AUTHOR SPEAK: ANNE MORRISS
HOW TO FIX YOUR ORGANIZATION’S PROBLEMS IN SEVEN DAYS The week-long approach in Move Fast and Fix Things lays out a distinct agenda for each day.
This architecture works at the scale of a team but also the scale of an organization. So, when organizations are struggling with any kind of a problem, they should identify the stakeholder at the center of the problem and then look at the problem through this lens of trust and work out which of these three pillars is getting a little shaky on you: authenticity, logic or empathy. It matters because you can’t solve a logic problem by doubling down on empathy, and you can’t solve an authenticity problem by reinforcing logic. But we see this happening all the time. For example, many employees and companies are struggling with the core employment contract right now. Younger employees, in particular, want more meaningful work, for example, or they want to grow and advance at a faster rate. Those are logic needs. Yet employers are responding by providing yoga classes at lunch or offering organic snacks in the break room, which are empathy signals. This doesn’t help to strengthen relationships. It’s important to go one layer deep and figure out at a foundational level what’s happening with trust with whichever stakeholder is at the center of the problem. Doesn’t trust take a long time to be built? I believe that’s a myth. When trust breaks, it’s quite possible to rebuild it quickly. We see in practice that we’re constantly gaining and losing trust. The leaders, teams, and organizations that are most effective at rebuilding
it start with the conviction that it can be rebuilt and that it can be rebuilt quickly. They lean into figuring out what’s going on and then act with a sense of urgency on the solution. The larger message of your book is to “operate with urgency, be wildly ambitious, and fix as much as you can along the way”. Can you provide some strategies to help business leaders succeed in this regard? In the book, we give you a challenge for Monday through Friday. The logic is that you spend the first part of the week building trust. You’re figuring out what your plan is and then how to communicate that plan in a way that’s compelling to the people you need to act on the plan. And once you do that hard work, by the end of the week, you have earned the right to go fast. So, speed is the payoff for the fact that you have built a foundation of trust earlier in the week. Once you get there, it gets fun and tactical. One thing I will push you to dwell on is the idea of empowerment. It’s a very operational idea, even though it sounds very soft. It’s about distributed decision-making and organizational physics. So, if all decision matters must flow through a single point in your organization or just a few points, then speed will be a very clear trade-off. And if you can open that aperture even a bit, you can go much faster than in a world where only a few people are at the center of all critical decisions. There are lots of ways to empower an organization. One of my favorites
Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems is available to buy now.
IDENTIFY THE REAL PROBLEM HOLDING YOU BACK
MONDAY
Far too often, companies don’t tackle the root issues but instead focus on surface problems that mask what’s going on. The solution is to ask tough questions, build a team of problem solvers, and surface major roadblocks to progress. Then, gather new data and listen, really listen, with an anthropologist’s curiosity and a leader’s accountability.
About the Author: Anne Morriss is dedicated to helping people unlock their own potential — in the name of building extraordinary organizations. As founder of The Leadership Consortium (TLC), Anne Morriss is dedicated to building inclusive executive teams and preparing emerging leaders for senior roles. For the past 20 years, she has guided entrepreneurs, companies and governments throughout the United States and Latin America on strategy, leadership and organizational change. She has also put her own theory into practice: as CEO of GenePeeks, she oversaw a computational genomics company developing breakthrough ways to identify disease risk.
is The Ritz-Carlton. It has a policy of giving every employee on the payroll a budget of up to $2,000 to solve any customer problem. That number is shocking to some people, but solutions rarely require that kind of investment – a plate of cookies is usually sufficient. More important, it’s a very powerful signal to employees that they have permission from the organization to go out and solve problems by any means necessary. The steps in your book can be accomplished in a week. Can you explain why you took this approach? What can readers of the book expect to come away having achieved? We give you a week, but you have our blessing to take longer than a week to complete it. What we don’t want you to do is take months or even years, which tends to be our default timeline for solving hard problems. Most of our problems in organizations deserve a more urgent response. A metabolic rate that honors the frustration and the mediocrity and the real pain of the status quo. And so that’s really what we’re challenging our readers to do – to decide right now to move fast and fix the things that are truly in the way of their organization’s progress.
BUILD AND REBUILD TRUST IN YOUR COMPANY
TUESDAY
With the confidence that comes from knowing the right problem to solve, running smart experiments to steady trust ‘wobbles’ helps strengthen relationships with key stakeholders.
CREATE A CULTURE WHERE EVERYONE CAN THRIVE
WEDNESDAY
Creating the conditions where everyone can thrive as complex, multidimensional humans can lead to a better change plan – and better performance – by including more and more varied perspectives.
COMMUNICATE POWERFULLY AS A LEADER
THURSDAY
Creating change means developing a powerful narrative honoring the past (both the good stuff and the not-so-good), articulating a compelling change mandate, and describing a rigorous and optimistic way forward. Then, telling that story with emotion again and again makes it impactful.
GO FAST BY EMPOWERING THE TEAM AND REMOVING ROADBLOCKS
FRIDAY
A CULTURE OF SPEED IS KEYS TO UNLOCKING RAPID, ENSURING CHANGE
Leading change with a sense of urgency means empowering others to execute quickly. Clear strategy and a culture of speed are keys to unlocking rapid, enduring change.
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Volume 8 ai:sight by Fractal
ai:sight by Fractal Volume 8
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