One of the challenges associated with Courageous Leadership and achieving Excellence by Design is knowing how to effectively manage customer relationships.

In the consulting environment, there is generally a measurable connection between client satisfaction and the revenue trajectory of an account (whether that’s expressed as stable annuity or growth over time).  In a perfect world, this is ideally driven based on a blend with how you are managing the relationship and the quality of your service delivery.  In the corporate IT world, it is a little more difficult to measure, but certainly there are indicators on whether a business partner is satisfied with the support they receive, whether it is expressed in feedback processes, involvement in critical strategic discussions, the collaborative dynamics of the relationship, etc.  In both cases, whether a consultant or an IT leader, the goal is generally to be a “partner at the table”, which is a very often used, but rarely achieved situation.

Describing What “Good” Looks Like

At an anecdotal level, some simple litmus tests on the health of a customer relationship:

• Does the customer involve you actively when ideating or forming a business strategy?
• Would the customer or a neutral third party refer to you as more of a “partner” or an “order taker” in business discussions?
• Are conversations when issues arise handled as a fact-finding and joint solutioning opportunity or as a beat down/”do what I say” discussion (conceptually)? This is normally very perceivable in the tone and direction of the discussions as they occur.
• Does the customer openly seek feedback and input as to how new/advanced technology can drive innovation and adjust plans accordingly?
• Are prioritization discussions occurring when new opportunities arise as part of a larger portfolio management process? Are those conversations collaborative?  Are initiatives stopped or deferred as an outcome of the exercise, or are portfolio discussions largely a snapshot of all the work that has come through the demand management process and is planned for delivery?
• Is the delivery environment sustainable from a utilization and pace of execution standpoint?
• What are the average hours worked per employee? Is there time being spent in learning and talent development?  Are technology standards and strategies being implemented or set aside in deference to critical “priorities” on an ongoing basis, resulting in accumulated technical debt?

Worth noting, I’m calling out a number of dimensions above intentionally and not leaning on “the customer said they are happy” for a reason… namely that, there are many situations where customer satisfaction is largely based on a sense of having control over priorities and actions in a relationship and where no effective partnership exists.  Again, the simple test for this is: what happens when the parties disagree and, in those circumstances, what percentage of the outcomes are ultimately what the customer originally wanted?  I don’t know how to estimate this with any precision, but if the answer to the question is directionally something like 80% or more of the time, and the consulting/IT team taking on more work without any remedy or accommodation, it would be hard to argue there is much “partnership” in practice.

Where The Best of Intentions Creates Challenges

It isn’t news that being highly motivated in a delivery environment is a blessing and a curse.  On the positive side, motivation and a passion to deliver is what can propel an individual and those leading teams to achieve sometimes incredible results, despite the odds that otherwise could undermine their success.  On the flip side, a belief that anything can be accomplished can also lead to issues when leaders view tradeoffs or compromises as an inherent sign of failure or weakness in their customer’s mind and they take on too much when they should be seeking balance in the overall situation instead.

In practice, organizations often sign up for too much, stretch beyond their internal capability to support the volume of ongoing work effectively (with critical skills and knowledge where it is needed) and ultimately create an unsustainable environment.  This is generally FAR more costly than taking a reasoned, fact-based approach to portfolio management and prioritizing the mix of ongoing work effectively (something I will likely write about as part of Operating with Agility).  The resulting effects of this situation are fairly prevalent in my experience across many organizations and clients in the last 30 years, namely missed delivery commitments, technical debt, poor quality, lack of value realization, employee burnout (and ultimately attrition), and unhappy customers.

Overall, a healthy and credible customer partnership should be created by establishing mutual trust and respect, acting with integrity, and making fact-based decisions in the interest of maintaining a sustainable environment that delivers quality solutions with agility and speed at scale.  Admittedly, that’s quite a lot.  Easy, right?  Of course not, but what in that statement isn’t the aspirational end state?  If that level of partnership and delivery environment isn’t the goal, what is?  That might be a discussion worth having from a leadership standpoint.

