Teamership: Pragmatic, not dogmatic
Keegan Luiters
I support committed leaders to take a deliberate approach to high performance in their teams.
A simplistic (but often useful) way to distil our role in our teams is that we have two jobs:
That means that our decision making has a huge impact on our ability to contribute to team performance. If you execute really well on a poor decision, you're probably getting a poor outcome. Poor execution on a good decision is not ideal, but more likely to lead to positive progress.
Some decisions are easy. It may be that there are obvious choices, you have all of the necessary information, the outcomes are highly predictable or the stakes are pretty low. These are not the decisions that will differentiate your team's performance or your individual contribution to the team's performance.
Where we need to make better decisions is when there is ambiguity - either in the information we have at hand, the possibilities of the outcome or even the desired outcome.
This is what the situation that we have found ourselves in when looking for our next place to live. We have a long list of ideal criteria - including (but definitely not limited to!) size of place, location, price and timing. Unsurprisingly, the perfect place hasn't yet popped up!
What we have been able to do, however, is be really clear with each other about the trade offs that we are willing to make. We have prioritised timing over many other criteria.
My daughter is finishing primary school (we figured that the start of high school was a good time to move), so we have decided to not move before she finishes at primary school. That has meant that we have missed out on a few places that ticked a lot more of our boxes than the ones that are currently available.
This process has reminded me that it's great to have ideal criteria - it's often even more useful to be clear on what is not ideal, but still acceptable. Likewise, what are the dealbreakers?
Throughout our transition, we have been asking ourselves often "are we making the right move?". I've come to realise that it's not the most useful question. It implies that there is one right decision. There is not and there is no way to make the perfect decision.
As leaders and team members, our ability to not only accept, but embrace the need to make decisions with imperfect and incomplete information is going to become increasingly important in a world where highly predictable decisions are rapidly becoming a non-human task. That means that living with (or in the case of us moving house - living in) those decisions is also an important capability for all of us.
The best advice that I can share is to appreciate the beauty of being pragmatic, not dogmatic.
It takes more courage than a lot of us give credit to be willing to embrace the world as it is - not as we want it to be.
Letting go of the idea of our dream home (for now) and embracing the adventure of writing our next chapter is exciting. The uncertainty is actually a part of that excitement - the packing not so much!
Some questions for you to consider this week:
Go well,
Keegan