When executive leaders know their essential why

Our essential why is the core contribution we have been called to make in this lifetime. It exists and we realize it to the degree we discover its character and nature. It is not our how. We can have any number of hows for any single why. It doesn't change with phases of life or circumstances. It remains a constant in every how we engage in. It is lifelong.

I would argue that an executive leader has the ability to inspire and support growth in the organization to the degree that know and live and work from their essential why.

Not my label

The kinds of labels churned out by personality tests are classic exercises in social assumptions. Social assumptions are at the root of most social tensions, misalignments and disconnects.

When you are present to me, I don't necessarily want you to assume I want to be treated in that moment as the extrovert type my personality rest indicates as my "favorite style."

My favorite style is when people are present to me in that moment. Sometimes I want to be engaged in a quiet, reflective way - the opposite of whatever people fantasize as "extrovert" - especially by people who can't relate to extroversion.

A simple decision process

We can keep decisions simple with a 3-dimensional approach that parallels the spirit and power of the Agile Canvas. It's a process engaging iterations of hopes, questions and options.

Hopes describe what we consider good in what we want to see from this decision, in any given timeframes. Questions are anything we want to explore, clarify and research. Options are approaches to the good we seek. Using cards, we keep identifying and working on whatever emerges in these three dimensions.

What typically results are realistic, attractive and supportable decisions.

Predictability is not a requirement for clarity

One of the more ubiquitous challenges any team and organization daily faces is the ubiquity of unpredictability. Even when we hope our best intended and engineered decisions and plans create the assurance of predictability, they evoke and unfold new iterations of unknowns and unknowables. Every when we heroically execute our best decisions and plans, we unleash new generations of questions. 

In spite of the hypnotic seduction of our favorite assumptions, the future remains intrinsically unknowable. 

As much as this reality persists regardless of our efforts, what remains equally real us that we can be as clear about the future we want to create as we are unable to predict the future from the present.

Clarity is realizing the good we want to create. When we translate a long view good into short term action, we realize progress even as unpredictability remains life's constant.

Without clarity, we are deviled by unpredictability. Without clarity, we seek predictability and as a result create a future that tries to resemble the past. Predictability is the enemy of progress. Clarity makes progress possible.

 

The OCD of Discussions

Nothing wastes time like unproductive discussion. The idea of an unproductive discussion borders on redundancy because so many are.

Discussions are OCD experiences. Time is wasted in the endless banter of opinions, complaints and digressions. We call in all kinds of interesting and frustrating circles and tangents, arguments and distractions. It divides the group into people who love to hear themselves talk and people who want to be anywhere else.

Discussions do not result in deliverables. They typically result in somebody having to go off and do the real work now that we've wasted everyone's time or we reschedule to have more pointless discussions in the insane hopes that more of the same will produce different results.

The opposite is a work session. These feature questions, planning and decisions. These keep converations focused, engaging and productive. This is new for most people, so they have to be exposed to it in order to become contributors, When people bring in opinions, complaints and digression, we do what we can to reframe them into work session relevance. 

The difference is in the design of the process. It is actually simpler to have a working conversation and infinitely more satisfying.

Question-based planning

When we approach planning as a question-based process, there are many ways we can form new questions, including consideration of Ideas, hopes, wishes, concerns, problems, worries, obstacles, threats, decisions, research, uncertainty, expectations, assumptions, curiosity. All of these can be translated into questions that inspire and organize the process. The whole process of any kind of planning has optimum value and velocity when it's question based.

Why not to criticize leaders

In parent-child organizational and civic cultures, leaders are easy targets for judgments, based on all manner of unrealistic assumptions and expectations. 

Reality, is most leaders worldwide are largely unprepared for skillful and mindful leadership. They're doing exactly what they're prepared for. They need support for growth, not being the object of unrealistic expectations and assumptions.

 

The functional alternative to (dysfunctional) discussions

One of the most salient, unique and powerful aspects of he agile canvas process is how things get done and move forward because the quality of our conversations is more about work than discussion. Discussion is classically the process of bantering opinions about a topic, sometimes punctuated with questions that might or might not be taken seriously and that might or might not be good questions.

The work we do in the canvas process is clearly not discussion. It is co-creation. Together we create the future we want to see possible, questions that will lead us there and the momentum and progress that engages our gifts. Everything is written and shared, everything builds together and everything decided is based on reality and not assumption based or predictive opinions.

