Doug Sundheim's Blog, page 5

Four Stories a Leader Must Master

Of all the jobs on a leader’s plate these days, perhaps none is more important than sensemaker. We’re all confronted with too much data and too many choices on a daily basis. We see countless potentially-valuable things we could do while only having time for a limited few. We’re so busy that we can’t see all the forces at play; we struggle to connect the dots. Thus, the heavy lifting of leadership has to be to help people connect those dots so they can make the smartest choices regarding where to spend time.

The best way to do this is through storytelling. Storytelling is powerful because it provides guidance without being prescriptive. Four stories in particular are the most helpful.

Who are we? – This is a heritage story. When done well it takes us back to first principals. It reminds us of our founders’ mission and values and of the organization’s history. Furthermore, it reaffirms what we will and won’t do in order to succeed. It’s simple and instantly compelling. I did some work with the spirit company Pernod Ricard a few years back and Bryan Fry, their US president, was great at this. He would often reference the story of Paul Ricard travelling the French countryside with his eponymous spirit connecting with tavern owners. Fry would use the story to remind people of the power of personal connection and the need to forge that connection with everyone they did business with.
Where are we going? – This is a vision story. When done well it paints a picture of the future. It puts us there. We understand not only what we will have achieved when we get there, but also how it will feel. We can see the impact. And we feel pulled towards it. I recently saw Steve Bock of Shinola tell an excellent where-are-we-going story at the World of Business Ideas conference. He started by painting a picture of the decline of American manufacturing, then telling the story about how Shinola is bringing it back. Their current focus is handcrafted watches, bicycles and leather goods, with more product categories to come. Instantly you could see a future with clothing, other household products etc where handcrafting would be appreciated. I found myself wanting to be a part of it.
Where are we now? – This a reality-check story. When done well it creates a healthy tension with the where-are-we-going story, inspiring people to get up and get moving. It brings our strengths and weaknesses to life. It indicates the distance we need to travel, setting the stage for our next steps. Al Pacino delivers one of my favorite where-are-we-now stories in the football movie Any Given Sunday. He pulls no punches in his assessment of the teams current struggles using it to light a fire underneath them.
How do we get from here to there? – This is a practical action story. When done well it reduces anxiety about the road ahead. People see a path forward. Even if difficult, it looks doable. This story should not only clarify what we will do, but also what we won’t do, setting clear priorities. The best way to tell this story is to force yourself / your team to pick three things you need to do to get to where you’re going, in a finite time period. Then string those three things together in a story. Sounds simple, but it works.

It’s worth noting that it is not necessarily leader’s job to define all these stories on her own. Other members of the organization must provide input and help to craft. However, it is the leader’s job to ensure that these stories get crafted, and then to tell them over and over again to provide context and guidance for decisions and action.

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Start Before You Know Where to Start

There’s a moment, when you’re trying to do something big or new, that you realize that logical analysis has taken you as far as it can. It’s never going to convince you to take that final step. Too much still feels uncertain. You realize that if you’re going to take that final step, it’s going to have to be a leap of faith.

I call this the kinetic moment. It’s the moment when you see the potential in something and decide to make a move, even though you still have doubts. Kinetic moments are often filled with heart palpitations, sweaty palms, and butterflies. They’re characterized by an indescribable mixture of excitement, tension, terror, and relief.

We reach kinetic moments for one reason: not risking seems scarier than risking. We rarely love the thought of taking action in these moments, but we hate the thought of not taking action. So we act.

An example is the musician who feels stage fright but takes the stage anyway because he can’t imagine not playing his music for others. Or an average, usually quiet citizen who speaks up because not saying something feels too irresponsible. Or an entrepreneur who is hesitant to invest in a new idea, but who jumps in because not taking her shot is unimaginable.

Once you jump in, you often learn an important lesson: your initial fears were largely unfounded. Things weren’t as difficult as you thought they would be. You found support where you least expected it. And you were more capable than you realized.

You just had to start moving in order to understand this.

The Art of Starting

If you don’t start somewhere, you’ll never get anywhere. I’m always amazed at how this little truism trips people up time and time again. I include myself. I’ll have an idea, think about it, plan for it, and then sit on it for a while, waiting for the timing to be better before getting started. But better timing never comes. The idea keeps eating at me. I think about it some more, and finally I just jump in. Within days, I always have the same thought: worrying about starting was much more painful than doing it.

