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Making Good Decisions Part 3: Fall in Love with the Problem and Generate Good Options

7/28/2020

When faced with a challenge, we often fall into the classic decision-making pitfall of asking too narrow of a question. This drives us to “this or that”, “yes or no” and other binary options. This one-zero logic can lead to bad decisions. For example, if I’m hungry after dinner, I could ask myself whether to have cake or ice-cream for dessert. A better question is “how might I satisfy or prevent after-dinner-hunger?” That question opens up a world of options, from considering other dessert types, to changing eating times, to eating a bigger dinner, etc.

Fall in love with the problem, before you settle on either-or solutions. A few simple ways of doing this are:

Ask others with different perspectives how they see the challenge. State how you see it and ask “what am I missing?” or “what’s another way of looking at this?”
Look at the issues below the surface, the root causes, which may be the actual problem that needs to be solved
Frame a question in a way that does not contain a solution in it, is broad enough to generate lots of options but narrow enough to be practical

Once you settle on a broad question, generate good options using these steps:

Get clear on design criteria, the attributes that any solution you come up with must meet
Diverge before you converge: brainstorm many options before you settle on a few and then compare the few side-by-side to see what might be possible
Gather representative evidence to form options. Beware of “availability bias” where you put too much value on the info in hand; “recency effect”, where you pay too much attention to the most recent piece of data you’ve seen; and “anchoring” where you hyper-focus on one piece of evidence instead of looking at the body of data as a whole
Figure out what your known unknowns are and how you’ll address these in your options
Surface assumptions and limits to knowledge, and ask for those weighing in to rate their level of confidence in their assertions
Balance your biases by inviting counterarguments and disconfirming questions

And finally, don’t keep on collecting data in the hopes that the answer will magically appear. In this world of uncertainty and ambiguity, there’s often more than one right answer. Colin Powell advises to shoot for between 40 and 70% of the info, and Jeff Bezos uses a “70% of the info” rule before making a decision. Uncertainty is to be expected and something to manage. We’ll talk about that in the next blog post.

Making Good Decisions Part 2: Know the Blind Spots

7/21/2020

When I first saw this picture, I was 100% certain it was an old woman in profile, with protruding chin and nose.

By William Ely Hill "My Wife and Mother-in-Law.”

And that’s what the drawing is.  But, as I later came to find out, it’s also a picture of a young woman, turned away, sporting a necklace.  Even as it was explained to me, how the lines intersected to form neck, nose, eyelash, I still could not see the young woman in the picture.

We all see with our own frames. Our frames come from our unique experiences, values, and cultures.  These are mental constructs we use to simplify complexity. Frames filter what we see and appear to represent a complete reality, but in fact do not. And once you see something a certain way, it can be exceedingly difficult to see it any other way.
Conflating our frames with “the truth” creates problems in decision-making. For example, we make a snap judgment about something and then gather and interpret evidence to support that view, a phenomenon called “confirmation bias”. Or we define a challenge too narrowly, from our singular perspectives, and end up solving the wrong problem, overlooking potential solutions, and jumping to the wrong conclusions.

Another blind spot in decision-making is overconfidence.  Good decision-making requires knowing the limits of our knowledge. We need to understand what we know, what others might know to fill our gaps, and what no one knows.  This means admitting the level of uncertainty we’re dealing with and preparing to be wrong with the decisions we make.

We also tend to over-look “noise”, or the variability that results when we make value judgements. For example, you can consult several different doctors on the same issue and get a different opinion from each of them. Relying on just a few loud opinions is noisy. You’ll make better decisions if you crowd-source and use either consensus or the average “robust” opinion to decide. See here for more information on the power of group decisions.
And finally, we can be high jacked by emotion which clouds our judgment. This leads some of us to shoot from hip, and the rest of us to undertake analysis paralysis.

Luckily, there are many proven tactics you can employ to manage these blind spots. Want to learn more about high quality decision-making? Join ISSP’s leadership training webinar on decision-making, July 23rd, 1 PM EST.

Making Good Decisions Part 1: Clearing Mental Space

7/14/2020

We sustainability and social impact professionals must lead in the face of constant change, complexity, and ambiguity. Especially now in the age of COVID, uncertainty has become our norm. Making good decisions that we can be confident in can be quite challenging these days!

