The agents radioed their colleagues at the kidnapping command center and a few minutes before midnight, SWAT trucks arrived at the Atlanta apartment complex the suspects had mentioned. Officers jumped out of the vehicles and ran past dilapidated buildings. They paused in front of one home and rammed their way through a wrought-iron door. Inside were two men sitting in chairs with guns next to them, caught completely off guard. The room also contained ropes, a shovel, and bottles of bleach. The men had recently used their phones to send texts about how to dispose of a body. “Get bleach and throw it on the walls,” someone had ordered them. “Maybe do it in the closet.”
An officer in riot gear ran into a bedroom and tore open all the doors. Inside the closet, he found Frank Janssen tied to a chair, unconscious, with blood still on his face from where the assailants had pistol-whipped him. He had been missing for six days by then, and was severely dehydrated. The police cut him free and carried him out of the apartment, past where Janssen’s attackers lay on the floor, hands cuffed behind their backs. Janssen was put into an ambulance and rushed to the hospital. When his wife saw him, she began sobbing. For almost a week, no one had known if he was alive or dead. And now here he was, with no serious injuries beyond bruises and cuts. He was released two days later with a clean bill of health.
The breakthrough in the Janssen case didn’t occur simply because the bureau’s computer systems connected the dots between his kidnapping and an old, seemingly unrelated interview with a confidential informant. Rather, Janssen was rescued because hundreds of dedicated people worked nonstop to chase dozens of leads, and because an agile culture empowered junior agents to make independent decisions and follow the clues they thought made sense.
“Agents learn to investigate by listening to their guts and learning they can change direction when new evidence appears,” Fulgham told me. “But for those instincts to be unlocked, management has to empower them. There has to be a system in place that makes you trust that you can choose the solution you think is best and that your bosses are committed to supporting you if you take a chance that might not pay off. That’s why agile has been embraced at the bureau. It talks to who they are.”
This, ultimately, is one of the most important lessons of places such as NUMMI and the lean and agile philosophies: Employees work smarter and better when they believe they have more decisionmaking authority and when they believe their colleagues are committed to their success. A sense of control can fuel motivation, but for that drive to produce insights and innovations, people need to know their suggestions won’t be ignored, that their mistakes won’t be held against them. And they need to know that everyone else has their back.
The decentralization of decision making can make anyone into an expert—but if trust doesn’t exist, if employees at NUMMI don’t believe management is committed to them, if programmers at the FBI aren’t trusted to solve problems, if agents aren’t encouraged to follow a hunch without fear of admonishment, organizations lose access to the vast expertise we all carry within our heads. When people are allowed to stop the assembly line, redirect a huge software project, or follow an instinct, they take responsibility for making sure an enterprise will succeed.
A culture of commitment and trust isn’t a magic bullet. It doesn’t guarantee that a product will sell or an idea will bear fruit. But it’s the best bet for making sure the right conditions are in place when a great idea comes along.
That said, there are good reasons companies don’t decentralize authority. There is a powerful logic behind investing power in only a few hands. At NUMMI, a small group of disgruntled workers could have bankrupted the firm by pulling andon cords needlessly. Inside the FBI, a misguided programmer could have built the wrong computer system. An agent might have followed the wrong hunch. But, in the end, the rewards of autonomy and commitment cultures outweigh the costs. The bigger misstep is when there is never an opportunity for an employee to make a mistake.
A few weeks after his rescue, Frank Janssen sent a thank-you letter to the agents who rescued him. “I have never felt a greater feeling of joy, relief, and freedom than that miraculous moment when I heard a firm American soldier’s voice say, ‘Mr. Janssen, we are here to take you home,’?” he wrote. “Despite the nightmare that I experienced, the fact that I am writing this letter from the comfort of my home is a testament to the many wonderful things that were done by many wonderful people.” It was a calamity that he was kidnapped, Janssen wrote, and a testament to the commitment of the FBI that he was saved.
* * *
* The Federal Bureau of Investigation was provided with summaries of this chapter. Please see the chapter’s endnotes for the bureau’s responses. The Janssen family did not reply to repeated attempts to seek their comments by telephone and certified mail. Details regarding this case come from court documents, interviews, and other materials specified in the endnotes. At the time of writing, the allegations of criminal activity contained in this chapter had not been adjudicated by a court of law, and thus remain allegations rather than proven facts. Please see the chapter’s endnotes for further details and the responses provided by the attorneys of those implicated in this alleged crime.
DECISION MAKING
Forecasting the Future (and Winning at Poker) with Bayesian Psychology
The dealer looks at Annie Duke and waits for her to say something. There is a pile of chips worth $450,000 in the middle of the table and nine of the world’s best poker players—all men, except for Annie—impatiently waiting for her to bet. It’s the 2004 Tournament of Champions, a televised competition with $2 million to the winner. There is no prize for second place.
The dealer hasn’t put down any communal cards yet, and Annie is holding a pair of tens. Her hand is strong—strong enough that she has already shoved most of her chips into the pot. Now she has to decide if she wants to bet everything. All the other players have folded except for one—Greg Raymer, aka “the FossilMan,” a rotund gentleman from Connecticut who carries pieces of petrified bark in his pockets and wears sunglasses with holographic lizard eyes.
Annie doesn’t know what cards the FossilMan is holding. Until a few seconds ago, based on how things were proceeding, she figured she was going to win this hand. But then the FossilMan pushed everything onto the pot and threw a wrench in Annie’s plans. Has the FossilMan been playing her this whole time? Luring her into bigger and bigger bets while waiting to pounce? Or is he trying to scare her off with a wager so large he thinks she’ll get spooked and walk away?
Everyone is staring at Annie. She has no idea what to do.
She could fold. But that would mean forfeiting the tens of thousands of dollars she’s spent to get to this table, all the progress she’s made over the past nine hours, everything she’s worked so hard to earn.
Or she could match his wager and bet everything. If she loses, she’ll be knocked out of the tournament. If it pays off, though, and she wins this hand, she’ll instantly become the tournament’s frontrunner, a step closer to paying for her kids’ school bills and her mortgage, not to mention her messy divorce and all the uncertainties that give her stomachaches at night.
She looks again at the mountain of chips on the table and feels a pressure rising in her throat. She’s had panic attacks all her life, breakdowns so severe that she used to lock herself inside her apartment and refuse to leave. Twenty years ago, during her sophomore year at Columbia University, she became so anxious she walked into a hospital, begged them to admit her, and didn’t come out for two weeks.
Forty-five seconds pass while Annie tries to figure out what to do. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I know I’m taking too long. This is just a really hard decision.”