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- [00:02]
Relativity AI Advertiser
Legal teams face more data and more scrutiny than ever. They need AI built for both. Relativity is the AI platform for legal work, delivering defensible AI that handles the tedious tasks so judgment stays where it belongs with you. Learn more@Relativity.com HBR
- [00:23]
LinkedIn Hiring Pro Advertiser / Show Producer
Finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to find the right Fitness. That's why LinkedIn built Hiring Pro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you so you can spend your time talking to candidates who are a good fit. Get started by posting your job for free@LinkedIn.com onleadership. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome to HBR on Leadership. I'm HBR Executive Editor Alison Beard. On this show, we share case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts, hand selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. We carefully curate this feed from across the HBR portfolio, aiming to help you unlock your next level of leadership. I hope you enjoy the episode.
- [01:27]
Kurt Nickisch
Welcome to the hbr ideacast from harvard business review, I'm kurt nickisch.
- [01:32]
Ann Morris
Foreign.
- [01:40]
Kurt Nickisch
Intimidating sure, some problems are fun to dig into. You roll up your sleeves, you just take care of them. But others? Well, they're complicated. Sometimes it's hard to wrap your brain around a problem, much less fix it. And that's especially true for leaders in organizations where problems are often layered and complex. They sometimes demand technical, financial, or interpersonal personal knowledge to fix. And whether it's avoidance on the leader's part or just the perception that a problem is systemic or even intractable, problems find a way to endure, to keep going, to keep being a problem that everyone tries to work around or just puts up with. But today's guest says that just compounds it and makes the problem harder to fix. Instead, she says speed and momentum are key to overcoming a problem. And Ann Morris is an entrepreneur, leadership coach, and founder of the Leadership Consortium. And with Harvard Business School professor Frances Fry, she wrote the new book Move Fast and Fix Things the Trusted Leader's Guide to Solving Hard Problems. Anne welcome back to the show.
- [02:50]
Ann Morris
Kurt thank you so much for having me.
- [02:59]
Kurt Nickisch
So to generate momentum at an organization, you say that you really need speed and trust. We'll get into those essential ingredients some more. But why are those two essential?
- [03:12]
Ann Morris
Yeah, well, the essential pattern that we observed was that the most effective change leaders out there were building trust and speed. And it didn't seem to be a well known observation. We all know the phrase move fast and break things, but the people who were really getting it right were Moving fast and fixing things. And that was really our jumping off point. So when we dug into the pattern, what we observed was they were building trust first and then speed. This foundation of trust was what allowed them to fix more things and break fewer trust.
- [03:49]
Kurt Nickisch
Sounds like a slow thing, right? If you talk about building trust, that is something that takes interactions, it takes communication, it takes experiences. Does that run counter to the speed idea?
- [04:02]
Ann Morris
Yeah, well, it's the, this issue of trust is something we've been looking at for over a decade. And one of the headlines in our research is it's actually something we're building and rebuilding and breaking all the time. And so instead of being this precious, almost Faberge egg, it's this thing that is constantly in motion and this thing that we can really impact when we're deliberate about our choices and have some self awareness around where it's breaking down and how it's breaking down.
- [04:35]
Kurt Nickisch
You said break trust in there, which is intriguing, right? That you may have to break trust to build trust. Can you explain that a little?
- [04:43]
Ann Morris
Yeah, well, I'll clarify. It's not that you have to break it in order to build it. It's just that we all do it some of the time. Most of us are trusted most of the time. Most of your listeners, I imagine, are trusted most of the time. But all of us have a pattern where we break trust or where we don't build as much as could be possible.
- [05:04]
Kurt Nickisch
I want to talk about speed, this other essential ingredient that's really so intriguing. Right. Because you think about solving hard problems as something that just takes a lot of of time and thinking and coordination and planning and designing, explain what you mean by it. And also just how we maybe approach problems wrong. By taking them on too slowly.