One of the difficulties I’ve been hearing from my coaching clients is their “decision fatigue”. They feel so overwhelmed and have so much on their plate, they don’t have the mental space to make good decisions. This causes some of them to shoot from the hip and decide on impulse. It causes others to sit on a decision forever, thinking if they keep gathering information, the right answer will reveal itself. Neither option is optimal for getting good results

Cutting back the amount of decisions you need to make is a great way forward. By asking your yourself these three questions, you can take the steps needed to clear the mental space needed to make high quality decisions:

Do I have to make this decision, or is this something I can delegate? Some of the leaders I coach think that they have to have all the answers. That’s just not the case. The trick is to leverage the best of your team, or maybe all the team, to define the question, create and assess good options, and recommend or even execute the decision. For more info on how to delegate, check out Coaching for Leaders podcast with Cisco’s Hassan Osman. Even if you don’t have a team, you have colleagues you can try to delegate to or trade with, who might be better suited or have more capacity to take on the task.

2. If I don’t decide today, might it go away? Maybe you’re like me and have a “bias towards action”. I’ve made my fair share of horrible decisions just to get them off my plate. What if we just sat on it for a while? Sometimes the problem just goes away magically. Check out this video with Dave Ramsey for more tips on this tactic.

3. Is it something I must decide on my own, or can we decide as a group? Group decisions take more time, but generally lead to better framing of the challenge, more creative options, and higher quality assessments. Group decisions also generate buy-in. If you’re dealing with a complex, adaptive challenge, ask the team (or form a group) to help you.

Want to learn more about high quality decision-making? Join ISSP’s leadership training webinar on decision-making, July 23rd, 1 PM EST.

NAEM’s Women Leadership Roundtable: Influencing Without Formal Authority

7/1/2019

Last week, at the NAEM Women’s Leadership Roundtable, I had the honor of leading a group coaching
session on “Influencing Without Formal Authority”, framing it around the book Influencer (Grenny et al).
The participants, representing a variety of corporate environmental functions and leadership levels
within their companies, noted similar challenges when it came to influence and came up with some
winning strategies:

Challenge 1: How can we get better results in a matrix bureaucracy?
Solution Option: Have that elevator pitch ready at any moment. In a matrix organization, you
never know who might help you get what you want. You need as many allies as you can get. If
you don’t know how to put together that pitch, consider joining Toastmasters.

Challenge 2: How can we get resistant co-workers to collaborate more while managing our own
emotions when we feel frustrated or disrespected by them?
Solution Option: Meet with them one-on-one, in person if possible, to develop more of a
relationship and more empathy for what they need and want. If you know this person can
trigger you, prepare what you’re going to say ahead of time, and even role play it with a friend.
If they’ve just upset you, take time to cool off before responding. Sit a good long while on that
angry email response before sending it!

Challenge 3: How can we get more buy-in for our change initiatives?
Solution Option: Find an influential advocate to champion your cause. Often this will be
someone on the executive leadership team. (John Kotter, in Leading Change, refers to this as
“creating the powerful guiding coalition.”) In some instances, the advocate you need may not
necessarily be in a formal leadership role. She or he is the person your colleagues go to for
advice, the one in the team meetings that gets asked for their opinion, who can sway a debate
with the power of their personal influence and persuasion skills. It pays to build good
relationships with the informal opinion leaders in your organization.

These were some of the many solutions generated in our coaching session. Sustainability, CSR, EHS, and
social impact professionals know the impact that their ability to influence their colleagues and
leadership has on their results. What influence challenge are you facing?

Influencing (Cynical People) Without Formal Authority

11/13/2018

Photo by Nathan Cowley from Pexels

November, 2018
I’ll never forget the time I pitched an idea to my SVP on a cost-effective way to green our supply chain. Armed with all the numbers and scenarios, ideas on how to make it relatively easy, projections on what the biz could gain, and endorsement from the procurement team, I was feeling pretty good. Until I walked into his office, where he greeted me with a not-so-subtle sneer and a “Now what do you want?” without looking up from the papers on his desk.

I bet most of you who work in corporate sustainability can relate. Some of your colleagues just think of you as a cost-center, someone who’s going to make extra work for them on an issue they don’t care about, an outsider who has no business meddling in their business. And somehow, without having any formal authority over them, you’ve got to get these folks to not only take your call but to ultimately buy into the goals and co-create the solutions. Working in this environment can be tough and disheartening. But there are ways to smooth the path.

