CHAPTER 24

Get Everyone Rowing in the Same Direction

I, CrisMarie, am an Olympic rower. I know how critical it is for everyone to row well together. It’s easy for business leaders to get caught in the tactical, firefighting aspects of day-to-day business and lose the big-picture strategic direction. You busily get things done, but are you moving in the right direction? The opposite also applies: leaders can err on the side of the wider, strategic viewpoint and miss the narrow focus and tactical details required to move the business forward. The big picture is great, but what does it take to make it a reality?

Leaders need crystal clarity to toggle back and forth between a strategic, wide view, and a tactical, narrow focus. Leaders tend to be better in one of these areas than the other. They start off giving great direction, and then fail to check in with their people to see if the direction—both short and long—really is on target.

Regular check-ins on both your wide view and narrow focus ensures you don’t miss your ultimate goal. In this chapter, we’ll pose some key questions—both wide and narrow—that will help you get to clarity and innovative ideas to provide you with profitable results.

TACTICAL VERSUS STRATEGIC

Leaders, we’d like you to step into an arena with a horse to appreciate the difference between wide view and narrow focus. No, you’re not riding the horse. In fact, the horse isn’t even wearing a halter. You’re on the ground, and you have only one communication tool, a rope in your hands that is not connected to the horse. In the arena, it’s your job to navigate the horse through various obstacles. Sound familiar?

The horse is free to comply or not. There’s no halter for control, nor is there any incentive. As you can imagine, this situation is loaded with nonverbal cues that interrupt clear communication.

My (Susan’s) experiences with this exercise reveal my tendency to quickly narrow my focus. I make a decision to move the horse through a particular obstacle, and if my plan works, I’m satisfied. However, if the horse doesn’t play the way I anticipate, I get caught up in a power struggle with the horse. I keep going after the same obstacle and applying more pressure.

To lead more effectively, I need to step back and take a wider view. With a wider viewpoint, I can pick up on the cues from the horse. Some horses are very sensitive, and when I wave the rope up and down in my hands, they instantly react by moving away from me and the motion of the rope. Other horses are less sensitive and more determined to get what they want. These horses easily ignore my waving rope and instead go stand by the side of the arena where there is an open window to the outside.

When I see from a wider view, I am more aware of my own energy. Am I nervous, tight, or anxious? My feeling is communicated to the horse no matter how well I think I’m covering it up.

During our off-site work with clients, we take teams through a series of crucial questions, starting with a wide-view, strategic direction and then moving to a narrow, tactical focus. Wide view gives big-picture direction; narrow focus puts that big picture into action day to day.

Many organizational leaders spend time and energy on developing their vision and mission statements. But when we ask them to tell us their mission statement, they need to pull it out to read it. It’s not engrained.

Our goal is to help the leadership team access short, simple answers to these wide-view, strategic questions that are easy to remember because they fit so clearly. When a leadership team can say at the drop of a hat why they exist beyond making money—when it really rings true—we have struck gold. They’ll be fully able to drive that clarity down throughout the organization.

Nothing creates alignment better than a team of leaders who all cite the same message and mean it! Your people, your partners, and your clients or customers will believe it and rely on you for it!

WIDE-VIEW QUESTIONS: SETTING STRATEGY

Management consulting experts agree that the key to setting strategy and getting everyone to row together is to get clear on three things: your business’s or team’s:

HOW to get to this clarity is where the management consulting experts differ, and there are lots of different models out there. From all our work, study, and experience, we like Pat Lencioni’s six critical questions in his book The Advantage.16 These questions are great at getting to the wide strategic view quickly. We were fortunate to work with Pat for eight years at the Table Group and we think his book, The Advantage, may be the best resource for starting with a wide view and driving to a narrow focus.

Here are four of Pat’s questions:

  1. Why do we exist? (This identifies the core purpose.)
  2. How do we behave? (This encapsulates the core behavioral values or team norms.)
  3. What do we do? (This defines the concrete business you’re in.)
  4. How will we succeed? (This identifies three strategic anchors that guide all decision making.)
  5. We also add a fifth question: Who do we serve? (This identifies your target market.)

