The Wrong Work

It's not strategic questions going unanswered that cause the problem. It's that they get answered every day, differently, by frontline employees who are all making different choices.

Unresolved strategic issues don't just stay in the boardroom until you finally get them answered. Every unanswered strategic question leaves legions of people in your organization deciding for themselves as they go along. Everyone is less productive and more busy than they would be with clear direction. The problem is the inconsistent outcomes that are created by everyone taking their best guess while waiting for the strategy from above.

Here is an interesting example: A company I worked with had two business units. At the executive level, it was a political war. They could not commit to a decision. Was one or the other business unit the primary mission of the company? Or should both businesses get equal attention and investment? They could not decide. This debate went on indefinitely.

So what happened? Hundreds of frontline, individual contributors had to wonder, debate, and make up their own answer to the most strategic question in the company: What business are we in?

Here is an example of how this caused the company to undermine its strategy. The lack of an answer to the core question played out at customer events. Without clear direction from above, every frontline event manager had to make a concrete decision for how to present the company at the event. They had signage for both businesses in their inventory. So they each had to decide on their own, “Do we hang one sign or both? Do we make one bigger? Put one on top? Or give them equal treatment?”

They all did their best, but of course, they all made different decisions. And different local politics ensured that the company was never represented the same way twice! Because the executives left this uncertainty, the most fundamental positioning of the company was executed differently at every single event. And this resulted in wasted time, wasted money, wasted opportunity, and failure to scale. This is such a tangible example of what can happen when there is a lack of strategic clarity. The company failed to build its brand recognition consistently in the market.

LEADERS NOTE: Be right or wrong, but never unclear.

Clarity Is the Secret Sauce for Execution

In Chapter 5: Resource Reality, I talked about the fact that your strategy is where you put your resources. And if you want to get something done, you better make sure that the right resources are assigned to it.

Creating real clarity about resources is where the biggest source of conflict starts. Once you get concrete about what you intend to do—when? how? what? who? where does the money come from?—you'll raise all kinds of opportunity for disagreement.

For example, if you just say, “Our goal is to sell solutions at a higher level in our customer base,” everyone can feel happy, agree, and get along.

But as soon as you create clarity, you are inviting conflict: “But to do that means that we will take our top five reps, target them at these five strategic accounts, give the rest of their accounts to others, and change their comp plan. We'll divert marketing budget from the next product launch to create client specific marketing for these five accounts.” That is an example of describing in a concrete way what you are actually going to do, so you can do it, but it also represents the kind of clarity that invites conflict. You need to be comfortable with exposing this type of conflict.

Many teams avoid this kind of clarity and opt for a high-level, false sense of agreement and pleasantness, instead of facing and working through the discomfort. If you never take this step of stating clearly what you are actually going to do, your strategy will stall. Everyone will just nod their heads and go back to work. Having the Valor to invite and then work through productive conflict is the only way forward.

Nodding Heads

I used to think that a roomful of nodding heads around the table was a good sign. Nodding heads means we all agree, and we are going to go forth and do what we just talked about. Man, was I wrong. There are all kinds of reasons why people nod their heads.

What Everyone Is Thinking

I will get out of this meeting quicker if I just nod my head.…I wasn't actually listening, but everyone else is nodding their head, so I will too…I'd actually like to raise a concern, but my opinion isn't respected, so why bother stating it?…I really don't agree but it will be easier to nod my head now and sabotage this decision later, behind the scenes. I'll nod my head because it won't matter anyway—we never follow through with these kinds of things.

It's generally much easier to just sit in the meeting and nod your head than it is to voice your concern or disagreement, because it avoids conflict.