Some Examples to Consider

Having been in both consulting and corporate environments, I’ve seen a number of situations where managing customer situations has been challenging.  To share some examples:

• Where the skills were insufficient
  • Having completed a lengthy engagement with an existing customer, I was asked by the account exec on a strategic account to speak to a prospective client about a potential new portfolio of work related to data warehousing.
  • In the call, the client walked through where they were, the work done to date, the forward-looking plan, makeup of their team and areas where they could possibly use some assistance.
  • Overall, the project was thoughtfully organized, fairly complex, and the areas of opportunity were outside our organizational capabilities because the depth of skill and experience required was beyond anything we had. Subcontracting those capabilities also wouldn’t have offered any material benefit to the client that they couldn’t obtain by contracting the skills directly on their own.
  • As a result, I thanked the client for the opportunity but said we weren’t well positioned to help. The prospect’s response was literally “I’ve never heard a consultant say that before” and they thanked me profusely for being candid about our ability to meet their need.
  • As you might expect, the account executive, on the other hand, called and yelled at me for some time given I was meant to sign the client up for work, regardless of whether they needed our help or not, with the implication being that a very informed customer “didn’t know what they needed”, which is why we needed to sell the work.
  • In a positive twist, the prospect went back to their leadership and gave such a positive review of the conversation and us having done the “right thing” that they ended up offering up a different piece of work that was in our wheelhouse to deliver.
  • Was the conversation a mistake? Not in my mind.  Would I do the same thing again?  Yes, for certain, because I’d rather accept what we can and can’t do successfully than sign up for everything and ultimately have an adverse impact on the work as a whole.
  • Probably to this day, the account exec would argue that I messed that situation up, but unfortunately that’s the nature of consulting at times when revenue goals cloud matters in relation to ethics and integrity. The account team was primarily incented to reach a target, not a healthy client relationship and sustainable delivery environment (which is not unusual in consulting as a whole).

• Where the timing wasn’t right
  • Coming out of a successful delivery engagement with a new client, our executive sponsor referred us to a peer, who had recently assumed responsibility for the integration of an acquired organization. We were asked to help develop a strategy and some new customer-facing technology that would bring together and align the existing and acquired company products into one cohesive solution.
  • With the best of intentions, we started into what was a roughly an 8-12 week scoping and visioning activity, engaging teams from both the parent company and new acquisition.
  • What we rapidly realized was the major challenges and headwinds associated with being engaged so early after the transaction had been announced and nearly every deliverable we had planned for the early portion of the engagement fell very far behind schedule.
  • In preparation for our first sponsor checkpoint (~week 4 as I recall), we realized the probability of completing the engagement within any reasonable timeframe was extremely low and we decided to pivot to providing an update on where we stood in addressing the various challenges we were facing, such as the lack of a brand strategy, team dynamics, technology integration issues, major strategy decisions that would need to be made, etc.
  • In preparing for the checkpoint, we reached out to our prior sponsor who had referred the work to us for advice on how to approach the situation. His guidance was, thankfully, to be open and direct with where we were.  Whether he ultimately gave our new sponsor a heads up in advance of the discussion, I don’t honestly know, probably because I was too young and inexperienced at the time to think of that possibility.
  • In any case, we met with our sponsor, talked through the challenges, and his response was to pause and ask us “so, you’re saying it doesn’t make sense to do this right now?” to which we responded, “yes”. He expressed appreciation for our candor, the project was stopped in-flight, and the client spent time focusing on the integration of their teams before trying to proceed further on any implementation work.
  • As it happened, the sponsor also left the organization relatively soon thereafter and, based on the impression he had of us and our work, contacted us from his new place of employment to explore opportunities to engage us again.
  • Our actual project had only lasted around a month and didn’t deliver anything, and yet built enough credibility for the customer to come back from a completely new direction.
  • In retrospect, while I believe we handled the situation correctly, we should have had a sidebar with the sponsor to give him a heads up ahead of the checkpoint so he knew what was coming before we got to the meeting itself. Thankfully that didn’t blow up in our face, but it would’ve been a more thoughtful way to handle the situation than what we did at the time (largely out of inexperience between me and other people in the account team at the time).  Overall, I consider the project a successful failure because we didn’t waste the client’s money on an outcome we never would’ve accomplished in a reasonable timeframe.