I spoke to a friend (let’s call him Joe) who has a sustainability role in large global corporation that makes thousands of products. Joe needs to persuade his colleagues to change everything from how they design products to who they sell to. His colleagues sit in other parts of the organization and are often in roles way above his pay-grade.

He’s enjoyed success in gaining their buy-in. In fact, recently, over the course of a tense 1.5 hour meeting, he and his boss convinced several business leaders in his company to agree on a new product sustainability metric. He graciously shared what worked: Understand their goals and metrics and make arguments on what they are personally incentivized to deliver. Use “business empathy” – put yourself in their shoes and understand what they get evaluated for on their performance review. Recognize the case varies by role: talk about reducing cost and diversifying supply chain to an ops person and increasing sales to the account people Make it as easy as possible ahead of time for them to say yes – do the leg-work, anticipate their questions and have answers. Show them what the process will look like and how to de-risk the change. Give them an out. Go for easy wins and build on what they are already doing so they feel like change is possible.

  Show them where they are already changing and might not recognize it, and how this will smooth their path going forward Joe is a pretty zen guy, much more than me. I asked him how he kept his cool on that phone call, with so much push-back. He said he felt confident because he had a great case and understood what the folks on the line needed to make the change.

I asked if he ever struggled with colleagues, even when he had a solid pitch. He mentioned that some people just cannot handle change unless they understand every step of the way forward, which is tough given all the unknowns out there in this complicated world. That can be frustrating and there’s not much to do with someone like that but find allies who are a bit more risk-tolerant and willing to back him up. And sometimes, Joe admitted, he wants to shake people by the shoulders when all the pieces are in place and it feels like they are just saying no because they have too much on their plate.

When that happens, he tries to make things easier, take some of their load off, take a step back and ask lots of questions. He’s comfortable having open, honest conversations and digging into what is not being said. He also acknowledges that sometimes the timing just isn’t right and if you wait a few months to make the same request, you can have success. Joe seems to work in a relatively enlightened workplace.

I asked him if everyone was as collaborative and open as he is. “No! Lot’s of people are cynics, or selfish, or apathetic.” he responded. The way he approaches the cynics, like with others, is to start with what is important to them and make what you do about helping them. You may never win them over, so find and work with the allies. Like Joe said, “If you have a good reputation, that you are good to work with and people like to work with you, the cynics don’t matter as much.”

The keys to stakeholder engagement: start with building trust

7/17/2018

This is the first in a four-part series exploring essential skills and mindsets for building trusted partnerships with your stakeholders. Stakeholders can be a goldmine of valuable information, resources and support. Yet stakeholder engagement strategy is often reduced to a clinical process of mapping and assessing and project managing. Yet within that process are real, live people.
"Oh, you’ve come all the way from D.C.," Dave said. "I see. And I guess you’re gonna tell us how to do it right?"
My client, Angie, had asked me to find opportunities with stakeholders to improve implementation of her company’s sustainability goals. I’d flown halfway across the country to interview suppliers, competitors, NGOs, government agencies and employees. I’d painstakingly crafted a comprehensive list of interview questions and an intro script, all neatly attached to a clipboard which I carried fastidiously "into the field."
"No sir," I responded to Dave, my client’s supplier. "I’m just here to get your perspective so Angie can do things better."
"And who are you?" he asked, tight-lipped.
He wouldn’t say another word until I gave him my bona fides, which included having once worked in operations, in the same field as his. Strangely enough, that wasn’t good enough. He didn’t just want my professional credentials. He also wanted to know if I was a Washington Nats fan, whether I voted for Trump, and what kind of dogs I have (Aussie mutts, if you must know).

Building trust, at its core, requires taking a risk.

