Latest / The Lagging Team / Nobody Checked Who Set The Date

Transcript

Nobody Checked Who Set The Date · The Lagging Team

0:00
Chris Sims: Multiple times when I've been brought into
0:01
organizations, and they're like, "Oh my goodness, we have these
0:03
teams, and they're behind. I find out that the problem was,
0:06
well, like somebody set them up to fail. Somebody set them up
0:08
with a completely unrealistic, you know, goal or set of
0:11
expectation.
0:17
Devon Morris: Somebody set them up to fail, not a person being
0:22
cruel. Somebody at some point picked a date, and then
0:26
everybody downstream of that date spent months failing at
0:30
that particular date. And every single conversation was about
0:35
the team. Here's what I want you to sit with: that date actually
0:39
has an author, a human being that's actually close to that,
0:45
and on that, most teams are behind right now. Nobody in the
0:53
room could tell you who that person is, or why they're
0:57
solving a problem, or even why they pick that particular date.
1:02
Look, here's the deal. Somewhere on this planet, there's a team
1:09
that's behind, and somebody's meeting about it. They're always
1:14
meeting about it, and it's a recovery meeting more than
1:18
anything else. Like, what's the plan to get back on track? Can
1:24
we work in multiple streams to get back on track? Do we
1:28
actually cut scope? Do we need more people? And maybe, maybe,
1:34
maybe there's the conversation about what the new date is, and
1:38
are we confident if we can make that date, somebody's looking at
1:43
a burn down. Somebody's looking at some report that's
1:47
forecasting. Somebody says we need to pick up the pace. We
1:52
need to get faster at doing whatever it is that we're doing.
1:57
Somebody gently is asking where the team is right now. Be
2:04
careful here, right? That is a completely reasonable meeting,
2:11
and you have to run it. When you're behind, making a plan to
2:16
not be behind is the most obvious thing to do, but watch
2:23
what every question in that room has in common, and every one of
2:28
them treats the date as a fixed thing, and the team as the
2:34
actual variable that can shift. Nobody ever turns it around, and
2:40
this is where you have to be really careful. This is the
2:46
lagging team, and falling behind is a position, not a verdict.
2:51
I'm Dr. Devon Morris, and this right here is a sidebar. See, on
2:56
Tuesdays I sit down with somebody and we talk about
3:00
something. Thursdays I take one thing that they said and go all
3:07
the way, all the way in on it. And today, it's four words from
3:13
Tuesday that took the whole show apart from the Inside, look.
3:22
Here's the deal. One before, one thing before we go any place,
3:26
right? Tuesday's episode was going to be called "AI Ate the
3:31
Playbook. That was my title. That was my working title, and I
3:35
seem to be getting this thing wrong week after week after week
3:39
because the conversations don't seem to go to that exact place
3:43
where I'm dreaming of them going, and I prefer to be in the
3:47
moment of the conversation. Yeah, that's the title I had. I
3:50
agree. I had it before I sat down, and I really liked that
3:55
conversation. Then, then I sat with Chris, I did this exact
4:02
thing, you know, 11 weeks ago. I titled the episode "Stop Blaming
4:08
the Team, and the guest spent an hour defending leaders, and I
4:13
stood right here and I changed it. I told you that I actually
4:17
learned something. Then I did it again, and you know what? I'm
4:21
gonna tell the truth. I'm probably gonna do it again,
4:25
right? I'm not perfect by no stretch of the imagination. I am
4:29
here to have conversations, and I want those conversations to go
4:32
where they decide to go naturally, not where I deem that
4:36
they go. Yeah, I have questions, and a lot of times I got to
4:38
throw those questions out the window just because on an
4:44
episode about setting a standard before you actually check the
4:49
territory, it's really hard for me to check the territory about
4:54
a person's experience before I get in the room with them. Look,
4:58
I'm not going to. Make a joke of that at all, right? I set a bar
5:02
for a conversation before I had it, and the conversation came
5:06
back and told me the bar was wrong. That's what it is, right?
5:09
And that's the whole subject of our next what 14, maybe 15
5:13
minutes together, right? And so it's just different. It's
5:17
different than what I would have ever expected, and so the
5:22
problem. Well, here's my problem with the recovery conversation.