• Where the solution made no sense
  • As part of an internal team reviewing another engagement, the delivery team introduced us to a project they were about to initiate with their existing client. The overall engagement was going very well, and the opportunity to create a “management tool” came up as an adjunct to the larger program in motion.
  • For those of us outside the account, the proposed solution seemed immediately problematic and we challenged the team on why they were pursuing the work at all, given the complexity of what was desired, the likely cost of the project, and the questionable amount of value they could ultimately produce IF they figured out a way to do what the client was requesting.
  • The response from the team, not surprisingly, was that the client was “very excited” about the project, they were eager to sign the agreement and kick off the effort, and we should be more focused on how to help the team solution by comparison with asking why they were doing the project at all.
  • As you might expect, the engagement team ultimately had the authority to move forward with the work (and business), we noted our concerns in the review material for our industry leadership and the project got underway.
  • I don’t remember how far along it occurred, but somewhere after at least a couple months of execution, a change in client in leadership occurred, the new leadership reviewed the in-flight projects, and immediately questioned the nature, scope, and value of what the team building this tool was doing. The project was stopped, the account team took a major credibility hit, the larger engagement ran to completion, and no follow-on work came to the team as a result.  Worth noting, the larger program was worth something over 10x the revenue as the smaller tool project, but the relationship impact from the trust that had been lost was significant enough that the larger engagement was damaged.
  • This is a difficult situation to assess in retrospect, because the team was eager to solve a client need and be responsive. The problem is that the solution itself didn’t make sense, added no value, and was essentially a ticking time bomb from the moment it was conceived.  At a minimum, had the engagement team raised the concern and documented it somewhere in the course of initiating the project, there may have been some resource to mitigate the damage done once the overall direction changed.
  • The other takeaway from this situation is that a solution should objectively make sense and create value so that, in the event that circumstances and sponsorship changes, the work itself should be worth continuing. If the need for a project is largely subjective in nature, there can be downstream risk that the investment itself may not be in the best interest of the company (or client).
  • It could be argued that, as an outside team, it was far easier for us to call out the potential issue than the team engaging with the client directly (and that’s 100% true). However, the entire reason we had review teams was to provide an objective lens on the ongoing delivery work, in the interest of providing input and guidance to teams, but also to help them assess revenue at risk.  We provided exactly that input, but it was largely discarded in deference to securing the revenue.

• Where there was a historical lack of trust
  • As the start up on a first engagement with a new, large client, a teammate and I had the opportunity to meet with the client CIO for an introduction.
  • His opening statement to us was “I could buy a company of your size tomorrow if I wanted to, what makes you guys any different and why do we need to talk?”
  • After the tumbleweed blew across the room… and we drew a collective breath… my very young, overconfident, and inexperienced mind told him that we could also get a set of contractors, give them a copy of Microsoft Visual Studio, and ask them to do the project even cheaper… BUT… that’s not what buying consulting services is about. You’re buying experience, culture, methodology, passion, and a commitment to success.  If successful delivery was about tools and technology, then everyone would be great at it, but unfortunately that’s not how things work, which is where we come in.
  • In retrospect, thank goodness I was young and inexperienced, or I might have been more intimidated. To his credit, the client probably knew that, he paused, apologized for being abrupt, and then told us that nearly every consultant he works with started by saying they were going to deliver a project but “then the minute I turn around and open the safe to pay them, they are looking over my shoulder to see how much more money I have in there.”
  • For whatever reason, I suspect the fact that I focused more on successful delivery and not “partnership” (which translated into future revenue opportunity in his mind) made a difference in getting off on the right foot.
  • We left the meeting with an invitation to come back whenever we wanted which, given the size of the client and how generally inaccessible their CIO was at the time, was a notable achievement.
  • In retrospect, what I believe worked was the unfiltered nature of a genuine and honest response, and I think the client picked up on it by comparison with more “polished” consulting pitches he likely heard on a regular basis from people much more experienced than I was then.

