Let Them Pick Their Shoes
Kanban Principle 3: How Encouraging Acts of Leadership Puts Power in Hands That Need It
The Kanban Principles Series was born out of a conversation I was having around the finer points of Kanban. Because the conversation jumped directly to the practices, skipping over the Kanban principles, it dawned on me that others may be in need of hearing these principles along with some pragmatic examples. Previously, I’ve written about both, “Starting with what you do now,” and “Committing to Incremental, Evolutionary Change.”
For this tidbit, I want to finish my three part series around Kanban’s change management principles with “Encouraging Acts of Leadership at All Levels.”
Let me start by sharing a story of a time I didn’t follow this principle.
I was shoe shopping with my daughter and told her she had complete autonomy to make a decision about what shoes she could pick out. She was over the moon. Needless to say, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Who knew a ten-year-old’s taste could be so eclectic and colorful and…not like my own. I followed that statement by systematically shutting down each of her colorful selections until she finally said “Daddy, will you just tell me which ones to get!” That was a gut punch.
To this day I wish I had let her get that pair of unicorn vomit high top Converse she picked out. Her spirit was crushed. She’d been shoe shopping dozens of times and was well acquainted with the in’s and out’s. In other words, she had the model for decision making in this arena and for all intents and purposes was more qualified than I was. However, I had told her she had the power to decide, then proved to her I didn’t really believe that. Ouch!
Protecting her autonomy to make the decision, even one as simple as selecting a pair of shoes, is a way to encourage acts of leadership. I call these acts of leadership because one of the core skills every great leader has is a framework for decision making. If that’s the case, a person with the freedom to exercise decision making is someone with the potential to be a leader.
Without this leadership to catalyze change, things will not improve. Information about where improvements are possible can appear at any level in an organization and most often at the individual contributor level. To make changes quickly and effectively, individuals who believe improvement is possible must feel empowered to enact it. A culture of safety must exist to take action without fear of retribution providing changes can be defended based on logical explanation using models and data.
Model critical thinking
Jon Beebe, a great leader and friend of mine, says it this way;
I trust my team to the extent they can explain their thinking.
One of the hallmarks of leadership is autonomy in decision making. Every decision we make is an opportunity to model the structure and critical thought required to reach certain conclusions. We don’t always get it right, but when a leader or manager makes a decision, we tend to lend the benefit of the doubt it will either work, or perhaps something else went wrong. Why do we do this? In my experience, it’s because we trust the leader’s “homework.” It’s seemingly some hidden model they use to systematically reach conclusions that lead to intrinsic success. In fact, it’s normally only when the decision is so evidently bad and no forethought is evident that we question a leader’s ability. So what if we could model the critical thinking process and then empower and protect other’s ability to think, choose, and act. When we do this, amazing things start to happen.
Now I can hear some of the prevailing thoughts: “Tristan we’ve tried Empowerment. Autonomy scares us. People will go off in all directions. Worse, they will make mistakes if I don’t tell them what to do and how to do it.” Those are all valid concerns IF you have not done the work to model or make explicit the guardrails for decision making. Chances are, if you’ve made decisions, you have a model. Even if it’s just “I use my gut,” write it down and share it with your team or teammates.
Feedback loops
I worked with a team that had some ideas about how to change the way they worked. It was easy to see that some of the changes were going to have a negative effect and it would have been easy to advise the team to choose differently. Instead of “telling them what shoes to buy,” I managed to persuade the leader involved to protect the team’s autonomy to put the changes in place. I cannot stress how difficult yet important this is, but we will circle back to that in a moment. The team made the changes, they went poorly, and they had to live with the consequences of those decisions.
Then something amazing happened.
They spent the next few weeks using that same autonomy to incrementally fix the issues created by their earlier choices. What’s more, they didn’t blame leadership for the issues. Having made the decisions themselves, they were more open to taking ownership and making more decisions. They collaborated on what they could improve and made the changes. In the end, they had an understanding of “change managed well” they may not have had if someone had intervened.
Protecting Autonomy
Let’s be honest, we leaders love the idea of gaining the speed and efficiency models like Agile and Kanban offer. We don’t always want the risk and failures necessary to learn and improve in ways that create that speed and efficiency. The truth of autonomy is you MUST protect the right to choose incorrectly just as ardently as you protect the right to choose correctly. It’s how choice works and is the only way to build trust. This is the essence of “encouraging acts of leadership at all levels.”
The alternative may speed things up initially, but in the long run it can have adverse effects. Here’s an example of what it looks like to “offer” autonomy in word only.
I was coaching a team that had been “empowered.” While they were initially skeptical, they decided to test the waters by improving collaboration. They had some new ideas about how to structure their meetings. Before they even had the chance to pass or fail, someone up the ladder let them know their ideas didn’t conform to the “proper way” to conduct meetings, as if there is such a thing. It immediately let the team know that empowerment was theirs...so long as they made the “right” decisions. As with my daughter, I watched as this team quickly reverted to “just tell me what the answer is.”
It’s hard work…but worth it
Regardless of your current role, I challenge you to encourage acts of leadership. Give the power of decision making to those closest to the problem. If you’re a leader, model critical thinking and then empower your followers to make decisions. If you are an individual contributor on a team, encourage the rest of your teammates to take ownership of sussing out areas of improvement.
Here’s a quick recap for how leaders and teams can encourage acts of leadership and start building trust and embracing autonomy.
Create and/or share a decision making model for your team and make it visible.
Create a feedback loop with quick turnarounds like a weekly retro.
Protect acts of leadership by sharing and celebrate learnings from each decision.
Realize we don’t always get it right. Your daughter may end up owning a pair multicolored sneakers that don’t match a single outfit she owns. But she will also be the proud owner of trust and a decision to call her own. Who knows what kind of amazing things she’ll be capable of after that...