As a case in point when writing my books I wasn’t sure how to approach several chapters and what exactly I wanted to say. I sat down to think about them. Then I thought some more. Then I thought even more. Weeks passed. Finally, out of desperation, I started writing. To my surprise, what came out on the page looked completely different from what I had been thinking about for so long. There was something about writing that reoriented me and made me realize what the chapter really needed to say. Once the chapter was complete, I vowed never to get myself into that spot again. Then, two chapters later—you guessed it, stuck again.

For me, the good news was that each bout of paralysis got shorter as I found little things I could do to get me into action faster. I could talk ideas into a recorder first, or just start writing a stream of consciousness, or have others interview me before I wrote. Through the process I gained a deeper appreciation that starting is an art. And that I had to (and have to) keep experimenting with ways to start in order to get better at it.

Physics is instructive in the art of starting. Two laws in particular, inertia and momentum, are helpful reminders.

Inertia is the resistance of a body to changes in its state of motion. The only way a body moves from rest to motion, or motion to rest, is through the addition of an outside force. That means that while it takes a force to put something in motion, it’s the exact opposite once something is already in motion, it takes a force to stop it.

Momentum is mass times velocity. Once a body is in motion, every nudge forward is additive and builds steam. The more momentum something has, the harder it becomes to stop. The implications of inertia and momentum for risk-taking are profound. Start moving and physics is your friend. Don’t move and it’s your worst enemy.

Often, the force needed to start something isn’t that big. It can be a single conversation, document, or meeting. It doesn’t have to solve every problem. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be the right move. It just has to get things in motion. It just has to lead to another action. And then another. It’s easy to get so fixated on a big end goal that you discount the small efforts needed to start a process. You think they’ll barely make a dent in what you’re trying to do. However, it’s only through repeated small efforts that you ever make progress.

Excerpted and adapted from Taking Smart Risks

 

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Don’t Be a Hero

There’s one piece of advice I’ve found all long-term successful risk takers follow. Stay humble.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice.” No matter what river we stepped in yesterday, today brings different water, different currents, and different conditions—in essence, a different river.

The smartest risk takers have a deep understanding of and respect for this idea. They realize that even if they masterfully crossed one river yesterday, today is a different day. It brings just as many challenges, and sometimes even more, because the more success you have, the less vigilant you become.

To be a humble risk taker requires managing a fundamental tension between conviction and doubt. You must simultaneously make a decision to move, yet realize that you may be wrong. Conviction without doubt leads to overconfidence and loss of control. Doubt without conviction leads to paralysis and inaction. Smart risk takers balance both.

Wall Street is rarely considered a humble place, especially since the financial crisis of 2008. To many, the industry is rife with egotistical and reckless professionals. Having spent a fair amount of time with people on Wall Street, I can’t say the reputation is totally unfounded.

At the same time, some of the sharpest, most thoughtful risk managers I’ve ever met have been on Wall Street. These are people who did well before the financial crisis and have done well since it. You rarely hear about them because they tend to keep low profiles.

The Wall Street firms I know best, and have worked with the most, are institutional money managers. These firms invest money for endowments, pension funds, and insurance companies, among other large organizations. This kind of business is one of the most attractive in finance because the payoff for success is extremely high. However, it’s also one of the most brutal because the price of failure is equally high; a couple of bad years usually means the end of your career, often before it ever gets started.

Talented money managers usually have a high degree of intelligence, an analytical mind, and a steely set of nerves. These skills help them identify new ideas, pick them apart, develop conviction as to whether or not to invest, and then make strategic decisions.

Unfortunately, having talent isn’t enough to succeed in money management, a business that is littered with talented people who’ve been chewed up and spit out in the blink of an eye. Veteran money managers will tell you that the difference between the talented managers who succeed and the talented managers who don’t is humility.

The archetypal downfall of a talented money manager often goes something like this. The manager makes a few good investments and starts to feel confident. His ego grows, and he mistakenly starts to think he’s smarter than other people. Before long, believing that he has a golden touch, he starts taking irresponsible risks, not giving himself room for error if a trade turns bad. He isn’t worried because he’s confident that he’s right. Eventually, one of his trades turns bad. That fact alone isn’t a problem; everyone has bad trades. His problem is that because of his ego, he bets too much too fast on that single trade, trying to hit a home run. He ends up losing tons of money, sending his portfolio into an unrecoverable tailspin, and putting himself out of business, thus making it nearly impossible for him to ever get back in the game. In the end, it’s not his mistake that brought him down; it’s the fact that he thought he couldn’t make one.

