Bring me problems

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A common leadership adage is to say to staff “don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions”. At first glance, it’s a wise thing to request. Digging deeper, though, I’m not so sure. I see two ways this thinking doesn’t always work.

Solve It Together

First is the issue of trying to have one person come up with a solution, when bringing the problem to others may be of more value. To paraphrase Adam Grant, you can create a situation “where each person comes into the situation locked into their way of solving the problem and lobbies hard for that particular solution rather than considering multiple perspectives“. Bringing the problem to others may result in much better solution.

Go Do It

The other side is asking why people would come to me with solutions in most cases anyhow. If your team is adequately empowered, and they come across a solution to a problem they were facing, they should just go implement the solution. Don’t bring me the solution – just go do it.

This is often a problem in larger organizations, particularly with customer-facing staff, and I try to remember that when working with customer service folks as a customer. The solution to my frustration might be obvious to both of us, but the customer service rep simply isn’t allowed to think outside the box. Avoiding that trap is how companies like Zappos grew so quickly, as this NPR article from a few years ago showcases nicely — employees can do whatever it takes to serve their customers.

There are certainly times when I need some help and a solution is greatly appreciated, but treating that approach as the best way to go about your business is often not the best move.

Don’t have all of the answers; have all of the questions

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At the end of most episodes of Seth Godin’s Akimbo podcast, they run an ad for the altMBA that includes a great line from T.K. Coleman that includes the quip that “there is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet“. While I personally work hard to have many answers available in my head, the real benefit is generating more questions.

Asking more questions is a great thing to do. It helps uncover missing pieces or makes us view things a bit differently. Even better, the right questions can help uncover pieces that no one even knew were missing.

In a recent blog post by Seth, though, he took it even a level deeper:

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Rarest of all is the person with the humility (and confidence) to realize that even the list of questions can remain elusive. Finding the right questions might be the very thing we need to do.

If you’re not sure how to find more of the right questions, the “5 Whys” can be a good tool to help get there, and it’s super easy. Ask a basic question, follow it with “why?”, and keep asking “why?” to every answer. It can be a road that leads to sounding like a curious two-year-old, but if done correctly it can uncover great things.

Here’s a quick example showing how that might work:

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Having the right answer is great, but having the right question can be even better.

You don’t have to have all of the answers if you’re willing to learn

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It’s tempting to try to have the answer for every question, and it’s admittedly something I fall into myself. It’s kind of like the idea of “proving versus improving“, and trying to be an expert on everything. You don’t need to try to do that.

It can take a degree of humility to know you don’t have all of the answers, but it can lead to two great outcomes.

First, as the title states, it can give you the push to learn something new. If you can recognize that you don’t really understand a particular subject, even if it’s really just a bit of imposter syndrome, that will push you to learn.

Second, depending on your role, you can hire people to handle those areas. Years ago, I spent some time trying to learn Photoshop and improve my design skills. That wasn’t necessarily a bad direction, but it turned out to be mostly a waste of time — my time was better spent honing development and leadership skills, and hiring amazing designers to do what they do best.

Most great leaders (including politicians, ideally) can see the big picture and then hire experts to make the execution in each area as good as possible. People like Sara Blakely (founder of Spanx) and Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) have done this exceptionally well over the years, and their results speak for themselves.

Ultimately, it goes back to the Daniel Kahneman quote that I shared a few weeks ago: “No one enjoys being wrong, but I do enjoy having been wrong, because it means I am now less wrong than I was before.”

A lack of knowledge can be a good thing, as long as you are willing to admit your shortcoming in that area and do something about it.

Speed shouldn’t be a measure for untimed roles

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At the time of this writing, we’re looking to hire a new Web Support Manager at GreenMellen. We’re taking candidates through a fairly typical interview process, but speed is not a major factor in this. We certainly want to respond quickly to our clients, but if someone doesn’t have an answer to a question right away, that’s ok. They’re going to be faced with questions they can’t answer from our clients, too, and the key is whether or not they can find the right answer.