5:28
It's the wrong argument. It just really is, and I have to admit
5:31
that to myself. And I don't mean the people having it are wrong.
5:38
I mean it's the argument the situation was built to start,
5:42
and it's the loudest thing in the room, and it's standing
5:45
directly in front of the most important thing in the room.
5:50
See, the second you accept that you're behind, the whole
5:54
conversation becomes about closing the actual gap that
5:59
exists, and closing the gap means one or two things: go
6:03
faster or do less. That's all it really means. It doesn't go any
6:07
further than that. You have a sprint, you cut scope, you add
6:11
people, which you know can have its other things that go along
6:14
with it. You find something to deal with in a triple
6:16
constraint: scope, time, cost, something like that, and you
6:20
keep moving, which, as Chris pointed out on Tuesday, usually
6:27
makes it slower because now there's more people. Those
6:34
expectations have an impact, and all of it is aimed at a number
6:41
that somebody picked out the air that somebody just made up, and
6:46
maybe with good reason, maybe with good intentions, maybe with
6:51
real constraints, and I'm not denying those real constraints
6:54
whatsoever. Maybe it was on a slide a quarter or two ago, and
6:59
it's just gone. But but here's the expensive part. A recovery
7:06
plan produces the evidence. Six months of missing a date is six
7:11
months of documentation that this team can't hit those dates.
7:16
That follows a person. That follows a team into reviews,
7:22
into what's going to happen next, into how a person talks
7:26
about themselves in the moment. If the date was never real, then
7:34
you're just you just spent six months generating a permanent
7:39
record of a team failing to test, but nobody ever validated
7:44
in the first place. The tale is this, and it's why we spend time
7:52
on this: a team that's genuinely slow, and a team that's measured
8:00
against a fantasy, produces the same exact status report. Red,
8:08
behind, slipping. They look identical, but the question you
8:14
got to ask yourself is: Are the fixes the same, Chris Sims has
8:24
been working with companies for 20 years before me, right? Like
8:29
a lot of places I've been to.
8:30
Chris Sims: I often describe this this situation. I've
8:33
written about it a few times. I call it everyone is busy, but
8:35
delivery is slow, right? And the situation is like we look around
8:39
this place and everybody's working really hard. They're you
8:42
know staying late. You know all right. Everybody's like super
8:46
busy, and yet it's taking longer and longer and longer to get
8:51
anything done. Yeah. And so the leaders definitely saw the
8:55
symptoms, right? Because they remember like, hey, it wasn't
8:58
that long ago when we were doing all the hands-on work, we got
9:03
stuff. We got stuff done really quickly.
9:05
Devon Morris: Everybody is really working hard, and it's
9:09
taking longer. You got to hold on to that because those two
9:13
facts are sitting right next to each other that entire episode.
9:20
And here's the deal. Here's the part I actually want to give
9:24
you. We use two words like they mean the same thing, and they
9:29
don't. Slow and behind. See, slow is a fact about a team.
9:37
It's about pace. How long it takes you to get a thing from an
9:44
idea to someone utilizing it in some kind of way, turning it
9:49
from a thought into something that's real. You can measure it
9:54
without knowing anything about anybody's plan. Behind. Behind
10:00
is not a fact about the team at all. Behind is actually a
10:05
comparison. You got to recognize it as that. It's the distance
10:10
between where you are and a date. And a date is not a
10:19
measurement. It's a decision that somebody made. Period. Two
10:24
different words. Two different jobs, and your status report
10:30
only knows how to say anything at all about the second one.
10:38
See, when you start really sitting back on it, right? And
10:41
if I really just take my researcher hat and really put
10:44
that into play, a team's performance isn't a property
10:49
that team actually has. It's a relationship between the team
10:55
and what they can do, and what the team has been asked to do.