“Don’t be a hero. Don’t have an ego. Always question yourself and your ability. Don’t ever feel that you are very good. The second you do, you are dead.” This is advice from legendary investor Paul Tudor Jones in a 1987 PBS interview after he successfully navigated the Black Monday stock market crash. Twenty-five years later, Tudor Jones is still among the most successful money managers in the world. Asked in that same interview, “When did you turn from a loser to a winner in your investments?” Jones answered, “When I was able to accept being wrong.”

“The best investment managers are wrong about 45 percent of the time,” said Dan Sundheim, a top money manager who also happens to be my cousin. “That’s the nature of our business, but a lot of people struggle with that fact. They think they have a brilliant ‘can’t lose’ idea, and it blinds them in really destructive ways. They might bet too big on it. Or they might stay in a position long after they should have gotten out of it. They lose their objectivity and judgment because they find it hard to admit that they might have made a bad call.”

It’s a recurring theme you hear from longtime money managers. Overconfidence is the kiss of death. When interviewing people for his fund, it’s one of the first things Sundheim has his antennae up for.

“We’re looking for people who can have strong, insightful ideas while simultaneously being open to the possibility that they’re wrong,” he explained. “It might seem contradictory, but it’s a really important tension for people to be able to manage. If people can’t challenge their own assumptions or aren’t open to other people challenging their assumptions, it’s usually a bad sign.”

Sundheim makes a point of challenging his own thoughts and strategies daily. Even if he feels that his analysis of a new idea is spot on, he actively seeks in-depth critical feedback from his team and his peers.

“Thoroughly pulling apart an idea and looking at it from every angle is the only way to get the detailed insights we need to make smart decisions,” Sundheim explained. “There’s no room for big egos. If one of us makes a bad bet, it affects all of us.”

 

Excerpted and adapted from Taking Smart Risks

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Choosing the Right Focus for Risk Taking

Whether or not we take a risk in a given situation depends, in large part, on where we focus our attention as we weigh the pros and cons. If we focus on the upside of risk taking, we’ll feel pulled to take the risk. If we focus on the downside, we’ll feel pushed not to take the risk.

Unfortunately, our focus isn’t derived from a rationally selected set of data. When we’re making choices, we are all dealing with cognitive biases—ways in which our minds selectively pick out only certain pieces of information to pay attention to. One bias in particular has a significant impact on risk taking.

In the late 1970s two cognitive psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, employed a series of simple choice experiments in order to understand idiosyncrasies in the way people make decisions under uncertainty. Their research uncovered what they called the loss-aversion bias. Put simply, they found that human beings hate to lose. We hate to lose so much that we’ll do just about anything to avoid it, regardless of whether or not our actions are in our best interest.

To illustrate the loss-aversion bias, consider the following example.

Imagine that you’re a doctor who’s in charge of distributing a vaccine during a serious flu epidemic in which 600 people have become ill. You’re faced with a choice between the following two programs:

Program A: 200 lives will be saved.
Program B: There is a one-third probability that 600 people will be saved and a two-thirds probability that no one will be saved.

Which do you choose? (Pick one before reading on.)

Now imagine that you’re that same doctor during the same epidemic, but this time you have a different choice of programs:

Program C: 400 people will die.
Program D: There is a one-third probability that no one will die and a two-thirds probability that 600 people will die.

Which do you choose? (Pick one before reading on.)

You might already have figured out that the two sets of choices are the exact same options, presented differently. Kahneman and Tversky presented these exact scenarios to two groups of 150 doctors. One group had to chose between Programs A and B, and the other group had to choose between Programs C and D (unlike you, they didn’t have the advantage of seeing both pairs together). The results were astonishing.

In Group 1: 72 percent chose A (avoid risk) and 28 percent chose B (take risk).
In Group 2: 22 percent chose C (avoid risk) and 78 percent chose D (take risk).

How could that be? Programs A and C were exactly the same, and so were Programs B and D. Why were the results so drastically different? Why did 75 percent of the doctors want to avoid taking the risk in the first scenario, yet 75 percent wanted to take the risk in the second?

The answer lies in how the information was framed to focus the doctors’ attention. More specifically, it lies in how the possible loss was framed, which Kahneman and Tversky found is the strongest motivator of behavior under uncertainty.

The first group of doctors was focused on a sure gain—200 lives saved. Loss-aversion bias made them less inclined to take a risk because they didn’t want to lose those 200 lives. A doctor might think, “Why would I risk losing 200 people when I know I can definitely save them? That seems irresponsible.”

Conversely, the second group of doctors was focused on a sure loss—400 people will die. Loss-aversion bias made them more inclined to take a risk because they didn’t want to lose those 400 lives. In this case, a doctor might think, “How can I let those 400 people die without at least trying to save them? That seems irresponsible.”

