📖 Leadership is Language in 50 drawings (final)
Concluding the visual walkthrough of L. David Marquet famous book (part 2/2)
Hello!
As we begin a new year I want to thank you for following my creative journey of sharing ideas / book learning visually. It has been a great journey for me, and I hope you found some value as well in it.
Now let me welcome you to the second and final part of the visual book summary of “Leadership is Language”. If you missed the first part you can catch up here:
Now that we are all in sync, here are the drawings:
Chapter 5 - Commit
This chapter will dive deeper on how collaboration & thinking together (also called Bluework - see previous post) can lead to commitment from the team and getting things done.
Commit to learn - Not (just) do
To move from Bluework (Thinking) into Redwork (Getting thing done), commitment is essential, but you may ask:
What type of commitment? It start with being committed to learn.
Instead of thinking « what should we do?» try « what should we learn?».
Commit to action - Not beliefs
The second advice on how to go from collaborative thinking to getting things done, is to commit on actions.
You may not always believe in the decision, but you may commit to support the team with your action.
Chunk it small, but do it all
The next advice is to break the work into small chunks, but to keep each piece as a « all ».
It reminded me of the design thinking approach of aiming for a « Minimal Delightful Experience » for the user, a kind of MVP product but that contains all the elements of the desired experience for the user.
Example
1. Starting with a small cupcake
2. Upgrading to a birthday cake
3. Finishing with a wedding cake
The product evolve, but always contain the delightful experience of eating a cake.
The opposite approach would be to start with a wedding cake without egg, butter, sugar and slowly add the missing ingredients, leaving an awful user experience during the all development until the end is reached.
COULD - WOULD - SHOULD
While moving from reflection to action, we usually go through three stage « COULD - WOULD - SHOULD »
Recognizing which stage you are in can help you jump to the next one and get yourself and your team ready for action.
A personal example: The idea for this newsletter came from an internal conversation that went a bit as described in the drawing. I felt that posting my drawings on social media worked well for me, but could be hard to follow for you as a reader…
So here I can prepare an overview and then share it with the interested people,
If you are one of those, and didn’t yet subscribe, don’t hesitate!
Escalation of commitment
It is very hard to stop a failing project after having invested in it. The advice that the author give is to go into the project with the intention to learn, that makes it easier to recognize when to pause and reflect or even stop.
The example given was the Vietnam war which I couldn’t help linking with the current situation in Ukraine/Gaza…
Separate the decision-maker from the decision evaluator
Having the same person taking a decision and having also to evaluate it, can lead to the escalation of commitment we just talked about.
Having two different person responsible for evaluating can preserve the ego, and make it easier when a switch is needed.
Chapter 6 - Complete
Redwork is about doing the work, but there is a need to get a sense of progress, to celebrate and get closure on the work accomplished.
This is why it is important to “Complete” and not continue working forever. Having a clear completion for a portion of the work also allows to adapt and take a different path if the situation have changed or we learn something new.
Chunk work for frequent Completes early, Few Completes late
Behind that complex title, we can understand that,
At the beginning, as we have less clarity, therefore we need:
more thinking (bluework)
Smaller chunks of work
As the project progress switching towards:
More “getting thing done” (Redwork),
Longer uninterrupted work
Celebrate
We arrives to the topic of Celebration, which is often put aside due to a “Continue forever” approach to work.
Why Celebrating is important:
Effort spent need to be recognized,
It helps the team continue to invest into thinking, be creative etc.
It reinforces the positive behaviors.
How to celebrate:
Recognition is most impactful when done right after the positive action.
Don’t judge - it is not about your evaluation. “I’m so proud of you” is condescending.
Observe & Appreciate - Describe and thank. “I noticed…”, “I see that… Thank you, it helps…”
Focus on the Journey
The author conclude chapter 6 with the advice of focusing on the journey not the end.
When we frame a completed task or project in term of a journey, it helps us:
Continue to value the benefit achieved,
Re-use the learning and experience in the future.
Chapter 7 - Improve
When to improve
Getting away from the time pressure give the chance to think and Improve, however the timing is important and we shouldn’t try to get some improvement in before completing the current phase of work(redwork). Instead we should wait and use the following thinking period (bluework) to share our ideas and try to improve.
The “Be Good”-self versus “Be Better”-self
We arrive to the two personalities competing in us and in our teams:
The Be Good-Self - Being focused on proving and protecting what was just done. Ex: “We have always done it this way”
The Be Better-Self - Being focused on finding what could be improved. Ex: “What could we do differently?”
We need to make sure we embrace the improving mindset.
Our three emotional needs
The self-determination theory says that humans have 3 basic needs:
- Competence (the feeling of mastery)
- Relatedness (the feeling of being accepted by others)
- Autonomy (the feeling of having control over your life)
Out of the three, two basic needs are actually counterproductive when we try to improve.
Wanting to show or feel competent, or, not wanting to hurt the feelings of others / be rejected ourselves prevent us to go on uncharted territory and improve.
Autonomy however is a main ingredient allowing to innovate and get better.
How to improve
Some tips to avoid “learned helplessness”, and make it psychologically easy to improve:
Focus on forward, not backward - Look to the future.
