"Easy" Doesn't Do It Anymore

Getting sick of the whole "Move Fast & Break Things" thing? Read on...

Yesterday I spent some time watching my husband’s grandson play “Minecraft” on his tablet. He told me he was killing goats and cows and “everything”! “It’s fun!” “I’m good at this!” And I guess he is. I tried to take this in with a sense of equanimity. But I also had to admit that his joy and relish at blowing things up was just a bit disturbing. He’s six years old.

It’s so easy to wreck things, isn’t it? Blow stuff up, push the carefully constructed something over until it crashes to the floor - the satisfaction of the explosive sound, the chaos, the mess. The brief but powerful shot of Glory! But it’s short lived. Now the mess needs to be cleaned up. And by whom?

In the US, we are beginning to realize the costs of moving fast and breaking things. As most adults know, it is way harder to actually build stuff - and takes a much longer, often painstaking effort to create a lasting solution to problems.

True leaders don’t settle for “easy”. True leaders commit to the difficult process of building solutions.

There’s a new book out by Frances Frie and Anne Morriss that was profiled in an article in the Harvard Business Review. Their Move Fast And Fix Things outlines specific ways for leaders to solve difficult problems while strengthening the resilience of their organizations. Their model offers three essential elements that leaders need to demonstrate in order to build the trust required to bring an effort, a vision, a profitable year to fruition. Those three elements are:

• Empathy: Giving those you lead a sense that you truly care about them

• Logic: Making clear that your plans are built on solid proven ground

• Authenticity: Demonstrating your ability and commitment to take action on people’s concerns.

In reading over this list, I realized that these elements align perfectly with the 3H model in my book Head, Heart & Hands Listening in the following manner:

• Empathy - Heart Listening

• Logic: Head Listening

• Authenticity - Hands Listening

The premise of my book explores the possibility that we listen through habitual filters that allow us to screen out information that we can’t or won’t use. For example, If a leader with Head listening as her primary modality hears emotional feedback from an employee on the problem of constant interruptions in the workspace, the leader might tend to dismiss the complaint because her habitual filter is to discount information expressed with high emotion. Conversely, a leader who is a primary Heart listener might focus too exclusively on trying to care for the complainer, rather than take action on the complaint. And a primary Hands listener may too quickly attempt to fix the problem with a workaround without taking the time to really understand the issue.

I’d like to explore the three elements put forward by Frei and Morriss - along with their associated listening modalities a bit further in upcoming posts over the next three weeks, so keep reading!