. I asked my friend, "So you try to teach him to wash his face by himself and expect him to keep his shirt dry. And if he could not, you took away the opportunity for him to practice at all. Well, I can barely keep my shirt dry when I wash, can you?" My friend was quiet.
At so many times, a leader will need to step in at critical moment to save a project or an organization. There are three very easy questions to help every leader stay on track at those moments. Now let's look back and use the three questions to test what actually went wrong with the example of my friend and how to stay on track for a different result.
1. What is my goal?
If we ask this question more often, we would be able to stay on track and reduce detours.
For our example above, the goal is clearly that the boy to practice and learn to wash his face by himself. When someone washes their face, or do anything related to water, there are very high chances, or risks - a more "management"-like word, that water will wet things or even cause damages. These risks very easily will derail the focus of the task or project from its original goal to mitigation, because it is almost an instinctive reaction that we wanted to prevent risks from interrupting our achievement. Sometimes we mistake managing risks as expected achievement.
This is why the father shifted his focus to keeping the shirt dry. There was nothing wrong to try to keep our shirt dry while handling water, however, the decision to take over the control has completely wiped out the track to his original goal.
2. What are the costs for my actions?
Cost was never just money. There is cost associated with everything we do.
For the father to take over control, not only comes the cost of the opportunity for the boy to practice but also the cost of slowing down the learning process for the kid to do it independently therefore delaying the delivery of the final result.
In addition, by making an issue of "shirt will get wet and we will need to change the shirt", it sent a message to the boy that the goal is to not only wash face but also stay dry, which is practically impossible and conflicting. In this case the normal course should be, wash face, shirt may get wet, and we can change the wet shirt afterwards. A mixed message may confuse people working on the task, which may lead to chaos within the project team or the whole organization.
3. Who should lead the actions?
At every moment an issue occurs, or we predict something would become an issue, we jump on taking actions to help things move smoothly. As executive sponsor of any major project, it is almost inpreventable people will seek our opinions and look for advice or decisions. A leader's role is to provide overarching guidance rather than DIY all. It is hard to stay aside, especially if you are a hands-on leader who see things are wiggling toward an undesired direction and you have ready solutions at hand.
Again, we should ask what is our goal before we make any decisions or take actions, and what are the costs of those decisions and actions. Was it worth it to intervene NOW or we can observe a bit longer and allow the project team figure things out? Timing is critical. For example if the water overflowed from the sink because the boy kept the tap on big, it is necessary for the father to jump in and straight things out.
Remember, even though a leader can probably mobile resources to complete almost every major course, it does come with costs, which may include pumped up budget, delay in other major developments, or organizational restructuring etc. For the father to take control, he spent 5-10 minutes washing the boy in order to prevent a wet shirt. And same time, he has to rush his own morning routine to make up the time.
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Take a pause to practice asking these three question on everything is slowing down to move faster. With practice, we will habitually go over the three key questions in an instant to help us stay on track with better decisions for healthy growth of any organization.
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