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August 26, 2021
“Great teams do not hold back with one another,” she said. “They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.”
“Why do you suppose there is so little passionate discussion or debate among this group?”
spend five minutes deciding what they believed were their single biggest strength and weakness in terms of their contribution to DecisionTech's success or failure. “I
“Well, in most sports, there is a clear score at the end of the game that determines whether you succeeded or failed. There is little room for ambiguity, which means there is little room for . . .” He paused to find the right words. “. . . for subjective, interpretive, ego-driven success, if you know what I mean.”
Our job is to make the results that we need to achieve so clear to everyone in this room that no one would even consider doing something purely to enhance his or her individual status or ego. Because that would diminish our ability to achieve our collective goals. We would all lose.”
“The key, of course, is to define our goals, our results, in a way that is simple enough to grasp easily, and specific enough to be actionable.
“Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think.”
“If we don’t trust one another, then we aren’t going to engage in open, constructive, ideological conflict. And we’ll just continue to preserve a sense of artificial harmony.”
“I’m talking about committing to a plan or a decision, and getting everyone to clearly buy in to it. That’s why conflict is so important.”
When people don’t unload their opinions and feel like they’ve been listened to, they won’t really get on board.”
“Consensus is horrible. I mean, if everyone really agrees on something and consensus comes about quickly and naturally, well that’s terrific. But that isn’t how it usually works, and so consensus becomes an attempt to please everyone.” “Which
The point here is that most reasonable people don’t have to get their way in a discussion. They just need to be heard, and to know that their input was considered and responded to.”
“Once we achieve clarity and buy-in, it is then that we have to hold each other accountable for what we sign up to do, for high standards of performance and behavior. And as simple as that sounds, most executives hate to do it, especially when it comes to a peer’s behavior, because they want to avoid interpersonal discomfort.”
“No buy-in. People aren’t going to hold each other accountable if they haven’t clearly bought in to the same plan. Otherwise, it seems pointless because they’re just going to say, ‘I never agreed to that anyway.’”
Meetings. If we cannot learn to engage in productive, ideological conflict during meetings, we are through.”
Our ability to engage in passionate, unfiltered debate about what we need to do to succeed will determine our future as much as any products we develop or partnerships we sign.”
“Let me assure you that from now on, every staff meeting we have will be loaded with conflict. And they won’t be boring. And if there is nothing worth debating, then we won’t have a meeting.”
The question we need to answer is this: If we do anything between now and the end of the year, what should that be?”
“All right then. We will have eighteen new customers by December 31.”
one final question. “Are there any comments, questions, or concerns people want to raise before we leave?”
“During the next two weeks I am going to be pretty intolerant of behavior that demonstrates an absence of trust, or a focus on individual ego. I will be encouraging conflict, driving for clear commitments, and expecting all of you to hold each other accountable. I will be calling out bad behavior when I see it, and I’d like to see you doing the same. We don’t have time to waste.”
