Uncertainty

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Dealing With Uncertainty: 3 Stand-Out Capabilities You Need In Every Team



One of the biggest issues in managing large, complex, or high-profile pieces of work including change and transformation projects is that you have to continually be on the lookout for, what I will call, half-baked problems or early warning signals that indicate challenges may be on their way—this while simultaneously leading, building, and delivering what is in your remit right now.

If you are a change project leader or tasked with leading and delivering big change in all or a part of your organisation, while balancing your many (read many!) day-to-day activities, you must also balance monitoring for early warning signals.

What do I mean by early warning signals?

As an example, any activity, new piece of information, or behaviour from a senior stakeholder that catches your attention because the information is at odds, surprising, or inconsistent with your current understanding of the context (and details) of your transformation work.

For instance, if there is a sudden change in senior leadership in the organization, pay momentary attention and ask yourself, ‘What does this mean for the transformation work in my remit?’ The answer decides if there is impact, no impact, or a need for action by you, such as continuing to monitor closely.

Early warning signals are one of the best sources of information on potential problems, risks and threats to your work’s success. Signals are indications of potential, unexpected change that might hit your work, project or complex activities. You need to monitor the horizon continuously to know what might be coming ‘down the barrel at you.’

What To Do?


Team meets at work

So, what to do when you are so busy with your day job to also fit in this extra layer of horizon scanning or monitoring?

If you are able to and your budget allows, surrounding yourself with a team of capable colleagues will help you build additional capacity to get the work done and to help monitor these half-baked problems and early warning signs.

It’s important to work out how to monitor what might be coming at you and your project because being prepared will mean you will likely nail anywhere up to 9/10 problems and mean you will rarely be caught off guard.

While not 100% fail-safe, monitoring the horizon for early warning signs of what might be coming means you stay more in control of your project overall and are able to reassure your stakeholders and sponsor of the same as well.

Stand-Out Capabilities You Want In Your Team


Team members discuss a problem during a work meeting

In my experiences in the trenches working on distressed or big complex projects in multiple industries, where uncertainty rules, there are three recurring stand-out capabilities in people I have worked with that can make a difference to your success including pre-empting half-baked problems. You may want to read more about distressed projects and teams by reading my blog post "6-Point Checklist For Taking Over A ‘Distressed’ Project & Team" here.

The stand-out people are those with the motivation to do a good job, are able to join the dots in the project without full information, and are great at pivoting in uncertainty.

You might be surprised that I don’t mention, out of the gate, stand-out skills like knowledge or experience. In truth and in my own experience these are not the most important, at least initially. Skills and experiences can often be acquired including during high-pressure, big, complex, project work. I know because I had a brand new team start with me as part of the Brexit Transfer—choosing people who were not the most experienced but were motivated, could join the dots, and were able to pivot quickly and regularly.

So, let’s go through each of the three stand-out capabilities in a bit more detail:

Stand-Out Capability #1 - Motivated


stay motivated, motivation concept

What I am talking about here is what drives the person in their day job. Some are driven to do their day job and others are driven by doing more than their day job without being asked. These people are what I would call natural-born problem solvers who are driven beyond just doing their day-to-day activities.

Nothing is externally imposed on creating this person’s motivation; rather the motivation comes from a place deep within the individual. They are driven beyond usual incentives rather they are driven by a higher-order goal that is beyond a paycheck (although this is important). I would best describe these people as going the extra mile without being asked to.
This is not necessarily about asking people to constantly go the extra mile. Your job as a leader is to make sure things remain as balanced as possible within the team and effort, but having the attitude tells you something about the sort of person you could potentially have as a colleague and on your team. And when you are restricted by size of the team, you have a small, tight-knit team, and in truth, there is little room for people who are not prepared to go the extra mile.

Stand-Out Capability #2 - Able To Join Dots


connect the dots geometric concept

People who join dots (connect information that doesn’t look like it connects but eventually you see it does) are able to join together information from different sources to build a clearer picture of something that is yet to reveal itself completely (like a half-baked problem or material risk that is yet to gain momentum).

This skill is invaluable in helping to pre-empt and deal with problems that are yet to ‘grow legs,’ that is problems that could become much bigger.

Colleagues with the ability to join the dots are able to see what may be almost invisible to most others. These are people who can work comfortably even without full information and yet have a sense of what to scan, what to ask ‘why’ about, what to watch out for, and how to act if things change, that is more or pivot quickly. They are able to see the small silver balls of mercury and are able to look and sometimes find the energy that may push each individual silver ball into a larger pool of silver mercury—that is a problem with legs in our analogy.

