Ham and eggs

About 15 years ago, I went to an industry event.

Honesty and strategic intent about how we are measuring delivery against growth goals is key

It doesn’t matter which event, and it doesn’t matter where it was, because the reality is… there was a cookie-cutter predictability to who you saw at some of those events, and what was talked about and how and so on. And although I remember where and when it was, it really doesn’t matter.

What matters is that, although it was fairly early in the digital journey we were all embarking on, I was beginning to get annoyed with hearing industry folks saying the same things… pretending the things that were being said were enough… and concealing the fact that they were not. Even though we already knew that to be the case.

So I irritably said to the organisers that these events risked becoming an indulgence in collective selective amnesia and, to avoid that, we needed to have a commitments board. A way for all attendees to say: hey, look… it is the year of our lord 2011 and this is where I am.

And by the time we meet again in a year, this is where I will endeavour to be.

And if I am not, we will talk about the challenges faced and lessons learned.

The organisers chuckled at my funny joke.

But I wasn’t joking.

The reality of coming together to say the same things over and over again and not share the hard truths of the matter with each other was grating then and it grates now.

And it grates not because people sanitise their own representations: that’s human nature and I don’t, frankly, mind it as much as I mind the fact that we deprive each other of the opportunity to learn from each other’s successes (even if you don’t admit the failures) and the opportunity to vent and find community among the people who are truly walking the same road as us.

So, you can imagine my surprise and joy when I found myself on stage at Fintech Meetup last week with a panel that walked the walk and didn’t pull their punches. So much so, that you can expect to hear more about my dream panel in the weeks to come as I have notes… so many notes.

But where I want to start is a point made on stage by Chris Fritz. And it goes as follows (though I paraphrase): when we engage in the difficult work of building new things or carrying out transformation work… when we engage in large-scale strategic projects… we need to be extremely clear and honest with ourselves about how we measure growth and performance against strategy.

Because, he continued, we have all seen how this kind of thing plays out when you don’t have the honesty around what you are measuring and leave things to good faith and abstraction.
Year one: everyone is excited. Everyone is your friend. Resources and headspace are plentiful.

Year two: budget starts being an issue. Friends start becoming scarcer. Tensions emerge.

Year three: the knives come out.

We chuckled, but everyone on stage and everyone in the room knew that to be true. So, Chris’ point was: honesty and strategic intent about how we are measuring delivery against growth goals is key. Abstraction is not your friend.

The ability to iterate along the way is key. Adapting to the reality and the learnings of the journey rather than the wider political realities of the organisation is key.

Otherwise, you will not stay the course.

He is so right.

If I think back to any and every large-scale, multi-year transformation project I have ever witnessed or been part of… the leadership’s head was put on the chopping block about halfway through year two, no matter how well they were executing against plan. Do I exaggerate? Perhaps, but off the top of my head, I can’t think of a single case that doesn’t fit this bill in one way or another.

In some cases, new leaders were brought in, some assumptions were re-calibrated, some goals re-stated. Fresh momentum and a reality check, even if the calibrations were always going to be needed and the leadership change had more to do with fraying patience than a change in strategy.

In some cases, the work stalled. Not killed. Not abandoned. Not completed either.

In some cases, the leadership change was absolutely necessary

In others, it was a way to get the organisation to get going again.

In all cases, something happened about two or three years into a five to ten-year piece of work with clockwork-like inevitability.

So, it is fair to ask: since we know this will happen, why do we keep letting it happen?

Why do we keep falling into the same traps? Traps of our own making?

I have a theory, and I would love to hear yours. And it’s just a theory, mind. But I am increasingly convinced as to its accuracy.

My theory is as follows:

This happens because humans are weak and politics always matters more than reality, substance, work and vision.

We all know that. That’s not the theory. That’s the baseline.

We also know that people commit to an iterative process of test and learn. People say they know mistakes will be made and experimentation will not always work out first time. They say it. And don’t get me wrong… when they say it, they mean it. But when the mistake happens, when the experiment doesn’t work out and the assumptions made prove wrong… that is a moment when they find it hard to remember that they meant it when they said it.

But we all know that too. Nobody is blind-sided by that fact anymore. We have learned our lesson and stage-manage the iterative work. We sign-post the iteration and bring the lessons learned without necessarily sharing everything that goes on in the kitchen. It’s safer for all that way. That’s not my theory either.

My theory is that, in the context of the above, there is one more perception battle at play. One that we haven’t historically managed very well.

My theory is that we keep falling into the same traps because people’s perception of time is distorted despite what we agreed in the SteerCos.

For any complex piece of work, those of us doing the work always assume that the clock starts the day we are given the resources, the money, the permission, the green light. We all assume that the clock starts when the powers that be say, “OK then, let’s do it.” That means that the plan that outlines the activities and milestones for the next five years lies ahead of us.

Intellectually, that is absolutely the case.

But the reality is that, emotionally, the organisation started on this journey when we all started thinking about this work. When the first presentations and conversations took place. When we started going down the ‘maybe we should’ route.

So when you get the green light, your organisation is already two-to-three years into thinking about this stuff. Two-to-three years into getting tired. And fed up. And restless. You may have five years of work ahead of you, but you only have two years’ worth of senior stakeholder patience left.

And so, by year two, you are tracking well against your plan but your stakeholders are five years into hearing about something that is still nowhere near done.

And there’s no way around this.

Other than…

1. You bend the space-time continuum (good luck with that one); or
2. Everyone in the stakeholder group is invested, not just involved, so they are in the work rather than in the audience, getting restless.

Remember those early days of scrum?

A pig and a chicken walk down the street? Seriously, how can you have forgotten?

“We should open a restaurant,” says the chicken. “Fabulous idea,” says the pig, “What should we call it?”

“Ham and eggs,” says the chicken. “No way,” says the pig, “Because then I would be committed and you’d only be involved.”

So, I ask you: when you start your work and everyone is excited (year one) you can already tell who the chickens are because they are excited but not busy.

They drift in and out of meetings and nod a lot.

This is your moment for negotiating with the powers that be who gets to be in the room and what level of involvement is required even from your most senior sponsors.

Because the minute you are committed, you don’t lose track of time. You don’t get surprised by the iterative nature of the process. You don’t feel blindsided that not everything works as clockwork.

And when budget conversations come up in year two, you don’t need anything explained to you.

And when the knives come out in year three, it is other people in other rooms. Because we are way too busy here, delivering against the work we committed to. And we will squabble, sure. But we won’t tear each other down because we are in it together: not in spirit, but in practice.

In the actual doing of the thing.

#LedaWrites

Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures’ resident thought provocateur – she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.

She is a recovering banker, lapsed academic and long-term resident of the banking ecosystem. 

Leda is also a published author – her first book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, is available to order here.

All opinions are her own. You can’t have them – but you are welcome to debate and comment!

Follow Leda on X @LedaGlyptis and LinkedIn.