How EMC's CEO quashed the 'pocket veto'.

• Author: Zeckhauser, Bryn
• Position: LEADERSHIP

From How the Wise Decide: The Lessons of 21 Extraordinary Leaders by Aaron Sandoski and Bryn Zeckhauser. Copyright 2008 by the authors. Published by Crown Business, a division of Random House Inc. (www.randomhouse.com/crown).

EVEN IN A CULTURE OF CANDOR, People can still stymie implementation simply by putting their hands in their pockets, quietly refusing to execute a decision. Wise leaders prize employees who persuasively argue their opinions before a decision is made, yet who can abandon internal politics and come together as a team to implement the final choice. An essential task in achieving this is to eliminate the "pocket veto."

The term pocket veto comes from politics, where a pocket veto is the indirect rejection of a bill by the president of the United States. The U.S. Constitution gives the president 10 days (excluding Sundays) to review and sign a piece of legislation once Congress has passed it. If the president chooses not to sign the bill into law within those 10 days, and Congress adjourns during that time, the bill automatically dies.

The pocket veto can be an equally powerful tool in business. A member of your team can hear your final decision and then quietly undermine it through inaction. Mike Ruettgers ran into that problem when he was CEO of EMC.

"For a while we had a problem with pocket vetoes," he recalls. "I would make a decision and announce it and a few of the participants would walk out saying to themselves, 'I don't care...