Applying Debate Making to get your company to focus more

Have you ever felt like hundreds of initiatives are running in your company, and few actually matter for its success?

Creating a strategy with too many objectives happens easily. And it happens just as easily that even despite having a clear and focussed strategy, iniatives pop up over the course of time that may distract you. In both cases it may be time for you to “pull out some weeds” and get your company to focus more.

In this article, I’ll provide a small recipe you can apply as a company leader to overcome a lack of focus, micro-optimization, and silo thinking in a mid-sized company. With this approach, you’ll create buy-in, if not enthusiasm to refocus your limited resources on what matters most.

It is inspired by the book Multipliers, specifically by the chapter “The Debate Maker”.

1. Raise awareness: Is your company on the brink of failing strategic targets? Time to speak up about it. Leverage review meetings to express your concerns and find concrete examples of initiatives in your department, but also in your peers’ departments that are either not fully aligned or do not directly pay into the company’s main targets.
2. Prepare the debate: With buy-in from your peers and top management, schedule a debate meeting. Use a debate question like “In which areas do we need to invest most”. With “invest” I mean spending budget, allocating (wo-)manpower, and management attention.
   You will need some time to prepare for that debate, so plan at least 2 weeks. Invite top management, key decision-makers across all departments, product managers, and whoever you think can contribute to that debate with meaningful input. Try and think beyond organizational hierarchy. Who has access to data and insight and can bring it to the table?
   Then, map out the potential investment areas. Probably your existing strategy has something like key challenges, strategic vectors, or success critical KPIs which you can use. The challenge will be to narrow down investment areas as much as possible. I would suggest a maximum of 3. Less is better.
   Schedule preparation meetings with the main stakeholders of each strategic area. The goal is to identify the biggest problems and opportunities, which could be tackled with more resources in that area.
   Also, prepare the “decision mechanism” and brief the decision-makers about it. If there will be many participants in the debate, get a co-moderator and debate in 2 or more subgroups. This way everyone will get heard. Also, assemble a small presentation including the framing, debate rules, the outcome of the preparation sessions, and next steps (see below).
3. The actual debate: After your intro on why everyone is here, state the debate question (“where to invest”) and introduce the decision mechanism. I can highly recommend, separating the debate from the decision-making, because this removes anxiety from the debate. There will be no pressure to come to a conclusion in that meeting and everyone can argue fiercely for what they believe is the right investment area. A good decision mechanism might be, that based on the exchanged arguments a smaller group or even a mandated person makes the call. The decision can also be taken democratically, but I wouldn’t go for it.
   First, read out the debate rules, i.e. technical rules, e.g. use the “raise hand” feature in Zoom before talking, and rules for making the debate fruitful (e.g. “Leave your ego at the door” or “Try to argue from the company perspective, not only from your own or your department’s”).
   Your debate may start like this: Let one stakeholder from each investment area give a small pitch of why they think is it worth investing in it. After all areas had their pitch, it is time to start the actual debate.
   In each subgroup let them debate for a reasonable amount of time and at the end take the sentiment of the room. I recommend mentimeter or similar tools. All subgroups can then come together and share the results. The discussion may continue in the large group. When you see that two camps with different opinions emerge, ask them to switch positions and argue for the other side for 10 minutes. This will relieve the tension a lot and increase the likelihood of acceptance and support of any decision later on.
   When the time for the debate is up, leave some room for final remarks. Repeat the decision mechanism and next steps.
4. Now execute the decision mechanism, i.e. let the decision-makers have some space to make the call or let the meeting participants vote. Make sure to reflect the result back to the group.

That’s it : Here are your new focus areas. :) Obviously, some more work will follow, e.g. getting projects stopped, refocus people and product squads, etc.

By having a good debate first you ensure that 1) the decision will be based on good arguments and 2) buy-in for the decision will be there from all the sides, even if that means for some areas of the business to step down a little.

For us, this approach worked wonders and sparked quite some energy in the company, despite the fact that some departments ended up with fewer resources.

A big personal learning from my first debates is, how hard facilitating actually is. The book Multipliers offers some advice for good debate making and I’ll list some of them below. Yet, getting the framing of a debate right and executing it with rigor, needs some practice.

• Ask for evidence: If a participant makes claims without backing them up with data, argues emotionally and not factually, ask for proof. This makes sure the arguments having data backup will be stand out.
• Let everyone speak: introverts, as well as extroverts, should be able to share their view.
• Ask the tough questions: Prompt the participants to see things from another perspective. For example, if everyone argues from a pure business perspective, ask them for the customer’s point of view.
• Encourage an open and fierce discussion: Create a safe space during the debate.
• Encourage to switch positions for a few minutes (see above).

Have you experienced similar situations? How have you mastered them? And where do you apply debate-making in your job?