Your old playbook. Experience is a wonderful thing. We respect and admire people that have it. We count on them to guide us forward through tough situations. We hire them to solve the problems of today in our organizations. Owners of experience can rise above the conversation at meetings and cocktail parties. They attract the awe of those around them with stories of past triumphs and inspire insights about how to solve today’s gripping dilemmas. Congratulations on all that experience you’ve acquired.
Now be careful. Your experience is harming your decision making. And your career.
You hear it all the time. Being present as a leader, being truly attentive to the people and circumstances around you, is the key to effectively guiding your team and making decisions that create success. You must be empathetic. You must be open and honest to all the factors that surround the situation you are trying to resolve. Ignoring any critical factors will set you off on the wrong foot. You can’t be a successful leader if you’re not paying attention to the right stuff.
Luckily, you’ve been at this game for a while now. You’ve seen many different situations in the businesses you’ve worked. You’ve gotten to know wide variety of customers. You’ve negotiated complicated deals. You’ve led teams of people and been successful. Heck, you’ve been hired and promoted several times by now. That in itself is validation of your performance. And your experience. There are fewer and fewer situations you haven’t seen before.
That playbook is getting pretty thick.
I’ve seen many leaders throughout my career lean on their playbooks. That vast encyclopedia of experiences they’ve been building over their career. The accumulated stories of their successes, their battle scars, their wisdom. When they open that playbook and share their knowledge it tends to trump everything else. The lessons from the playbook are proven, right? Tried and tested. They represent the map to today’s potential treasure. The team is fortunate to have them around so they can quickly provide the answers to today’s problem. Or is it?
When leaders lean on their playbook, an interesting thing happens. Thinking slows down, and then stops. Observations about the current situation become muted. People stop looking for and identifying the factors that are in plain sight. Ideas about how to proceed dwindle. The leader just opens up to page 238 in his playbook and calls the play. The huddle breaks and the team runs the play. Then the team gets surprised.
Factors that they didn’t consider emerge as show stoppers. People whose role was discounted become critical influencers. Success that was already banked is now elusive. Teams are disillusioned. And the leader is dumbfounded. How did this happen? It worked before. Maybe there is something wrong with the team members charged with executing the play? Maybe we should look at their performance, or change the players altogether?
Experience is history. It is your memory of something that happened in the past. It should be formative to you. It should help you understand the factors that led to an outcome you experienced. But it is not a formula. It is not a repeatable experiment. Each of the factors were dynamic and unique to the situation as it occurred. You assessed those factors in real time and made choices about how to proceed based on what was presented to you. As you moved forward you encountered new information. You responded to that information with a new action. You continued this cadence throughout the situation, and you produced an outcome. That process represents a learning sequence that should serve to benefit you in your development as a decision maker and leader. But it isn’t a play.
Don’t mistake your experiences for plays that you can run again when a similar situation arises. Your playbook is dated. It doesn’t work anymore. The circumstances are different in the current problem you are trying to solve. The people are different. The customers are different. The environment is different. Think about that prior situation that now seems so similar. Think of the dozens of factors you observed and assessed as you discerned your strategic path to solve that situation. Are all of them the same? Are any of them the same?
So how do you avoid the tendency to trap your team in your old playbook?
Luckily, there are signals when this is about to happen. Catch phrases will come out. “It’s just like that time when…” “I know that customer, they always want the same thing.” “I know the buyer there, used to play golf with him. Here’s what we need to do…” “Let’s not overthink this one, I’ve been here before.”
These phrases and others like them close down debate. They stifle input. They throw people into action before appropriate understanding of the situation and appreciation for the critical factors. They create bigger problems to solve. They hurt your team. And yourself.
As leader, you must be on watch for these signals. Listen for them from above you. Catch yourself if you are speaking, or even thinking them. Approach every situation with fresh eyes. Draw from your experience to recall how you thought through past situations that may resemble this one. Be clear with yourself that this is not the same situation. Failure to remain vigilant in this thinking will result in failures to solve today’s problems. Repeated failure can be fatal to your future as a rising leader.
Be completely present and open to the situation before you. Build brand new experiences.
Throw away that playbook.
Lead well.
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