How to do something even if you're not sure what it is

Around this time off the back of a typically disruptive festive season but not yet in the flow of routine I find there’s a lot of chatter but not much action.

People want to settle in before seriously strategising for the year ahead.

But what if I told you that doing something, almost anything rather than just thinking about what you will do, could give you a competitive edge?

‘Doing’ is a key plank of design thinking because it provides new insights and impacts how you think, leading to better decisions with each iteration.

Doing something strengthens the strategic brain even if you have no idea where that something will take you. Trust me, your brain will work it out.

So what could you do?

At the start of each year leaders tend to have similar conversations with similar type of people in their bubble – managers with other managers, CEOs with their executive team, senior stakeholders with other senior stakeholders, direct reports or the most important project teams.

Often they don’t connect with frontline staff who talk to customers every day. With their collective ears to the ground picking up real time feedback these people are super valuable.

When I suggest they make frontline teams a priority many don’t know where to start in particular when customer teams are large - who should they talk to, why this one over the other, what would they talk about?

Here’s the million-dollar insight – it doesn’t matter.

Simply by observing your customer teams at work in the store front or answering calls and asking questions you’ll understand their pressures and motivations and those of your customers.

What you hear may surprise you. Direct feedback is a different tune from the one played back through middle managers. Listen in, get a sense of what is really going on and apply your own filters.

The benefits are mutual –

You tailor your strategic message to meet real not imaginary customer needs. You say ‘our customers are asking for this and we’ll give it to them because it meets our overall purpose for being in business in this specific way’. Frontline staff hear something real that they can identify with and connect to the mission of the business.
When customer-facing staff feel more connected to the strategic direction of the organisation, there are measurable impacts on wellbeing and productivity.

We know that people want to feel valued and have a role in strategic decisions that affect them.

A 5-step experiment

Here’s a simple design-thinking approach that you can implement this week that will deliver immediate and flow-on benefits for the year ahead -

Choose five people at random, two of whom you don’t know well or at all - if you really need a technique then put names in a hat
Set up a half hour meeting to sit and listen in on their work, ask them about how they are finding things and what they believe priorities should be – take notes.
Don’t worry if the level of detail is quite granular, you will find higher level patterns across the five interactions
Take 45 minutes on your own to process what you saw and heard in a relaxed setting. Think about the energy you felt across the organisation. Where the excitement might be and the concepts that came up in different ways.
Send a thank you email reflecting what you heard, share it with the leadership team and staff if there’s anything worth reporting back, and let it become one of the inputs in your decision-making this year.

The experience will provide you with insights and perspectives that you could not have otherwise had because regardless of business acuity, you will learn what they think. It shows that you care about staff inputs into the decisions that affect them.

If everyone on the leadership does this at least once a year, then over time you develop a set of behaviours that accumulate to demonstrate in real terms a culture of inclusion and meaning.

Don’t just let culture happen around you in 2017. Design it. Do it.

For more ideas on how to design smart teams join us here.