We may not use all questions with every team, but our sweet spot is to use a combination of these questions to help leaders and teams apply the energy of conflict as the secret sauce to turn a great vision into a reality. We bring these questions in after focusing on the ME and WE to ensure that the team engages in healthy conflict during the discussion and arrives at the best answers. Time and time again, we see teams discover answers more quickly when they have done their ME and WE pre-work.

How can you specifically use the wide-view questions? For the first question, “Why do we exist?” you can:

Often, one of the four questions requires a deeper dive. Let’s explore how we worked with one executive team around the question, “How will we succeed?” We’ll look at how they used the strategic anchors on an ongoing basis to drive growth.

Strategic Anchors: How Will We Succeed?

One of our long-term clients was a multi-billion-dollar, multi-national mining company that specialized in precious metals such as copper and gold. When we began working with the company, they were a lower-tier in the industry with a five-person executive team.

The four wide-view questions brought the team to the big why: to show the world how it is done! They also got clear on question two, “How will we behave?” They had identified their core behavioral values: bold and decisive, forthright, and adaptable. Since they were a public company, the answer for, “Who do we serve?” could have simply been their stakeholders or the copper buyers, but that didn’t capture their impact. This leadership team also cared about, and knew they couldn’t be successful unless they focused on, their impact on the countries where their mines were located. We serve our stakeholders and the political, labor, and environmental needs of our mines’ countries.

Conflict and misalignment came up when we asked, “How will you succeed?” Some people focused on immediate success, while others took a longer-term view.

We hashed through the state of their business. They had problems with some of the mine sites in countries that were politically unstable. Some of their mine sites were inefficient in finding the metal deposits they needed to meet production levels. What they did agree on was that they wanted to grow, but how?

Reflecting back on what we heard, we asked, “What are you exceptional at?” The answer was unanimous: finding and making successful acquisitions. As a result, Growth through mergers and acquisitions became their first strategic anchor.

We carried on by asking, “What else do you need in order to grow?” A discussion ensued on the different mine sites they had acquired. They discovered that they were more successful with mine sites in countries with low political risk than in countries that were unstable. Low political risk became the second anchor for growth.

Finally, they realized that in order to be successful, they needed to be operationally efficient, and they struggled with that. They needed to be better at finding the metal deposits. Geological science became the final strategic anchor.

By the end of the discussion, the team realized they had significant work to do on the last anchor. When we came back for the next quarterly off-site, they had set their sights on merging with a smaller company that specialized in geological science. This decision was driven by two of their strategic anchors.

The merger went through that year, and we helped them integrate the new company. As with all new relationships, there was conflict of styles and goals, and they added four new leaders to the executive team. When you add even one person to a team, the whole dynamic shifts. We worked with the new team on both the ME (helping people understand their individual styles and impact to their teammates) and the WE (learning to Check It Out! during heated discussions).

Most of the team worked well together, but one team member had repeated run-ins with his teammates. He would agree to a plan of action and then do something different. We helped the team to clear up these differences, and we coached that team member individually. It became clear that he wanted a faster trajectory in his career. He wound up leaving the company.

After he left, the team clicked, things smoothed out, and the company emerged as a mid-tier player in the industry. We re-checked the four wide-view questions with the new team, and they had some heated discussions. They made minor tweaks to the definition of core values, but all in all, the wide-view clarity remained intact.

After the merger, the team commented on how the key to success was getting clear on the strategic anchors. Going through the four questions and diving deeper as needed helped the team shift from random decision making (what seemed good at the time) to focused decision making to drive growth.

Aligning the leadership team around the wide-view questions made for big-picture clarity. That set the direction and priorities, and it simplified decision making for the leadership team and the company. Because they had taken the time to build the ME and the WE their clarity came quickly.

Use this wide-view clarity to drive your monthly and quarterly strategic meetings, and then step back each year to see if it remains accurate. Getting clarity; and, more importantly, maintaining that clarity and alignment around the wide-view questions, sets the direction, defines the game you’re playing, and how to move the business forward. Build the ME and the WE so that your wide-view discussions are on the right level and your conversations are real.