11:01
Those are two different things. Change either side, and the
11:06
reading changes dramatically, and only one of those sides ever
11:12
truly gets examined. Think about what behind requires to be in a
11:18
real true statement. It requires a date, some position. The date
11:27
requires the team, the person had a reason, a commitment,
11:33
right? Maybe a customer commitment, right? A board
11:36
meeting, a conference, a competitor, a guest, right? It
11:39
had something that was the meat behind that statement. Every one
11:45
of those reasons can actually be checked. Almost none of them are
11:51
truly ever checked. See, the date gets a score at the very
11:55
beginning, but somebody with the least amount of information will
12:02
ever have to do the work that it takes to get to that date,
12:07
because it happens at the beginning when we know the least
12:09
amount of information, and then it hardens based on all the
12:13
other things that touch it to some degree that the people
12:19
that's doing the work may not have any control over
12:20
whatsoever? It stops being about a decision, and it becomes a
12:26
fact about that particular team. See, a date starts to have its
12:31
own life as somebody's best guess, and quietly becomes a
12:36
description of the people that actually is doing the work. See,
12:45
that's different, and that's something that we have to deal
12:48
with. So, you find the person. That's the move. Who sets the
13:02
actual date? Great, right? And what I found over and over again
13:08
is that you usually can't really get there. You ask the question,
13:13
and it's going to boil down to some of the things we talked
13:16
about earlier, right? It goes to something that someone
13:20
inherited. You ask them, and it goes into a deck. You open up
13:25
the deck, and it's been there for a quarter. Nobody lied.
13:29
Nobody was being careless. It's just got accredited to some
13:35
place, and every time it gets more accreditation, it becomes
13:40
more of a statement of fact, and your team has been failing
13:44
against it for two quarters, for three quarters, for whatever
13:47
that time is. But again, where did that truly come from? See,
13:53
it brings me to a different place-a second pair of words-and
13:57
this one is why nobody catches it. Busy and moving. See, I go
14:04
back to what Chris said. Everybody's working really hard,
14:09
staying late. It's taking longer and longer to get anything done.
14:14
Now, ask what that actually looks like from one level above.
14:20
You know, from those people that's not a part of the team,
14:23
it does look like effort. It looks like a team that cares.
14:27
Busy is extremely visible. the The calendars that exist that
14:34
that you can't get somebody's time on, right? The slack
14:38
timestamps, right? The they they they're online until seven
14:43
8o'clock at night when they come in the office at 8o'clock in the
14:47
morning. See, moving is almost invisible by comparison because
14:52
moving is a direction over time, and you only see it if you look
14:58
at the same thing.
15:00
Twice, with some time that has lapsed in between them, so the
15:06
room reads busy and calls it moving because they're not in
15:12
the weeds of it. And here's the trap: if everybody is visibly
15:18
busy and the work is still late. There's only one explanation
15:27
left that fits it: the people, the team. They're not good
15:33
enough. Something's wrong with them in some kind of way. That's
15:37
how a date problem becomes a performance conversation, and
15:42
the thing that you have to understand is that it's not
15:45
through malice. It's not through malice. It's through math. It's
15:49
through arithmetic. Effort high, output late. Therefore,
15:54
capability is the gap. The only variable anybody's left with on
16:02
the table is that. See, busy is a feeling. Moving is a
16:08
direction. A team can be at maximum busy and 00, moving for
16:21
the entire quarter, while every signal a leader sees is opposite
16:26
of that. Okay, one more right because this is what should
16:32
bother you. Busy is what a team does when it doesn't know which
16:38
things matter, when priority is clear, people do the thing to
16:46
get to home plate. People do the thing to get moving, and when it
16:53
isn't, everybody is working on everything because working on
17:00
everything is the only real safe move to actually make. See,
17:05
Chris was being coached years ago, and
17:09
Chris Sims: I remember I said, "I don't know. The harder I
17:12
work, the behinder I get. And and for those leaders, it was
17:19
really true, right? The harder they worked at this, the more
17:24
they were holding the company back.
17:26
Devon Morris: You hear that? The harder they worked, the more
17:33
they held it back. Read that again. Understand that. Right.
