Conversations solve problems
We want people to solve problems with conversations.
Most overheard in medium sized organisations:
“We don’t know what this other team is working on”
The best way to find out is not another shared spreadsheet, or another recurring meeting. It’s usually to go and ask them. Have a conversation, find out for yourself, share ideas, get to know each other’s work, deepen your relationships.
Getting started with such a conversation isn't always easy for everyone. Many people find it vulnerable to reveal their curiosity - in asking to find out more, there’s the implication of something they don’t and perhaps should already know and the fear of treading on people’s toes. It can also be hard to get started when the field is wide open. It’s like the dreaded interview/first date question: “So - tell me/us about yourself”. Where do you start?
This is where dashboards, metrics, and project pinboards can be very useful. They provide a way in to conversation. They help us frame good questions, either because they are already pointed and relevant, or because they provide a low-cost way to overcome the friction of starting a conversation and get to the important part sooner. (Classic joke: British person says at the end of the conversation “oh, by the way…” meaning “this was the actual reason I wanted to talk to you”).
It’s also easier to go and solve problems through conversations in an organisation that shows you, through its actions, that relationships and interactions are important. In other words, one that is continually investing in relationships.
High performing teams have frequent interactions. People are constantly coming together to refine their understandings of customer problems, and to think about ways to solve them.
In Leading without Authority, Keith Ferrazzi describes how the US retailer Target needed to launch new house brands within months - rather than years, as it had previously taken:
“For the first time, members of [the] legal team at Target regularly joined the branding brainstorming sessions that had previously been the exclusive domain of the Brand Design Lab. New concepts were shared in this open forum, and the viability and comparative strengths of various options were researched and debated right on the spot. It was like a shooting gallery for ideas, a far cry from Target’s old method of working in silos, with teams exchanging polite emails and making formal presentations over the course of weeks or months.”
This - having real conversations, in the moment, that solve problems together - is the sort of behaviour you want to see happening every day!
