1 big idea worth considering.
If you think about the best way to make a decision, you’d likely agree that you want the decision as close to the information as possible. Put another way, you’d want the decision to be a reflection of the best information you have. That’s how you give yourself the best shot at making the right decision.
Yet when it comes to the way we build businesses, this logic tends to go out the window.
As companies scale, the information-decision gap naturally begins to widen. Layers of leadership are put in place, and a business that once made ground-level decisions now finds their core decisions being made by people far removed from the information - the boots on the ground.
To make this concrete, in the early days of a company, the person leading sales is making decisions based on the reality of trying to sell every single day. Once a company has scaled significantly, the person making decisions about sales is mostly, if not entirely, removed from the day to day sales conversations.
Information ← gap → decision.
There’s 2 issues with what seems to be this expected side effect of growth:
Tracking the logic above, we’re not making the best decisions if they aren’t based on the best information possible.
We’re losing trust with the people pushing the business forward each day.
The people closest to a problem are the ones with the best information about how to solve it. To be a great leader, we need to involve those closest to the problems that we’re solving in the process of solving it. We need to use divergent and convergent thinking to build buy-in. And that buy-in leads to trust because people feel invested in the solution.
To make better decisions and build more trust, shrink the information-decision gap as much as possible.
2 questions worth asking.
Good questions are the root of good coaching, because inquiry has the power to spark ideas and uncover gold that lies just beneath the surface. Each week on Forward+ I share 2 questions that you can use with yourself, at work, or in your relationships.
Question 1: What does done look like?
💻 In your work: Scope creep. I can feel you nodding along. We all know what happens when a project has not defined what “done” looks like, and because of this it drags on forever, with the scope creeping into areas never originally intended. Define done at the beginning - the actual checklist of attributes that means the project is done. You’ll save yourself from the natural drift away from original intention.
🌴 In your habits: If you struggle with checking out from work at the end of the day, don’t start with a “transition routine” or believe you can just setup your environment to not focus on work. The baggage is in your head, not in your environment. Instead, define what done looks like at the beginning of each day. It’s as simple as saying “If I get these things done, it’s been a productive day”. Then go do them. It will be much easier to transition away from work when we know our commitments were accounted for.
Question 2: What would a 9 look like?
💻 In your work: Assigning arbitrary scoring systems to things can be a useful proxy for how we’re feeling on a given topic. As an example, if I asked a sales rep how they like their role on a scale from 0-10, their answer is useful. Not in the number, but in the number becoming an anchor point to start from. If I know their role is only sitting at a 5, I can ask them what a 9 looks like. Not a perfect 10, but a 9, a score any of us would love to have. Showing the rep the gap between 5 and 9 is what helps them get clarity on how to close the gap.
🌴 In your life: Part of my coaching includes scoring the core components of our lives. Much like the example above, asking yourself what a 9 looks like in any area is incredibly helpful. It gives us something to grab on to as we paint the mental picture of what really good looks like. That mental picture is what helps us start getting clear about the habits and actions that sit between our current state and that 9.
3 links worth exploring.
📚 From the archives: It’s not a nail.
🎧 Flourishing in an Uncertain Future.
That’s a wrap for this week’s edition of Forward+.
💡 Have an idea for a future edition or an interesting link worth sharing? Just reply to this email! I’d love to hear from you.
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