How ‘Big Things’ get done
One of the most common things senior leaders find is that it's just soooo hard to get Big Things done.
Whether the Big Thing is changing an operating model, closing a merger or improving the performance of a team (etc), the experience seems to be true of all sectors and all types of organisation, and is certainly one shared by most of the Heads and MAT leaders I coach.
When you think about it - or rather when one looks at what it is that a client spends their working days doing - it's not really a surprise that staying focused on a horizon goal or an over-the-horizon vision is tricky. The everyday demands of the workplace - of managing teams, individuals and projects, of fire-fighting and politicking, and so on - mean that their eyes are down and flitting from a focus on one short-term need to another.
This is not how strategy is achieved so when the eyes do come up, they see that following their feet has not got them any closer to the Big Thing they seek and that can really hurt, particularly when it builds up cumulatively over time. One described graphic nightmares in which something they urgently needed remained constantly out of reach, the space between them and it either expanding or getting harder to cross. When things get this bad, clarity of focus and decision-making is almost inevitably compromised.
But what can be done?
One thing is to develop an outside perspective.
Projects, whether they are large or small, have a tendency to take on a life of their own, with their own momentum and 'rules'. There's a pressure to become an 'insider', with an inside view. This naturally limits ones capacity to maintain focus on the bigger picture, or an organisation's wider aims. It can also be very compelling, and make it difficult to apply course correction when the horse that's saddled-up and got the bit between its teeth starts heading west when the watering hole's north.
Developing an outside perspective is about trying to keep at least one eye on the horizon, and on the Bigger Thing of which the smaller things are a part. This is hard, so a key strategy is to get help. Assembling a group of diverse advisers who can bring different perspectives is a good idea, as is engaging in professional networks with peers and finding other opportunities - like professional coaching - to reflect systematically on what you might be missing.
And read around too. These ideas are taken from 'How Big Things Get Done', an FT best business book of 2023 by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner, which - as you might see from the illustration - is a great place to start.
But Daniel Kahneman's 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' also has much to offer, as captured in the image by the maxim 'think slow, act fast'. In contexts characterised by uncertainty, acting without thinking is a sure fire way to come off the rails.
