Do you also struggle with questions like:
- Which 3 tactics would you apply to debug team delivery issues?
- What are the top 5 JS frameworks for small teams?
- What’s the best way to layer a sandwich?
What I find challenging is that I can’t answer them through a divide & conquer approach. The unbound problem space contains infinite possibilities. And the difficulty increases with familiar domains 1.
Furthermore, even if you did manage to brainstorm your way out of the blank canvas, you are still halfway through. The biggest challenge comes next: filtering the options.
I faced this last week. The question was simple, yet the answers difficult to pin down:
If you had to choose 5 leadership principles that every manager should follow, which ones would you pick?
The longer I spent thinking, the more I struggled to find the right principles. Doubt crept in. If I couldn’t answer this simple question, what did this say about my skills?
However, I haven’t faced this when working with people.
Why?
Thinking back, the nature of the thought exercise differs from real world situations. The former, seeks perfection. The latter demands pragmatism.
There are always things to improve, but you need to make a compromise. For me, that’s avoiding things that hurt the team.
I joke that my playbook is management antipatterns.
- Have you seen a bad way to solve this problem?
- If not, can you think of the worst way to do it?
- Cool, now just do the opposite!
The funny thing is not that it’s true, but that it works.
And with the same approach you can unlock these pesky questions.
Instead of trying to find the right answer, start from the wrong one and work backwards.
Example:
Impossible to answer: Top 3 behaviors that boost morale
Much easier to figure out: Top 3 behaviors that destroy morale
- Blaming.
- Command & control decision-making.
- Allowing toxic behaviors.
Reversed: Top 3 behaviors that boost morale
This is not something new, in fact, if you’ve ever done a pre-mortem, it’s the same mechanism. And as Donald Philips shared with me (thanks Don!), the tactic works wonders for building consensus in group settings.
Next, I’ll post the worst leadership principles I can think of ;)
Thank you for reading, please share if this was helpful.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wise people so full of doubts. – Bertrand Russell ↩︎
Strategies for Learning from Failure, Amy C. Edmonson ↩︎
Change Top-Down Leadership with “I Intend to…”, Lorri Freifeld (notes from D. Marquet’s “Turn the Ship Around!”) ↩︎
