Ideation, Alignment, Execution

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Much of this newsletter focuses on ways leaders can do a better job of getting shit done. Strategy is important and all leaders need to zoom out occasionally in order to make sure they aren’t losing the forest for the trees.

That said most teams fail not from a lack of ideas, but an inability to turn those ideas into reality.

There are a million reasons why this is true but often it’s because leaders don’t do a good job shifting their team across the three phases of bringing an idea from the whiteboard to reality.

These three stages are:

1. Ideation

2. Alignment

3. Execution

For the purposes of this post we’ll talk about each stage sequentially, but it’s important to realize often in the execution phase you’ll run into problems which may require you to go back to ideation and alignment. The key is to realize your job as a leader is to make decisions to avoid your team getting stuck in any single phase with a specific focus on moving to the execution phase as quickly as possible.

The goal is to deliver work, not talk about it.

Ideation

Ahhh the ideation phase, where no idea is a bad idea and everyone is a genius.

Take it from someone who comes up with a new idea for some side hustle, scheme, or business every other week, believe me there’s nothing I love more than chatting through a great idea.

That said, there’s nothing worse than being on a team with leaders incapable of time boxing the amount of time spent in the ideation phase. Take your time to wander, explore, and think openly about the best way to position your team to be successful but don’t get lost here.

There are two components to the ideation phase which I find most useful:

1. Talk to people

2. Think

Talk to people

I work in sales and on GTM teams so my ideas are usually centered around solving problems for others so they’ll pay my company for the solution. That framing may not work for everyone based on your role and the team you lead, but you get the point.

Whether you’re working on a truly greenfield opportunity or you have a narrower scope of a problem you’re looking to solve step one is to go talk to people. Leaders and teams are so quick to go to the whiteboard and brainstorm in their insular world, but you shouldn’t do this until after you’ve spoken to someone who actually has the problem you’re setting out to solve.

White boarding before talking to actual customers (be they internal or external) is play work. A means of fooling yourself that you’re being productive when you’re really just being busy.

So step one in the ideation phase is pick up the phone. Cold call a few potential customers and ask for 15 minutes, use your network to get an introduction, do as NPR does and stop people on the street it doesn’t matter. The point here is you haven’t earned the right to brainstorm until you’ve talked to a decent sample of people who face the problem you’re trying to solve.

Think

Now that you’ve talked to potential customers you’ve earned the right to go for a few long walks or stare at a whiteboard with your team as you try and solve the problem. The key in the thinking phase is to give yourself constraints by putting deadlines in place for when you are going to build your first prototype.

Nothing is worse than a team that gets stuck in the ideation loop and a three months after the project kicks off they have nothing to show for it. Take the time to be thoughtful about what you’re building, but know that your role as a leader in these scenarios is to keep the team moving forward.

Alignment

Alignment can be tricky depending on your decision making authority. Rarely do leaders have the ability to make unilateral decisions which means it’s now your goal to gain the necessary consensus needed in order to commit to a course of action.

In the alignment stage there are broadly two groups you need to align with. Alignment within your team to ensure you have the buy-in needed for those who are going to be responsible for delivering the work to ensure they don’t drag their feet. Alignment broadly with your boss and those peers who may be impacted by the work you’re about to set out to do.

Remember, all leaders are in sales. This is the stage where you may need to go on a bit of a roadshow to rally the troops (and the higher ups) to your recommended solution. It’s important to take feedback from those groups as you go about aligning, but again your job is not only to bring people around to your way of thinking but also to put constraints in place to ensure decisions are made as quickly as is reasonable.

Execution

Now to the good stuff. Nothing gets me more excited than a team firing on all cylinders that is making ambitious commitments and then delivering on those commitments.

When you’re part of a winning team you quickly realize it isn’t because you have the best ideas, but simply that you deliver more, high quality work, faster than your next closest competitor. Execution is byproduct of a leader defining a clear end state, providing clear visibility into the work being done, and inspecting consistently to hold teams accountable.

The cadence of inspection (aka accountability) matters a tremendous amount during the execution phase. Delivering high quality finished products is really just the summation of delivering high quality smaller pieces of work on time.

Break down the project into manageable pieces, assign those pieces of work to team members with reasonable timelines for delivery, hold them accountable to meeting those timelines.

Conclusion

There it is, have an idea for a big problem to solve that will get you and your team paid? Great, leverage the three steps of ideation, alignment, and execution to deliver on that work.

Your job as a leader is to ensure the work product consistently progresses from one stage to another and never gets stuck in any single phase for too long. If your team is spinning their wheels and you aren’t satisfied with the amount of work they’re delivering, reflect back on these three stages to see where you might be stuck.

Once you’ve identified it, put constraints in place to ensure you move to the next stage in a timely manner.

See y’all next week.