So, this capability to join the dots will always surpass knowledge and experience in my book. Of course, it would be ideal to have both types of colleagues in your team—those that are new, with fresh eyes on a problem, and those who might be more experienced and knowledgeable. This would then, however, require all to get on as a team to build trust to share information freely otherwise having all this knowledge and ability won’t bring out a great result. This bit, managing a team well, is up to you as manager or leader. By the way, skills can be trained but attitudes like motivation and an inner drive to understand and do a great job are not so easily trained or found.

Hence why I would always go with motivation over skills when selecting a team.

Stand-Out Capability #3 - Able To Pivot


pivot, strategy change concept

I define pivoting as an ability to turn or rotate fast. Pivoting is like watching velvet that moves. The feel of velvet is soft and sophisticated for some, and this is what I mean by pivoting in this context. People who can pivot are essentially able to effortlessly move from one task to another, from one piece of work to another, without any angst or stress. Velvety. Rather they appear as soon as they are needed even though they may have been very busy already.

Final word

As motivation is the hardest to recruit for and identify in your colleagues, the best way to find out what motivates a person is to ask them: ‘What are the top five things that motivate you?’ You will find that while money or financial reward is in the top five, it is not necessarily number one of the top five. Interesting, right?

Another important success factor is to make sure you select people who are naturally comfortable with change. Make sure you spend time understanding if your potential team member does not like or deal well with uncertainty in the workplace or in their day job; rather they prefer stability—nothing wrong with this by the way—but this means they may not necessarily be suited to the energetic demands of pressure and uncertainty coming out of a big project.

So, keep this in mind when building or assessing your potential team members. Make sure you match a person’s personal environment preferences (busy, stable, chaotic, calm) with their preferences. These are important factors in successfully embedding someone in your team and an important factor in the project’s ultimate success.

Summary


Team members shake hands after a work meeting

As a leader or manager of large pieces of work that are surrounded by uncertainty, it is important to continually scan the horizon for emerging risks and impending problems. This is a vital capability that needs to sit alongside your many other responsibilities and skills.

It is in your best interest to surround yourself with a capable team that can provide additional capacity to you either to scan the horizon with you or for you to delegate some of your other work so you can dedicate more time to scanning, assessing, and mitigating problems that might be coming your way.

I would love to hear what you think and how you handle scanning for early warning signals in your change work and projects.


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Dealing With Uncertainty: 3 Stand-Out Capabilities You …

6-Point Checklist For Taking Over A ‘Distressed’ Project & Team



I will assume you believe people can make a bigger, faster difference toward success when engaged well and respectfully. No matter what you find on the ground when you arrive to help, people can solve problems faster when treated this way rather than when they are told, pushed, directed, and treated as dispensable.

If you feel people are a means to an end and you don’t value the individual as a human being but rather more as an asset only, then this blog is probably not going to be of help to you.

As part of my work as a business change consultant and coach, I have had the privilege of helping organisations and their teams when projects get into trouble. I call it a privilege because the people I come across on the ground when I arrive are invariable hard working, keen, and really want some help. And they are now confused and uncertain and don’t know how to deal with where they are.

This is an incredibly humbling position to be in. People are in a state of stress and feeling vulnerable; there is usually a strange sense in the air when I arrive, a sort of mix of both loyalty and fear because action has been replaced with dread and bewilderment asking ‘how did we get here’ as realisations hit that the team, function, project or company is suddenly (or so it appears) not where it should be and that consequences may now be serious—both for the company and people on the ground.

As An Example...


Team tries to recover a distressed project

A project sponsor, for example, usually calls me in as a kind of last resort. Frustrated by the situation, they decide enough is enough after assessing from afar with a watchful eye that things aren’t going the way they should be. Sometimes the sponsor can be closely linked to the person directly responsible for the situation now in distress.

Most of the time, my arrival into a distressed project is greeted with a kind of hopeful hesitation by those involved. You may find this too if you arrive in a situation, for example, a project where changes are likely, and you are the one recommending and leading those changes (for a time anyway). How long a company took to decide to act to address the distressed situation has major implications for the likelihood of success for your work to get things back on track. You can read '#1 Thing That Breaks Projects (And Is Likely In Your Control)' here about the one big thing that if handled well initially makes a big difference to a project’s ultimate success or failure—and usually this one thing, to a certain extent, is in a company’s control. Worth a read!

This initial situation of a sense of vulnerability particularly, which as I said is what I often find when I first arrive to help with a project in distress, motivates me greatly to get things done in double quick time, to rough out a mud map toward clarity so that both the company and people involved know where they stand and what the likely next steps are. Where possible I try to reassure quickly. If you find yourself in a similar leadership situation responsible for getting things back on track, get things done as quickly as you can. I guess we’d call these quick wins.