• Where the engagement approach itself was poor
  • The final example I’ll share relates to having an ‘all or nothing’ mentality when it comes to discussing higher risk efforts.
  • With a change in senior executives, a directional statement was made with regard to a desired amount of technology delivery (i.e., X major releases per year) the new leader wanted to be part of the future environment.
  • The CIO and leadership team assembled a set of “educational” materials to help the new executive understand why the desired pace was unachievable. The message was not met well, either by the new executive or the head of the company, both of whom considered it a lack of leadership on behalf of the CIO and technology leadership team.
  • In retrospect, the entire issue was in the approach to the response, because the reason the IT leadership believed the request couldn’t be accomplished was, aside from technology-related issues, the business dependencies in delivering at that pace were generally unmet and would require an unprecedented level of speed by the business teams working with IT overall. The team assumed those items would never change and therefore wrote off the new executive’s request without ever considering whether he’d be willing to explore ways to address those challenges.
  • This situation has actually bothered me for a long time, in part because of the risk averse nature of the CIO and leadership team at the time, but also because the discussion could have been approached in a positive and partner-oriented mentality. “We’d like to help accomplish these goals and we will do X, Y, and Z to support it.  We also, however, need your help in making sure that we can do A, B, and C from a business standpoint as well, because those are critical dependencies in our ability to meet those objectives as well.”  That discussion never happened and rather than further the idea of IT as an enabler or partner, the reputation of IT as an impediment or barrier to success was furthered.

Putting Things in Perspective

In all of the situations described, it’s safe to say that none were “easy”, all involved some level of risk, and the stakes were generally high in some way or other.

What I’d say is fundamental in all cases for having healthy client relationships is:

• Being open and transparent in communications, noting objections where appropriate
• Operating with integrity, no matter what the pressures of the situation are
• Remembering to put value in the center of the conversation and the desire to make things better. A partnership isn’t about control, it’s about mutual respect and understanding, listening, and collaboration in the interest of finding the right solution to challenges

It’s worth noting that our reputation is what transcends individual decisions, projects, and jobs over the course of a career (whether within one employer or across many)… and it doesn’t take long to do substantial damage to one if you’re not careful.

Recognizing there are opportunities to improve partnership in customer or client relationships isn’t a condemnation or criticism of any current or past situation I’ve encountered.  It’s a recognition that, by acknowledging dysfunction and identifying opportunity where it exists, we create space to make things better and lay the foundation for excellence.  It takes humility, but also courageous leadership to drive change where it’s needed, and that will always be worth the effort for the betterment of an organization.

Hopefully the ideas were worth the time it took to read them.  As always, feedback and reactions are welcome and appreciated.

-CJG 04/09/2022

First of all, it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to share some thoughts on here.  Hopefully I can make up for lost time with a few articles on short order, but time will tell. 

As I’m rapidly approaching my 30-year professional milestone, I’m reminded that the reason I began this journey was to relate and share experiences in the interest of (hopefully) helping others avoid some of the many mistakes I’ve made over the years.  In my mind, if you’re lucky, you are doing things as part of your professional (and arguably personal) life that are challenging enough to create the conditions to fail or minimally sub-optimize outcomes to the level that you’ll reflect and realize there was a better way to approach things if you had another chance.  That is fertile ground for learning and development.  Said differently, we only truly understand our potential when we challenge ourselves to reach beyond our established norms and pursue aspirations to achieve and accomplish more.  Ideally, over time, we also become more self- and situationally-aware, so we continue to adapt and adjust how we do what we do, minimizing negative impacts and maximizing the value we create while things are still in motion (versus during a “debrief”/retrospective process).  That’s ultimately a byproduct and benefit of experience and, unfortunately, it’s the kind of thing you appreciate once you have it if you’re humble enough to admit you make mistakes in the first place.

Focusing specifically on the topic at hand, I was thinking about innovation recently and a keynote address I heard a number of years ago.  The speaker made a point about the difference between “best practice” and “innovation”.  His overall point was that there was a significant difference between the two and leaders often unfortunately weren’t doing a good enough job distinguishing between them.  In the case of best practice, you have a process or approach that has been done so many times that there is a well understood and generally accepted “best” way to do it.  If that is effectively true and we seek to do things in a way that aligns to best practices, how innovative can what we’re doing actually be?  What is truly unknown or exploratory in that situation?  Arguably not very much, and yet best practice thinking is often recognized and sought out from a leadership standpoint as a way to drive process or operating improvement.  Is that necessarily a bad thing?  Not necessarily, because it could be that the nature of the area is not one where any level of significant change or transformation is anticipated or desired and the organizational goal is really just to stabilize something and make it execute well and consistently enough that it is not having an adverse impact on overall performance.

