Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say--and What You Don't

by L. David Marquet

“How could we start?”

“How could we test that quickly and cheaply?”

the aspirational how shifts people’s thinking from worrying about obstacles and barriers to considering what we can do with the time and resources we have. This shifts the focus from what we can’t do to what we can do.

“What is the smallest slice we could make?” “What can we do?” “What would that look like?” “What would a first step look like?”

“What could we do first?”

“What would you do if you were me?”

“OK, then what should we do?”

A practical way to separate the decision-evaluator from the decision-maker is to have the senior person in the organization act as the decision-evaluator and one of the junior people act as the decision-maker. This is not the way most organizations are designed, and in many organizations, it is the senior person who normally evaluates and makes each decision.

Head of product would evaluate PM decisions & coach them to better decisions

“We intend to launch the product on time.” And then give the rationale.

Is it important to recognize that the initial intent statement is just the start of the conversation and is incomplete without the rationale behind the decision. Several of the results of doing business this way are that junior decision-makers feel a strong sense of ownership, they start thinking like the senior people, and there is a bias for action because simple decisions are not held up in committees.

Commit to learn, not (just) do. Commit actions, not beliefs. Chunk it small but do it all.

Collaboration sets us up for commitment. Coercion results in compliance. Commitment is better than compliance because it releases discretionary effort in people. For complex, cognitive, custom teamwork, discretionary effort is everything.

The three ways for executing the COMMIT play are designed to minimize barriers to action and inoculate our organization against escalation of commitment.

Today, the combination of a rapidly changing world with reduced design costs means that the emphasis has shifted from production (do, or make, what we know) to learning (what is needed to be done or made?). While in redwork, we benefit by having a prove mindset. However, our overall mindset guiding the redwork-bluework rhythm is one of improve. When preparing for redwork with an overall improve mindset of learning and growth, we are able to extract the maximum possible amount of useful information from each production phase to fuel subsequent innovation.

CONTROL THE CLOCK, not obey the clock. COLLABORATE, not coerce. COMMIT, not comply. And now . . . COMPLETE, not continue.

Completion marks the end of a period of redwork. Running the COMPLETE play means thinking of work in terms of smaller chunks of production work (redwork) and frequent intervals of reflection, collaboration, improvement, and hypothesis creation (bluework). Complete means .

That’s why the management plays we default to today all follow the same patterns: first, obey the clock, then coerce people into doing what we need them to do, get them to comply, and continue the redwork for as long as possible. Maximize production per unit time. Any stoppage of the assembly line, any pause in redwork, meant idle time and wasted resources.

Viewing the work as one long, continuous action means that any intermediate change needs to overcome the inertia of the old plan before being a viable option. Legitimate options at interim decision points are handicapped. They are not competing on a level playing field against the previous commitments.

Second, failure to complete also takes a toll on the humans in the organization. No completion moments mean no celebration moments. One hour merges with the next, one day into the other. Without completion, we do not feel a sense of progress for what we’ve accomplished or learned. There is no opportunity to tell the story and no opportunity to reinforce the behaviors that allowed us to be successful. Humans will become dispirited and lose interest. Behaviors that support the organization will tend toward extinction.

complete serves to proactively control the clock, exiting us from redwork and launching us into bluework. Controlling the clock gives us the operational pause we need to reflect and improve upon our processes. (IMPROVE will be our next play.)

the frequency of bluework interruptions is a key operational tempo design element for organizations. To bias toward learning and growth, plan shorter redwork periods with more completes. To bias toward production, plan longer redwork periods with fewer completes.

TO MOVE FROM CONTINUATION TO COMPLETION Chunk work for frequent completes early, few completes late. Celebrate with, not for. Focus on behavior, not characteristics. Focus on journey, not destination.

At the beginning of a project, you want shorter redwork periods and more frequent bluework periods to bias toward learning and improving. As the project matures you want to extend the periods between bluework and allow more time in redwork production.

Does this mean moving from 1 week sprints to 4 week sprints later…?

But “Why should I celebrate?” is a question I frequently encounter. “After all, they are only doing their job—they can celebrate when they see their paychecks.” People thinking this way are influenced by their Industrial Age structures and language. In the Industrial Age, this was the boss’s thought process. Work was transactional, so why would you stop to celebrate your team’s work, especially if that would interrupt them from working more?

Done right, celebrate does several things for us—it gives us a sense of accomplishment, allows us to detach from the past and move on to the next thing, and, done right, it reinforces the behaviors that allowed us to be successful.

In today’s workplaces, where thinking, creativity, innovation, and decision-making are so important, it would be easy for people to feign that they’ve done their best—and you as the leader would have no way of knowing. If we want people to be fully invested, we need to ...

What gets in the way of celebrating? Three things.