The more groups get used to the process the more intolerant they become of circular and useless discussions. They become accustomed rather to the engagement and productivity of a process that is by design a process of co-creation.

Unconscious expertise bias

Recent studies indicate that we naturally assume someone has expertise based on how much they talk. The phenomenon invites an irrational trust in people based on proxies of expertise, 

This is yet another reason to use note cards in idea sessions, to give voice to everyone and every idea without dividing the group into dominant minorities and disengaged majorities.

8 Benefits of a Team Agile Canvas

Creating Sync

When teams share a sense of the future they want to create together, they experience a more rigorous sense of sync in their work in the present, always on the same page

Deepening Passion

Teams work with passion when they have a long view of the future they want to create together; the depth of their passion is always equal to the length of their vision

Fostering Velocity

Teams are nimble and responsive when they have shared priorities they work from at a two week tempo

Sustaining Progress

The biggest driver of a sense of agency and happiness that overcomes sense of victimhood powerlessness is having a continuous sense of progress being made this happens from the tempo of the canvas

Growing Culture

The process by design makes it possible for people to feel valued, connected and free to so their best

Inspiring Meaning

Because present action is always aligned with future dreams, everything we do in the present has a sense of significance beyond

Expanding Learning

Because the process is question based allows us to learn our way into a new future inspired by the constant of uncertainty.

 

Dream sync

A team can be in sync the present and about the present when they are in sync about their future. Shared dreams get teams in sync about their future. Further out into the future they go the deeper their sense of coherence in connection. Being in sync in the present does not simply rely on strategies in the present. They rely on this kind of rigor in shared dreams.

The perils of labels

It is actually a function of a fixed mindset to believe that people are restricted to our labels of them for example as ADHD, introverts or extroverts, overachievers or underachievers and so on. What matters is that we practice and help them practice a growth mindset of seeing how they are capable of learning and growing beyond any labels that we or they might be conditioned to. This means communicating clearly the message that we can all grow and develop any ability for which we have the physical capacity to perform. This helps move us from helplessness to a sense of agency.

Time lining

Time lining is the simple act of associating actions with time frames. So we decide to start the next actions in a project on a specific date and time. This helps us work in sync together.

By not referring to time lining is planning it gives us more psychological freedom to be agile rather than rigid and inflexible in unresponsive when shifting momentum or approach is valuable to realizing the good we seek together. Timeline and doesn't have the connotation that we are necessarily needing to follow it and if we don't we have failed and must repent and defend our agility.

Social responsibility

Every organization, in consideration of its growth intentions, can include attention to the possibilities of social responsibility.

One of the simplest frameworks for social responsibility is thinking about how we can do our work and make impacts in ways that benefits the well-being of all life forms. This is not rocket science even though it might be quite foreign to business as usual strategic thinking that organizations practice on a regular basis.

Making social responsibility conscious and intentional in how we do business can add a sense of meaning to work for everyone that would otherwise be missing. It is at the end of the day not antithetical to our other performance and profit interests and urgencies.

Coaching and rounding

When we as leaders round our team members this means checking in with them briefly to find out how they're doing, bring them back to consciousness of their goodness and the good they are striving for, recognizing progress, time lining their next phase of momentum and giving them some nourishing feedback. This is a matter of 2 to 3 minutes can happen in any kind of media.

Coaching takes more time and has more to do with problem solving together. Problem solving is the identification of our questions and the development of potential approaches that we could try. Coaching can also involve all of the brief aspects of rounding.

 

Hierarchy in Agile Canvas

It is fairly inevitable that in an agile canvas strategic planning process, which is uniquely empowering and engaging, there are people accustomed to hierarchical approaches who bristle at the lack of hierarchy in the process.

It takes them out of their comfort zone. They are used to there being top-down mission and vision statements, values lists, top-down governance, managerial assignments, executive mandates. They are not used to people being entrusted, empowered and engaged in doing what matters inspired by shared dreams.

They actually have to go through the process and see it happen to have any faith in it. Hierarchy is intrinsically a mistrust of people. And this mistrust is not necessarily ill intentioned. It simply comes from having no idea how to do otherwise. People who are committed to hierarchical structures are not bad people. They have gifts to be engaged as well as others do. They wil