Where I’d suggest there is room for thought is whether this “status quo” is true anymore in the world of digital business.  Is there really ever a case where you have a process that is so static that there is literally no room for making it better?  I’m not sure.  Can you make it more predictive, automated, integrated with customers/partners/suppliers, quality-oriented, etc.?  The complexity of digital business, particularly in terms of integration, speed, quality, and customer centricity would tend to make me think that even the most mundane of our solutions to current problems provide opportunities to improve.  If that’s the case, then I’d offer that relentless innovation is worth consideration. 

The litmus test can simply be this question: if you had a blank sheet of paper and had to design your process in a perfect world, would it work exactly how it does today?  If you set aside limitations, constraints, the current operating environment, and opened up the discussion to the realm of possibilities on what excellence could look like in that domain, what would it be?  If it looked different from current to desired state, what would you do about it?

This isn’t to suggest change for change’s sake or having a lack of priorities as there is a point to prioritizing efforts based on maximizing value, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a vision of a desired “ideal state”.  The point is that it’s very easy to accept the status quo and the perceived safety of the known in terms of best practice and lose the opportunity that comes with continuous reinvention.

This is where courageous leadership comes into play and we should ask ourselves why we prefer the best practice solution to true innovation.  Is it the safety that comes with not taking the risk of exploring the unknown?  As leaders we can take the safe route, let others take the risks for us, learn from their mistakes and implement only those things that are generally accepted to work (and work well).  Where does this leave us, however, in terms of establishing competitive advantage and differentiation in the marketplace?

Technology delivery is challenging and it is becoming even more the case as the pace of innovation is accelerating.  Most organizations will struggle with being able to adopt and integrate new technologies as they emerge over time and limit their competitive position as a result.  That is somewhat related to antiquated architectures and infrastructures that stifle innovation and change (something I will address when I write about framework-centric design and the future of enterprise architecture), but I believe it’s also related to a lack of organizational agility and courage in terms of innovation itself.

Innovation should be uncomfortable.  By that, I mean there should be an element of the unknown that creates a healthy discomfort you may actually fail in the pursuit of what you’re doing.  If it isn’t “scary”/exhilarating at some level, are you really pushing the boundaries of what’s possible or just re-treading a path that others have explored before you?  This is not an argument for being undisciplined or taking unnecessary risks.  Rather, the point is to understand that true innovation should be pushing the boundaries of what is actually achievable to the point that you could fail.  If what you’re doing is simply an iteration of current solutions, at the pace technology is advancing overall, the odds may well be that what you’re doing will be obsolete by the time you ultimately deliver it (if it involves any scale or time to execute).  Said differently, if you’re going to set an innovation goal, make it audacious and one worth achieving in its ability to truly transform your business, because the alternate path will eventually lead you to obsolescence.

Having worked on innovative efforts at various points over my career, one thing that I have come to look for (as a watch item) is a lack of fear/awareness on a delivery team when what they are doing is still fairly new or unproven.  Experience tends to give you a sense of what to watch out for, or minimally an awareness that, as you delve into areas of technology delivery that are not very mature, you are going to encounter unexpected issues that will threaten the ultimate success of your effort.  Leaders who have operated in this space generally seem to know that, so their enthusiasm over pursuing the next “big thing” tends to be tempered by a healthy dose of humility on what they don’t know, need to understand, have on their “watch list”, etc.  That, to me, is a sign of strength and experienced leadership.  Where I’ve had a decent number of “lessons learned” in the past is exactly the opposite situation, where we took on a difficult challenge and took a “we got this” mindset (and there’s nothing wrong with being highly motivated), without really appreciating the complexities of what we were doing to the point that, when things eventually went sideways because of an unknown in the delivery effort, we were ill prepared to adapt and address the situation.  Experienced leaders know what they don’t know or minimally that they have blind spots that they need to identify.  Motivated inexperience tends to breed overconfidence and that’s dangerous when it isn’t held in check with discipline.

In creating an environment for excellence, the challenge for leaders is to create space for individuals and teams to experiment and innovate while making it safe to fail when things don’t work out.  It’s better to fall short of accomplishing something great and strive for true innovation than to excel at the routine and find yourself overrun by your competition at some point in time (and it’s only a matter of time if you encourage safety over courageous leadership).