First, the pause to celebrate takes time away from the production work, reducing efficiency and creating waste. Second, we worry that our team will turn complacent and not be motivated to continue on to the next phase. Third, we don’t see the components of the work in chunks, we see it as one long conveyor belt. Hence, we never get to the end of anything, and there is nothing to celebrate because “we’re not done yet.”

The cost of managing by metrics, goals, and deadlines, however, is that workers seek to meet only the minimum requirements. Because there is no personal satisfaction in work—because work is already a series of unpleasant tasks to be completed—why go one inch above or beyond what’s required? When all you know is redwork, you become expert at predicting exactly how fast you need to go to achieve the bare minimum at the last possible moment.

A pause to celebrate will cost a certain and immediate amount of time out of redwork for the team, and the benefits will be uncertain and in the future. When pressed, the immediate, certain cost supersedes the future uncertain gains. When we pause to celebrate, though, we acknowledge the work we do see, and workers feel valued. Our team feels better about work, and that translates to better engagement, more creative thinking, and reduced turnover. Feeling valued motivates people to contribute, so we set up a positive future. Celebrate validates both bluework and redwork; it’s a vital component of a healthy workplace.

To celebrate with, not for: appreciate, don’t evaluate; observe, don’t judge; and prize, don’t praise.

Be specific and leave judgment and evaluation out. Just describe the action and how that made things better.

“I saw you coordinating frequently with your team to deliver on time; it looked like a disciplined delivery process.”

So as a general rule, acknowledge the behavior that is controllable—such as dedication in the face of obstacles, careful review prior to action, inviting others to provide early feedback on an idea—rather than praising someone for an intrinsic characteristic or ability

Is there a better way to be the anti-troll? Lauding behavior that’s controllable…?

To improve performance, celebrate what people can control—their efforts—and not the things they can’t—outcomes. For instance, let’s say a team of software developers completes a period of redwork. Instead of saying, “I’m proud you guys got it done,” try something like, “It looks like it took difficult cross-department coordination to deliver this product.”

Here are some specific questions to invite someone to tell their story:

When people think of their achievements in terms of mile markers in a journey, they are more likely to continue the behaviors that resulted in them reaching that goal.

This change, where there are no more redworkers and blueworkers but simply people who are engaged in redwork for a time and then bluework for a time, is the tectonic change that is making the old leadership and organizational design models irrelevant.

The “get better” self is that part of us that seeks to learn and grow. It is the seeking self. It is intrigued by challenges, is curious about what other people see and think, and has an open desire for learning and improvement.

People speaking from the perspective of the “get better” self sound like this: “Tell me more about that.” “How do you see it?” “What do you think came before this?” “How might we see it differently?” “What does this look like from your perspective?” “What could we do differently?” “How could I have done better?”

The defending behaviors of the “be good” self actively inhibit and crowd out the seeking behaviors of the “get better” self.

People on teams have a choice between protective, “be good” behavior, intended to create an image of effectiveness, and open, “get better” behavior. The risk is being perceived as ignorant or incompetent. If the team as a whole doesn’t encourage and reward “get better” behavior, our chances of learning and developing innovative new solutions are diminished.

All transformations require people to be their Get Better selves vs seeming capable, their Be Good selves

Full participation in an improve session also presents the risk of a loss of autonomy. People worry that admitting to any inadequacies invites the boss to take back control of their job, leaving them with less freedom. Therefore, instead of operating with full transparency, allowing the rest of the team to see into the inner workings of our jobs, divisions, and departments, we tend to reveal things selectively, offering just enough transparency to reassure others that everything is OK and under control.

Not just green dashboards, but a lack of desire to share the true status of our work.

One of the central problems with extrinsic motivation is that it doesn’t help people shift to the perspective of the “get better” self, which, as we’ve seen, is essential to learning and growth.

In her research, Amabile found that the number one organizational factor driving innovation is “freedom in deciding what to do or how to accomplish the task, a sense of control over one’s own working ideas.” In other words, employees with the autonomy to decide how to go about solving problems and achieving goals innovate. Those constrained to operate as their superiors instruct do not.

Empowered Product Teams

It makes sense that freedom is closely linked to innovation. First, without the power to change anything, the motivation to develop improvements is removed. Second, environments that lack freedom, in which people are consistently told what to do and how to do it, do not challenge and strengthen anyone’s creative thinking. Without autonomy, growth stalls.

it seems to me that there is a link between our history of command and control leadership—separating workers into tellers and those who are told—that has conditioned many people into believing that resistance is futile. Their early efforts to bring up good ideas and suggestions were ignored.

ideal conditions for thinking in groups include diversity of thought and independent judgment. If you use the right language to establish these conditions for a team, it can often make smarter decisions than any of its members could do alone. By the way, this is also why “vote first, then discuss” is such an important tool to effective bluework.

What was it about these cultures that prevented action when needed, decisions by the people who knew the issues, and open and direct communication about serious threats? Again, fear, steep power gradients, and an absence of psychological safety.

If you want to create ownership and develop thinking, you still want the other person to think through the situation.