NARROW-FOCUS QUESTIONS: DRIVING ACTION

Narrow-focus questions help you bring that big picture strategy into action on a day-to-day basis. The key here, experts agree, is clarifying your team’s common goal, getting clear on who’s doing what, and having efficient communication. Again, of all the models out there, we like Pat’s six critical questions best from The Advantage17, and use the last two for getting to the heart of things quickly/clarifying the nitty/gritty succinctly:

Here are Pat’s other two questions:

  1. What’s most important, right now? (This gets to the heart of the team’s collective goal or rally cry.)
  2. Who must do what? (This defines roles and responsibilities.)
  3. We also add: Who needs to know what? (This clarifies what you need to communicate out.)

These questions are more tactical than the wide-view questions. The answers become the ongoing focus in the short-term. We’ll focus on the first narrow-focus question here.

The biggest challenge we find on teams around narrow-focus work is that people tend to center on their own areas. They maximize the success of their departments or silos to the detriment of the business as a whole. When people don’t know what’s most important at an organizational level, they focus on what they know how to do, which are their areas of responsibility. Your job as a leader is to drive the team to focus collectively. That sets the priorities for the organization and provides the collective focus needed to break down the silos between different departments.

Many companies have annual goals. The trouble is that people tend to forget annual goals until the last half of the year because there is no urgency. Timeframe is important. A shorter timeframe forces the sense of urgency, which helps people work together to accomplish the goal. Make the time-horizon nine, six, or three months, depending upon the size of the goal.

Identify your team’s collective goal or rally cry by asking, “What is the most important thing we need to accomplish in the next three to nine months to move our business forward?”

Focusing on short-term immediate needs helps teams to organize and align around what is most important. It ensures all members focus on a collective goal rather than just their own individual area. It’s the leader’s job to provide clear, long-term and short-term focus so people can stay engaged.

Collective Goal (Rally Cry): What’s Most Important, Right Now?

We worked with a niche-player pharmaceutical company known for its expertise in research. The company had three primary departments: research, development, and commercialization, with research being the largest. We were brought in to help them improve the cross-functional teamwork on the project teams working with different drugs. The teams began operating significantly better, and the executive team asked us to conduct their executive off-sites.

The company faced the long-term challenge of bringing its first drug all the way through the process to commercialization. We introduced to the executive team the idea of a rally cry to focus the team as well as the entire company. The executive team knew their long-term company success depended upon successfully submitting their New Drug Application (NDA) and receiving approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Their rally cry became: successful New Drug Application to FDA. Their advancing objectives included: complete clinical trials; build NDA cross-functional team; write draft NDA application; conduct review cycle; and complete and submit final NDA. These tasks involved only a small subset of the company, but clearly communicating the advancing objectives to the entire company set the priorities for the whole organization.

During the nine months this goal was in place, we worked in the research department with a leader and his team for a two-day off-site. When one of his team members got a call that she was needed at an emergency NDA meeting, there was no question she had to go because the organization’s priorities were clear.

As we continued our work for the rest of this three-year engagement, we were impressed with how well the company applied the rally cry tool. A new one was created every six to nine months. Our client learned the importance of defining a collective goal and then advancing objectives.

The client ensured people were clear and emotionally connected to what was most important to move the company forward. This kept the leaders playing together and being accountable for more than just their functional areas.

Leaders and teams tend to narrow in on roles, responsibilities, and processes to deal with setting priorities. But usually that is not the real root of the problem. Once a team achieves the right level of dialogue and conflict, has a wide-focus map that is regularly tested for alignment, and develops a rally cry that gives people a reason to play together, they are clearer on the other two narrow-focus questions.

EMBODY THE BUSINESS

How do you succeed as a leader in conjunction with the business? First, be sure you communicate congruently. Make your words and actions match your inner intent and the core values you have set for your organization. This builds loyalty, and your people will better hear, believe, understand, and act on your message.

Second, toggle between a wide view and a narrow focus depending on the needs of the situation, team, and organization. Both wide-view and narrow-focus questions provide a simple structure that ensures clarity on a team and in an organization. Once you have a clear road map that outlines the answers to these questions, it’s crucial to check in regularly. We suggest the following team check-in frequency:

A great resource on meetings is Death by Meeting 18 by Patrick Lencioni. Like horses, your people give cues and feedback as to how effectively you move between a wide and narrow focus. Are you picking up on these cues?

Even if you take care of your wide and narrow focus, you, as a leader, may be making critical mistakes that are undermining your team’s success. Read on to find out the five common mistakes leaders make and how to fix them.