The Edges of Clarity

“We meet and agree on the direction of the project. But then I find work is being done that is counter to the strategic direction we have agreed.” (A CEO)

“One of the decision makers is unavailable to meet for extended periods. Meanwhile we have to decide and take action. Then he shows up, doesn’t like the decisions and ‘throws grenades’.” (Company Director)

“My manager meets with me weekly and keeps getting involved in the nitty gritty of my projects. I’m a senior practitioner with years of experience managing projects like this. When she gets involved in this way, I feel like my skills aren’t valued and it slows everything down.” (Senior Technical Project Manager)

“Mate, we just sit on the sidelines until ‘Bullshit Castle’ tells us what to do. If we start anything, they always come and change it anyway, so what's the point? Might as well chill til they make up their mind.” (Frontline Supervisor)

Have you ever heard or said things like these? They are all real examples from coaching sessions over the years. All stem from a lack of clarity. Lack of clarity burns time, energy and resources. Do-overs, stress, frustration, lack of momentum, fatigue, cynicism are byproducts.

The challenge for clarity is that your expectations and assumptions are probably different to mine. Unless we spend some time understanding the gaps and creating alignment, we are destined to carry unnecessary load. It’s no wonder that “Lack of Clarity” is listed as a psychosocial hazard in the updated Work Health and Safety Legislation in Australia.

Time spent increasing clarity is never wasted time. It’s a case of slowing down to speed up. Where could you add clarity today?

Clear as Mud

Image by Hans from Pixabay

One of the greatest barriers to effective work is getting clear about what we want, need or expect for a job well done. Here are some examples of lack of clarity getting in the way of good work. They are all live examples from my own interactions with staff, or from leaders I coach.

• A designer sends me some sample ideas based on an initial brief. It’s not even close to what I was expecting. I’m baffled, because I’m sure I have been really clear about what I consider some of the fundamental ‘must haves’ in the design. When I go back to my brief I find several areas that I thought were crystal clear, but on reflection are very ambiguous. I have not set the designer up for success. I could have done a much clearer job of the brief. The designer could have asked for more clarification.

• A manager gets very frustrated when a high priority piece of work has received no attention for several weeks. They had given an urgent task to the person responsible. The urgent task was interpreted as a ‘drop everything else’ priority. He had shifted all his effort and attention to the new task. It left the manager questioning his capability and him feeling ambushed and unsupported.

• A team gets delegated work from their team leader. They take no action. Why? Because the team leader has a pattern of taking over part way through a delegated task and ‘re-doing’ it because it’s not ‘up to standard’. Neither the leader or the team can articulate what the ‘standard’ is. The team has decided to wait until the team leader initiates the direction, because it feels like a waste of time to do otherwise.

• A director gives a senior leader responsibility for coordinating the scheduling of staff for significant remote area projects that the team is delivering. The leader starts organising a detailed roster to ensure expertise, breaks, and logistics are all taken into account for each trip. She’s told she’s overstepping the mark. The directors wanted to be able to assemble their own project teams. The senior leader was completely confused about what was expected. Turns out they wanted someone tracking workloads and scheduling issues, to advise on team makeup, rather than someone to actually assemble the team. Both had a really different picture of what ‘coordination’ meant.

All these examples burnt time, energy and resources. They created frustration and more work to arrive at good outcomes. All of them involved capable, competent and enthusiastic people. Lack of clarity was a significant factor in all of them.

Do you have similar experiences where you work? What’s the impact?

Lack of role clarity is listed as a potential psychosocial hazard. Lack of clarity adds to workload and can certainly contribute to stress. Clarity also contributes to a sense of certainty and acts as a launch pad for high performance. Next time we’ll talk about what we can do to add clarity.

Kindness

Our local open spaces look great. Today I saw why. A young city staff member was flat out with a rake and blower piling up and then picking up autumn leaves and rubbish. Without her efforts I reckon it would be knee deep. I paused on my morning walk and said “Thanks, the place looks great.” She smiled.

I’ve been reminded a lot lately about the impact of kindness. It’s easy, especially if we are stressed, to be short with others or overly focused on problems and criticism. At its worst, this can even be people making personal attacks. I certainly don’t always get this right. However small those harsh moments, they have a negative impact.

Christine Porath and Christine Pearson have investigated the impact of incivility (unkindness) in the workplace for decades. Their findings are profound. Even small moments directly impact people's mental health, productivity, customer service and the bottom line. Being kind is not only the decent human thing to do, but it makes good business sense too.

At the moment, many people across sectors are feeling fatigue, stress and pressure. One of the practical things we can do to impact this is set the intent of kindness, and follow it with action.

Ask yourself:

• When, how and with whom am I most likely to be harsh?

• In what simple ways can I demonstrate kindness today?

