This week I want to share the third pillar of my Leadership Plan (learn more about those here) - after 🙅 Saying No & 🔁 Following Through, this week I want to talk about the challenge of helping your team project themselves in your vision.
Today vs. Tomorrow
In my first weeks at Scaleway, I followed my onboarding plan to a tee. I made a conscious effort to listen without giving my opinion. I made a few exceptions, like participating in the Q2 OKR process in my first few weeks, but I insisted on not changing what they would work on - the only input I gave was to make sure that OKRs were clean, but I happily made compromises so that goals weren't changed for Q2. Good now is better than perfect later.
When sitting in on conversations, I would paraphrase what had been said to make sure I understood and then ask questions like "what would you do next if I hadn't joined the company yet?" I wanted to understand fully where we were today before I shared my vision for where we could go together tomorrow.
As month two rolled around, my assumptions & hypotheses had been sufficiently challenged & reinforced to a place where I felt they were ready to share - also, there were a few pressing recruiting topics that I was aware of on day one that meant I needed to act faster than I would've liked to - and so I did. I shared my vision for the team in our first monthly marketing department all-hands in the form of scope, reporting structure & accountability. I shared a snapshot of our team today, one quarter, one year, and three years from now. The team looked excited - I had validated individual roadmaps and internal mobility requests with team members 1:1 in advance, so I didn't expect any major objections, but I made time for questions and followed up in the 1:1s afterwards to make sure everything was clear.
In follow-up discussions, the team appeared very enthusiastic - we dove into the details of what needed to be done next quarter, who needed to be involved, and what the blockers were to getting us there. They had plenty of questions, which I initially took as a positive sign but quickly realized that some team members were adding more work on their plate based on my roadmap - exactly what I had hoped to avoid, changing their Q2 OKRs while I'm still onboarding.
What I had intended to communicate was "here are the challenges we are going to work on in Q3," but what I learned later was that the team had been in firefighting mode for so long that what they heard was "here are the challenges you need to solve before Q3."
I had acknowledged where the team was operationally, but I had failed to fully take in the current team dynamic. This dynamic had served the team and its stakeholders for a long time - in truth, Scaleway wouldn't be where it is today if it hadn't been for this dynamic, but a non-neglible part of my arrival was due to the diminishing return that this dynamic was having - like a car staying in 1st gear on the onramp to a free way, we just aren't going to achieve the escape velocity if we don't throttle up to the next level of operations.
I stepped in the exact pile I was trying to avoid - bringing a new management style without acknowledging the current one - and I'm still taking time with the team to acknowledge this.
Leaders should spend a good chunk of time thinking about the big picture as a means of anticipating upcoming problems that could hinder team performance. As broad strokes come together, the temptation is to share out your rough drafts and co-create a detailed roadmap together; however, your team can't have their head both up in the clouds and focused on their next step, so there is a tendency for team members to interpret unelaborated futurisms as present-day challenges that require action rather than the ideation sessions that leaders might want them to be.
⚙️ Embrace Asana, embrace Roadmapping.
The key for me to connect your vision to the day-to-day is to draw a line from annual to quarterly to monthly to weekly to daily. The best way I know how to do that is to put everything in the same tool - my preferred tool for years has been Asana. I've used Trello intermittently, which I like for a managing tasks, and I use Notion as my personal knowledge base, but Asana is my go-to product when I have the option of choosing what tool our whole team uses. If you're not already a fan, I think there are two features that really put me over the edge:
One Task, Multiple Projects: the ability to create a task and drop it into multiple projects means you can superimpose multiple layers of project management into a single project. Big Annual Goals like "prepare for US Expansion" can also sit in projects focused on quarterly projects, a reminder of the 'why' behind current projects.
Timeline View: visually laying out projects, drawing dependency lines, filtering by owners or by tag make it very easy to understand how we get from today to one year from now. I've built product launch playbooks, soft skills development roadmaps, and OKRs all in the same tool in the past, and seeing tasks as a timeline with a start and stop date allow you to block out priorities, and perhaps most importantly decide when will start thinking about something (i.e: what you won't think about now).
⚙️ Broken Record Statements
One tactic I rolled out recently when joining Scaleway was committing to a few 'broken record statements' to help make my strategy clear. Exactly like what it sounds like, I repeat the same phrase over and over and over again, every time a certain theme comes up, so that there is consistency & clarity. When I created my leadership plan, I created one for each theme:
"I want to understand where you're coming from so that we can go where we want to go together."
"I think the best way to leverage me right now is for me to hear and digest your perspective on how things are today."
"That feels very important. Can we spend some more time on that?"
As I got settled in, a few new ones formed naturally based on my learnings about the current and future challenges, and I made a conscious effort to repeat them often.
The thing about repetition is that it's contagious. I'm only 10 weeks into my new job and my team and stakeholders are already starting to use the same language I use.
🚦 Stop. Start. Continue.
🔴 Stop solving problems before aligning with stakeholders on the solution.
🔴 Stop assuming people can see the big picture and how they fit in
🔴 Stop working on topics before pulling everyone into the fold.
🟢 Start distinguishing explicitly between organized thoughts and half-baked ideas before sharing.
🟢 Start sharing problems that you're seeing with your team during your 1:1s
🟢 Start proactively building a roadmap that include specific tasks for different team members
🟢 Start valuing day-to-day operations as much as strategic wins.
🟡 Continue sharing notes from meetings for the whole company to see if they wish.