Changing your team’s posture to respond to today’s uncertainty
While I try not to use (too many) sports analogies, the NFL’s 2020 draft is being held today and it got me thinking about a comparison between how a running back changes their posture between the combine and during a game, and how there may be a lesson for large corporations in responding to today’s pandemic-driven uncertainty.
During the NFL combine, the 40-yard dash is a measure of how quickly a player can run in a straight line. Some of the best do it under 4.5 seconds.
However, the true measure of an athlete’s prowess is on the field during a game when there is a defensive line gunning for them.
Arguably the biggest difference between the combine and game time for a running back is posture. Athletes optimize for predictability in the combine (first image AP Photo) by leaning forward and making themselves long as they leap. During the game, however, they get their center of gravity low and take smaller steps. While this is counterintuitive as it may slow them down, it provides them with the agility they need in the face of the uncertainty of the opponent’s defense. Success and failure depend on the right posture for the problem you’re solving for.
Similar to a running back in the combine, large public corporations are rewarded by the stock market for accurate forecasts, and hence, they optimize for predictability. The assumption here is that public companies offer established products/services in predictable markets. The current changes to our lives mean those assumptions are being challenged and we need to respond.
Not only has this pandemic affected the market today while stay-at-home and shelter-in-place orders are in effect, but it will also impact how we as a market live, work and play once we put this virus behind us. It’s important that we change our posture even if it feels counterintuitive so that we optimize for navigating these changes.
Even in the NFL, the fastest players in the combine aren’t as successful as the ones who can best navigate uncertainty. While it can seem impossible to change the posture of your teams and it is important to get started right away, I have found that there is low hanging fruit around the changes you can make that will yield disproportionate value without completely disrupting your team.
A major point of inefficiency that I find amongst teams I work with is the difficulty in making decisions quickly. This is likely because of the big bets that we’re forced to make where failure to make the right decision could be catastrophic. An alternative mindset would be to limit the risk by reducing the implications around the decision. Rather than running down the line in leaps, take small steps and continuously sense and respond.
Here are 3 extremely effective ‘small steps’ that we have helped our clients take in order to drive quicker decision making while mitigating risk and traversing uncertainty:
One outcome
Business/Strategy and Technology/Execution teams need to be more aligned than ever. It’s important to understand each others’ objectives, needs, and challenges in order to best support each other. For the best performing teams, we create safe spaces where asking for help or for context is a sign of strength rather than weakness. We’ve had to work extra hard on this while we collaborate remotely.
As a business or product lead, share context, and invite questions from your technology team around the customer of the product and the problem that they are expecting you to solve for them. Alternatively, as a technology lead or a software engineer, share context and invite dialogue around the architecture of your application and the domain assumptions that you have optimized your system for. These will inevitably lead to a deeper understanding of the problem space and increase the collective creativity of your team and its solutions.
Accuracy over precision
Once you’re aligned on goals and constraints, you need to align on measurements that act as indicators to outcomes. If you’re amongst the first to try an innovative approach, data is often sparse when navigating this unfamiliar territory. In order for the leading indicators to be effective, they must be accurate (measuring the right thing e.g. 75F±10%), even at the cost of precision (the sensitivity of the measurement e.g. 75.6632F). While we likely find more comfort in precision, this bias could cost you accuracy wherein you are compromising the effectiveness of the indicator. Precision can also be costly and time-consuming and the level of investment may not pay dividends early in a product lifecycle.
Most of the time, it may be better to ask your customers how likely they would recommend your service, or how much the problem currently costs them and make decisions based on 5–6 interviews rather than stand up the infrastructure to measure these precisely when the decision you’re looking to make may not change drastically.
Experimentation
Use an experimental mindset to test out the riskiest assumptions in your system. These are the ones that get most debated and ultimately drive inaction and indecision. Adopt a lean experimental mindset to explore the fastest and most cost-effective approaches to learn more about assumptions that might have the biggest implications if you’re wrong about them.
In order to benefit from the 80/20 rule here, invite a discussion on the biggest assumptions in your system from a diverse perspective of both product and technology teammates. “Biggest” here refers to the assumptions that have the most impact if you’re wrong, and that you also know the least about. Once you have identified the most uncertain assumptions, leverage ‘small data’ tools like contextual interviews, Wizard of Oz tests, concierge tests, and concept tests (amongst others) to augment your insight with data in order to drive decisions and progress.
What has worked for you?
While these three approaches have been very successful for me, I am sure there are other tactics that can help drive better outcomes from the collaboration of our teams. What are some of your go-to approaches? Drop me a note, or post in the comments and I’ll follow this post up with a summary of your insights.
Ashok Sivanand is the CEO of Integral, a Detroit-based software consulting firm that focuses on building great teams that build great products. Ashok is a student of lean product management, human-centered design, agile software engineering, theory of constraints, organizational behavior, and cooking with a smoker. Integral is offering pro-bono software clinics to help navigate technology decisions. Sign up here.
