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Wait. Now What Are We Trying to Accomplish Again?

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As we try to keep up with the many changes thrust at us in the workplace, it’s easy to get off track and focus on the wrong best new thing. It’s not uncommon that we add new projects or stray away from our existing strategic plan. We get inspired and experience a ‘fear of missing out’ when we see that attractive pitch from a vendor presentation or see a great idea a local competitor just announced as their next best flavor of the month. So how do we stay focused on doing the right thing for our business without burying our head in the sand and getting behind? These are common challenges I’ve experienced and shared with me from my many CEO friends.

It’s important to know that thinking strategically is a skill and talent that does not come naturally to most leaders. In fact, in my CEO peer-to-peer groups, it’s often discussed as the most desired skill and gap in their executive team leaders. So, let’s help them by adding a new discipline using a three-step process to our leadership team agenda items and proposals for that next big spend or grand idea.

We must start with asking about the why. If we don’t start the conversation around our purpose, the problem we are trying to solve, it is shockingly easy to focus on the wrong thing. It can lead us to falling in love with, the bells and whistles of a function or new toy that is cool, but won’t bring the value we need when we become blind sighted by a critical function that doesn't exist. We can lose sight and focus on the easy fix and may end up chasing the wrong thing. And we become what's referred to as shiny object syndrome chasers. The struggle is real.

When we ask about the problem we are trying to solve and a simple breakdown of the problem, this takes us to a good place of creating a needs assessment. Needs assessments don’t have to be complicated. Ask yourself what the most important problems are that you are trying to find a solution for and how you can ensure your recommendation meets these standards? I’ve seen decisions around software, as an example, where the need was for concurrent users, but because this never surfaced in the needs list, the full implementation was a failure because of one simple question that could have discovered this requirement.

I encourage you to take your team and your own excitement about that next new idea through the following three steps. If you do, you will start to experience success in a more strategic and high-functioning world.

 

Start with purpose first. Answer these questions:

  • What does success look like if we decide to make this change? Be specific.
  • What is the main problem we are trying to solve? How big of a problem is this in comparison to the resources it will require to complete successfully?
  • Who will be the owner of this change and how do we ensure they have the resources to be successful, including time, talent, and financial?
  • What will we give up or take off our existing initiatives that are less important?
  • What are the requirements before we launch (i.e., communication, expertise, licenses, compliance, financial, schedules, existing and new contracts, board approval)?

Secondly, and this step is critical, is to examine our biases and get them on the table for part of the strategic discussion. We all have personal biases within our comfort level around various components of decision making and it’s ok to express these. In fact, it builds trust when all team members have this healthy conversation. Stating, for example, “I tend to be more conservative in my approach to budgeting,” or “I tend to easily trust this vendor because I know them,” can be helpful to the conversation and add energy to the discussion. It creates a trusted holistic vibe. When you state, “I am biased because I used this process at my previous employer,” you add credibility to the conversation and quite frankly, your reputation as a trusted advisor. When you hide it, the opposite occurs.

 

Here are some questions you should ask yourself during this step of discovering bias.

  • What is my personal preference and why? Where are my biases showing up?
  • Is my recommendation more of a hunch or proven with adequate research?
  • Am I withholding or tainting some information because I have a preference?
  • Am I taking the path of least resistance because I don’t want to do the work?
  • Is my recommendation the best for the company or just best for me?
  • Am I looking at both the positive and negative factors equally?
  • What are our other options?

And lastly, the third step is the risk assessment discussion. It is important to discuss what could go wrong if this decision backfires, and how we will overcome this decision if it fails? This step will surface the magnitude of the decision and prepare you for contingency planning should it be a poor decision. All decisions come with inherent risk, and some of the best decisions contain risk and reward. What are you doing to discuss these risks and plan for contingencies and recovery methods should this go wrong or need tweaking?

When a team spends time in the risk assessment phase, they will often discover additional actions to minimize risk that would not have been part of the implementation or decision otherwise. You will identify through the discussion new thoughts around additional testing that should be considered or additional stakeholders that require collaboration before the launch, for example. This is a critical step to effective strategic decisions and launching with fewer oversights. It simply gains a healthy buy-in from the team members, too.

 

Here are some questions that will be helpful in this third step of risk assessment and contingency discussion:

  • What are all the things that could go wrong if we approve this change?
  • How can we ensure the product meets the performance standards we need? This will lead to a healthy conversation of needed research around verification of references, building adequate test phases, reviewing contract term cancellation clauses, etc.)
  • Does this meet our purpose and why discussed in step one?
  • What steps can I add to mitigate the identified risk?
  • Are we willing to live with this and see it as a trial if it is a failure?
  • Have we thoroughly reviewed the contract terms to ensure we are protected?
  • What are we missing that we are not talking about?

In summary, increasing your strategic thinking skills and critical thinking competency levels will lead to a more direct path to success, and more time working on the business instead of in the business. You and your team will shift from being strong executors to also being strategic leaders. Be prepared that it takes more time on the front end of the discussion, but the rewards are a speedier implementation and fewer challenges, not to mention the building of your credibility. It’s a competency worth investing in.