I believe in autonomy. I’ve talked about it before, and I describe it as the ability for people to make choices. Victor Frankle discusses it in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, as an immutable aspect of a person. He puts it like this:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
The one thing that seriously slows people down or negatively impacts an empowered team is seeking or requiring permission and approvals. But I don’t think it’s as easy as destroying them. That would surely bring chaos.
With the responsibility of acting autonomously comes the hard work of building and maintaining trust. While trust has multiple facets that would require its own blog series, I want focus on how creating transparency in the way you think through problems can unlock speed and autonomy. The tool for creating this transparency is something I refer to as: “Doing your homework.” With this tidbit, we go back to school...
My Story
While I had multiple teachers in my youth that contributed to the way I think, there were two that directly changed the way I thought about homework, approvals, and asking permission.
When I was in high school my teacher for both Geometry and Trigonometry was a wonderful teacher, and even better man, named Dion Pulley. Mr. Pulley, as we called him, had an interesting homework and testing policy. Most of the score for tests was awarded for showing the work a student used to arrive at their answer. In fact, only giving the answer to a problem would be counted as “incorrect.”
In a second twist, the overall grade for the classes were weighed heavily by his homework policy. We were not asked to turn in homework each night. Instead, at the end of the week, we would turn in our entire class notebook for him to review over the weekend. He would carefully review not just the daily take-home assignment but also the notes we took in class. Aside from my love for creative note taking, or sketchnoting as the cool kids call it, I learned a lesson that would stick with me even to this day. Mr. Pulley graded, and subsequently trusted, based on our ability to explain our thinking.
This “homework,” it seems, never stops. In the world of product delivery, especially software or digital products, this idea of homework can take a team from soul sucking approvals to life giving autonomy. Homework shifts the onus of a team to simply keeping their stakeholders informed instead of requesting permission or approval. On the path to empowering teams, creating a model for how you critically think through and validate ideas can mean the difference between a slow crawl and gazelle intense speed.
Create a Homework Model
By homework I mean validation. By validation, I mean some type of lightweight, continuously improving model for how you and your team gather the data to inform the decisions you make. If teams should be focused on answering the question of what and how - what problems we are solving, and how we are solving them - they need a solid, shareable method for answering those questions.
For example: The Silicon Valley Product Group uses a four question approach to discovery for digital products.
Is it Valuable - Is it valuable to a customer? So much so that they are willing to buy or share it.
Is it Viable - Does it work for the business? Will the business support it?
Is it Feasible - Is it technically feasible to build it? Do we have the tech, people, and knowledge?
Is it Useable - Can a user or customer actually use it.
The model itself is not as important as what it allows your team to accomplish. Imagine for a moment you were able to get data for all four of those questions and it showed you had a solution that could be successful. Instead of having to ask for the permission to build it, you would bring your stakeholders into a room, tell them your intent was to build the solution, and then back that decision with the data you had collected when they ask to “see your homework.” In fact, let’s dig in to that conversation.
Meet With Your Stakeholders
One tool I taught and used at Ramsey Solutions was a collaborative feedback loop called the Stakeholder Meeting. Contrary to what the name implies, this is actually a meeting that the team organizes. The goal is to invite your stakeholders and have a discussion about what you and your team intend to do as you answer the questions of “what and how.” This conversation is essentially a recurring opportunity to align with your stakeholders and give them a chance to check your homework. It’s not about approval or permission. Of course, if you’re a brand new team, this meeting will require some course correcting as you build rapport and improve your “homework model,” but that is still accomplished with coaching and not approvals and permission.
Some questions you may overhear in the stakeholder meeting should be; “tell me the thinking behind that decision,” or “how does that solution align to the objective or strategy?” These are probes into your thinking. It’s not supposed to feel like an interrogation or pushback. In fact, it’s an excellent way to learn what’s important to your stakeholders. If you continue to hear the same question again and again, why not add that to your “homework list” and ensure you have an answer for the next round. After all, we are committed to incremental, evolutionary improvement, right?
Again, the model above is not important. I’ve seen quality assurance experts create a list of “items to test” for their team. Software engineers use Kanban cards where they track the decisions they make while building solutions. As a teacher, I use a model for how I research and formulate the courses I create. Marketers research user trends, clicks, sentiment, and other variables in order to know how to reach people. All of these are different methods we use to do the homework that allow us to earn trust in our domains. When you have the data, you should know how to act. Why then would we seek approval or permission?
Here’s the thing. We don’t need permission or approval. It’s become a proxy for trust.
If you’re a manager or stakeholder in your organization, stop giving it. Instead, get comfortable with saying “you don’t need my permission. I trust your homework. Go forth and conquer.”
If you’re a team member or maker in your organization, stop seeking it. Get comfortable showing your homework and letting your stakeholders know “Here is what we intend to do, based on our research. Feel free to check the math.” Not in a smug, abrasive way. But as an invitation to a different conversation that builds trust.
The Recap
You and your team can build trust and reduce or eliminate the need for approvals and permission. Once you have it, protect it. It only takes one lapse in judgement to goof it up. Here are three things to remember.
Create a “homework” model for decision making and continually groom it.
Meet regularly with your stakeholders to gain alignment, not approval.
Show your work! It’s the best way to reinforce how your homework model is working.
People are smart. Full stop. Using the tool we were all given as eleven and twelve year olds, we can build, or rebuild, the trust needed to deliver life changing answers to people in need. It’s as simple as the question my chain smoking fifth grade English teacher (the second I alluded to earlier) used to ask me, almost every day: “Tristan, did you do your homework?”