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Malcolm Gladwell has talked about this topic repeatedly in podcasts and interviews, as it drives him nuts. To pass the LSAT exam and get into law school, speed is crucial. It’s a long test and you need to move quickly. But why? This is measuring how fast students are, not necessarily how smart they are. When they become a lawyer, they’ll have time to research and look things up, and their ability to ultimately come to the correct decision is what really matters most.

Malcolm sums it up this way:

When we decide who is smart enough to be a lawyer, we use a stopwatch.

That’s not to say there’s an easy answer here, as you can’t give infinite time to the test. Do you double the allotted time? Triple it? Having not gone down that road myself, it’s not something I can really answer.

I just know that if I need to hire someone that can handle rapid-fire Q&A at a conference, speed matters. For the rest of our roles, the outcome is the main thing we should be worried about.

What do you think?

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I’ve had a bad habit over the years that my team has rightfully called me out on, and it’s one that I’m trying to break. I’ll find an interesting article and send it to one of them and simply ask them “thoughts?”. That’s not helpful.

Richard Millington recently had a great post where he unpacked the similar phrase of “what do you think?”. When someone is asked that, Richard says:

If you’re cornered, you might give a quick reply and then try to move on. The approach just feels a little weird.

The obvious catch with an online community is people aren’t cornered. If the approach is off and there’s no real benefit of replying, people don’t reply.

The solution is to set more specific intentions with your request. Ask if the budget allows for what the article suggests. Ask if they’ve tried that app before. Ask them to review the article to discuss at a future meeting. Be clear on your intentions.

At our Meetup next month (it’s free and virtual – join us!), we’ll be digging into managing follow-up. While much of the discussion will be about us following up with others, the flip side of that is creating situations that lead to better follow-up from others. Asking “thoughts?” will keep an email lingering in an inbox, while more clear tasks will be taken care of. Clarity in your requests will likely yield better results.

What do you think?

Don’t let the HiPPO have the final say

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When you’re in a meeting of any kind and you’re working to make a decision, one person often has the final say, even if they’re not the one that should really be providing the answer. Don’t necessarily listen to the HiPPO (“Highest Paid Person’s Opinion”).

Great leaders surround themselves with people that are experts in their given specialties. While it’s on the leader to make the final decision, it can be dangerous for them to speak first as others may just fall in line and agree.

Adam Grant summarized it well:

A senior leader is present and no one says much until the senior leader does. People then fall over themselves to comment, with the comments leaning towards different ways to restate what was just said or to pander to the leader. Group think kicks into over drive, and anyone who had an out of the box thought quickly buries it along with their pride.

This often happens because the HIPPO (the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) is crushing any diversity of thought in the room.

The only person that can really fix this is the HiPPO, in one of two ways:

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  1. Refrain from giving their thoughts until others have had a chance to speak.
  2. Create an environment of trust, where people aren’t afraid to speak up with their opinions.

A good leader will have solid thoughts to share and contribute to solving the problem at hand, but a great leader will make sure that everyone in the room is able to give their honest thoughts so that the best answer is revealed.

When to honk

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Car horns are a funny thing. At times they can be incredibly useful, like when someone is sleeping at a red light or (more importantly) if someone is backing up and doesn’t see you there. A quick “honk” solves it.

On the other hand, the horn can be a way to vent frustration. They can sometimes be directed at a specific driver that did something you don’t agree with, but it’s often just vented to the world at large with no real outcome expected. Something like this:

As Seth Godin recently said, “Honking at traffic serves no purpose other than to express a need to control the uncontrollable”.

This leads to two quick thoughts:

First, you don’t have to always “do something”. Honking in standstill traffic might feel good, but is of no benefit to anyone. If you can control yourself, then control yourself.

Second, I see feedback to others in the same way. Sometimes feedback is appropriate and useful, and worth a quick “honk”. Other times, if you feel the need to give useless feedback simply so you can vent off some frustration, do your best to take a breath and save it for another day.

That’s not my job

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A few weeks ago, we bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee for my wife. It’s an excellent vehicle, but I noticed something interesting during the sales process.

