We’ve all suffered it.
Jane in the product design department is upset she didn’t get a budget increase, and Steve the Director of sales is upset she was promoted to VP sooner than he was, even though he had more tenure. Meanwhile, Todd the company’s chief counsel is so focused on limiting liability that Michelle the VP of Marketing feels stiffled in what she can do with a promotional campaign.
Whether you call it “silos” or “parochial thinking”, office politics affect just about everyone. It’s that organizational tunnel vision that slowly seeps into our work. Mission statements, corporate values, or the latest process improvement effort all fail to motivate workers toward a common vision. It seems no matter what leaders do, people still fall into old patterns. Enter Patrick Lencioni.
I’ve been wanting to read his books for a long time, so a couple weeks ago I picked up his book that attacks this topic head-on. Silos, Politics and Turf Wars describes the problem and solution in the format of a “fable”, a fictional narrative that gets the point home without the embarrassment of naming anybody in real life. The solution, as it turns out, is the age old proverb: “Never waste a crisis”. Lencioni observes that organizations and teams really come together in the face of a collective emergency. In the ER, a hospital’s organizational departments come together to save a gunshot victim. In a failing company, teams pull together to stave off bankruptcy. In a startup, the energy of a grand idea inspires people to a goal larger than their own turf. Over the course of a very quick read, Lencioni formulates an approach for tapping into the substance of a crisis, without have to suffer through the pain of a crisis:
What is your organization’s or project’s top priority right now? This is your “Rallying Cry”, the single most important goal for your team over the next 2-6 months. It needs to be succinct and simple. An example from the book would be “Complete the merger and launch the new company”. While this may be a compelling motivator, it’s a little vague. What exactly needs to happen to accomplish this goal? That’s the next question.
What component goals are need to accomplish the Rallying Cry? These are your “Defining Objectives”. What would it look like if this Rallying Cry were fully achieved? What are the components of this primary objective. Decomposing our example above, we might want to “Clarify the product offering”, “Simplify the org chart”, and “Establish the new brand”. These smaller, more tangible goals help to put real meaning into the Rallying Cry.
What regular ongoing responsibilities must be met, just to survive? These are the tasks that *have* to be done, regardless of what the highest priority is. No matter the rallying cry, a project has to deliver and an organization has to generate revenue. A key to combatting turf wars is to acknowledge that a given office is still important, even if it’s not the most important thing right now.
It turns out this model is so effective, he wrote another book that he uses it to provide clarity for the average frantic family life (The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family).
There you have it. A simple 3-question approach to adding context and clarity to the chaos of your own organization. I’m wondering what yours would look like. How would you use this approach to describe your organization’s key needs right now, and describe it in such a way to motivate your team?