It turns out that the question, "And who are you?" is a fundamental building block of trust. Building trust, at its core, requires taking a risk. The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook defines the "Trust Equation" as:

Trustworthiness = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation
In this context, credibility is about what you know and how you say it. You can become more credible by acquiring deep subject matter expertise and by expressing that expertise honestly. In this case, the fact that I came from the same industry as Dave helped him to see me as somewhat credible.
Reliability means just what it sounds like, doing what you say you’re going to do. Over and over and over. In this case, I had no way of demonstrating reliability. Often though, we are interacting with the same stakeholder or advisory group over an extended period of time. Things such as being on time for meetings, following through on action items you promised to do, setting and meeting expectations and taking responsibility when you can’t, are what make people think of you as reliable.
This brings us to intimacy and self-orientation, the two areas that the Trusted Advisors’ research show are most commonly lacking. Whereas reliability and credibility are skills many of us find easy to develop, intimacy is a lot about opening up on a personal level and being vulnerable enough that the other person sees you as authentic, human. Intimacy makes the other person feel safe enough to share things that otherwise could come back and bite them. Empathetic listening helps create intimacy. And, as simple as it may sound, so does letting down your hair. In this case, once Dave knew that I liked baseball (even though he rooted for the rival Braves), he no longer saw me as a scary stranger.

Once Dave knew that I liked baseball, he no longer saw me as a scary stranger.

Finally, we come to self-orientation, in other words, focusing on your own needs or wants instead of the other person’s. Simply put: The more you focus on yourself in the interaction, the less the other person will trust you. One way to manage your self-orientation is by asking the other person lots of questions to understand what really makes them tick. Another way is to use empathetic listening, even when it is really hard to sit there while they say stuff you might not want to hear.

By contrast, talking too much and being opaque are surefire ways of screwing up the "S" in the Trust Equation. Admittedly, I love to gab. Luckily, Dave must have thought my transparency and curiosity outweighed the constant yammering, because we ended up having a fruitful and open conversation.
My interaction with Dave was transactional, but still required a level of trust to get his honest feedback. For building longer-term relationships, the Trusted Advisor offers the following principles:

Focus on the other.
Take a collaborative approach.
Take a medium to long-term relationship perspective.
Make it a habit to be transparent.

Test the Trust Equation yourself, and see how your most valued stakeholder relationships improve.
Note: Names and ancillary details have been changed to protect the innocent.

Stakeholder engagement: getting to the heart of the matter with empathetic listening

7/17/2018

In the first of a four-part series, we explore some essential skills and mindsets you and your team can build trusted partnerships with your stakeholders.
For the corporate sustainability leader, stakeholders can be a goldmine of valuable information, resources and support. They can help you manage issues before they blow up and find innovative ways to solve the most complex of challenges. Stakeholder engagement strategy is often reduced to a clinical process of mapping and assessing and project managing. But within that process are real live people, and dealing with us humans can be messy.
"It’s not what you hear by listening that’s important; it’s what you say by listening that’s important." — Thomas Friedman
I was talking to Joe, a procurement guy at my client Mary’s company. Mary, head of CSR, was developing a new sourcing policy, which she hoped would make her company a sustainability leader in her sector. She asked me to facilitate a meeting with a group of external stakeholders to discuss the draft policy and she invited Joe and some other colleagues in to answer any questions. I liked Mary a lot: she was visionary, bold and sincere. I was rooting for her all the way.
I liked Joe, too — he was a real team player. During the meeting, he was completely engaged, affable and answered all the questions the right way. This was about leadership, doing the right thing, meeting the customers’ expectations. The group was duly impressed, singing the praises of the policy. Success. We took a break.

But how had we gotten so far down the path without uncovering this issue?

Joe grabbed a coffee and went off by himself to a couch in the corner of the lobby corridor. I joined him. We got to chatting about the policy. He repeated a lot of the things he said in the meeting: we were on the right track, doing the right thing; the company was showing great leadership. As he talked, he slunk down more and more into the couch, his eyelids grew heavy, his shoulders slumped.

