After a full and productive Annual Season with my clients, I’m always left reflecting on some common themes. This year, what resonated most was the relationship between members of a leadership team and a company’s Issues List. That reflection led me to a question every leader should ask:
“What verb describes how I most frequently impact our company’s Issues List?”
In Chapter 6 of Traction, Gino Wickman shares ten “commandments” of a team that’s great at solving issues. Because solving an issue often requires one or more decisions to be made, they are also referred to as the Ten Commandments of Good Decision Making in the eBook, Decide! If you or your team are stuck and making little or no progress when solving issues, it’s time to assess whether you’re following these commandments.
Nobody talks about the elephant in the room. It’s too uncomfortable. “It’s too embarrassing,” you think, “If I bring that subject up, then everyone will know about it.” But here’s the thing – people know about the elephant in the room, and ignoring it is causing more problems than it’s solving.
“But Jim, I completely disagree with the decision. How can you expect me to support John’s decision and commit to it when I think it’s wrong?”
“Tom”, I replied, “I’m not asking you to agree with John. I’m asking you to do the greater good – to be unified as a leadership team in all the decisions that are communicated to others. Especially the ones we don’t all agree on.”
I hadn’t quite won Tom over. Julia noticed, and jumped in.
Compartmentalizing will help you manage all the “stuff” and eliminate all of the other lists in your organization. It will provide a simple system that every leader can follow. Once you master this at the leadership team level, then have each department live by the same system.
Some time ago, a client of mine had a ridiculously long Issues List that was getting out of control. They never seemed to be making progress on resolving their issues – in fact, their issues seemed to be exploding!
EOS® promises to help you solve your company’s issues for good. Over time, you should be seeing fewer issues and gaining new ground as an organization. But what if your Issues List isn’t working? It seems like you’re rehashing the same issues over and over again, and frankly the Issues List seems to grow rather than shrink.
You’ve got Issues List Fatigue.