- [05:28]
Ann Morris
Well, Kurt, no one has ever said to us, I wish I had taken longer and done less. We hear the opposite all the time, by the way. So what we really set out to do was to create a playbook that anyone can use to take less time to do more of the things that are going to make your teams and organizations stronger. The way we set up the book is okay, this is. It's really a five step process. Speed is the last step. It's the payoff for the hard work you're going to do to figure out your problem, build or rebuild trust, expand the team and thoughtful and strategic ways, and then tell a real and compelling story about the change you're leading. Only then do you get to go fast. But that's an essential part of the process. And I and we find that either people under emphasize it or speed has gotten a bad name in this world of moving fast and breaking things. And part of our mission for sure was to rehabilitate speed's reputation because it's is an essential part of the change leaders equation. It can be the difference between good intentions and getting anything done at all.
- [06:46]
Kurt Nickisch
You know, the fact that nobody ever tells you, I wish we had like done less and taken more time. I mean, I think we all feel that, right. Sometimes we do something and then realize, oh, that wasn't that hard and why did it take me so long to do it? And I wish I'd done this a long time ago. Is it ever possible to solve a problem too quickly?
- [07:07]
Ann Morris
Absolutely. And we see that all the time too. What we push people to do in those scenarios is really take a look at the underlying issue. Because in most cases the solution is not to take your foot off the accelerator per se and slow down. The solution is to get into the underlying problem. So if it's burnout or you know, a strategic disconnect between what you're building and the marketplace you're serving, what we find is it's the anxiety that people attach to speed or the frustration people attach to speed is often misplaced.
- [07:42]
Kurt Nickisch
What is a good timeline to think about solving a problem then? Because, you know, if we by default take too long or else jump ahead and we don't fix it. Right. You know, what's a good target time to have in your mind for how long solving a problem should take?
- [07:57]
Ann Morris
Yeah, well, we're playful in the book and talking about the idea that many problems can be solved in a week. I mean, we set the book up five chapters. They're titled Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And we're definitely having fun with that. And yet, if you count the hours in a week, there are a lot of them. Many of our problems. If you were to spend a focused 40 hours of effort on a problem, you're going to get pretty far. But our main message is listen. Of course it's going to depend on the nature of the problem and you're going to take weeks and maybe even some cases months to get to the other side. What we don't want you to do is take years, which tends to be our default timeline for solving hard problems.
- [08:45]
Kurt Nickisch
So you say to start with identifying the problem that's holding you back. Seems kind of obvious, but where do companies go right and wrong with this first step of just identifying the problem that's holding you back?
- [08:59]
Ann Morris
Yeah, and our goal is that all of these are going to feel obvious in retrospect. The problem is we skip over a lot of these steps, and this is why we wanted to underline them. So this one is really rooted in our observation and I think the pattern of our species, that we tend to be overconfident in the quality of our thoughts, particularly when it comes to diagnosing problems. And so we want to invite you to start in a very humble and curious place, which tends not to be our default mode when we're showing up for work. You know, we convince ourselves that we're being paid for our judgment. That's exactly what gets reinforced everywhere. And so we tend to, you know, counterintuitively, given what we just talked about, we tend to move too quickly through the diagnostic phase.
- [09:53]
Kurt Nickisch
I know what to do. That's why you hired me.
- [09:55]
Ann Morris
Exactly. I know what to do. That's why you hired me. I've seen this before. I have a plan. Follow me. You know, we get rewarded for the expression of confidence and clarity. And so what we're inviting people to do here is, is actually pause and really lean into, you know, what are the root causes of the problem? You're seeing, what are some alternative explanations? Let's get into dialogue with the people who are also impacted by the problem before we start running down the path of solving it.
- [10:29]
Kurt Nickisch
So what do you recommend for this step for, you know, getting to the root of the problem? What are questions you should ask? What's the right thought process? What do you do on. On Monday of the week?
- [10:40]
Ann Morris
In our experience of doing this work, people tend to undervalue the power of conversation, particularly with other people in the organization. So we will often advocate putting together a team of problem solvers. You know, make it a temporary team, really pull in people who have a particular perspective on the problem, and, you know, create the space, make it as psychologically safe as you can for people to really, you know, as Chris Argyrous has so beautifully articulated, discuss the undiscussable. And so that the conditions for that are going to look different in every organization depending on the problem. But if you can get a space where smart people who have direct experience of a problem are in a room and talking honestly with each other, you can make an extraordinary amount of progress, certainly in a day.
- [11:34]
Kurt Nickisch
Yeah, that gets back to the trust piece.
- [11:37]
Ann Morris
Definitely.