So, what are the things that you need to focus on when dealing with a distressed company, team, or project situation?

So, I wanted to share my approach for when I hit the ground in these sorts of project situations, a sort of standard checklist I have in my mind when I first arrive and in the early days. The list is born out of over 25 years of experience and success (and not) and serves me well when it comes to getting a project (or team or function) back on track to clarity and positive momentum.

The very first thing you need to do is you must demonstrate you are ‘hitting the ground fast’ toward helping everything get back on track to clarity and forward momentum.

Note I didn’t say back on track to success. Clarity first. Forward momentum second. Success may be third. Please do note that although success is often the case, there are some situations where the project or the team or the circumstances have been left for too long without care and attention and the situation is almost irretrievable.

If you find yourself inheriting or becoming aware of a distressed project, team, or function, here is what to do in the initial stage. Do it in this order and quickly.

My 6-Point Checklist


Checklist concept

Here is my 6-point checklist that guides my initial entry into a distressed consulting assignment:

  1. Define the problem & how it came about. Consult widely and quickly.
  2. Define the level of sponsor, senior support for your work. How important to the company is this?
  3. Regarding the actual team or function involved, connect with them fast by email, group meeting, and face-to-face or individual Zoom in this order with little time gap between each form of connection.
  4. Ask ‘Who else?’ Who else is impacted or impacts this project/situation? Find out. Meet them. Understand.
  5. Timing — give yourself 30 days maximum to make inroads and bring things back to clarity if no deadline given.
    • Meet with all key stakeholders regularly, getting the difficult decision over quickly (e.g. reducing headcount) and importantly handle the decision implementation with the dignity of those affected top of mind and informing your approach.
    • No matter what.
    • This is not only the right way to go about this sort of implementation but if this reason alone doesn’t do it for you then remember those left behind in the company after your decision is implemented. That is the remaining team, and colleagues will be watching and will hear about how others were treated and take this as the company’s general approach going forward.
    • This can influence their decision whether to stay on in your company, team, or function. These people are likely your key resources that you need. This makes good business sense.
  6. Finally, use this checklist as the basis for a high-level plan to share with all stakeholders so they can see what you are doing and in what order. This builds trust and helps people feel reassured things are progressing forward. Note this plan is not about promising anything. It is about showing there is a structured process to resolution. This will help everyone no matter what the outcomes.

As I am called in when usual actions to fix a situation in distress don’t work (or haven’t worked)—even actions like replacing or firing people may have been tried in an attempt to not get this far gone into distress and non-performance, lack of productivity—often there are earlier warnings than the one that led to the phone to me.

Another way for you to reduce the chances of distressed projects and teams in your company and on your watch is to scan for what I call the early warning signals—signals that triggered your gut feeling in the first place and now demand more investigation.

Don’t ignore your gut feeling. It is always right. Just sometimes the interpretation of that gut feeling may be off and is what lets you down in the end. So, learn to surround yourself with good factual evidence like impartial data and seek out relevant subject matter experts ideally who are critical thinkers and respectful disagree-ers (you want people who are technically strong not people who are without critical thought) from in and outside the company ideally.

This information and help from others will help you make sure your interpretation of what your gut feeling is saying is as accurate as possible.

Then you decide whether you ignore or act on that gut feeling because now you have both data and impartial external input from others you trust and know or seek out that can help you in your decision making. This approach saves me time and continues to serve me well, particularly when it comes to identifying early warning signs well before a situation, team, function or project get into a distressed and difficult situation.

Summary


Professional woman looks at documents at work

​If you find yourself appointed to help resolve a distressed work situation, team, or project, use the 6-point checklist as a guide.

Pay attention to the ‘how’ you go about implementing each step as much as doing each step quickly and effectively. There is more at stake here than meets the eye. If you believe people are the critical resource and central to your organisation’s ongoing health and success, the ‘how’ you handle the implementation to address the distressed work situation is equally important as to the structure and steps in the approach and actually getting it done.

Good luck. I would love to hear what you think and about your experiences in dealing with distressed situations.

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6-Point Checklist For Taking Over A ‘Distressed’ …

#1 Thing That Breaks Projects (And Is Likely In Your Control)



I was recently asked to write about what I thought was the one big thing that could potentially break any project yet remained in a company’s control.

For research, I zeroed in on my consulting and coaching work I call my ‘distressed projects and teams’—projects where I was called in to lead, stabilise, and generally help get things ‘back on track’ in a variety of companies and industries.

