No, but phrased in the form of a question

Photo by Scott Webb.

When the kids were little, and Raw Signal Group was just getting going, we would joke that if you squinted hard enough, basically anything could be a team-building activity.

Toddler just had a blow-out and the diaper bag is out of wipes? That's a well-formed exercise about trust and resilience in a high-stakes situation. Need to read and sign 50+ pages of an office lease before after-care pickup? That's an opportunity to "divide and conquer" – each person reads 25 pages and flags anything sketchy.

Years later, it's still a running joke. On any day that we fill, run, and empty the home dishwasher AND the office dishwasher one of us will point out that other co-founding duos invest in offsites and corporate yogis and co-founder mediation to get to this level of collaboration. The dishwasher is much cheaper and provides ample opportunities to practice.

But the dishwasher is kid-stuff compared to navigating Ikea on a Sunday. Which is exactly where we found ourselves this past weekend.

The plan was clear. Get in. Get what we need. Get out. And if at all possible, do not set foot on the second floor. The plan was a good plan. It was realistic. It was well thought out. It took into consideration the various strengths and weaknesses of the core team.

What the plan did not consider was that we'd be an hour late getting out of the house and arrive at Ikea in the middle of the lunch rush. Which would have been fine but before we even hit the parking lot, it was clear our plan had to adapt. The 8-year-old in the backseat was hungry. Actually, maybe more hangry than hungry. But either way, we would not only have to go upstairs. We'd have to brave the cafeteria.

The Ikea cafeteria is pure chaos. Small children and hot tea are a wild combination all on their own. But then add in the chaos of trying to decide between veggie balls and plant balls? Madness. Never the less. We get everyone food. We escape with our lives. And then we bee-line for the main floor, dodging poang chairs along the way. We go back to plan A. And we get the hell out of there.

At this point you may think this is just a cute story about Ikea. And it is. But it is also a story about the plan you've got, the straightforward work you think you're about to get done, and someone showing up with an existential threat at the last possible moment. So yes, cute Ikea story. But ALSO a parable for how to operationalize strategy when the surrounding context keeps changing.

The Jeopardy No

New managers often get raised and praised for predictability. If the team is solid. If turnover is low. If there's a happy drumbeat of promotions, and customer wins, and kudos in slack, then you must be a good boss.

As your team grows, other teams want a piece of your team's steady productivity. It's nice to feel wanted, but every new idea from some other part of the org distracts your team and threatens the vibe. You start to push back against those changes in the name of keeping your team productive and focused. In the immortal words of Timbaland and Furtado,

T: I want you on my team.

F: So does everybody else.

(To be clear, you are Nelly Furtado here.)

A simple "no" is unlikely to cut it. Saying no to every new idea or change in direction gets you labelled as hard to work with. Stuff gets escalated, you get overruled, the vibe suffers. Instead you learn to bury new ideas in implementation questions. Does this come with budget allocation? What about extra headcount? Would you trade this new idea for keeping the lights on, which my team is doing right now? The questions are rhetorical, and they're not really focused on the merits of the idea at all. The merits are immaterial. The questions are just a way to show how overtaxed your team already is. It's like you're a Jeopardy contestant. No, but phrased in the form of a question.

The problem is that as you get more senior — let's say Director or so — maintaining productivity and de-risking execution is no longer good enough. Your job is not stability for its own sake. Your job is to make your team an instrumental piece of the organization's success. And yes, one piece of that is making sure they can focus on their work.

But like, the world changes. The needs and wants of the people you serve change. The other players in your space change, the threats to your organization change. And we see a lot of mid-career leaders really struggle to get out of their own way when that means that the work has to change, too.

The merits are material

The more senior you get, the more your approach to change needs to evolve from concern and critique, to curiosity. Whether that's the CEO and their team bringing forward a new strategy, or a colleague pulling you aside after a meeting with an idea. Just for a minute, park the questions about implementation, and look at the idea on its merits.

Does it make sense? Do you understand why the other person is excited about it? And is that excitement pure New Idea Energy, or does it have some real strategic depth? Does it build on our key strengths and amplify other work we're doing? Does it address a major opportunity, or neutralize a threat? Could we achieve it and, if we did, would that be better than where we're currently headed?

This is hard to do! Every good operator wants to jump to "yes, but we have to keep the lights on." And you (probably) do! But learning how to hear strategy and adapt your understanding of the situation has an order to it. As Priya says, you don't start a funeral with logistics, and you don't start a strategic planning process with implementation costs.

Some changes get tossed out after a second look. Some are obviously correct, like feeding the child instead of speed-running Ikea while hangry. And sometimes it's not clear which way to go, it's a high-risk bet either way, and your company's leadership has to make a call. But either way, once the call's been made, change is coming.

Now it's time for some operator questions.

Non-rhetorical questions

You might be annoyed. Take a walk if you need to, shake off the moop. When you get back to work, the first questions will typically be for yourself, and they won't be rhetorical. If your org is making this bet, what's your team's role? What will it actually take to accomplish your piece of it in terms of budget, and humans, and time?

Which other teams will you need to be working with and are their leaders on board? If you really actually believed in this idea and wanted it to succeed, who would you need to bring in, and what would you tell them?

Next come the harder ones. What work has to drop, given the above? If it's really really true that we're doing this new thing, what work that felt important yesterday doesn't have a place in the new plan? Is there any sense in continuing it now? What are our even overs? You'll want to talk this all through with your own boss, and with your team, but it's worth it to get to some answers on your own first.

A lot of our questions here are about pushing yourself to sit with the new state of things, and chase the downstream implications. That's not an accident. It takes a minute to let the change fully settle in, and it's helpful to have taken that minute before talking with the team.

The good news is that this is where the vibes help you. The high-trust, high-productivity team you've been building and protecting? They can handle this.

And when they grimace, tell them what we told you.

The world changes. The needs and wants of the people we serve change. The other players in our space change, the threats to our organization change. And if we want to be continue to operate in this new context, our work has to change, too.

— Melissa & Johnathan