Clarify the Desired Outcome

First, be really clear about the desired outcome. Define what, specifically, is expected. Be really clear about:

• How the big goal breaks down clearly into smaller, concrete parts
• Who is responsible for each piece
• How each piece is resourced
• What doing something different in each case means to the old way of doing something
• How the roles of specific people change
• What the new tasks and deliverables are
• What the new behaviors and values that are expected at each level are
• How the success of each role will be measured
• What the consequences are for not doing the new thing
• What will be communicated

Don't Give People the Chance to Passively Agree

To continue the previous example, this sales organization that I worked with had a goal to sell higher up in organizations. They all agreed on that. But then to create real clarity about what they were going to do I asked the following:

• Do you expect every rep to spend some time on strategic deal making? How much time? Doing what, exactly?
• Will you pilot this in a few accounts with a few key sales reps? Which reps? Which accounts? What happens to the rest of their accounts?
• Will you offer the same products? Or will you need to create new product/solution offers to appeal at a higher level?
• How will you engage customers differently? Are people trained to do that? Who will be trained?
• Does this mean that you will split the team into tactical and strategic teams?
• Will you change the comp plans of the sales team?

Again, once we had this level of discussion, first there was a lot of arguing, but then they were able to come up with a plan with concrete tasks, owners, measures, and communications about it. Everyone knew what to do and what to expect each quarter over the course of the Middle.

Clarity and Creativity

Just a note: If you are at all concerned that this level of clarity eliminates creativity and innovation, quite the opposite happens. When you tell people clearly what is expected, why, and how it will be measured, it gives them goals and constraints that actually improve creativity. It's the lack of clarity, and not being sure what to work on or why it matters, that de-motivates people and gives them too vague a target to be inventive.

Shift Resources or Die

One of the most notable examples of not dealing with resource clarity and trade-offs that I experienced was when I was working with the leadership team of a tech company. There were about 12 managers in the room, and we defined a single ruthless priority of getting a new product out into the market by the following March.

This was truly a ruthless priority, and the group was in total alignment. Everyone in the room agreed that if they did not get an initial version of this product into the market that they would die—meaning that their business would lose credibility in the market and would likely be shut down by the parent company.

Everyone agreed. They all nodded their heads.

So then I took them through the steps of creating clarity about what they will do and putting concrete milestones on a timeline as we discussed in Chapter 3: Timing and Momentum. It became clear that if they did not start development work on this within the next three weeks, they would never make the timeline. My part is in italics:

OK, you all agree this must be done. There is no scenario where you can not do this and remain viable. Do you have a team in place to do this work?

No.

How many people would you need?

Seventeen engineers.

Do you have the skills in your organization to fill these 17 positions or do you need to hire from the outside?

We have the skills in our organization.

Since this is so important and urgent, why not use some time in this meeting to re-assign the people now?

We can't do that.

Do all of these people report to the people who are in this room, or does this involve approval from other groups?

They all report to us.

How many engineers total report to all of you in this room?

Seven hundred.

I'm sorry, so why can't you move 17 out of 700 engineers now?

Because we'd need to involve HR; it takes time…But didn't you just all agree that without putting this product in the market in March, you are all going to die? And if you don't start right now, you won't get there? It seems like you are saying that you would all prefer to run off the cliff together rather than move these 17 people.

At this moment a very senior executive, who just happened to be auditing the meeting, came to the front of the room and said, “I have to ask the same question. Why are we not just doing this now?”

As it turned out, there was a guy sitting on the side of the room turning gray. Fifteen of the 17 engineers would be coming from his team. No one in the room had the guts to expose this conflict. The guy himself kept quiet, and everyone else did not feel it was their place to speak up.

It was fascinating to me that all of them were literally not going to make the move that saved the business because they did not want to hurt the feelings of one person. So instead of one person potentially losing his team, they would all lose their jobs. For the sake of avoiding conflict, they were willing to let the whole business fail.

As it turned out, the visiting executive took the guy whose team would need to shift out into the hall, and in a matter of moments, gave him a new charter. They both came back with smiles on their faces and within minutes the 17 people were moved.

If you are not willing to deal with conflict, you will not move forward!