Category: One Minute Tips for Remote Leaders

3 practical strategies

Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” is like a tsunami rolling over the business world.

If you haven’t seen it yet or you’d like a reminder here’s Simon’s original TED talk.

I used to be completely enamored with it 🤩

Over time I have become slightly more sceptical 🤔

I’ve also talked to many people who struggle with making it practical 🏋️‍♀️

However I still believe in the core idea ❤️

And thanks to many wonderful teachers I have accumulated some rather powerful techniques that work towards the same purpose.

It’s actually the A in my AsyncABC system.

When planning anything significant: from a meeting, an article, a product improvement or a whole new product …

… here are three (groups of) questions that can help you “start with why” and tap into people’s deeper drives; without a Sinek-style, singular, all encompassing mission.

The three questions are:

1. Whose life will be better when we do this?
2. What kind of …? and Is there anything else about …?
3. And when …, what will we be able to see or hear?

Let’s dig into each of them in turn:

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Question 1: Whose life will be better when we do this?

From the amazing Mike Burrows of Agendashift:

When starting anything, start by asking this set of closely related questions:

Whose life will be better? How?

or Who cares about this? Why?

or Who will be affected? How?

and then Do they actually want this?

if not: What do they want?

It might not be a single (type of) person, but a whole list of stakeholders. That’s fine. Focus on the critical few.

If you don’t find a convincing answer you might want to consider doing something else instead.

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Question 2: What kind of X? and Is there anything else about X?

One huge problem with planning in groups is that we frequently imagine completely different things while using the exact same, seemingly obvious, words.

There’s no such thing as obvious!

When someone tells you that they need X I encourage you to peel back just one layer by repeating what they said and asking:

What kind of X?

and when you explore one aspect you can go back to the beginning and ask:

Is there anything else about X?

I promise you you will frequently be surprised by how differnt your initial guess about what they meant was from what they actually had in mind.

Elephant? What kind of elephant?

You might have recognized those questions as the basics of clean language, which I encourage you to explore after you experience the clarity that comes from just using those two easy to remember, natural sounding, yet extremely powerful questions.

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Question 3: And when X, what will we be able to see or hear?

This is the most advanced purpose-clarification strategy of the three we’re discussing today.

It becomes critical when there’s a lot riding on the exact details of what we’re trying to achieve or when we’re spending a lot of time talking about abstract concepts and are having a hard time converging on specifics.

Take your list of stakeholders and the the things they care about from section one.

About each need ask:

What will they be able to see and hear when we’re done?

or more strongly

What will they be able to see and hear when we’re successful?

Now comes the key part:

Express that as a number!

In this part you might have recognized the influence of one Tom Gilb. Learn more about his approach to delivering stakeholder value in the ValueFirst Manifesto.

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Bonus question: How do you know those needs are the real needs?

You don’t.

Start with your best guess and get fast feedback by asking for it or better yet: observing how it impacts actual behaviors.

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Once again:

1. Whose life will be better when we do this?
2. What kind of …? and Is there anything else about …?
3. And when …, what will we be able to see or hear?

—

Phew, a long one today, but a useful reference to have in one piece I think.

Don’t Let Worst Possible Stories Win

If you can count on one thing, it’s that whenever there’s limited information people will make up the Worst Possible Story to fill in the gaps.

• “My boss hates me!”
• “That guy is a #$@%.”
• “How can they be so stupid?”

This dynamic can be especially harmful in newly remote teams, who have not yet developed patterns of communication that work for them or in distant working relationships across organizational silos.

So what can we do about it?

1. Be as open and transparent as you can, especially around hot button issues.
2. Create as many opportunities for people to get to know each other better, so that there’s a lot of shared context and accumulated goodwill when trouble arises.
3. And most of all: adopt the API (Assume Positive Intent) habit for yourself and with your team.

Who? What? When?

When you get angry about something someone said, wrote or did. Instead of jumping to conclusions, take a deep breath and consider the alternatives by asking:

1. How might this make sense?
2. In what circumstances might this be a reasonable thing to say, write or do?
3. Is there any part of this I can agree with?

It might not solve all your problems, but believe me: it can be transformational in many difficult situations.

Try it!

The more useful stuff you have in a well-organized, densely interconnected team information system, the richer your interactions can become.

A great TIM can be like a beautiful garden where things can stack up, grow and interweave in ways that would be impossible without the right environment.

(photo by Cherry Laithang via Unsplash)

Ok, Michał. Colorful metaphors are nice, but what do I do?

Glad you asked!

I like to use this three step loop which I call AsyncABC:

1. Align to needs
2. Package information into useful Blocks
3. Connect everything

If that sounds interesting, learn more about AsyncABC on fluidcircle.net.

Imagine you’re holding a magic sword.

The only problem is that it’s wrapped in dirty rags.

When faced with a worthy challenge it would make sense to unwrap the sword and cast away the rags. Once you do, the road to victory is all but assured.

Consider now that the rags contain an old stick.

In that case you should not waste time unwrapping it. It would be wiser to start running before the wolves get you.

So it is with everything else.

A common problem (especially in engineering circles) is to be overly problem-oriented. To immediately look for what’s not working and try to fix it.

But some things are more worth the improvement effort than others.

That’s why it’s useful to first find what’s good. Then find ways to turn it up: repeat, reinforce, amplify, use in other contexts. Then think about how to make it even better.

See you on the other side!

Build up your team information environment.

Today’s one minute tip is:

use a consistent information architecture across tools.

For example: given you use JIRA Stories as the main unit of work and you have a team wiki, when you add information supporting the development of a story to the wiki, then this information should clearly reference the story: directly in the title or in some other clear and unambiguous way.

Or: given you distinguish several types of information (say delivery plans, playbooks and reference information) when you create and share a Google Doc to brainstorm ideas then you should clearly indicate what the ideas are about: are they proposals for future delivery plans? are they potential improvements to our playbooks (i.e. operating standards and methods)? or are they optional ideas that may be useful in some part of our work but do not constitute a solid commitment?

All this might sound simple but there’s a deeper thought behind it.

According to cognitive research:

“… the basic functioning mode of the human mind is not reasoning and planning, but interacting via perception and action with the environment.” — Francis Heylighen and Clément Vidal, Evolution, Complexity and COgnition group, VUB.

In order to go beyond simulating the office with your remote team I encourage you to look at your work not just as individual effort tied together by communication between people, but as a set of interactions with a distinct Team Information Environment made up of all the tools, services and technologies that you use.

Having a consistent information architecture across tools is one way to improve that environment …

… but the rabbit hole goes much much deeper than that.

What do you say? Shall we jump in?

The first ever One Minute Tip for Remote Leaders is about making references concrete.

When you’re talking about something (document, ticket, website, app) — share your screen and show it.

If you have nothing to show — create the appropriate item immediately — capture what you talk about in concise bullet points, and then make it complete as soon as possible.

If you can’t show it and you can’t create it then be extra careful, because with ephemeral topics like that it’s extremely hard to have everyone understand it in the same way. Ephemeral is the enemy.

What say you?

If you do this: what was the most challenging aspect of implementing this habit?

If you don’t: why not?