What was the biggest common theme of why these projects and teams were close to breaking?

Time taken to act.

Projects can break for a host of reasons. Equally, the one big thing in every company’s control, to a large extent, is timing of their own decision to act, especially pre-project. How long a company takes to come to a decision, that is to act, is a key factor in any project’s final success or failure.

What To Watch For


Two coworkers collaborate on a work project

Avoid wasting time by delaying making a choice. In any event, this is a decision in and of itself. Although this may seem simple, the clamour of daily, high-stress corporate and senior work life can drown out the obviousness of choosing to act, especially while waiting for better or perfect information, which rarely materializes.

What else can be done to minimise project failure?

Too Little (Almost) Too Late


Team members work on a project together

I had a highly stressed client reach out to me six months after her portfolio project showed signs of distress.

Classic things like missed minor deadlines, team turnover, and high absence, one person overworked beyond any form of fairness, and the project had major looming deadlines in just four short months.

Through the sheer hard work and dedication of an incredible core team that I found when I arrived, the team delivered beyond every expectation within the four months. The project (and the leader's) reputation was saved.

But it didn’t need to take this long to call out problems. And there were consequences—75% of the original project team left the organisation within six months.

Suggestion

Years ago, my MBA Financial Analysis lecturer told us that his aim wasn’t to turn us into accountants but rather to skill us up enough to have a good idea of what was going on.

I recommend a similar philosophy to you, no matter what your role in helping to lead your company—get interested in your company’s major projects and go beyond the usual reading of formal project board reports and dashboards.

Of course do this carefully and thoughtfully ensuring your company culture supports this sort of cross-functional enquiry, especially if projects don’t sit in your remit.

Most program and project leads will welcome this enquiry (if it's genuine) and will likely view it as support—especially if your enquiry is delivered authentically and comes from a place where you seek to help and understand yet challenge (evidence-based only).

If you go down the route of skillful enquiry, asking practical questions of practical project people on the ground regularly and consistently—questions like ‘what,’ ‘where,’ ‘when,’ ‘why,’ ‘how,’ and ‘who?’ These questions will help you gather valuable trend information over time.

Over time this trend information may potentially reveal signs for further investigation and enquiry (for program or project colleagues to answer).

If you don’t think this is your job, even if not directly responsible for major projects, think again—all projects are important and relevant (or at least they should be) to company success.

In external market uncertainty, you can’t afford to not be personally interested in your company’s projects, the major ones at the very least, and to make sure you carefully do your bit to minimise internal uncertainty and project failures.

Your company’s future (and your own) likely depend on it.

Too Far Removed


Team members work on a project together during a meeting

Looking across my 18 years of change project and coaching work, in my estimation for every one day taken by a board or senior leadership team to consider and make a decision, it then takes about 25-100 days to deliver this decision as a completed project.

You may not agree with the ratio numbers used, but I think you see my point—there is a multiplier effect (and direct relationship) between time taken by senior leadership to make their decision and the knock-on effect this has on a project’s ability to deliver that decision as a reality.

I had a client who invested three months in making a decision. The project deadline to deliver this decision was cut back by that same amount—three months. Yet applying the ratio above (1:25-100) the project really required every bit of that three months back.

Of course, every company needs considered decision making, governance, and controls. Yet reviewing and streamlining these where possible will have a direct and helpful knock-on effect, given the direct relationship between a business’s decision to act and a project being successful.

Suggestion

Consider reviewing and streamlining decision-making processes prior to project approvals. Small incremental changes in how decisions are made at the top can have a big impact on a project including contributing to their success or failure.

Conclusion

If you are not already, I strongly suggest you get interested at the very least in your company’s major projects on the ground. Investigate and (in a cooperative way) call out early indicators that require further investigation.

Do this thoughtfully and wisely as this is all about support and success for all involved.

Good luck and I would love to hear about your experiences.

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#1 Thing That Breaks Projects (And Is …

What Is BPO And 5 Top Ways A “Boutique BPO” Insulates Leaders Amidst Uncertainty



Most companies use a form of “business process outsourcing” (BPO) or “outsourcing,” tapping someone else to perform operational, logistical, service, support, or sales-related functions as a primary or supplementary resource vs. depending solely on in-house infrastructure. Nearly every individual with a pulse is also well acquainted with outsourcing aspects of their personal life.

This could be the CPA, attorney, marketing agency, or consultant that you retain, an answering service, mechanic, your dentist, dry cleaner, or nanny. The list goes on.