Focus on process, not people - No blaming, not focusing on who made what decision etc..
Focus on Outward, not inward - It is easier to separate from our previous decisions if asked to look at the situation from an outsider’s perspective.
Focus on excellence, not avoiding error - Have the goal to achieve excellence not to avoid mistakes, as they are part of getting better.
Chapter 8 - Connect
Reduce the power gradient
This chapter which will be about how to « Connect ».
In most organisations and many other spaces there are separation purposefully set in place such as teacher/student, blue collar /white collar, manager/doers etc…
In many situations, the high power gradient reduce the ability for information to flow and therefore the amount of collaboration possible or the quality of the decisions being made.
To reestablishing the connection, it is necessary to flatten the power gradient.
The 3 first advices, would be to be careful with the words used:
- Do « with » instead of assigning work « to » someone, or doing it « for » someone
Ex: « we need to do x » instead of « You need to x / I need you to x»
- Don’t emphasize on the hierarchy / authority or qualification
- Make observations « I noticed that… » instead of judgement « you should have… »
But the language is not enough you should also:
Admit you don’t know
When leaders admit they are not all knowing, it gives the opportunity to the team to speak up and share their knowledge and ideas.
Be vulnerable, share your doubts and fears, so that the team feel comfortable opening up and bring their own concern or ideas
Start with trust, assume good intent, if there are wrong decisions being made it might be due to the misalignment of the team, rather than bad or selfish intent. It would be the responsibility of the leader to help the team understand the common goals.
We finish the chapter « Connect » with a few additional hints related to emotions and the power gradient:
The importance of emotion, some studies shows that we may actually need our emotions for decision making. It is part of how we connect.
The power gradient is not only between boss and employees, it is also about any kind of newcomers in a group, so it is important to use language that invite them to be comfortable and bring their fresh views and ideas
Chapter 9 - Applying the principles
Interference or Controlling the clock
Chapter 9 is a collection of stories and practical examples on how the changing your language can concretely help. In this summary I focused mainly on capturing the learnings for each of the stories told.
For example in the image, asking « Tell me if I should come.. » is putting the responsibility onto the other, and not caring that it maybe hard to ask your superior to change his activities for you.
On the contrary « how helpful on a scale 1-5… » make it clear that what you want is information, and the scale is not a binary Yes/No which makes it easier to report any level of issue.
Managing a change initiative
When you would like to transform a way of working, you can approach it and present it to the team as a « test » or a « try » for a short period of time. In this way the people affected are included in the change, able to influence it and, if not beneficial also drop it. This is not always possible but the principle stay valid.
Not being stuck in your perspective
During a heated conversation, we may start to get stuck in our own perspective. We could therefore try to recognize those moments (ex: Raising your voice, Starting to think about your next phrase instead of listening etc.) and call a pause.
Chapter 10 - The Red-Blue Operating System
The Perils of Goal setting
Chapter 10 dive deeper on the balance of doing/thinking (redwork/bluework).
One of the warning is how having a challenging goal can reduce your vision to only one specific task, preventing you to see opportunities, or important information. Worse, it can lead you to cut corner, or be unethical in order to achieve the goals.
Lifelong Learning
We are in an age where we need to adapt and learn all the time, so expecting and welcoming lifelong learning is important.
There is also the need of stopping, taking the time to reflect regularly and potentially switch what we do in our careers (the book give an example of ten year periods with break in between).
Chapter 11 - Saving El Faro
We arrive to the final chapter of the book, which re-imagine the first chapter that told the tragic lost of a ship and its crew, and see how using the 6 new ways of working (called the new playbook) could have changed the outcome.
Applying the principle shared in the book could have changed the tragic end of the EL Faro cargo ship that sank together with the crew on board.
The 6 principles, or as the author David Marquet call them “the new playbook” are:
- CONTROL THE CLOCK, not obey the clock: having everyone able to call a time-out, a pause at anytime when issues or new information arises. Setting in advance decisions points to be ready for new approach if necessary.
- CONNECT instead of conforming to a role: Lower the power gradient, make it psychologically safe for each team member
- COLLABORATE not coerce: Use of voting with probability rather than binary (yes/no) answers, make sure everyone as a voice and can take ownership and be part of the decision making.
- COMMITMENT rather than compliance: Get the commitment of the team for the next period of redwork (getting thing done)
- COMPLETE instead of continuing indefinitely: split task into small but complete chunks, and celebrate their completion. Understand the work as journey, and make the progression visible
- IMPROVE outcomes rather than prove ability: go into the work with the goal of learning, remove the stress to allow the flow of thinking and idea generation,
The El Faro had an opportunity to take different path and avoid the hurricane in front of them, the tragic end could have been avoided if the captain had not been stressed by the clock and able to get his teams input in a meaningful way.
We may not be heading toward a hurricane, but I found the lessons of book very valuable as a reminder of the importance of putting people first and that your “playbook” and words can affect the behaviors of a team.
Dear reader, hope you enjoyed the journey!
If you believe my visual book summaries could help someone, or be interesting or fun for one of your friends / colleague, I really appreciate any share!
Please also don’t hesitate to write me any feedback or suggestions for a book to illustrate!
For those reading this in the beginning of 2024 - Happy New year!