When you’re brave enough to ask but fear the answer.
Do you ever run into situations like this? It starts with a conversation with a prospect, client or co-worker and sounds something like this:
- We need help understanding our customers.
- We are about to offer a ____ and don’t know if it really fills a market need.
- We need to get better at innovating.
- We know ______ doesn’t work as well as it should but don’t know why.
A great start to any conversation. But the follow up explanation is usually where things go south. What follows is often a slew of suggestions often with conflicting means and goals. Such as:
- We need to learn to do it ourselves, but we don’t have time.
- We need to launch it by _________.
- But it must fit into our existing process which we can’t change.
- Really, it has to increase effectiveness.
In design thinking I work a lot with not leaping ahead to solve something before you understand what the challenge is. It’s why we spend time with our empathy, insights and reframe efforts. I also work with constraints — the idea that there are limits and tradeoffs in our work and that forces us to make better decisions.
I’m struck in a lot of these conversations that while they start well, they too often and too quickly jump to solutions. I understand this completely — everyone is under lots of pressure from their bosses and leaders to deliver something very fast, and that something is often a result of internal decisions without understanding the end customer. It feels like there is very little wiggle room to do the right thing, rather than just delivering the thing.
And really, it comes down to constraints, if we want to be honest, which few people do. You can learn to do it yourselves, but that will have other consequences for time and responsibilities. If it is that important, and usually it is, are you willing to deal with the choices and constraints it entails? Sure, you can launch something on time but is it worth launching something that delivers minimal returns rather than delivering something that grows your organization and delights your stakeholders and customers?
At the end of the day, it comes down to one word: fear. Are you more afraid that your boss will be mad at you for making the right choice? Or are you more afraid of wasting your organization’s and stakeholder’s resources by not doing the right thing?
I think we talk about fear too little. We fear fear. I would say it is extremely human to fear and worry. It’s what has allowed us to stay alive and evolve. It doesn’t need to paralyze us, but we need to acknowledge it and be brave enough to talk about it if we don’t want it to force us into making poor decision making.
That might be the most frustrating part of these conversations. The initial questions point to bravery and self-insight — two critical components of transformation and change. The answers to these questions often cause that fear reaction to rear its ugly head.
We need more people to act bravely. And we need to be brave enough to talk about how fear may hold us back. Only then can we significantly change our organizations for the better.