So why “Niche or Boutique BPO”? You might think of it as the “Goldilocks” fit for small to mid-market organizations, new ventures, and secondary or emerging corporate divisions.

The following are (5) ways “Niche or Boutique BPO” scales perfectly, delivers exceptional service, and uniquely insulates and equips mid-market executives to pivot amidst uncertainty.

1. You instantly become a big deal. Specializing in serving small of mid-sized organizations, expect a luxury service experience WITHOUT PAYING MORE.


throne

Have you ever anticipated a luxury purchase? If so, you appreciate the sensory EXPERIENCE of stepping into an exclusive store to interact with an exceptionally made product, refined staff, and brand that places immense importance on your mere presence, affinity for their brand, and investment. Every detail anticipated and carefully addressed in a polished fashion to help you acquire an enduring product, perfectly tailored to your preferences, delivered with an exceptional customer experience, followed by unwavering and responsive AFTERCARE, continuing the exceptionalism after your purchase.

As you consider appointing added resources to supplement operations or upscale your customer journey, expect a luxury experience with amenities such as:

  • Direct access to the C-suite and executive leadership before and after forging a partnership
  • A team of industry specialists assigned and dedicated to serving your organization with comprehensive functions in quality assurance, workforce management, recruiting/sourcing, training, process improvement, analytics, and excellence in customer experience for internal and external customers
  • A seat at the table to contribute input in the design and perpetual execution of your service program as a consultative and collaborative partnership
  • A partner that shows up to earn your business every day, every month, every year

2. Your organization gains the agility of a race car. Quickly stand up and call on flex infrastructure when you need it, whether on demand, seasonally, or as part of your ongoing service team.


racecar

It is an understatement that our times are very uncertain, yet most organizations simply do not have the resources or specialization to scale infrastructure up or down quickly as headwinds or new demand come unanticipated, and the business climate grows more complex with factors such as:

  • A pandemic-induced transition to WFH and a workforce that has grown to expect it. Bringing with it new employee workplace demands, resignations, difficulty with recruiting, training, retaining talent, and the challenge for organizations to overhaul infrastructure to accommodate virtual or hybrid operations while ensuring excellence in their customer experience.
  • A worsening economic environment that has manifested into hiring freezes followed by layoffs and other capital-preserving measures. Businesses face fallout from quickly escalating costs, missed earnings estimates, declines in consumer spending, supply chain interruptions, legacy real-estate costs, etc.

If pressures call for quick moves to transition front-line to mid-management from W-2 to 1099 in their respective roles, move brick-and-mortar service and support to 100% virtual or a hybrid of the two, supplement in-house resources with on-demand flex staffing, or upscale the customer experience altogether, “Boutique BPO” tailors full-time, part-time, or quick turn gig back office, service, support, or sales activities to deliver results.

3. Serving you becomes personal. Expect a fully personalized, intuitive, and adaptive service delivery process and tech stack to execute around your specific operational and customer experience objectives.


running man and gears

​If it’s your style, bring-your-own operational process flow, training curriculum, and tech stack, and consultative experts will leverage high-visibility BI and analytics with professional recommendations to dial efficiency and service excellence into your operations.

Or go part or full custom with a hand-tailored customer journey, onboarding, training process, and tech stack from a suite of proven technology options, formulated by industry experts to deliver prompt, professional service, well-received self-help options, and speed to resolution, delivered by highly engaged agents, personally invested in customer care.

4. You get to be choosy. Every service agent is hand selected for dedicated service, chosen to reflect your brand, community, and the experience you want to create.


Man on laptop working customer service

Want representation from users of your product, those who already have an affinity for your brand, or that fit the demographic of your target audience? You decide who you want on the end of your service and support line, engaging and serving your customers.

5. Pick the culture that reflects yours. Agent care is a core value that emanates service excellence.


people and gears concept

A supportive team surrounds every front-line agent, fostering a distinct service culture with high engagement, willingness to go beyond the expected, passion for the work, and personal pride in winning customers for your brand, taking initiative, proactively problem solving, and delivering a positive customer engagement.

In a sea of uncertainty, insulate your outcomes from the unanticipated with your own “Boutique BPO” operations, service, and support team who stands ready to cater and dynamically adapt to your business needs as other internal or contracted infrastructure cannot.

I’m Lynn Holland, an 18-year business development, sales, and marketing executive helping corporate boards and executive leaders to solve gaps in the customer journey, dynamically manage new and uncertain demands, seamlessly reappoint staff on a contract basis, upscale the customer experience, and deliver operational excellence. Like or follow me on LinkedIn.


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What Is BPO And 5 Top Ways …