Hej Cliff - Episode 1
Emma asks the question: "How to tackle executives being out of the loop?"
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Transcript of the video
So Emma asks this wonderful question, how to tackle executives being out of the loop? She says she's had a look at some of the things in the flight levels model and is wondering if there's some sort of a procedure in order to introduce this across the organization. So one of the first things that I think is important to address is that most organizations are actually struggling under a lack of focus.
And part of what we're doing when we're introducing flight levels into an organization is actually creating focus across all levels within the organization. And what this means is that for the first time, many organizations actually know what is important at every single level of the organization. And what that means is that we have a sequence of activities.
So we know at the top level of the organization, what is the number one thing for the entire company to focus on. Or to stay out of the way of the folks who are doing The idea here is quite simple What we want to try to achieve is a state in the organization where we are not letting our number three thing Block our number one thing.
Now, for many of you, you've worked in organizations where there are a large number of dependencies. And so you've seen this challenge constantly. If we're not clear about what is number one, everybody spends their time shouting at each other and getting frustrated and perhaps being out of the loop as Emma's question alludes to, uh, on the things that are actually important because we don't actually know what is important.
So once we have started to address this, what I like to introduce within an organization is quite simply a simple check in rhythm. I've written about this a little bit in more detail on my website and I'll link to it in the comments in a second. So what you can do is find that below. But quite simply, the simple idea here was that we wanted to create a simple rhythm for check ins.
Now, in most cases, we would be doing this with some kind of a, maybe a leadership trio around a squad or a tribe or a mission area within a company, something like this. And the idea is that we want to try to tackle five key questions over the course of this conversation. So let's say we're doing this on a two weekly basis, uh, with an area that's leading, say, a department or a tribe type thing.
Uh, the idea here would be that we would ask the questions or expect answers to the questions of, What have we done since we last met? What are we planning to do by the time we meet again? What are the things that are currently on our minds? And what is keeping us up at night? And finally, out of all of these things, what would we like help with?
I think it's very important to separate the difference between these last three, because very often I've seen leaders lean in and try to jump in on things that they think their teams need help with, without actually an explicit request. And quite often, if you separate these, what you'll start to notice is the big difference between what's on my mind, what's keeping me up at night.
And of course, the thing that I need your help with. And that creates opportunities both for coaching from the leadership to be able to say, Hey, I'm curious, how come you're not thinking about this? So why are you thinking about that? What's the deal with this thing, keeping you up at night, but also creates the opportunity for folks at the edges of the organization to be able to ask for help in the ways that they actually need it and focus their leadership behavior on the things that are most impactful.
I want to say thank you, Emma, for the wonderful question. I look forward to answering more of these over the coming days, weeks and months. Uh, there's a link below as well if you'd like to submit one of these questions and I'll give you an answer as soon as I have a chance. Thank you. Look forward to seeing you soon.
Hej då.
