Simple Design in a Complex World

I facilitated a meeting today where a thoughtful, simple design for the session really paid off.

The client is just starting a major IT project that will alter (in a good way) how most of their activities are carried out.  A big deal for them.

The project leaders genuinely wanted input from the people who were invited to the meeting, but hadn’t had much success engaging this audience in the past on similar, less extensive projects.

The audience was made up of the people who would be the main users of the new system.  I couldn’t imagine how this bunch wouldn’t be chomping at the bit to have a say in what it would do and how it would look.

Reflecting on what happened, I discovered a handful of principles were at play.

Be clear on your intended outcomes, and don’t be too ambitious.

Here, we wanted simply to bring everyone to the same understanding of what the new system would do, and give people the chance to tell the project team what they thought was missing from the current concept.

DO something to establish the tone you want, don’t just declare it.

This doesn’t have to be a big deal.  However, if you want a conversation with people, you can’t start off a meeting with 60 minutes of PowerPoint.  (You should never have 60 minutes of PowerPoint, but that’s a topic for another time.)

Instead, ask people to talk to one another about their expectations for the session.  Voila!  You have conversation!  Now you can dump a little bit of content on them and they are ready to talk back to you.

Allow space for people to engage with the content and with each other.

This means don’t over-engineer the agenda.

Express appreciation for everyone’s time and interest, and be committed to follow up.

If the people who just gave you the benefit of their best thinking don’t see you taking it seriously, good luck getting them to come to your next meeting.

That’s it.  The session was a home run.  Everyone in the room left excited about the work and ready to play their part.

One of the many paradoxes of this work is that the more complex the setting and the higher the stakes, the less rigid the design of the session should be.  That’s not to say you shouldn’t be rigorous in your upfront work, but you also need to relax your grip on the agenda and outcomes in case the group needs to go somewhere else.

Thoughts On Leadership 2

I’ve been running a workshop on team leadership this week, so the topic has been on my mind.

One of the most challenging aspects of leading any group is meeting people where they are.  What does that even mean?

Leaders are supposed to lead, aren’t they?  Chart the course to a bright, new future.  Meeting people where they are feels like going backwards. 

OK.  Maybe so.  Answer this then:  How does a leader get people to want to go toward this shiny future?

You’ve got to bring them along in your thinking.  Show them what you see and how you came round to seeing it.  They haven’t been living with your vision (quite literally) for as long as you have.  They have no idea what you’re so excited about, so you have to take them on the journey you’ve been on and let them see and feel it for themselves.

No matter the situation, if you are called to step up to a leadership role, you’ll be asking people around you to start doing things differently.  To make a change.  Whether we’re talking about a 3 month project to put a new section in your website, or a reorganization of the entire company, the issue is the same.

What’s the best way to make this happen?  Speak their language.  Connect to what is important to those you want to follow you.  And to do this, you need to begin by listening.  Ask questions and then pay attention to the answers.

A scholarly piece I read recently on conversation said that speaking is the art of listening to the listening.  I like that.  A lot.

These actions may not feel like leadership in the same way that rallying the troops or whipping people into a frenzy does.  That’s because everyday leadership is so much more than that.  Even if the situation calls for rallying and frenzy-making, there are some other things you’ll have to do first.

Build trust, treat others with respect, and help people to find the courage they will need to go in the direction you’re pointing them.  This earlier post had a little something to say about how to do these things.

Whether you like the idea of leading from the front, from behind, or from the middle as your preferred position, you still have to get into the hearts and minds (especially the hearts) of those who would follow you.  Otherwise, no one’s going anywhere.

Laying the Foundation for Team Success

You’re starting up a new project and assembling the people with whom you’d like to work.  You’ve already sketched out how you’ll know you’ve been effective at getting the job done, so now you need to think about structure, design, and process elements.

Structuring the team

Be clear about who will actually be on the team.  Who’s in and who’s not.  Sometimes you don’t get as much say in this as you’d like.  Sometimes there are political considerations that have to be factored in.  Think about whether there are other ways to satisfy these needs that don’t require full membership, if that’s an issue.

Another thing about membership, stability is very important.  The disruption that results from people coming and going all the time is a real drag on productivity.

Although this seems obvious, make sure you have the skills you need, both technical and interpersonal skills.  Find them or build them. 

Finally, size matters.  Try to have your team not be any bigger than necessary to do the job (see above).