17:38
Listen to that. Right. And do it slowly, because it's the
17:42
opposite of everything that you've been told about in terms
17:47
of what to do when you're behind. It's the it's
17:51
counterintuitive at the very least. Last pair, and we we will
17:58
take this thing home. Right. So last pair. It's the one that
18:03
actually explains why this happens to good leaders
18:07
specifically, and it's strength and reflex. Right? See, Chris
18:13
described the light bulb moment when a leader realizes that the
18:17
exact thing that got them right here to the successful place is
18:23
the thing that's holding them back, right? And here's why: a
18:27
strength is something that works, right? You did it; it
18:31
works for you time and time again, and it's gonna work for
18:35
you again. Yes, 20 years of evidence seeing that. A reflex,
18:41
right, is the same behavior after you stop checking. Same
18:47
move, same confidence, and nobody has tested it against the
18:52
current situation in years. They feel identical inside. That's
18:58
the actual problem. There's no Sensation, right? That
19:01
distinguishes this works from this used to work. Let me repeat
19:09
that because I want you to really understand that there is
19:12
nothing that distinguishes that thing that you feel about this
19:17
works from this used to work, and when you're behind, you
19:24
reach for the strongest move that's available to you, which
19:28
is by definition the one you've stopped examining. Pressure
19:37
doesn't make you check your assumptions. Pressure makes you
19:42
reach for the things that are familiar to deal with the things
19:48
that have gotten harder. So, all right, here's what I need you to
19:55
do. Come Monday, right? None of these things are going to cost
19:59
you any money whatsoever. None of them you need permission to
20:03
actually utilize, right? Not why we are behind. Ask yourself
20:10
this: Who set this date, and what were they solving for? Then
20:18
follow that thread. Whoever you ask, ask them the same question.
20:25
Keep going until you hit the name and a reason, or you run
20:31
out of people. Right? I mean, you can't go forever on it.
20:33
Right? You know, it's almost like using utilizing the five
20:36
whys. Right? Just get to that place where you get some solid
20:40
answer. Write that down because the trail ends at that
20:44
particular point. That's your finding. It's five to 10 minutes
20:49
with someone, right? By the time you get down that first or
20:52
second ask, that second or third ask, you'll have it. You will
20:55
really have it. Here's the three things that can happen, and all
21:01
three of them are useful. A person, right, and a real
21:05
constraint comes up. A person, and they don't know. They give
21:10
you a shrug, right? Or you have a place where there's no author.
21:15
You'll get usually one of those things. If you don't get one of
21:18
those things, you know, reach out to me. Let's talk about it,
21:21
right? Then it becomes about you really having two columns,
21:26
right? On that left column is everything the team spent time
21:31
on last month, and that right column only the things
21:35
measurable, closer to being done for the past four weeks. That's
21:41
it. I want you to understand that gap between those two
21:47
columns because that's not a performance problem. That is
21:50
likely, more than likely, a priority problem, and it's
21:56
yours. It's yours to deal with, right? Because that left column,
22:03
if that left column is full, and that right column is thin, your
22:08
team isn't slow. Your team doesn't know which things matter
22:13
the most, and they're protecting themselves by doing everything
22:17
that they can to touch every single thing in some kind of
22:19
way. So maybe you don't complain about it, okay? And that's
22:25
really that column thing is the second thing I want you to do.
22:27
Do the first one, right? Or go and ask the question. But that
22:30
second thing, I want you to do that, right? Because the third
22:35
thing is going to ask you, right? Slow one thing down on
22:43
purpose. That's what the third thing is going to do, because
22:45
it's counterintuitive, right? And and Chris prescribed it.
22:51
They really did. When you're behind the instinct to work
22:57
later, to work harder, they really said that's exactly
23:04
backwards.
23:06
They talked about sharpening your saw, and that you don't
23:11
have time to sharpen your saw, even though you need to
23:15
continually still cut wood. You can't work your way out of a
23:21
shift, right? You can slow down and look around, maybe
23:25
experiment, right? Get yourself in a direction that you need to
23:30
go in. Get yourself moving, you know, because I want you to pick
23:34
the thing you cancel because you're behind, right? The retro,
23:38
the the pairing time, the whatever that thing is that you
23:42
cancel because you're behind, and it might just be the thing
23:46
that you need. Pull it back for two weeks. If it feels
23:53
irresistible, the feeling is the point, right? It's the reflex
23:58
talking, and you're testing it is the point, and I want you
24:03
really, truly to test it out. Okay, now here's what would make
24:11
me wrong about this because I want to be able to. I want you
24:14
to actually be able to check this instead of just taking my
24:17
words, right? I want you to go trace that date, right? Think
24:20
about those three things and come back right. The name, the
24:23
reason, right? A person, a constraint that genuinely exists
24:27
that that they're solving for, right? A customer contract,
24:30
right? Could be it, right? A regulatory window, a real thing
24:34
with the real edge, right? Then the data is real. If you have
24:39
that, it's real. You you know you got something that you
24:42
really truly does tested. It's not something that people
24:44
grabbed out the air. Now maybe the regulatory department
24:47
grabbed it out the air, but that's a different thing, right?
