Author: duanne.obrien

Something that I have thought about a bit lately is how do I better embrace and flourish in my temporary. Why? Well because everything is temporary right? Every career role, friendship, love connection… pretty much completely temporary. Not disposable, but definitely temporary.

Now I’ll accept that the degree of temporariness will certainly differ, but things are gonna come to an end at some point, and that’s not only OK, but it’s also something that should spur us into thriving, enjoying and truly living. Consciously not taking things for granted as we should always know they won’t always be there.

Case in point. For me, there are probably fewer things more satisfying that watching the sun go down with a beach fire burning away, preferably with line in the water, beer in hand. When striking that first spark on the tinder, I can enter that sad knowing it will not burn forever, or I can embrace the fact the fire is only for the night and thoroughly enjoy it while it lasts. I’m leaning hard to the latter.

The irony is that in my experience spending any thought on ‘whether it will last’ will often directly contribute to it not doing so. An unplanned and sometimes unconscious self-defeating of things. Not good, not needed. Avoid this.

The flip side is also true. Knowing that because things are so temporary, it really opens a freedom to maximise the exploration or experience without fear… the outcomes is already well known. Freeing and de-stressing of sorts. 

The spectrum is obviously pretty vast here, from a completion of a short term contract role, the passing of a long term life partner, a special friendship that dissipates to a natural end. It’s OK to accept and acknowledge all the things that are dear to us are so very temporary.

Note to younger self / protégées / offspringers: Everything really is temporary, don’t spare a thought for that, but flourish and embrace knowing it… And when things come to an end, certainly mourn appropriately, but more importantly celebrate and cherish having been a part of it while you did!

When it comes to enabling leaders in my team, I think sometimes things can get a little over complicated.

Ultimately to fully empower and enable them, it’s essential to stick to managing the outcome and not the method. For me this comes through a pretty simplistic a repeatable frame in the form of 2 statements and 1 question. An uncomplicated, decomplexifying of things.

Statement 1: The Vision. What is that we need to achieve… the 10,000 foot view of what our success looks when completed.

Statement 2: The Reason: Why do we need to achieve what we need to achieve. What is the overall context, specific and nuanced.

Question 1: Play Support: What do you need from me? 

Playing support is the key. There will be times where we could spoon feed the answers, give the hints or take control, but that’s a big mistake in my mind (for so many reasons) in most cases. By setting the vision, explaining the reasons and asking how I can help… means my team is able to pickup the ball and run with it, which is something that is essential if I am not on the playing field.

I was so fortunate to attend the Aotearoa New Zealand 2023 Dev Day last week. From being invited to being on the Staying Ahead of the Curve panel through to meeting so many amazing people, day well spent! Thank you to old friends meeting again, and new ones met.

In that, I met someone new who asked me a really interesting and important question. Should I take the next big thing (job) or the next big thing (life experience)? Might be the best question of the day!

This is obviously so personal and so biased… but I’m good with that. I’m 100% biased towards success, satisfaction and fulfilment in life comes through experiences. Out of work experiences.

I’m fortunate enough to have spent literally years travelling, family who live (even now) across continents and countries and I can’t emphasise enough the benefits in spreading wings.

Yes that next work opportunity will benefit you like a short term hit, yup it will bump your $ right now, but normally nothing will help your growth, your love for life, your contribution to your relationships and your overall success than it being second to your OE (colloquial antipodean for Overseas Experience). Do it. Do it now, do it always.

There is no substitute for being powered up from a global experience.

As humans we seem to engage in a never ending dialog around who should, when and why?

A constant conversation that often focuses on the process rather than the outcome. In my own world (a technology product delivery world), there has probably never been a better example than when does architecture end and technical design / engineering begin? If I had a dollar…

I feel that this type of question is (unfortunately) more about when to engage the people / team rather than the activity itself. More about when do we get Jenny in the loop than what will our architecture and technical design look like?

I’ve got a pretty strong opinion on this and it’s rooted in primaries, secondaries and soft edges.

For simplification, think of primaries as the R/A in RASCI and secondaries as the C. Soft edges? Well that’s just about not being precious and working together as primaries and secondaries.

When we lead into something like architecture, the reality is that our architects are responsible / accountable for it, but our engineers have so much to contribute. In fact they need to contribute because they will ultimately implement what’s being architected.

When we lead into something like technical design and engineering, our engineers are responsible / accountable, but our architects typically have a deep engineering background. They too can contribute to ideas on how to implement the architecture.

Therefore is architecture and technical design / engineering mutually exclusive? Nope, never is. In fact over time, such involvements and activities don’t start and stop, they merge and transfer. As we progress through time and implementation, our architects shift from primaries to secondaries and our engineers vice versa.

Where is the handoff point then? Well there actually isn’t one. Instead there is a blended activity of outcome ownership and a shifting of responsibility / accountability and contribution within the team.

