Speaker 1: Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of
Speaker 1: performance through strong human relations, team building and golachieving. This
Speaker 1: is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host Paul Fellovledo.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 2: It's episode seven forty four. Today's episode is called tech
Speaker 2: lag in high speed decisions. I want you to imagine something.
Speaker 2: You're driving a car using a backup camera that's delayed
Speaker 2: by three seconds. You turn the wheel, nothing happens. You
Speaker 2: turn it a little more and still nothing, and then
Speaker 2: suddenly the image catches up and you realize you're headed
Speaker 2: towards a parked vehicle. I think everyone would agree that's
Speaker 2: a dangerous way to drive. Unfortunately, that's exactly how many
Speaker 2: leaders run their organizations without even owing it. They're making
Speaker 2: high speed decisions using delayed information. The technology exists, the
Speaker 2: dashboards exist, the reports exist, the notifications exist, and now
Speaker 2: AI exists. The problem is that the information often arrives
Speaker 2: after the decision window has already passed, and when leaders
Speaker 2: don't recognize that lag, they create problems that never needed
Speaker 2: to exist. Think about sports. A quarterback has about two
Speaker 2: seconds to decide where the football goes. Imagine if the
Speaker 2: quarterbacks helmet displayed the defense from five seconds ago. The
Speaker 2: play is already different. The information is technically correct, it's
Speaker 2: also completely useless. Many organizations suffer from the same problem.
Speaker 2: Leaders receive reports about employee morale from six months ago,
Speaker 2: customer complaints from thirty days ago, finance data from last quarter,
Speaker 2: in performance reviews based on events everyone has already forgotten. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the business environment has already changed. The workforce has already changed,
Speaker 2: the customer has already changed, the threat has already changed.
Speaker 2: The leader is staring at a historical snapshot while trying
Speaker 2: to solve a current problem. That's tech lag, and it
Speaker 2: shows up everywhere I see it often. In emergency services
Speaker 2: and ambulances responding to a call, the crew receives information
Speaker 2: from dispatch, and halfway to the scene, the situation changes,
Speaker 2: the patient condition changes, the location changes, and additional hazards appear.
Speaker 2: The information arriving in the vehicle is technically accurate based
Speaker 2: on what was known five minutes ago. Five minutes can
Speaker 2: be an eternity. The crew has to constantly reassess because
Speaker 2: decisions based on old information can become dangerous and the
Speaker 2: same thing happens in business and manager sees productivity numbers
Speaker 2: showing a healthy department and three key employees submitted resignations yesterday.
Speaker 2: The dashboard hasn't caught up yet. The numbers look great,
Speaker 2: The reality is a completely different story. Technology creates a
Speaker 2: dangerous illusion. It makes us believe we are informed. Being
Speaker 2: informed and being current are not always the same thing.
Speaker 2: Some leaders have become addicted to dashboards. They refresh charts
Speaker 2: all day long. They monitor metrics, they watch trends, they
Speaker 2: study spreadsheets. Then they walk right past the employee who
Speaker 2: could tell them exactly what is happening. The dashboard says
Speaker 2: everything is green. The employees are telling a different story.
Speaker 2: Which one is more current, which one has less lag?
Speaker 2: Many times it is the human being standing right in
Speaker 2: front of you. This is one reason I often tell
Speaker 2: leaders to get out of the office. Leadership happens in
Speaker 2: the field. Leadership happens at the counter. Leadership happens in
Speaker 2: the hallways. Leadership happens where the work is being done.
Speaker 2: The closer you get to the work, the less lag
Speaker 2: exists between reality and your understanding of reality. Now, let's
Speaker 2: talk about artificial intelligence. AI is becoming one of the
Speaker 2: greatest decisions support tools ever created. It can summarize, it
Speaker 2: can identify patterns, It can help leaders evaluate options. It
Speaker 2: can process information faster than any human being. I teach
Speaker 2: leaders to embrace these tools because they are incredibly valuable.
Speaker 2: The mistake happens when leaders assume the output is real
Speaker 2: time truth. AI is only as current as the information
Speaker 2: it receives. If the data is delayed, in complete, inaccurate,
Speaker 2: or outdated, the recommendation may also be delayed and complete, inaccurate,
Speaker 2: and outdated. Technology accelerates processing, it does not automatically eliminate lag.
Speaker 2: A leader's responsibility is to understand the age of the
Speaker 2: information they're using. Pilots learn this concept very early. I
Speaker 2: often talk about aviation because the lessons are so powerful.
Speaker 2: A pilot might receive weather information before departure. That information
Speaker 2: could be perfect, and twenty minutes later it might be
Speaker 2: completely different. Storms move, visibility changes, winds shift. The pilot
Speaker 2: who assumes the old report is still accurate creates risk.
Speaker 2: The pilot who continuously updates their situational awareness stays ahead
Speaker 2: of the aircraft, and leadership works the same way. Situational
Speaker 2: awareness is not a one time event. It is a
Speaker 2: tenuous process. The best leaders are constantly asking what has changed,
Speaker 2: what am I missing? How old is this information, what
Speaker 2: happened after this report was generated? Who is closest to
Speaker 2: the problem right now? Those questions reduce decision lag, and
Speaker 2: that brings us to something I call leadership velocity. Leadership
Speaker 2: velocity is not how fast you make decisions, it's how
Speaker 2: fast reality reaches. You think about that for a second.
Speaker 2: Some leaders make decisions quickly, but are working with information
Speaker 2: that's two weeks old. Others make decisions at the same
Speaker 2: speed while using information that is ten minutes old. Those
Speaker 2: leaders have a massive advantage, not because they're smarter, not
Speaker 2: because they work harder, because they reduce the distance between
Speaker 2: reality and decision making. That's where modern leadership is headed.
Speaker 2: The organizations that win over the next decade will not
Speaker 2: necessarily have the biggest budgets. They will not necessarily have
Speaker 2: the most employees. They will not necessarily have the most technology.
Speaker 2: They will have the shortest lag between what is happening
Speaker 2: and what leadership knows is happening. The winning organizations will
Speaker 2: see reality faster. The winning leaders will see problems sooner.
Speaker 2: The winning teams will adapt before everyone else. So here's
Speaker 2: your challenge today. Look at the information that you use
Speaker 2: most often and ask yourself one simple question, how old
Speaker 2: is it? Not when did you receive it? How old
Speaker 2: was it when you received it. There's a huge difference.
Speaker 2: The answer may reveal blind spots you never knew existed,
Speaker 2: and once you identify those blind spots, you can begin
Speaker 2: shortening the gap between reality and response. Because in leadership,
Speaker 2: the quality of your decisions often depends on how quickly
Speaker 2: reality reaches your desk. So the next time you review
Speaker 2: a dashboard, a report, a spreadsheet, or an AI generated recommendation,
Speaker 2: pause for a moment and ask yourself how much lag
Speaker 2: exists between this information and reality. That single question may
Speaker 2: completely change the way you lead. The leaders who thrive
Speaker 2: in the future won't be the ones with the most data,
Speaker 2: They'll be the ones closest to the truth. This has
Speaker 2: been the seven minute Leadership podcast, and I thank you
Speaker 2: for listening.
Speaker 1: For more Paul Fell of Alito Podcasts, visit paulfellowalito dot com.