"Office flanking"

Ahoy,

Before we dive into our normal programming I just want to let you know, those of you on the waitlist (a surprisingly large number of you!) will be receiving another email from me very shortly with your early access to The Winning Startup and discounts!

Don’t forget that offer is only live for 24 hours… Then we open the gates to everyone…

So for everyone else, keep your eyes peeled for a potential email tomorrow… if there’s any space left you’ll need to act fast.

But for now, lets get back to the schedule.

Today I want to tell a story about an office place flanking manoeuvre…

Back when I was deployed out in Germany, I was in charge of a piece of software that was used by the headquarters.

We had 17 multinational senior officers working within our department.

And when I tried to suggest they start using the software slightly differently, I got 17 multinational responses for the word “no”.

Previously, a colleague of mine tried to convince the team of a change to the organisational structure.

They shared the proposal to a large part of the group, but a few key individuals were not there, on top of this, they only shared this much the day before they were briefing the command team on the plan.

In addition to not including everyone in the planning of the change, they also failed to include the most stubborn and vocal team member in the meeting the day before briefing the command team.

What did this lead to?

During the back brief later that day, a discussion on the topic moved from conversation…

to debate…

to argument… quickly.

Things were heated and there was active dispute of the idea from two members of the team, the majority had no major interest in the change, and only two or three individuals actively supported it.

What went wrong here?

Well there was no buy in because the idea was being pressed upon them.

They didn’t have involvement in the planning and so did not feel valued.

And at the end of the day, keeping our team feeling valued carries the most when it comes to saving our leadership capital.

Needless to say, the plan did not go ahead as originally intended.

After this mess, you’d think that being a keen young officer I would have learned from this mistake…

On the contrary.

So when I went into that meeting and tried to convince the other officers that we needed to change how we used the IT system, there was an embarrassing amount of backlash!

Having just followed in the exact footsteps of my colleague, it was only then did I realise what was happening.

So now we can move into the solution phase.

I still needed the change to happen, so I couldn’t spend the rest of my deployment with my tail between my legs.

I decided I needed to perform some “office flanking”.

This is an analogy I’ve stolen from Jocko Willink but I think it paints the picture quite well.

You see, these officers had essentially bunkered down on their opinion that there should be no change to the system.

They had made that decision and that’s where they laid their defences.

And what I had tried to do was a full frontal, head on assault on their bunkered position.

Now you do not need to be a military mastermind to understand that running head on at a bunker is probably not going to go well for you!

Thus me getting metaphorically machine gunned down.

The best approach is to perform a flanking manoeuvre.

And so I took a two stage approach:

1. Have them unveil the problem

2. Have them unveil the solution

It’s really important that they identify that there is a problem, so they become open to the idea of change.

It’s also important that they see this themselves, and not juts have me tell them, because that way we’re not going head on into their bunker.

We’re asking questions until they realise the problem, and in doing so, we’re getting them to come out from their defences themselves.

Now onto stage two.

Taking the same approach, we’re asking questions until they find the solution.

Now instead of fighting a bunkered position, they have essentially packed up and started walking away without a fight.

In my situation, the solution they unveiled was conveniently the plan that I had already prepared all along.

And so now, instead of fighting a losing battle, they were happy to embrace the change because it was now their idea.

The gold standard in this situation would have been for me to bring them into the discussion right at the beginning.

But this is a really important lesson.

People believe in the plan they came up with a lot more than they believe in your plan.

So have them come up with it, or at least don’t try and force your ideas onto them.

Don’t do what I did, please actually learn from other people’s mistakes, it’ll save you a lot of hassle (trust me, I know the pain)!

As always, have a great day.

Reece