Never turn up with a blank page
This week I want to explore the intersection between leading and doing. This topic arose from a recent debate with some friends about whether it actually works to “just get in a room and work it out”. My strong view is that it rarely works. My instinct is that these sorts of meetings are just lazy and are an excuse to attempt to make decisions by committee. However, that implies that decisions are made at these types of meetings. I think that’s rarely the case.
These types of group meetings fail because clear expectations are rarely set about what everyone is meant to bring to the discussion – this includes what the leader of the meeting (the organiser) is expecting of themselves. For example, I’m sure that we can all think of a time when we’ve attended these sorts of meetings with a desire to just be told what to do without having to think too deeply about the topic – only to realise that the room expects something far more involved. Equally, I’m sure that we can think of times when we’ve entered the room, full of energy and with many pre-conceived ideas, only to realise that we’re not going to get a chance to properly express all those bustling thoughts. Both versions are frustrating and are a waste of our time.
In my opinion, what’s happened in these two examples is that the person who organised the meeting hasn’t articulated to us why we’re there and what’s expected. It’s also often the case that the organiser hasn’t turned up with the beginnings of an idea for discussion and debate – and, at times, they haven’t even turned up with a clear framework to guide the discussion. Equally, I know that it takes two to tango. So, when I’m frustrated in these scenarios, I know that some of that frustration is directed at myself for not exercising any leadership and taking some obvious pre-emptive steps.
I then started wondering why we rarely (if ever) experience this at Tiger & Bear and I think it comes down to our culture and how we practise leadership.
What we’ve been practising is an extreme openness about when we want to lead and when we want to be led (i.e., when we want to drive the direction of a project, and when we simply want to be told what to do to get the job done). We also set the clear expectation that someone always has to take the first crack at any task. Our thinking is:
if we’re clear about when we want to lead on a task or a project, then we’re more likely to get the desired airtime and we’ll minimise the number of times that too many cooks arrive at the one kitchen with their own recipe
it’s entirely okay not to want to lead all the time. In fact, no one can lead at all times on all things. It’s exhausting and we’re human. We believe that decision fatigue is real. At times, each of us has to take a back-seat, to just come on the journey or to just execute a task. There’s nothing wrong with saying this out-loud – it’s actually quite liberating
every finished product benefits from iteration – things are rarely perfect from the start. Once we accept this, we realise that it’s important for someone to exercise leadership by volunteering to take the first crack. This means that in every instance, on every task, one of us will hold the pen in preparing the first draft / skeleton / structure – the guardrails for the discussion. That person has a “crack” and does the heavy lifting by starting with a blank canvas. The others then know that their role is to debate, review, iterate and improve. Collectively, everyone knows their role and responsibility. We do our best to rotate the ‘blank canvas pen holding responsibility’ to avoid burn-out and to share the load
This leadership practice is built on a simple foundation:
clear communication (made possible by our culture)
for every task or project, someone has to take a crack
an acceptance that everyone is a leader at times and that no one is a leader in all things at all times
it’s completely normal to be happy to take a back-seat on a task or project, just executing can be quite refreshing (especially when we know that there’s a social license to enjoy the process)
We make this work because our culture permits a very open style of communication which is a separate topic, but for now, we’re just happy that we don’t have to sit through rudderless meetings and we avoid the anxiety caused by not knowing our role in respect of a task or on a project.