is happening), circumstance (what has happened) and consequence (what could happen) at all times. For pilots, these three factors may converge within seconds; for CIOs, these situations may unfold over days and months. Nonetheless, these underlying principles are worthy of exploration by CIOs and others who deal with constant change and complexity. Let's take them one at a time.
Context. A leader must know what he or she is up against—that is, what forces are shaping your world and your decisions. Who or what is pushing for a decision? Is it a competitor? Is it your boss? Is it your community or is it a genuine need? Determining the factors pushing for the decision is vital to making the decision. For example, if you are challenged to reduce costs, you need to consider what to cut and why. Is overhead the problem? Or are you overstaffed? And if you are overstaffed, whom can you cut without reducing productivity? At the same time, do you have the right people in the right jobs? Are they properly trained?
Conundrums may arise—that is, you may have to reduce some headcount but add people with different skills. Knowing the context of your decision will help you make the right choices.
Circumstance. It is vital to consider the unfolding situation. Life is not static; it is fluid, and therefore whatever a leader does must be framed within variables. Ask yourself: What is changing now and what could change in the future?