"You look tired, Joe," I said. "Is everything OK?"
"I’m fine, thanks, just have a lot on my plate," he responded, sitting up a little straighter.
We got to chatting about his thousands of work responsibilities, how he had just lost some staff, how he was not spending enough time at home with his young children as a result. As we talked, his whole body seemed to loosen up, his once impassive face had become quite animated.
"And how will this new policy impact you?" I asked him, truly curious. I really had no idea.
He let out a deep sigh. This once mild-mannered, company man leaned in close to me, his voice now loud and full of energy, his hands perpetually moving. He told me about how onerous the procurement process they were using was, how much extra paperwork he had to fill out, all the signoffs and approvals he had to get which he didn’t think really affected the results. He was afraid that if even one more requirement was added, as the policy proposed, he and the process would break. He sounded frustrated, almost angry, although he never said anything disloyal about the company or Mary.
"Can you walk me through the steps you have to take now? I’d love to learn more about the details," I said.
As he explained the procurement journey, we brainstormed together why certain things were done certain ways, and he came up with some excellent ideas on how to make it easier and more efficient. Coffee break was almost over, and he was sitting up straight, lively, smiling. He had revealed a big potential pitfall to the strategy and had come up with lots of great solutions, in less than 30 minutes.
But how had we gotten so far down the path without uncovering this issue? It’s not like Mary didn’t ask for his input; she had circulated the draft to all the key internal stakeholders and asked for feedback before the meeting, just as the stakeholder engagement process required. She met with her colleagues and addressed all the concerns raised, reiterating how well the new policy would position their company in the marketplace. So what went wrong? It appears that, for whatever reason, no one brought the procurement issue to her attention, at least not in so many words.

Empathetic listening helps us discover what our user or stakeholder sometimes does not even consciously know.

In organizational coaching, we use empathetic listening to go beyond the words to find the meaning. Listening like this, according to Co-Active Coaching, includes "everything you can observe with your senses: what you see, hear, smell and feel — the tactile as well as the emotional sensations." It requires us to be fully present, to be very curious about the other person and to trust our intuitions.

Some of the lucky few are naturally good at empathetic listening, but most of us, including myself, must learn this skill and consciously practice it over and over to get good. Our tendency, when we listen, is to focus internally on our own thoughts and judgments. Sometimes we are defensive. Other times we hear the literal words but do not grasp, or understand the value of, the emotion underlying the words.
With design thinking, a human-centric design approach sometimes used to create social impact collaborations, we might apply tools such as ethnographic interviews and 360 Empathy to identify the unmet, unarticulated needs of the user. This helps us co-create the best solutions. Such an approach requires empathetic listening to surface the deeper issues and delve into the non-rational side of human behavior. Empathetic listening helps us discover what our user or stakeholder sometimes does not even consciously know about their own needs or wants.
Mary’s approach, commonly used by the most well-intentioned, smartest of people, did not allow her stakeholders to express their underlying needs. As a result, she would have had a lot of problems executing it. Joe’s valuable insights helped us reconfigure the policy and implementation process to get the best outcomes. Empathetic listening gets us to the heart of the matter.

Top Tips on Engaging Stakeholders from a Corporate Sustainability Pro

7/5/2018

Dawn Rittenhouse, Director of Sustainability for the DuPont Company, has a wealth of experience working with environmental organizations and other stakeholder groups. She’s been with the company since the 80’s and, in 1997, began helping DuPont businesses to integrate sustainability into their strategies.

Like many corporations, DuPont’s first major foray into formally engaging with NGOs was driven by crisis, one after the another. In the beginning, the company’s aim was to come to terms with the environmental campaigners to resolve the challenge du jour and get out of the headlines. Over time, as they built trusting relationships, DuPont’s leadership came to see these organizations as partners who could help them get ahead of potential issues and even help to grow the business.

For example, Dupont had this idea to create a salmon aquaculture food based on a GMO process that would reduce pressure on wild fish populations. Before investing in the R&D, they ran the idea by several environmental and conservation organizations and scientists. DuPont wanted to understand what steps it needed to take to make the idea environmentally friendly on all fronts. The business sought input from these outside experts throughout the product development process. By the time DuPont commercialized the concept, it had very strong NGO support.

I asked Dawn to share her top tips for companies effectively engaging with stakeholders:

