Three weird tricks – Rule/Skill #10

This is the final post in our 14 week series on the 4 questions and 10 rules of Strategic Doing. Thanks for joining us on this journey, if you’re here for the first time, be sure to start from the beginning!

You know those clickbait stories that start with, “Just try this one weird trick” (to lose 600 pounds, make seven figures, or some other equally improbable outcome)? Well, this post on the 9th of the 10 rules/skills of Strategic Doing/agile leadership sounds suspiciously similar, except that it’s three weird tricks rather than one (and we don’t think they’re weird).

Rule #10 is: Nudge, connect and promote to reinforce new habits of collaboration.

It’s not that these three things will directly achieve the work that your team is focused on, such as a changed economy, more competitive business, a thriving university, etc. Instead, by applying this rule, we’re seeking to set up the habits that will enable a collaborative approach. There’s an implicit leap of faith that those habits will, in the end, get you to the specific goal you’ve set for your organization.

Why this rule is important

This Strategic Doing rule recognizes the essential nature of complex challenges. With a complex challenge, the only certainty is that there is no one way to plot the entire route to a solution – you can only plot a few steps ahead of your current location. Your team will have to learn its way to the solution, or more accurately (probably), a set of solutions.

This is decidedly not good news for some groups we’ve worked with at the Lab. They really, really, hope we can share the “one weird trick” with them. The idea that there are three tricks, and that they’re tricks that they’ll have to keep doing…it’s not that appealing. There’s also no endpoint in sight: it might take a year, it might take a decade. If the issue you’re confronting is really complex, and a consultant gives you a proposal that promises success in 90 days, keep looking. What is possible in 90 days is a set of new habits…and those will – as your team learns, pivots, and perseveres – lead to solutions. The three “tricks” will take you there.

How to use this rule

Simply put, do three things:

Nudge. Nudging means putting in place routines that will keep everyone focused. Regular 30/30 meetings are an obvious start. Having a CDO (“chief doing officer”) who will remind people what they committed to do is another. Somewhat counter-intuitively, building a team culture in which it’s safe for someone to say “I didn’t get that done” – so that teammates can figure out if it still needs to be done and get it covered – is a third.

Connect. A team that gathers to take on a complex challenge is almost by definition ‘too small’ to really take on that mission. View your team as the hub of a new network that will need to expand. That can mean bringing in new individuals to the team, splitting the team when it gets too big (10 team members is a practical limit), and/or partnering with other organizations/networks that share the team’s aims. Especially at the beginning, think about the assets you’re missing that would make a difference, and identify people with access to those specific resources. Sure, they might say “no” – but a team that is actually getting something done is a team most people are happy to join.

Promote. You probably won’t run into the right new people immediately – promoting what you’re doing can open the doors. That can mean social media, e-newsletters, forums, press releases, or presentations to decision-makers. Importantly, if someone says they can’t help, don’t stop communicating. A university team I worked with a number of years ago related this story: they’d made periodic presentations to a dean, who was interested in their work but was very clear that budgets were (of course) tight. A few months in, some discretionary funds the dean controlled suddenly “appeared.” The “no” really meant “no, unless I’m sure you have what it takes to succeed.” The team’s persistence made the case for them.

Next steps

Take action: Find (or be) a CDO that can remind people of the tasks they said they’d take on, far enough in advance of your next team meeting to take action. Some teams find it easiest to rotate this “nudger-in-chief” role so that no one feels like a nag.

Learn more: automation is your nudging friend. Learn how to get your calendar to send you reminders, and how to write emails that will automatically go out at a future date (here’s the how-to for Gmail and Outlook). Personal emails are best, but an automated email is better than no email.

As we wrap up the 4 Questions and 10 Rules of Strategic Doing

This series of posts has explored all ten rules/skills and the four broader questions that summarize them. Come back anytime for a refresher as you encounter new dynamics in your team. While we’ve covered each separately here in our blog, in a Strategic Doing workshop, we put them all together. Over the course of a few hours, a team can go from framing question to the first version of a strategy to address that question, with a plan to follow up in the weeks to come. We can help you do that – join us for a training (we offer both in-person and online options), or reach out for a no-obligation conversation to explore how we can work directly with your team in a workshop. Either way, we’re committed to your success, no matter how complex an issue you’re tackling.