- [11:38]
Kurt Nickisch
How do you like to start that meeting or how do you like to talk about it? I'm just curious, like, what somebody on that team might hear in that meeting. Just to get the sense that it's psychologically safe, you can discuss the undiscussable and that you're also focusing on the identification part, like what's kind of key to communicate there.
- [11:57]
Ann Morris
Yeah, well, we sometimes encourage people to do a little bit of data gathering before those conversations. So the power of a quick anonymous survey around whatever problem you're solving, but also be really thoughtful about the questions you're going to ask in the moment. So a little bit of preparation can go a long way and a little bit of thoughtfulness about the power dynamic. So who's going to walk in there with license to speak and who's going to hold back? So being thoughtful about the agenda, about the questions you're asking about the room, about the facilitation, and then courage is a very infectious emotion. So if you can, early on create the conditions for people to show up bravely in that conversation, then the chance that you're going to get good information and that you're going to walk out of that room with new insight in the problem that you didn't have when you walked in is extraordinarily high.
- [12:57]
Kurt Nickisch
Now, in those discussions, you may have people who have different perspectives on what the problem really is. They also bear different costs of addressing the problem or solving it. There is a you talked about the power dynamic, but there's also kind of a unfairness dynamic of who's going to actually have to do the work to take care of it. And I wonder how you create a culture in that meeting where it's the most productive.
- [13:25]
Ann Morris
Yeah, for sure that the burden of work is not going to be equitably distributed around the room. But I would say, Kurt, the dynamic that we see most often is that people are deeply relieved that hard problems are being addressed. It really can create, and more often than not, in our experience, does create this beautiful flywheel of action, creativity, optimism. Often when problems haven't been addressed, there is a fair amount of anxiety in the organization. Frustration, stagnation. And so credible movement towards action and progress is often the best antidote. So even if the plan isn't super clear yet, if it's credible, given who's in the room and their decision rights and mandate, if there's real momentum coming out of that to make progress, then that tends to be deeply energizing to people.
- [14:27]
Kurt Nickisch
I wonder if there's a organization that you've worked with where that you could talk about how this rolled out and how this took shape.
- [14:35]
Ann Morris
You know, when, when we started working with Uber that was wrestling with some very, you know, public issues of culture and trust with a range of stakeholders, internal, the organization also external. That work really started with a campaign of listening and really trying to understand where trust was breaking down from the perspective of these stakeholders. So whether it was female employees or regulators or writers who had safety concerns getting into the car with a stranger, this work, it starts with an honest internal dialogue. But often the problem has threads that go external. And so bringing that same commitment to curiosity and humility and dialogue, you know, to anyone who's impacted by the problem, is the fastest way to surface what's really going on.
- [15:38]
Relativity AI Advertiser
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- [16:13]
LinkedIn Hiring Pro Advertiser / Show Producer
Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money, and momentum. A good hire, they can help grow your business. That's why LinkedIn built Hiring Pro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you. So instead of sorting through applications, you can you spend your time talking to candidates who are actually a good fit. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free@LinkedIn.com onleadership. Terms and conditions apply.
- [16:48]
Kurt Nickisch
There's a step in this process that you lay out and that's communicating powerfully as a leader. Right? So we've heard about listening and trust building, but now you're talking about powerful communication. How do you do this and why? Is it maybe this step in the process rather than the first thing you do or the last thing you do?
- [17:11]
Ann Morris
Yeah. So in our process, again, it's the days of the week. On Monday, you figured out the problem. Tuesday, you really got into the sandbox in figuring out what a good enough plan is for building trust. Wednesday, step three, you made it better. You created an even better plan, bringing in new perspectives. Thursday, this fourth step is the day we're saying you gotta go get buy in. You gotta bring other people along. And again, this is a step where we see people often underinvest in the power and payoff of really executing it.
- [17:53]
Kurt Nickisch
Well, how does that go wrong?
- [17:55]
Ann Morris
Yeah, you don't. People don't know the why. You know, human behavior and the change in human behavior really depends on a strong why. It's not just a selfish what's in it for me, although that's helpful. But, you know, where are we going? You know, I may be invested in the status quo and I need to understand, okay, if, if you're going to ask me to change, if you're going to invite me into this uncomfortable place of doing things differently, you know, why am I here? Help me understand it and articulate the way forward and language that not only I can understand, but also that's going to be motivating to me.
