Finding some road to test your ideas
In my last post, I wrote about autonomy and how to keep pushing into this with your team. In most cases, your efforts to build autonomy are limited by what your organisation is ready for. You can’t force your organisation or group leadership teams to support higher levels of autonomy, but you can create conversations that explore what’s possible and lead to a desire for action.
When I’m facing resistance to something I want to try out and get support for, I hit pause and challenge myself to be in the other person’s perspective. I ask myself (or them) why the position they are taking is important to them, and what the problem looks like from their perspective. When I understand that, I know what I really need to focus on to start making progress.
Our challenge is to get into the world perspective of those we are trying to influence. And I reckon we get there with good questions that truly intend to explore a challenge. So if we are trying to make autonomy feature more in our ways of working, we might start with the approach Warren Berger shares in his cracking book, A More Beautiful Question: Ask Why…? What if…? and How might we…?
For example, if you are aiming to open up the idea of more autonomy with those group or organisation leadership teams, you might try something like:
Why don't we work with this level of autonomy normally? and then,
What if we did? or
What if we tried some autonomy experiments around the team / group / org?
I hold a view that one way of getting new or different ways of working up and running is to get your leaders asking these sorts of questions to their teams / groups / the organisation, and never answering themselves. That might be a big leap for some of your leadership teams, who want to make sure everything we try out runs smoothly and is successful. It could be a big leap for your people, who might be hankering for someone to be more directive once they get back to the office. Even for you as a leader, the tension of asking the question and not then providing the answer can be enough to put you off this approach. Warren Berger again sets the scene:
Research led out of MIT points to questioning being a key success factor in innovative executives (not rocket science, right?); but
Those leaders who do question exhibit an unusual blend of humility and confidence (note "unusual"... as in not most of us); and - for a piece of extra good news
Asking questions in public signals "I don't know the answer" and in most of our organisational cultures, to not know is to be at fault.
Okay, so how do we get some progress on this? How do we get our organisations to try out ways of working that include greater levels of autonomy? I’ve written about the value of experiments previously, and this is a prime opportunity to get an experiment up and running as we return to the workplace. The beauty of an experiment is that it can be small and quick, provide you with data that pushes deeper exploration and - whether it proves or disproves your hypothesis - you’ll always learn something and come out the other side with a more refined approach.
Practically, building on the questions above, it could look like this:
Why don’t we work with the same level of autonomy we had when we were in lockdown?
Lots of answers will come. Spend time truly exploring those reasons and testing the evidence for them.
What if we did work with that same level of autonomy?
If you want to make the case for it, look for some data that points to gains to be made. One leader I talked with this week told me that his people have been far more efficient and productive from home and he’s got the numbers to back it up. Now he’s presenting that to the rest of his leadership peers to make the case for a work-from-anywhere experiment.
This is a good time to float your initial hypothesis. If we try x, I expect y .
How might we do that?
Here’s a chance for everyone to contribute to what an experiment could look like. Or for you to offer to run a small, quick, well designed experiment in your team. Is it a work-from-anywhere experiment? Is it extending flexible working more? Running your own version of Atlassian’s ShipIt Days?
Now go do it. Make sure you collect data and, when the experiment is done, be light with whether it went the way you hoped or proved something different. Whatever happens, you’ve tested an idea, learnt something and now have either a platform to build on, a banana skin avoided, or somewhere in between.
Experiments need planning and good execution. They also need reflection and review so you can learn from them. You might have your own way of doing this. If not, feel free to download my two 1-page resources I use with my Potent Leaders groups:
Of course, your experiment doesn’t have to be about autonomy (but come on - why wouldn’t you after what we’ve experienced during lockdown?!) You can substitute anything you want into this approach to test and learn from. Whatever you do though, do something.