Designing the work

Whatever the work you are setting out to do, it should have three characteristics:  

1. It needs to be meaningful in the eyes of the team. 
2. People should feel responsible for the outcomes. 
3. The team should get to see the fruits of its labors; it should get feedback on how it did. 

Also, whether any one member is successful needs to be driven by whether everyone else is.  Mutual accountability is perhaps the central element of building an effective team.  If this isn’t present, you don’t have a team.  That’s not a big deal, it just means you need to think differently about the work. 

Process elements

Does the team have an end objective that is compelling?  Is its purpose and direction interesting enough to sustain it?  Ideally, the authority who gave you the project has supplied this as well.  If not, develop it in the team.

You also need to create some agreements about how you want to behave together to get your work done.  These norms can be about things like showing up on time for meetings and not interrupting when someone else is speaking.  More powerfully, they will encourage the team to continuously scan the external environment for changes and will specify what the team will always (or never) do: e.g. safety always comes first, never give the product away for free.

While it’s a very good idea to have thought about these aspects of structure, design, and process in advance, you don’t want to get too committed to them on your own.  It is crucial to work through all this when everyone is in the room together so that the commitment you build is a shared one.

Some Thoughts On Leadership

One of my favorite podcasts comes from the CBC.  It’s a show called Ideas, and the host, Paul Kennedy, takes listeners on a weekly exploration of usually quite interesting topics.  

A few weeks ago he did a piece on leadership, a subject that arises from time to time on the podcast.  In this episode, he talked about leadership through the eyes of the Canadian military.  

Not surprisingly, the “no bullshit factor” was seen as a key component of what it takes to lead young people nowadays. If you want troops to follow you, if you want to be successful influencing them, tell them the truth.  The Canadian forces have found that connecting to people through honesty and truthfulness is a big part of what makes a leader.

Perhaps there is a lesson for the US Congress in there.

These military leaders are saying that they can’t be successful, even in battle, where command and direction are coin of the realm, unless they have invested the time and energy in getting their troops to trust them.  

What’s especially intriguing is that these leaders have found that this trust comes from courage, competence, and compassion.  One of the leaders interviewed even went so far as to say that the need for empathy (i.e. compassion) increases in importance the higher in the ranks you go.

Deep down, I think this is something we all know -- that the people we experience as the most effective leaders are those who are the most authentically human, who can connect to us on some deep, personal level.  

And yet, there is an entire industry devoted to telling us what successful leaders look like, how they behave, what they say.  For all the noise that is out there on the subject, we would do well to keep these three simple principles in mind: be courageous, strive for competence in everything you do, and act with compassion.

Memo to the Super-Committee

“There is no limit to what can be accomplished if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

Over the years, this comment has been attributed to figures as diverse as Nelson Mandela, Harry Truman, former UCLA men’s basketball coach John Wooden, and Ronald Reagan.  The earliest citation I could find identifies Ralph Waldo Emerson as its originator.

It is one of my favorite notions, and I find it particularly apt -- and missing -- from the ongoing acrimony in our political process.  The story that brought it to mind this morning is the impending failure of the so-called Bi-Partisan Super-Committee.

Every voice I heard lifted from the Sunday morning talk shows stridently, unapologetically placed blame for the current impasse solely on the other side.

How have we reached this point where public discourse has become such a zero-sum game?

I am stunned that our leaders can’t seem to get themselves to move from positional bargaining to joint problem solving.  Granted, that’s harder and takes more effort, but isn’t this a situation where you want a lot of effort put in?

There is merit to the idea that these tough times call for shared sacrifice.  Meaning the way you know you’ve got a good deal is when everyone walks away unhappy.  But I think we can do better than cynicism.

It’s time for some serious reframing in those conference rooms where negotiations are taking place.  Each side has to loosen its grip on its brand of certainty long enough to be curious about the other.  You’ve got to get to understanding before you can worry about agreement.

Here’s a radical idea to go along with that:  Each side needs to recognize the complexity in the situation and acknowledge THEIR OWN contribution to it.  No kidding.  Acknowledging contribution does not mean accepting blame.

And all of this should be done in public, not just in the conference rooms.  Give the rest of us the chance to see and hear what trust, respect, and courage look and sound like.

I’ve seen these sorts of conversations, and they take people away from the limitations of either-or and win-lose thinking and move them toward something bigger.  Solutions appear that no one imagined at the start.

I can hear the objections already: That’s not how it works.  We don’t have time for this.  They’ll never go for it.  We can’t afford it.  You don’t understand.

Actually, I think we all understand.  And we know what’s really at stake here.