Ironically, both groups of doctors had the same goal—to save lives and avoid losses. Yet because their attention was focused differently, it led them to make very different decisions.

So, what are the implications of this insight for daily life?

We choose where to focus our attention every day,

and

WHERE we choose to focus our attention matters—big time.

When you choose to focus on what you might lose by taking risks—that is, what you already have (like the first group of doctors)—it makes risk taking seem like a bad idea. When you choose to focus on what you might lose by not taking risks—that is, what you don’t already have (like the second group of doctors)—it makes risk taking look like a smart idea.

With all we do we need to keep this cognitive bias in mind, and choose wisely.

 

Excerpted and adapted from Taking Smart Risks

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What Improv Taught Me About Risk Taking

A few years ago I had lost a bet with a friend and, against my wishes, was accompanying her to an improve workshop as payment. I say against my wishes because to me, improv is the ultimate in anxiety-producing situations. You’re performing before an audience with no preparation, trying to get a laugh. And you’re most certainly about to make a fool of yourself.

On stage that night, all my fears were realized. As the scene turned to me, I panicked and went blank. I felt my face flush. I didn’t know what to do next. Out of desperation, I blurted out some nonsense about wanting to play baseball. The comment was utterly ridiculous, because at that point we were supposedly on a flight from New York to Miami.

In true improv fashion, another actor chimed in without missing a beat, “That’s a great suggestion, Doug. Anyone can play baseball outside. But it takes real skill to play it on an airplane between the passengers and the seats. Thankfully, I have a bag of bats, balls, and gloves in the overhead bin!”

For the next two minutes, we played a full inning of imaginary baseball 35,000 feet above the Atlantic. It was very funny.

As I reflected on the experience later, I saw that my initial anxiety was born from a fear that I would somehow screw up. And yet there I was, screwing up, wanting to play baseball on an airplane, and yet the scene worked. Doing the “right” thing in that moment was much less important than merely doing something. My inane comment gave us all we needed—motion.

I’m still in touch with my teacher from that workshop, Scotty Watson, a comedian and an alum of the renowned Second City comedy troupe. In addition to his work on stage, Watson also runs corporate improv workshops designed to enhance creativity and leadership effectiveness. A big part of the hurdle he helps leaders and teams overcome is starting before they know where to start.

“Starting is everything,” Watson believes. “If you don’t start, nothing happens. You can apply that to anything in life. Without starting, nothing happens in your scene, nothing happens in your business, nothing happens in your relationships—the list goes on. Even starting in the wrong direction is better than not starting at all because at least something is happening. I always tell my students and clients, ‘Do something. Do anything. Just start!’”

Watson believes that starting in the wrong direction not only is a good alternative to doing nothing, but can often be the best way to start something because it wakes people up, creates tension, and causes reactions, much like my baseball comment. As Watson describes it, “No one falls asleep when someone’s screwing up.”

One of the funniest scenes he can remember involved an industry veteran, Adrian Truss, mistakenly breaking the number-one rule of improv by saying “no” to another actor’s suggestion—usually a kiss of death because it kills a scene’s flow.

“Watching Truss screw up and then dig himself out of that hole was surprising, interesting, and hilarious, but most of all, it was memorable,” recalls Watson. “The proof is the fact that I’m telling you about it right now. If everything had gone according to plan, I would have forgotten about that scene years ago.”

Bad starts with a good recovery have sticking power and story value.

Watson adds that you don’t have to do anything wild or off the wall to start something. He draws an important distinction between “big C” creativity and “little c” creativity. “Big C” creativity is a game-changing new idea. “Little c” creativity is a small step that changes something right under your nose.

“In improv and in business, 99.9 percent of all creativity is “little c’ creativity,” Watson explained. “That’s where true innovation comes from. It’s small changes on top of small changes. It’s continuous little risks. And even ‘big C’ creativity is usually just a lot of ‘little c’ creativity added up. No one just drops an idea for the next iPad in a suggestion box. It takes a lot of little starts.”

To help clients and students get over the fear of starting, Watson reminds them of three cardinal principles developed by improv great Elaine May. He feels they apply to risk taking on stage, in business, or anywhere in life:

Make active and positive choices. When you do things in good faith and to the best of your abilities, no matter what happens, good will come from it.
Support the reality around you. When you start where you are, accepting the world around you just as it is, you gain power.
Don’t worry about making mistakes, just fix them. When you make a mistake, take responsibility for it, fix it, and keep moving. Often this leads to the most interesting outcomes.