- [18:34]
Kurt Nickisch
So. And who on my team was part of this process and all that kind of stuff?
- [18:39]
Ann Morris
Oh, yeah, Yeah. I may have some really important questions that may be in the way of my buy in and commitment to this plan. So certainly creating a space where those questions can be addressed is essential. But what we found is that there is an architecture of a great change story. And it starts with honoring the past, honoring the starting place. You know, sometimes we're so excited about the change and animated about the change that what has happened before or what is even happening in the present tense is, you know, low on our list of priorities. Or we want to label it bad because that's the way we've thought about the change. But really pausing and honoring what came before you and all the reasonable decisions that led up to it, I think can be really helpful to getting people emotionally where you want them to be, willing to be guided by you. I mean, going back to Uber, when Dara Khosrowshahi came in, this is the
- [19:45]
Kurt Nickisch
new CEO, or Travis Kalanick, the founder and first CEO.
- [19:50]
Ann Morris
Yeah, yeah. And had his first all hands meeting. One of his key messages, and this is a quote, was that he was going to retain the edge that had made Uber a force of nature. And in that meeting, the crowd went wild because this was also a company that had been beaten up publicly for months and months and months. And it was a really powerful choice. And his predecessor, Travis was in the room. And he also honored Travis's incredible work and investment in bringing the company to the place where it was. And I would use words like grace to also describe those choices. But there's also a incredible strategic value to naming the starting place for everybody in the room, because in most cases, most people in that room played a role in getting to that starting place. And you're acknowledging that?
- [20:50]
Kurt Nickisch
Yeah, you can call it grace. Somebody else might call it diplomatic or strategic. Right. But. But yeah, I guess, like it or not, it's helpful to call out and honor the complexity of the way things have been done and also the change that's happening.
- [21:06]
Ann Morris
Yeah. And the value, you know, sometimes honoring the past is also owning what didn't work or what wasn't working for stakeholders or, you know, segments of the employee team. And we see that around culture change. Sometimes you've got to acknowledge that it was not an equitable environment. But whatever the work, everyone in that room is bringing that past with them. So again, making it discussable and using it as the jumping off place is where we advise people to start. Then you've earned the right to talk about the change mandate, which we suggest using clear and compelling language about the why. This is what happened. This is where we are. This is the good and the bad of it. And here's the case for change. And then the last part, which is to describe a rigorous and optimistic way forward. I mean it's, you know, it's a simple past, present, future arc which will be familiar to human being. You know, we love stories as human beings. It's right. It's among the most powerful currency we have to make sense of the world.
- [22:20]
Kurt Nickisch
Yeah, chronological is a pretty powerful order.
- [22:24]
Ann Morris
But again, the change leaders we see really get it right are investing an incredible amount of time into the storytelling part of their job. Ursula Burns at the head of Xerox is, is, is famous for the months and years she spent on the road just telling the story of Xerox's change its pivot from into services to everyone who would listen. And that was a huge part of her success.
- [22:55]
Kurt Nickisch
So Friday or your fifth step, you end with empowering teams and removing roadblocks. Can you dig into that a little bit?
- [23:04]
Ann Morris
Yeah. Friday is the fun day. Friday's the release of energy into the system again. You've now earned the right to go fast. You have a plan, you're pretty confident it's going to work. You've told the story of change the organization and now you get to sprint. So this is about really executing with urgency and it's about, you know, a lot of the tactics of speed is, is where we focus in the book. So the tactics of empowerment, making, you know, tough strategic trade offs so that your priorities are clear and clearly communicated, creating mechanisms to fast track progress. At Etsy, CEO Josh Silverman, he labeled these projects ambulances. It's an unfortunate metaphor, but it's super memorable. You know, these are the products that get to speed out in front of the other ones because this, the stakes are high and the clock is ticking.
- [24:02]
Kurt Nickisch
You pull over and let it go by.
- [24:05]
Ann Morris
Yeah, exactly. And so we have to agree as an organization on how to do something like that. And so we see lots of great examples, both in young organizations and big, complex biotech companies with lots of regulatory guardrails have still found ways to do this gracefully. And I think we end with this idea of conflict debt, which is a term we really love. Leanne Davey, who's a team scholar and researcher, and anyone in a tech company will recognize the idea of tech debt, which is this weight the organization drags around until they resolve it. Conflict debt is a beautiful metaphor because it is this weight that we drag around and slows us down until we decide to clean it up and fix it. The organizations that are really getting speed, right, have figured out, either formally or informally, how to create an environment where conflict and disagreements can be gracefully resolved.