• How can I be kinder to myself?

If you’d like some specific suggestions, let me know.

Expectations kill people!

In every survival situation I can think of it’s the expectations that did it.

The pilot expected to make it through lowering cloud… and flew into a mountain.

The prospector expected to find his way back to his vehicle… and was lost for days.

The lost man expected to find water… and perished from dehydration.

Reality! - No one in their right mind would continue into a situation they expect will kill them. 

In a survival situation the feedback is rapid. When you make a mistake the consequences are quickly experienced, sometimes in a matter of hours.

In our fast paced modern life, consequences may take days, or even years to arrive, but they are just as inevitable:

They expected the boom to go on and on...

He expected his staff to care as much about his business as he did…

So how can expectations lead us so far astray?
The fact is that our amazing brain treats memories of actual events and expectations of the future in exactly the same way.

“[Expectations] are stored in memory just as past events are. To the brain the future is as real as the past.”
L. Gonzales in ‘Deep Survival’ (2003).

The impact is that we tend to become fixated on our expectations, and then continue to blunder forward with a kind of blind optimism that believes the expectation will come to pass. That serves us well until there is a conflict – either between our expectations and those of another; or when reality begins to diverge from what we expect. At that point we have the choice of reformulating our expectations. If we don’t we are destined to encounter disappointment, conflict and friction.

The biggest challenge is being aware of what your expectations actually are. Most are formed without any conscious thought. for more on that see recent post http://goo.gl/dHZydF

I use a couple of great questions to clarify my own expectations:

1. What do I expect in this situation?
2. What is the impact on myself and others if this expectation is not met?

Once you are clear about your own expectations, one of the greatest gifts you can give to others is to clearly communicate your expectations with them, and seek to understand theirs.

The beginning of a new financial year is a great time to intentionally discuss your expectations in business. Are your strategies sound in the current reality? Are you tuned in to the expectations of your clients or customers? Does your team have a clear picture of what is expected of them, including how success will be measured or judged? Have you spent some time exploring the plausible "what if" scenarios for your business? 

Why take your team outside?

I had an interesting conversation with a corporate client last week about Outdoor Team Building. We were reminiscing about the late '80's and early '90's when adventure based activities were popular as a company team building event. People in their droves swapped suits for bush clothes and paddled, climbed, swung, paint balled and built their way to team success.

Most activities like this have a similar formula - a problem that can only be solved/overcome by a team who can innovate, communicate and cooperate. It's a solid formula. Most workplaces are attempting to create teams that do just that. So why did these programs all but disappear?

• One size fits all - Despite being highly flexible about activities and locations, the vast majority of operators ran the same program, regardless of the client. The place and activities might change, but how and why it was done remained much the same.
• No connection - The potential links between activities and the people doing them were poorly explored. It was fun but didn't relate to the "real world".
• Missed opportunities - Most programs were staffed by technically skilled young people who knew the activities inside out. Some had leadership experience, but mostly in the outdoors. Few had business experience. Activities were often debriefed in very superficial ways. Canned debriefs included sweeping, generalised statements like "So you see, communication is really important". Participants were given opportunities to reflect on behaviour, but few tools for any significant change. In the worst of programs, teams were actually worse off. They had seen and confronted ineffective team behaviour, and left the program aware, disgruntled and unsupported.

NOTE: These are generalisations. There were and are a few excellent companies providing such activities that do an awesome job of all the above.

So why do I recommend companies take their teams outside?

“I just wanted to pass on my gratitude and appreciation for the planning, facilitation, insights, activities, catering and all the other experiences and knowledge created over the 2-day bush retreat. I’m sure I’m not the only one who gained a lot from it including how to use a compass correctly!

The additional resources you gave us are perfect. I set up meetings with each Area manager to work on improving my unit’s service and delivery to them. I am confident that the questions and guidance you provided will assist in us understanding our customer needs and focusing our resources correctly.”

— Senior Manager - Bush Retreat

• Different environment - Stepping out of the familiar work setting changes everything. Hierarchy seems less important. The pace naturally slows. Corporate language and formality drop away. Habitual ways of relating to each other are reset. Communication improves. Silo walls get torn down.
• Perception expands - Physically people's eyes move from short intense focus to broad soft focus. As teams renegotiate their way of being together, previously unspoken assumptions about "the way things are done around here" get some conscious air time. Collective and self awareness rises. 
• It's restorative - A growing body of research shows attention, cognitive function and productivity all rise as a result of being outside. Stress, mental fatigue, depression and anxiety all reduce. Almost every company I have worked with is attempting to address one or more of these issues continuously in the workplace.

The bush is no magic bullet, but a well thought out and delivered outdoors program can have massive and lasting effects. If you would like to discuss how you might use some outdoor time this financial year, feel free to be in touch.