In parting, Watson shared one of the best insights of our conversation. It’s a line he tells himself all the time. “You have everything you need in order to be successful in the present moment. The only time you get into trouble is when you doubt that fact. Start where you are, with what you have, and everything works itself out.”

That’s a great thought to keep in mind when you’re jumping into the unknown.

 

Excerpted and adapted from Taking Smart Risks

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Walking the Fine Line Between Genius and Insanity

You have a spark of genius in you. We all do.

It’s not the result of you being smarter than everyone else. It’s the result of you being different from everyone else. No one else has walked your path. No one else has your distinctive mix of anxieties, experiments, scars, disasters, and triumphs. No one else has your exact personality and temperament. No one else has been influenced by the same set of weird, wild, boring or frustrating characters as you have.

So no one else can see what you see.

Of course, most of us snuff out our spark of genius before it has time to grow. Nascent genius always looks ridiculous, naïve or insane. So we write it off. We discount our perspective because it’s ours. We tell ourselves that if the idea was truly good enough someone else would have done it already.

Bullsh*t. No one else has done it is because they don’t see what you see.

Trust what you see. Trust that it’s important. Trust that it’s unique. Trust that it will evolve if you follow it. Trust that it’s the root of a significant contribution to the world. Trust it—above all else—when no one else does. It means you’re probably onto something big.

Of course it could also mean you’re crazy. Trust it anyways. Walk that fine line between genius and insanity. In the end the real prize never lies in what you achieve anyways. It lies in who you become when you trust the spark inside you.

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Expect Your Communication to Break Down

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

—George Bernard Shaw

When it comes to pursuing new ideas, entering new markets, or trying to make any big changes that involve other people, I always tell clients to start with the assumption that their communication is going to break down. This advice isn’t based on my observations of them, their specific organization, or the specific situation they’re facing. Rather, it’s based on my observations of hundreds of leaders just like them, all their organizations, and all the situations they’ve faced. Whenever two or more people are involved in anything, there’s a good chance that communication will break down at some point.

I see it in my own life and business. While it’s my job to help leaders and teams get better at communicating, and I’m hyper aware of pitfalls that can lead to poor communication, I still have communication breakdowns. I might get busy and not let other team members know what I’m doing. Or I might spend so much time thinking about a topic that I forget that others aren’t on the same page as I am. Or I might not share a piece of information because it doesn’t occur to me that it would be helpful for others to know it. Given the pace of business today, it’s easy for these things to happen, even when I know better.

Recognizing how easily breakdowns can occur, I have weekly check-in meetings with my team on key projects. When an issue rears its head, we’ll discuss why it happened, how to address it, and how to avoid it in the future. However, although we get better, we never completely eliminate communication breakdowns. Invariably, a different issue under different circumstances arises several months later, and we’ll go through the process again.

I’ve come to see communication breakdowns as a simple fact of human interaction and organizational life, especially when you’re up to something big. There are always a lot of moving parts to manage. If you expect breakdowns, catch them, and address them, you can lessen their frequency, intensity, and negative impact. Also, if you deepen your appreciation for why they happen, you can get better at predicting them in advance.

The Communication Blind Spot

Communication within organizations breaks down for many complex reasons, ranging from power dynamics to low levels of trust to hidden agendas. However, in my experience, the most common reason communication breaks down is much simpler than these. It happens because people fail to realize that they have information that should be communicated in a more focused, thoughtful, and frequent way.

I call this the communication blind spot. It frequently unfolds something like this. People get together, talk about something over a number of months, and come to a set of decisions. Then they share their decisions with a few people in the organization in an ad hoc fashion. They might even send a document around outlining the decision. Three months later, because they’ve been talking about the issue so much and they remember sending a document around, they’re under the illusion that everyone understands and appreciates the decision the same way that they do. They’re blinded to the fact that others, who weren’t in the original planning meetings and have never been focused on the ideas that the planners discussed, don’t have nearly the same appreciation for those ideas. Then one of the original planners brings up the idea in a meeting, assuming that everyone is on the same page as he is. Unfortunately, 75 percent of the room has no idea what he’s talking about. The person bringing it up can’t believe it. He was sure that the decision and rationale were shared very clearly with the organization months ago. But he was wrong.

The communication blind spot happens because once something becomes really clear to us, we have a tendency to think that it’s clear to everyone else, too. As a result, we don’t feel that the topic needs a lot of detailed communication. That’s when problems begin. People have different understandings of the issue. They draw different conclusions, and they begin operating from different sets of assumptions.