At one point they made a small financial miscalculation, but the finance manager ate the difference to make sure they stood by their word, which was appreciated. That was just good customer service. The weird part was the tires.

When we took it on a test drive, there were various lights on the dashboard warning about low tire pressure. “No problem”, the salesman said, “we’ll take care of that”.

So we got back to the dealership, and while we were doing the paperwork they took the car to the back, cleaned it up, and then brought it back to the front so it was ready for us. When we left, all the “low tire pressure” warnings were still on.

Now, this isn’t a big deal — we stopped by a gas station and filled them up, and all is good, but it made me think about how this happened.

My job?

When we initially got back after our test drive, one of their employees took the car to the back. Then, a little while later, one of their employees moved the car back to the front. It’s possible they didn’t notice the error messages, but Jeep makes those warnings very red and obnoxious, so that’s not the case. I think the problem is that it “wasn’t their job”.

I imagine the guy bringing it back up to the front saw the warning lights and thought “Steve was supposed to fix that. Oh well, it’s on him, not me.“

Employees taking ownership of “other” problems is key to a successful business. It’s similar to skipping things that they client didn’t ask for, but you know that they need.

Seth

Two of Seth Godin’s old posts touch on this a bit.

Back in 2010 he had a very short post about authority vs responsibility:

Many people struggle at work because they want more authority.

It turns out you can get a lot done if you just take more responsibility instead. It’s often offered, rarely taken.

And then in 2013 he talked about two ways organizations can promote responsibility:

There are only two choices available to any large organization:

1. Hire people who make no original decisions but be damn sure that if they are going to run by the book, the book better be perfect. And build in reviews to make sure that everyone is indeed playing by the book, with significant monitoring and consequences in place for when they don’t.

2. Hire people who care and give them the freedom and responsibility to act. Hold people responsible for the decisions they make, and trust their judgment.

The tires weren’t a big problem, but the lack of employees willing to step up and take action for something that needed to be done (even if it wasn’t on their list of responsibilities) should be a major concern for any company.

Obscurity is still your biggest threat

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There’s an old quote from Tim O’Reilly that I really love, and it seems to be getting better with age. Tim simply said:

Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.

While you can worry about people copying your content or stealing your ideas, your far bigger concern is having no one care at all.

I’ve seen this come up recently in two different places.

Full RSS or no?

The first was from a friend of mine in the WordPress community. I respect her work, and simply disagreed on this issue, so I won’t call her out directly.

Her post was essentially “don’t let people steal your content” and was a list of all of the ways you can lock it down. She took it further by encouraging people to only post partial content anywhere (including email and RSS feeds), to force them to click through to your site to read everything.

That can work to some degree to stop theft, but by forcing people to click you’re making it easier for people to ignore you. You’ll stop most of the spammers, but you’re also risking greater obscurity.

Rick Kitagawa

I see the opposite with Rick Kitagawa, one of the coaches in my recent altMBA experience.

Rick publishes a blog post every day. However, you can consume it wherever you want and you don’t need to click through to his site to read it — he just wants the message to get out. Some of the places he publishes:

  • You can read it on his site, of course.
  • If you sign up for his email, the full content comes to you there.
  • If you follow his RSS feed, the full content comes to you there.
  • He also publishes the full content on sites like LinkedIn.

His goal is clearly to spread his message, and he knows the results will come back in his favor. By making his content easy to find, consume, and share, he’s setting himself up to be a great authority.

That’s the kind of practice I like to see.

Show people their super power

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In his book “Nothing you don’t already know“, author Alexander den Heijer shares a simple but powerful statement:

You don’t inspire people by revealing your super powers; you inspire people by helping them reveal their own super powers.

This applies to inspiration, but I also think it can apply to your website and marketing.

As explained by Donald Miller in “Building a Storybrand” (and virtually every time he speaks), your goal is not to be the hero to your clients. Your goal is to be their trusted guide, and help them to be the real hero. Help them find their super powers.

If you can make that happen, it’ll be hard to ever lose that trust.