Image source: Jin Choi, Creative Commons
We’ve talked about stepping back from doing. It takes a pause, a break, getting away from the dialing routine of doing in order to give yourself a chance of even writing the right questions. But how about stepping back from knowing? This actually takes courage and trust. (This concept is also discussed Warren Berger’s book, A More Beautiful Question.)
Expect All the Answers?
I’ve worked with one fortune 200 company through four CEOs. While each one has been very different from the previous one, they all have had super qualities of their own that served the company well during their tenure. However, through all of their differences, there have also been a consistent pattern in their culture that each of them has upheld. They expect their subordinates to know all the answers. The COO is expected to know the production rate on any line anywhere in the system. The CFO is expected to know the financial numbers from every level of the organization from around the globe based on last night’s results. And on and on and on.
Step Back from Knowing in Order to Compete
Over the years, this operational excellence has served the company well. But things are changing rapidly with customers, consumers, competitors, etc. And I’m afraid this inability to step back from what they know may keep them from competing well in the future. Their investors are starting to think so.
It Takes Courage
So where do we find the courage to step back from knowing. In the culture described above, it can be fatal to admit you don’t know an answer. It’s even crippling to say “I’ll find out and get back to you.” And because of that, peers tend not to question each other. This inability to question each other leaves a very low level of trust.
An Attitude of Quick Learning
I’ve covered in previous blogs the concept of a quick decision mentality vs a quick learning mentality. Quick deciding suppresses questions or any discussion that would seem to slow down or delay a decision. Quick learning, however, encourages questions. Naïve ones at that. It encourages people from different functions to question each other and to question basic assumptions. It opens our minds to new perspective, It requires us to be vulnerable, open, and genuine about what we know and don’t know. And more importantly, even when we do know, realizing that an outside naïve perspective can reveal things about our business in a way we never thought about before.
Requires a Trusting Team
The only way to be able to step back from knowing is to build trusting teams and then get away from the business a couple times of the year to step back from doing and step back from knowing.