Here are a few practical suggestions for avoiding the communication blind spot:

Always start from the assumption that your communication is terrible. It may be an overstatement, but it will serve you well by putting you in a productive mindset.

Capture key discussions and decisions in brief “recap” emails and circulate to relevant parties. Make them short. I recommend 3 parts to each topic discussed: Key discussion points, decisions made, and next steps. That way, in 3 months, when no one has any recollection of the meeting, you can remember, where, when, and why a decision was made. And you can use these notes to keep a group focused and hold them accountable.

Check in with people regularly. Ask for feedback on “in flight” projects or programs. If you get a blank stare you’ll realize the message didn’t get through. Go back to the drawing board and re-communicate. Repeat often.

 

Excerpted and adapted from Taking Smart Risks

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Debriefing: A Simple Tool to Help Your Team Tackle Tough Problems

Your team has identified an important goal to hit, challenge to be addressed, or opportunity to be pursued. You call a meeting or two, set objectives, put a plan together, and start to execute. Everything looks good on paper.

But then your plan starts to hit some snags. Certain objectives are harder to meet than you had hoped. Critical players get pulled onto another project. Timelines take longer than you had anticipated. The impact is smaller than you need it to be.

At this point you can either (1) keep muddling through with your fingers crossed, hoping that things get better (2) abandon the plan altogether or (3) recalibrate and jump back in. In my experience, number one never works, and number two doesn’t help in the long run. Only number three can drive the growth of your team and company over the long term. This is where debriefing, a simple and powerful tool, comes in.

Debriefing is a structured learning process designed to continuously evolve plans while they’re being executed. It originated in the military as a way to learn quickly in rapidly changing situations and to address mistakes or changes on the field. In business, debriefing has been widely documented as critical to accelerating projects, innovating novel approaches, and hitting difficult objectives. It also brings a team together, strengthens relationships, and fosters team learning. In my experience, teams who debrief regularly are more tight-knit than those who don’t. They communicate more effectively across the board. They are more aligned on values and purpose. In essence, they become higher performing teams.

So what does a debriefing look like? More than a casual conversation to discuss what did and didn’t go well, debriefing digs into why things happened and explores implications for the future. Accurate understanding and knowledge is placed ahead of egos. People participate with a desire to truly understand root causes of their successes and failures so they know what to repeat and what to change. The conversations may be uncomfortable, but participants realize that the discomfort of getting things out on the table is minimal compared to the pain of making the same mistakes again.

When and how often you want to hold debriefings depends on the nature of your work. In 2011, when the NY Giants won the Super Bowl, they held debriefings 1-2 days after every game to understand what did and didn’t work. Many software development teams hold mini-debriefs every morning to review yesterday’s progress and today’s goals—and longer debriefs every month or two to understand larger project wins and challenges. As a general rule, I tell teams to start with one debriefing a week to figure out what works best for them. You also may want to hold one after significant events or project milestones. Too many or too few can both diminish the value of debriefing, so you have to discuss appropriate frequency with your team.

A productive debriefing can last for as little as 10 minutes or as long as several hours, depending on the size and scope of the project or event that’s being debriefed. I’ve found 30-60 minutes is optimal for most debriefing meetings. Here are four steps to conduct an effective debriefing:

1. Schedule a regular time and place.

The key here is to make the debriefing expected, so everyone adopts a learning mindset before the activity at the center of the debriefing even takes place. When people know they’re going to be getting together afterward, and can anticipate the general structure of the conversation, they’ll begin gathering insights in advance. Eventually, the more you debrief, the more effective and efficient the whole process becomes.

2. Create a learning environment.

Expectations should be set so people know that learning is what’s most important — not one’s position on the org chart. The expression the Army uses is: leave your stripes at the door. The most senior leaders in the room set the tone. When they make themselves vulnerable and admit to errors, it gives everyone else permission to do so too. Along with this, the other key aspect of creating a learning environment is no pointing fingers. The results, both good and bad, should be considered team results, recognizing that everyone had a hand in creating them.

3. Review four key questions.

This is the heart of a good debriefing. Ask all participants come to the meeting with thoughts prepared on these questions:

What were we trying to accomplish? Every debriefing should start by restating the objectives you were trying to hit. The group should have agreed on clear objectives prior to taking action in the first place. If there’s lack of clarity here, the rest of the debriefing will be of little value because you won’t know how to judge your success.

Teams often struggle to set clear objectives if the initiative is at a conceptual phase. Push yourself to set these early on to pave the way for your team’s learning and rapid improvement.

Where did we hit (or miss) our objectives? With clear objectives, this is a pretty straightforward conversation as you either did or didn’t hit them. Review your results, and ensure the group is aligned.