Hopefully the thoughts were helpful…

-CJG 03/21/2022

Having thankfully (and finally) gotten past writing about IT as a whole, I’ve wanted to write on a dimension I associate with engaged leadership, which is the role a leader plays in establishing the conditions for success.

Before diving into the specifics, I believe everyone in an organization can and should think of themselves as a leader with the opportunity to contribute in meaningful ways (see my “Power of N” article for more on that).  I’m referring to leaders in a managerial capacity for the purposes of this piece.

Setting the Tone

First of all, I believe it’s important to acknowledge the personal accountability that leadership involves.

While culture and core values tend to be established at an organizational level, it is the leader who sets the tone and culture for a team, and that is largely a matter of choice.

In a leadership development session many years ago, a key point was made about “externalizing” leadership, calling attention to the situation where a leader would assign blame for decisions they were making on an ongoing basis to a third party such as their customer or other leaders to whom they reported or with whom they were working.  The challenge offered in that discussion was to reflect on that situation and ask why we, as individuals and leaders were not taking accountability for the choices we were making in spite of those circumstances. 

It’s not uncommon in my experience to see this situation occur, with examples along the lines of:

• Difficult or aberrant behaviors of a leader translating to a next level of leaders who work with them, and thereby exponentiating the impact of the overall leader’s behaviors on the broader team
• Challenging customer behaviors leading either to an order taker mentality or similar pattern of unhealthy behaviors within technology leadership that, again, have a detrimental impact on the associated team and work efforts
• Organizational misalignment or lack of collaboration between teams translating into fragmented solutions being defined and delivered, ultimately creating complexity, limiting organizational agility and speed, and also increasing technical debt

The key questions in the situations above is “Where does this end?” or “Why doesn’t someone do something about this?”  The ripple effect of a lack of leadership can be quite substantial and the reason courageous leadership is needed is because there will almost always be some level of negative reaction that occurs the minute the cycle of dysfunction is broken.

Leadership starts with each of us and the choices we make every day.

The right questions for a leader to be asking in the situations above are rooted in personal ownership and accountability: “What can I do about this?” and “How can I set an example for how things ‘should be’ by comparison with how they are today?”

I’ve certainly been in situations in the past, particularly in consulting, where the client or personalities of a core team were not necessarily healthy or positive in terms of promoting collaboration and partnership.  It has also been the case where the direction I received from the larger organization may not have been in the best interest of my team, the client, or both.  This is, again, where integrity can be tested and doing the right thing is critical. 

In my view, a leader needs to set a positive tone for what is possible, to act in good faith, with integrity, and do their best to insulate their team from the adverse circumstances that may surround what they are doing.  This creates space for culture to be positive, engaging, and effective and for team members to do their best work.  By contrast, when a leader allows those circumstances to dictate their actions in a way that becomes unhealthy, they are effectively punting their accountability to lead in the first place.  Again, it’s a choice, and it’s one that truly matters if you want to pursue excellence and high-performance teams.

Given the above three scenarios, the outcomes of making the right choice can be significant:

• Not transferring dysfunction to the “next level” can unlock the performance and impact of the team that had previously been under-utilized. That could have a positive impact on output, on quality, on morale, on turnover, etc.  The negative impact of poor leadership is fairly well established in terms of operating performance
• Addressing customer challenges with effective leadership can provide greater portfolio stability, less missed expectations (because they are communicated, set, and managed properly), and overall improvement in the health of the work, not to mention the positive team impacts referenced above
• Finally, providing effective leadership in an organizationally misaligned environment can help provide clean solution designs that increase agility, accelerate speed to value, and reduce cost of operations

Wrapping Up

In short, the point of this article was to suggest a moment of reflection. 

What are the challenges you see in the organization in which you work today?  Can you do something about them?  Does that actually require “permission”?  What or who would prevent you from making a positive change?

My experience over time has been that leadership opportunity is always there, in part because you can almost never have too much of it.  It takes courage to step into the void and challenge the status quo where dysfunction exists… and it also takes a degree of fearlessness to truly drive excellence and transformation.

I used to echo a concept to a team many years ago in the interest of encouraging personal ownership and engagement: make a difference every day… no matter how large it is, it matters over time.

Imagine the possibilities if only a fraction of the leaders in an organization tried to create positive change every day…

I hope the thoughts were worth sharing… feedback is always welcome and appreciated.

