To succeed you need to speak truth to power, take decisions and focus

The success triad on enabling change related to growth within organization

Overview

What is the origin of success in businesses and in everyday lives? What are the driving forces needed to reach growth and maturity? Also, what it takes to have satisfied employees, customers and smooth transition? You often hear that this business succeeded because someone had the skills to affect the decisions or change the mind of the C-level executives. However, this is not a one mans show, and definitely not a single skill or something that takes place one time in one location. It seems that a business needs truth to be spoken to power, ability to focus and taking decisions without procrastinating. In this article, I am tackling these factors in an attempt to highlight their effect in an organization as well as the benefits. Also, as it be made clear later, these three aspects are connected to each other in a sequential order. Namely, you need to speak to power, then take decision (not you, but the whole organization) and then focus and implement. Otherwise, it makes no sense to speak the truth and then stalling in decision making or in the realization of your idea. Here, I am elaborating a little bit more (while keeping the article short) for how these three key aspects are distributed in time and space.

To succeed you need to speak truth to power, take decisions and focus

Speaking the truth to power- Or better discussing your view of truth to power

Speaking the truth to power seems to be one of the most discussed topics in the business world. According to various factors like personalities, cultures and organization structure, the ease of speaking truth to power might seem not feasible or too risky at all. In a well structured organization with a culture based on transparency, without bureaucracy and empowered teams I do not see why speaking the truth to power is an issue at all, as the “power” is engaged and the teams have the power to affect the operation and decisions.

In order to speak the truth to power, you need to have a clear goal and being able to build a fence around your idea. This includes explaining the topic, why it has to be done now and what are the expected outcomes of your proposal. However, the challenge does not stop there. When speaking the truth to power is like leading without authority so you need to empathize and consider any concerns. In general putting your self in the other’s shoes will help you achieve that and also be prepared to listen. While speaking the truth to power is considered as a chance for proposing your ideas it is also a good opportunity to hear from the power. So be prepared to listen and try to use open ended questions to trigger more thoughts and the “slow-thinking” mode. For example, you can ask, “what would it take us to do this in order to achieve that”, or “do you think that we put in risk this if we do that”. That said, you need to be open to listen. In some cases you might even hear a better plan that the one that you had in mind.
Speaking the truth to power consumes valuable time and attention from key persons in an organization. If you decide to do that you should also consider doing that with parsimony. Also, kindness is mandatory as when mixed with empathy will help others better understand what you are saying. Keep also in mind that in case of disagreement, arrogance or impact has a catastrophic effect. People will forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel, so next time they will be more reluctant to listen to you.
Here are some take-home messages for speaking the truth:
Why is needed: Because you assume that your idea should be listened and adapted and you do not have the chance to do that without needing to “speak to the power”. What do you expect (mechanical adoption): Everyone to hear you, change their minds, accept your positions and start planning What should happen (productive): Everyone should hear you, argue and try to figure out the why’s. Discuss, learn more, notice a change in both sides and start aggreging on an action plan that will set the basis for change.

On taking decisions

Now that you have spoken the truth you need to take some decisions. These decisions will include/describe the when, the what and by whom some actions will take place. Therefore, it is of vital importance to come with a plan describing the goal, the objectives and key results and persons involved. This plan might need to be discussed with subject matter experts and/or modified before put in execution. However, what is important here is to move from saying to doing. Sometimes, it is harder to implement a change as compared to convincing someone that it’s worth it.

While the plan will summarize the execution of your idea, your decisions need to be clear and sharp. But before that you need to make sure that you are not building a decision zombie tree within your organization. This can happen if a) you procrastinate to take some key decisions, b) have difficulties in drafting the plan or c) you don’t have the resources, capacity or knowledge how to do that.
Now, that you have drafted you plan, (usually) you once again have no authority in the execution, so you have to lead without authority or even step back and delegate things to other people. In any case, you need to take responsibility in an end-to-end manner and stand by anyone needs you throughout the execution. That said, you always remain accountable for what is happening and your responsibility against your colleagues grows more and more. Last but not least you need to lead by paradigm by being supportive in the change.

On remaining focused

As mentioned previously, you are always accountable for any decisions, actions and outcomes. That means that your journey starts with the pitch of the idea and end with the presentation of the outcomes. Depending on the project management approach, you might also be asked to provide some progress reports, metrics and KPIs depicting the progress. To cope with all the aforementioned, you need to remain focus and show trust in your plan and the team. Otherwise, you might be faced with scope creep, important delays, difficulties in the adoption of your plan and likely a failed project.

Some people are enthralled by the new idea, make some quick decisions and then they delegate everything including the accountability. So remember that enthusiasm is nice for self motivation but useless in realization of the idea. So, to make sure that you don’t fall in this trap, make sure that you have a north star. This should be visible to anyone involved and highlighted across the team often. Also, now that your idea is accepted and executed, it is a good opportunity for you to learn more. You are advised to collect data like what did work and what didn’t and what were the outcomes of each action.

Conclusions

I presented a chain of events needed to succeed as organization, project or business. This includes the ability to communicate with the “power”, taking decisions and remain focus on execution. Next you will find some extra guidelines that summarize my previous paragraphs.

  • Be prepared to discuss with power. Speaking to power is more like expecting others to blindly accept your positions/proposals. If that happens you should be more worried as compared to be rejected.
  • Be kind and ask open questions.
  • Avoid building decision zombies- namely decisions that never spoken to power or never transformed to decisions or abandoned later during execution
  • Always remember that you are doing this because you find meaning in that. Supporting change and speaking to power takes a lot of effort, time and large attention spans so it probably worth it

Hope this helps,

Dimitris Kastaniotis, PhD