The goal of your first meeting with an external stakeholder should be to get another meeting. Don’t go into it wanting to convince the other side that you’re right! Aim to listen enough so that they’ll want to talk to you again.
When you’re engaging with a non-profit organization, understand that their time is their money. Before you meet, envision win-win scenarios that help them progress their agenda. Don’t waste their time.
Understand the business model of the NGO before you start. Some need to create drama and headlines to raise funding and so may be more adversarial. Others have track records of quietly partnering with corporations to reach common goals. A leopard doesn’t change its spots, so be prepared.
Help your internal stakeholders – your leadership and colleagues in the businesses – understand that you and the NGO may want the same outcomes but have different ideas of how to get there. Help your colleagues look for areas of commonality and early agreement before diving into the more controversial topics.
Get your leadership and colleagues in the businesses “into the field” to experience first-hand how the issue being raised by external groups looks and feels like.
There are at least two fundamental types of engagements: one to gain perspective and understanding and another to get advice. Understand which type of engagement you’re after before you start. Advisory panels are very useful, but it can take a long time to get them enough up to speed on your business that they can offer practical advice.
When creating an advisory board, choose credible experts that are critical of your approach but are also open-minded enough to co-create solutions
Before meeting with an NGO on an issue, know what your company has done! In big global companies with lots of business lines, things may have happened or are happening now on the issue of which you might not be aware. Check in with the businesses and public affairs before talking to the NGO.

If you want to hear more from Dawn on ways to get the most value out of your stakeholder engagement, join us Aug 7, 12-1 PM for a free webinar.

Top Tips on Engaging Stakeholders from a Corporate Sustainability Pro

7/5/2018

Dawn Rittenhouse, Director of Sustainability for the DuPont Company, has a wealth of experience working with environmental organizations and other stakeholder groups. She’s been with the company since the 80’s and, in 1997, began helping DuPont businesses to integrate sustainability into their strategies.

Like many corporations, DuPont’s first major foray into formally engaging with NGOs was driven by crisis, one after the another. In the beginning, the company’s aim was to come to terms with the environmental campaigners to resolve the challenge du jour and get out of the headlines. Over time, as they built trusting relationships, DuPont’s leadership came to see these organizations as partners who could help them get ahead of potential issues and even help to grow the business.

For example, Dupont had this idea to create a salmon aquaculture food based on a GMO process that would reduce pressure on wild fish populations. Before investing in the R&D, they ran the idea by several environmental and conservation organizations and scientists. DuPont wanted to understand what steps it needed to take to make the idea environmentally friendly on all fronts.
The business sought input from these outside experts throughout the product development process. By the time DuPont commercialized the concept, it had very strong NGO support.

I asked Dawn to share her top tips for companies effectively engaging with stakeholders:

The goal of your first meeting with an external stakeholder should be to get another meeting. Don’t go into it wanting to convince the other side that you’re right! Aim to listen enough so that they’ll want to talk to you again.
When you’re engaging with a non-profit organization, understand that their time is their money. Before you meet, envision win-win scenarios that help them progress their agenda. Don’t waste their time.
Understand the business model of the NGO before you start. Some need to create drama and headlines to raise funding and so may be more adversarial. Others have track records of quietly partnering with corporations to reach common goals. A leopard doesn’t change its spots, so be prepared.
Help your internal stakeholders – your leadership and colleagues in the businesses – understand that you and the NGO may want the same outcomes but have different ideas of how to get there. Help your colleagues look for areas of commonality and early agreement before diving into the more controversial topics.
Get your leadership and colleagues in the businesses “into the field” to experience first-hand how the issue being raised by external groups looks and feels like.
There are at least two fundamental types of engagements: one to gain perspective and understanding and another to get advice. Understand which type of engagement you’re after before you start. Advisory panels are very useful, but it can take a long time to get them enough up to speed on your business that they can offer practical advice.
When creating an advisory board, choose credible experts that are critical of your approach but are also open-minded enough to co-create solutions
Before meeting with an NGO on an issue, know what your company has done! In big global companies with lots of business lines, things may have happened or are happening now on the issue of which you might not be aware. Check in with the businesses and public affairs before talking to the NGO.

If you want to hear more from Dawn on ways to get the most value out of your stakeholder engagement, join us Aug 7, 12-1 PM 12-1 PM for a free webinar.

Take these 9 steps to demystify science-based targets

4/9/2018

Jess McGlyn and Renée Morin

More companies are setting greenhouse-gas emission targets in line with what science says is needed to keep global temperatures from rising above 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial temperatures. More than 300 corporations from around the world representing many sectors have made commitments to set Science-Based Targets (SBTs).

This is unsurprising, considering all the benefits. In addition to knowing that your company is doing its fair share to address climate change, science-based targets can help your company to drive innovation, build credibility with stakeholders, and increase its resilience.

But you don't have to be a rocket scientist to join the movement.