Recently someone asked me, “Can you believe it’s March?” and I paused. Wasn’t it JUST March? Their question wooshed me back through time to the first time I drove thirty miles for a drive-by birthday party. The same afternoon, I wrestled my computer into a back bedroom for one of our first team Zoom calls. Crouching on the carpet, I balanced cords and screens on my knees.
This time last year, our team started scenario planning around the business’ future. We created a spreadsheet with columns titled “Worst case”, “Most Likely Case” and “Best Case” and took guesses at where we would be in the coming weeks. We’ve returned to this exercise each quarter.
While hope seems to be glimmering in the distance, and people are starting to plan for when we exit this pandemic tunnel, we’re having conversations with leaders who are still scenario planning. As we’re looking forward, decision-making remains complicated.
Do you start with the chicken, or do you start with the egg? And what if the egg gets sneezed on at a family gathering and comes back to work and infects the chickens? And how long until the whole coop gets vaccinated?
I digress …
What if the quality of the questions we ask directly influenced our ability to respond to what’s coming?
We believe leaders benefit from guide posts as they navigate this still-shifting environment - and we want to point out a few that might help.
Here is a four-question process to ask yourself and your team as you tackle complex problems:
What’s really happening here?
In the absence of data, people create stories - and our wired-for-survival brains often go negative and worst-case first. If and when you start hearing these stories of fear and doubt circulating, call your team together to do some rumor-control. Ask folks to share their perceptions of what people are telling each other, then work together to sort out what are stories and what is actually real information. (We all know even outlandish gossip often has some grain of truth within it.)
2. What are the benefits of the existing situation?
Now that you have a clearer picture of “what is”, ask what’s good about it. Starting with the positive can help us realize not all complexities are negative.
For example, during our COVID isolation our team has deepened relationships by asking ourselves check-in questions like “If your life was a hot air balloon and you could throw something overboard to make it float more successfully, what would you jettison?” We know each other better after a year’s worth of wacky check-ins.
How is what’s presenting itself beneficial to your team and the work you are doing? What payoff are you getting from an otherwise unhelpful situation? The answers can help you know what you may want to keep or grow in the future.
3. What are the benefits of creating something new?
Keep the positive energy going by exploring what could be better through change. Perhaps old systems haven’t really been serving us well all along. It’s ok to keep the best of what has been successful up to now, and ditch the familiar, yet unhelpful, practices of the past.
If your team’s like most, they’ll offer solutions before discussing the potential advantages. You can reduce the “Nah, that won’t work because…” idea shoot-downs by keeping the focus on what could be better. How can creativity and innovation help you solve existing problems in different ways?
4. What would make it easy to go from old to new?
It’s likely your answers from 2 & 3 will combine to create an energizing list of possibilities for you and your team. However, implementing change requires time and commitment. How can you make the right things easy? Where will barriers pop up? Answering these questions as a group may uncover new solutions to the challenges.
One of our favorite things is working with leaders to uncover possibilities. At times, swimming in the what-if’s can be paralyzing. Let’s set up a call to explore your answers to these questions, and talk through what could be created as you tackle complex problems for your organization.
PS - If you’ve made it this far, here’s a super bonus question to ask yourself and your team - What are the unhelpful payoffs from doing it the way you’re doing it now?
These are the often below-the-surface reasons people maintain the status quo - things like “I don’t have to learn something new” or “Keeping things the same preserves my power, influence, and status” or even “Taking risks could mean personal failure.”
As a leader, you can help your team reveal uncomfortable truths about benefits you get from not engaging around change. This exercise can reveal payoffs in the new solution, or how to support each other in letting go of what no longer serves the organization.