What caused our results? This is the root-cause analysis and should go deeper than obvious, first-level answers. For example, if you were trying to generate fifteen wins and only generated five, don’t be satisfied with answers like we didn’t try hard enough. Keep digging and ask why you didn’t try hard enough.

For example, were you overwhelmed because the team hadn’t prioritized work? Were incentives misguided so people didn’t feel motivated to try harder? Was the task too complex so people gave up too easily? There are many reasons why people don’t try hard enough. If you don’t get to the root cause, you can’t create actionable learning for the future.

An effective tool for root-cause analysis is “5 whys.” For every answer you give, ask why that’s the case. By the time you answer the question five times, you’ve usually uncovered some fundamental issues that are holding you back.

What should we start, stop, or continue doing? Given the root causes uncovered, what does that mean for behavior or plan changes? Specifically, what should we do next now that we know what we know?

4. Codify lessons learned.

Make sure you capture lessons learned in a useable format for later reference/use. At a minimum this is taking notes and distributing them to the members present. Other methods can make the information more readily available to a broader audience. For example at Procter and Gamble, R&D professionals submit Smart Learning Reports (SLRs) to a database, based on monthly research lessons learned, that can be searched by anyone in R&D worldwide.

The biggest hurdle to debriefing is merely starting it, especially if you have a culture where this sort of open communication isn’t the norm. If that’s the case, pick some small projects and an intimate team to pilot the process. Once you begin to do it, you quickly realize how natural and intuitive it is. We experimented with some stuff, we talked about what worked and what didn’t, and then we used that learning to get smarter about our next set of experiments etc. That wasn’t so hard.

The most powerful change processes are usually the simplest.

 

This article was originally published July 2, 2015 on Harvard Business Review

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Complexity is Killing Me

I feel inundated with complexity these days. So many competing perspectives on nearly every topic where I need to make a decision. At best it wastes valuable time. At worst it paralyzes me. Here are a couple inner monologues from rat holes I’ve meandered down in the last week:

Where should I publish my writing?

A decade ago it was simple. I posted it to Fast Company and got a lot of traffic. Now the media landscape is distributed everywhere. OK, fine so I’ll post my stuff to a variety of places. Well, that might screw up my SEO. Wait, do I care about SEO for my services? Isn’t social media more important? It is. I’ve got a fair amount of Twitter followers. How relevant are those these days? What about LinkedIn and Medium? Let me ask some people who should know the answer. Sh*t, they all have different opinions. OK, I’ll read about it online. Wait a second, most of these articles are terrible, how are these people experts? On another topic, what should I care about? Likes? Comments? Readers? Why are you worrying so much? I don’t know; it feels like it matters. Does it matter? I don’t know. On another topic, am I doing enough to strengthen relationships with people in my existing database? Probably not. What do I need to do in order to accomplish that? I don’t know. That feels like a whole different question. [Net result: A few hours exploring. No clear conclusions.]

What should my family eat?

You know bread is bad for you, right? What? When did that happen? Yeah, even the “good” bread is filled with too much processed stuff. Soy isn’t good, we’re back on butter. BTW, the governmental researcher who told us fats were bad for us all those years ago was actually studying trans fats. Fats are good. They’re cutting trans fats out of everything now because they’re horrible for you. When’s that happening? Probably 4-5 years. Snack food companies need a long runway to pull that crap out of their food. BTW, there’s a possibility that Whole Foods has been price gouging you worse than you thought. [Net result: I hate grocery shopping even more now.]

Multiply this meandering process by a factor of 10 and you get a sense of an average week. Am I alone out there? Anyone else experiencing these rat holes?

Sure, I’m an analytical person who likes to see all the angles before moving forward, so that doesn’t help. But even if I weren’t so predisposed, the speed of change and the amount of data out there these days is daunting for even the most rapid decision makers. Tangled up in this web of “too much information” is no way to live.

I’ve come to the conclusion that just making decisions with the best info I’ve got and letting the chips fall where they may is the only path forward. I can adjust as I go. Getting out of the gates is more important than finding the perfect horse because good things happen out on the track. Even if you’re failing, you’re moving, you’re gaining momentum. Nothing good happens caught up in complexity back at the gates .

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Where Courage Comes From

Courage comes from seeing the world through others’ eyes. In business, that means your customers.

When you take the time to see the world through your customers’ eyes, you see firsthand what excites them, annoys them, perplexes them, or scares them. Out in the world with customers, patterns jump out at you in a ways they never do when you’re back at the office. You see critical needs more clearly, with contextual nuance. You see how you can meet specific challenges. Your perception of risk diminishes because you know you can tackle that problem. Your courage and conviction build.