The underpinning philosophy that enables this is the soft edges.

The ability for roles / teams / people to work together on problems, contributing together with little regard for job description or remit. Soft edges allows us to have a first class opinion and not get precious about ‘who’s call is it’? Rather can we get the best outcome, like what’s the best idea?

We all know who the elephant in the room is, and we all know who is the deer. Let’s not rule out what the deer has to say.

It’s important to know who is primary and has the responsibility / accountability and who is a secondary and can contribute. Over time this often reverses, and when working well it does so with smooth transition. Smooth transitions need a lack of jarring and the best way to do that IMO is through softness, as in soft edges.

If there is one thing that I’m constantly encouraging my team to do it’s to get into alignment with each other.  You know, the close the door and everyone has their say, everyone debates the issue and when they leave the room they’ve all signed up to the decision and don’t break ranks.  

Sounds great!  However it doesn’t always play out that way. Even when the team is full of great professionals with the best intent, alignment sometimes cannot be achieved.  So where to from there then?

I like to use what I call Phased Alignment.  Phased Alignment is a construct which defines phases of getting a team to alignment by starting with decisions that can be simply endorsement by leadership through to (unfortunately at times), mandated by leadership.  

What do I mean by this?  Well… what I mean is I use a construct that fully empowers my team to make decisions through alignment, but if they can’t they know ultimately I’ll step in and make it on their behalf. Decision needs to be made, there’s no backing away from that.

Phased Alignment goes like this:

• Phase 1 – Leadership Endorsed Decisions: Teams operate independently and self guided where alignment is achieved. Leadership is able to endorse these decisions.
• Phase 2 – Leadership Guided Decisions: Teams fail to gain alignment and needs leadership input and guidance to get aligned.
• Phase 3 – Leadership Mandated Decisions: Teams fail to get aligned and forfeits the decision making ability.

Let’s explore these phases a little more…

Phase 1 – Leadership Endorsed Decisions

Leadership Endorsed Decisions is when my team is empowered and able to work effectively together and whether it’s 1 workshop or 20, they emerge with an aligned decision ready to be endorsed.  This is the best outcome and most decisions in a high functioning team come through the Leadership Endorsed Decisions phase.  This is the good stuff.  What’s the decision? Everyone Happy?  Awesome, job done.

Most of the time we stop here, which is great news, however sometimes it really isn’t that straight forward.  Sometimes it’s because it’s a difficult subject, or that people past experiences have already formed strongly opposed views, or even sometimes its even inexperienced or (unfortunately) ineffectual staff.  

Whatever the reason, sometimes the team is not able to get aligned themselves and at that point they move out of Leadership Endorsed Decisions into Leadership Guided Decisions.

Phase 2 – Leadership Guided Decisions

In failing to get aligned themselves, the team needs guidance in the conversation from leadership.    This is the team struggling, this doesn’t mean troublesome but it does mean struggling.

Leadership Guided Decisions typically manifests itself in re-workshopping with the leadership playing an active role, in being clear in the need for alignment, the outcomes required and guiding the conversation.  Tools like Six Thinking Hats can be helpful, so can the reassurance that nearly every decision is reversible and that we’ll test and learn and review and if need be reevaluate the decision at a point in the future.

Effective leadership and high functioning teams should nearly always get aligned after the Leadership Guided Decisions, but on occasion there are team members who collectively or individually don’t or can’t respond to the leadership guidance and at that point there is no other way. The leaderships hands are now forced and it’s time to consider the discussion and options and make the decision for the team.  

Phase 3 – Leadership Mandated Decisions

This is the destination we normally didn’t want to be at.  The team has had the opportunity to get themselves aligned and couldn’t, the team then came under leadership guidance and still alignment could not be reached.  Let’s not sugar coat it, we’ve collectively failed at this point.

I try to avoid Leadership Mandated Decisions wherever possible, but what I don’t avoid is being clear to the team that alignment is required and that the team is empowered to execute on that. However and it really is a big however, if they can’t we’ll head towards leadership making the decision for them.  A decision is required one way or another.

Conclusion

I’ve found using the Phased Alignment Framework really helpful and teams response very well to it.  I’m able to very clearly outline my commitment to empowering teams and allowing them to make decisions for me to endorse, but at the same time if they can’t there are consequences of that because the decision is required.  

Mostly I see my teams operate in Leadership Endorsed Decisions and occasionally traverse into Leadership Guided Decisions and that’s great.  Sometimes even teams ask to start in Leadership Guided Decisions to get some extra horsepower in the process and that’s great too.  Sometimes we end up in Leadership Mandated Decisions and that is… well it is what it is.

Let’s always aim for Leadership Endorsed Decisions, they are typically the best ones, with the highest buy in and the best results.