- [25:14]
Kurt Nickisch
Well, let's talk about this speed more, right? Because I think this is one of those places that maybe people go wrong or take too long, and then you kind of lose the awareness of the problem. You lose that urgency, and then that also just makes it less effective, right? It's not just about getting the problem solved as quickly as possible. It's also just speed in some ways helps solve the problem.
- [25:39]
Ann Morris
Oh, yeah. I mean, it really is the difference between imagining the change you want to lead and really being able to bring it to life. Speed is the thing that unlocks your ability to lead change. It needs a foundation. And that's what Monday through Thursday is all about. Steps one through four. But the finish line is executing with urgency. And it's that urgency that releases the system's energy, that communicates your priorities, that creates the conditions for your team to make progress.
- [26:20]
Kurt Nickisch
Moving fast is something that entrepreneurs and tech companies certainly understand. But there's also this awareness that with big companies, the bigger the organization, the harder it is to turn the, the aircraft carrier around. Right? Is, is speed relative when you get at those levels, or do you think this is something that any company should be able to apply equally?
- [26:43]
Ann Morris
We think this applies to any company. I mean, the culture really lives at the level of team, so we believe you can make a tremendous amount of progress even within your circle of control. As a team leader, you know, I'm, I, I, I want to bring some humility to this and, and careful of words like universal. But we do think there's some universal truths here around the value of speed. And then some of the byproducts, like keeping fantastic people, your best people want to solve problems, they want to execute, they want to make progress. And speed and the ability to do that is going to be a variable in their own equation of whether they stay or they go somewhere else where they can have an impact.
- [27:35]
Kurt Nickisch
Right. They want to accomplish something before they go or before they retire, finish something out. And if you're able to just bring more things on the horizon and have it not feel like it's going to be another two years to do something
- [27:48]
Ann Morris
meaningful, I mean, they want to make stuff happen and they want to be around the energy and the vitality of making things happen, which again is also a super infectious phenomenon. One of the most important jobs of a leader, we believe, is to set the metabolic pace of their teams and organizations. And so what we really dig into on Friday is, well, what does that look like to speed something up? What are the tactics of that?
- [28:21]
Kurt Nickisch
I wonder if that universal truth that a body in motion stays in motion applies to organizations.
- [28:27]
Ann Morris
Right, Absolutely.
- [28:29]
Kurt Nickisch
So do you have a favorite client story to share just where you saw speed just become a bit of a flywheel or just a positive reinforcement loop for more positive change at the organization?
- [28:43]
Ann Morris
Yeah, I mean, we work with a fair number of organizations that are on fire. We do a fair amount of firefighting, but we also, you know, less kind of dramatically do a lot of fire prevention. So we're brought into organizations that are working well and want to get better, looking out on the horizon. That work is super gratifying and there is always a component of, well, how do we speed this up? What I love about that work is there's often already a high foundation of trust and so it's well, how do we maintain that foundation? But move this flywheel, as you said, even faster and it's just really energizing because often there's a lot of pent up energy that there's a lot of loyalty to the organization, but often it's also frustration and pent up energy. And so when that gets released, when good people get the opportunity to sprint for the first time in a little while, it's incredibly energizing, not just for us, but for the whole organization.
- [29:58]
LinkedIn Hiring Pro Advertiser / Show Producer
HBR and Leadership will be back next Wednesday with another hand handpicked conversation from Harvard Business Review. This episode was produced By Mary Dew onLeadership's team includes Maureen Hoch, Rob Eckhart, Erica Trexler, and Ian Fox. If this episode helped you, please share it with your friends and colleagues and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. While you're there, consider leaving us a review when you're ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books and videos with the world's top business and management experts find it all@hbr.org. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money, and momentum. A good hire? They can help grow your business. That's why LinkedIn built Hiring Pro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you. So instead of sorting through applications, you spend your time talking to candidates who
- [31:06]
Ann Morris
are actually a good fit.
- [31:08]
LinkedIn Hiring Pro Advertiser / Show Producer
Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free@LinkedIn.com onleadership. Terms and conditions apply.