-CJG 10/30/2021

I thought I’d start out with a fairly simple mental model for thinking about employee engagement and its role in leading transformational change.

Like others, I’ve spent many years being indoctrinated to the concept of the “individual contributor”, which is the equivalent of a non-manager/ doer / worker / employee who presumably spends the majority of their time executing against responsibilities partially or entirely defined by someone else.

While not wanting to delve into the “manager versus leader” topic right now, I can say that I never really thought too much about the language above itself and what it implies if we’re not careful when leading teams.

My assertion is that thinking of team members as “individual contributors” establishes a mental model of linear impact and marginalized value.  In the worst-case scenario, the collective potential of a team of 10 individuals is effectively 10n… the sum of their individual contributions, with no added value beyond what they accomplish on their own, in isolation, given tasks defined, created, and assigned by someone else (their “leader” for simplicity’s sake).  While I don’t know that we’d see much of this ever play out fully in practice, the situation would likely be one where team members work in silos, don’t ask others for help, don’t participate or offer ideas to better the team or the organization, and see innovation and leading change as entirely someone else’s responsibility. 

Something in there sound familiar?  I suspect it does, because it happens almost everywhere in my experience, to varying degrees, based on culture, leadership, and probably a number of other factors.  What I don’t believe the critical determinant is, however, is talent.  If talent is a concern, operating in an “individual contributor” mindset is a sure way to have an adverse effect on the overall math, because arguably there will be individuals performing at less than their full potential, and the impact will be further reduction in team productivity and effectiveness.

So, shifting to the right side of the equation, what we want is to capture the Power of N… the exponential impact that comes from engaging a team fully, maximizing their potential contributions, and shifting from a passive to an active role in innovation and change.  Turning the capability of 10 individuals (10n) to a high performing team that generates the impact of n¹⁰.

Some litmus tests for this kind of environment could include:

• Is there a shared vision to which individuals are able to connect and see their contributions advancing?
• Do team members work across boundaries and collaborate actively with their teammates and others in the broader organization?
• Is there an inclusive environment where ideas from members of the team contribute to the objectives of the team as a whole, solutions presented to customers, opportunities for improvement, etc.?
• Do members of the team actively help coach and guide others in their professional development?
• Is it a cooperative or a competitive environment?

Enrollment is a critical lever in unlocking the collective potential of a team and the proportionate impact that they can have on an organization as a whole.  It requires awareness and humility from a leadership standpoint, because it’s very tempting to present the idea that you have all the answers, are the keeper of the keys when it comes to the vision, and have control of the greater whole at all times.  The problem is that this is the surest way to stifle contribution and innovation, because you also just became responsible for every “good idea”, limited advocacy of your greater cause, and took on the burden of having to direct the lion’s share of the execution, when a self-directed team will be far more productive (and effective) overall… and that is an incredibly limiting way to approach working with teams.

Now extrapolate this out to a team of 25, 50, 100… more… the impact of leveraging the Power of N is in our best interest when we want to promote transformational change.  It has to start with individuals, who execute against that shared vision, help define its advancement, and ultimately determine the bounds of what’s possible.  That is where the most knowledge (and capacity) in an organization ultimately resides and tapping into that potential matters.  With all the organizations with whom I’ve had a chance to work over the years (including clients as a consultant), even the most engaged and well-intended leaders don’t know the realities of the people who are on the front lines, facing the daily challenges, and seeing the opportunities that exist for sustainable change.  Closing the gap between our aspirations and daily realities is important to having an actionable strategy (something I’ll likely write about separately).

So, if any these ideas make sense, the suggestion would be to engage with your team, and ask questions… “Do we have a vision for where we’re going?”, “Are there questions/concerns about it?”, “Is this the right direction/the best we can do?”, “How should we deliver on that goal?”, “What help do we need to make it happen/Are we equipped to be successful?”, “Are we collaborating effectively?”, “How will we know we’ve been successful?”… and listen, and listen, and listen… and respond… and engage.

Today’s question for reflection: Do we want to lead a team of individual contributors producing marginalized results or a self-directed team that is engaged in driving transformation?…  It’s a choice.

Hopefully the thoughts were worth reading… feedback is always welcome.

-CJG 08/13/2021