Following is a brief case, excerpted from my book Taking Smart Risks, of how Matt Hlavin of Thogus Products Company found the courage to make an against-the-odds bet that paid off in tremendous growth.  

See the World Through Your Customers’ Eyes

Custom injection molders make plastic parts for just about everything you use, from controls in cars to keys on computers. Reactive in nature, these companies work on thin margins and are subject to the whims of their customers.

For years, running a custom injection-molding company was pretty straightforward. You landed a few large customers—say automakers—and then churned out parts for them for as long they would let you. Your customers dictated how you ran your business, from processes to pricing to payment terms. Your main point of contact was a low-level purchasing manager whose job was to constantly beat you up on price. While this was frustrating, you took the beatings because there were thousands of competitors ready to take your place if you balked. It wasn’t a particularly sexy or attractive industry, but it paid the bills.

Those were the good old days.

Now, with so much manufacturing taking place overseas, the molding business in the United States has gotten tougher. Eight thousand custom injection molders are all fighting for a smaller and smaller piece of a shrinking pie. These days, it’s considered a win if you can even find a low-level purchasing manager to beat you up. A tough business has gotten brutal.

But you wouldn’t guess it if you walked into Thogus Products Company, a custom injection molder in Cleveland, Ohio. Whiteboards full of big ideas are everywhere. Twenty- to thirty-year-olds race around with a sense of purpose and energy. If it weren’t for the millions of dollars of manufacturing equipment, you’d think you’d entered a Silicon Valley start-up. Thogus is a far cry from your father’s or grandfather’s Rust Belt.

Matt Hlavin, CEO of Thogus, calls it the New Industrial Revolution. Instead of just churning out parts, he’s adding high-value services that support the manufacturing process. Thogus now provides design, development, and rapid prototyping services that used to be the purview of his customers’ R&D organizations. This has allowed Thogus to move up the food chain into more strategic conversations.

While successful now, this was a risky proposition when Hlavin started adding these services in 2009. In the middle of a recession, Hlavin’s company, like many others, was in a decline. It was going to take significant start-up capital to get these services going. Moreover, Hlavin had never delivered these services before and had no idea what he was getting his company into.

But in the face of big obstacles, Hlavin pushed forward anyway. Where did he find the confidence?

He credits the time he spent with his customers.

As the recession deepened, Hlavin listened more and more to his customers’ talk about their challenges. Budgets were tight and showed no signs of loosening. Laid-off design and engineering positions weren’t coming back, unlike in previous recessions. Everyone was having to do more with less. Teams were getting burned out. Fear and anxiety were rampant.

As Hlavin describes it, “These were big, game-changing problems for our customers, and no one was helping them solve them in a beginning-to-end, cost-effective way. I realized there was a ‘blue ocean’ market opportunity to help current and new customers become more efficient, while simultaneously improving quality. I heard these challenges so often that I became convinced that if I built a suite of services to address them, people would come.”

Over the next couple of years, Hlavin invested more than $2 million in rapid prototyping equipment that typically only large manufacturers like GE and Boeing buy. He also purchased a design firm and kept hiring as his competitors were continuing to let people go.

In the beginning, others thought he was crazy. But by 2011, it was clear that Hlavin had made smart moves. As he had predicted, customers saw the value of his new services and started to buy.

“We can design, prototype, and test things very quickly here,” one customer noted. “Furthermore, because these guys build their manufacturing knowledge into the design phase, we don’t end up with pretty concepts that are unmanufacturable. When it’s time to mass-produce, we can hit the ground running. Thogus’s end-to-end approach is a great idea.”

Of course it is. After all, it was Hlavin’s customers who had given it to him.

Spending More Time with Customers

Sometimes the most powerful business advice is the simplest.

What Matt Hlavin did wasn’t rocket science. He spent time with customers and listened to them—a lot. He didn’t ask them for specifics on what they wanted; he just started to see the world through their eyes. This is an important distinction, because customers often can’t tell you what they really want. They don’t really know until they see it. That means you just have to spend enough time with them to be able to start to discern it.

Business people give a lot of excuses for not spending enough time with customers. Being too busy is the most common one I hear. Whenever an executive tells me that she’d love to spend more time with her customers, but she’s too busy, I ask to see her calendar for the coming month. Invariably, 50 to 70 percent of what’s scheduled could easily be considered lower priority than spending time with important customers. 

Prioritize time with customers (and potential customers) and the payback is always huge.

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