24:51
That could mean you're actually behind, right? And this episode
24:54
is not about you at that point. It really isn't. Go have the
24:59
pace conversation. Clean up everything that you need to
25:03
clean up, and go from there. A name and no reason-that's a
25:09
little bit different. Okay, this is somebody picked it, and you
25:16
can't reconstruct why. The common one, the easy one-it's
25:21
the single honest conversation with one person who will
25:25
probably be relieved you actually asked. Right, that
25:31
right there is different. Right, if there's no name at all
25:35
associated with it, I mean, no name at all associated with
25:38
this, then it came from somebody's imagination. They
25:46
don't want to admit to it, right? It came from a deck. It
25:49
came from a hallway conversation. It happened a long
25:53
time ago, and people don't know where to attribute it, right?
25:55
Your team is following something that nobody signed up for. I
26:01
guess it was signed up for, but nobody knows who to really take
26:04
that back to to make an adjustment to it, even if it's
26:07
real, right? Those are three possible answers, three possible
26:11
findings. The point isn't that the date is the date is always
26:15
fake. I'm I'm not by any stretch of the imagination saying that
26:18
because I definitely have been associated with dates that that
26:21
cannot change, right? There's a reason behind it, and we
26:24
normally can see that reason. We can name that reason, and it's
26:29
there. But those other two situations, the point that you
26:36
never once checked, and it's costing you only 15 minutes to
26:42
find out what's the real answer. Okay, check that. Now here's the
26:47
deal: falling behind is a position, not a verdict. I will
26:50
always say that in the show because that is what we are
26:53
really here to talk about. And a lot of what puts a team in that
26:57
position isn't their pace at all. It just isn't. It's a
27:02
comparison, and you got to remember that a comparison to a
27:06
date that a person chose on a particular day when they knew
27:12
less than what they know now, and that nobody has maybe looked
27:20
at since that particular time, see your team is not slow
27:25
because the status report turned red. They're behind. Well, those
27:32
are different words, and only one of them is about them. So
27:38
before you build a recovery plan. Go out and find out who
27:44
set the date. Get an understanding of the reason
27:49
behind why that date was set. It, and if you can't find a
27:53
person, you may not have a problem-a team problem at the
27:57
very least. If you can't find a reason, you may not have a
28:02
problem at all.
28:04
You have a number with no author, no reason that your team
28:09
is falling behind in this public space, and that's something that
28:14
you need to go deal with. Look, if you want to talk about what
28:20
it looks like on your team. Go to thelaggingteam.com/start.
28:25
That's thelaggingteam.com/start. This is a sidebar. Now you know
28:32
where to look. Oh yeah, one more thing. Before Tuesday, one job.
28:37
Right. Find out the date on your team. You know that that is
28:41
behind. Trace it to a particular person. Ask the who said it.
28:45
Understand what they were solving for. Follow that to the
28:50
end of the thread. Then come tell me where the trail actually
28:54
ended. Was it with a name and a reason? Was it with a name and
28:59
no reason at all, or you couldn't find anything
29:02
whatsoever. Look, put this in the comments, right? Wherever
29:06
you're listening, find me on LinkedIn. I want to know. I'm
29:11
gonna read the comments, right? I want to see if I'm right or if
29:15
I'm wrong. You're gonna genuinely let me know. So, so
29:18
next Tuesday, we get into what it cost a person, right, to
29:23
carry that change, right, and what they didn't. But I want to
29:26
have that conversation with you. I truly want to have that
29:30
conversation with you. So on that note, enjoy yourselves and
29:36
have a good one. I look forward to seeing you in the comments.