Author: L. David Marquet
Motivation and inspiration are just nicer words for coercion. You are trying to convince people to buy into a decision that they weren’t a part of. The people that need motivation or inspiration should be included in some way in the process of making the decision.
The organisation is perfectly tuned to deliver the behaviour we see, and people’s behaviours are the perfect result of the organisation’s design.
As individuals we should embrace our responsibility for being the best we can be within the design of the organisation. As leaders it is our responsibility to design the organisation so that individuals can be the best versions of themselves.
In highly stressed environments we often see individuals become much more self-serving than in relaxed environments. When teams have difficult problems to solve, and we as leaders put them under stress, team members turn into lizards. Then we don’t understand why we see antisocial behaviour, low empathy, and reduced creativity. It’s because we led them to these behaviours and emotions. when we’re stressed out and overwhelmed, we become more resistant to asking for help, leading us to an unhelpful subset of the performance mindset - the protect mindset.
There are two sides to the performance mindset: we either try to prove competence - “I can do the project”; or protect ourselves against evidence of incompetence - “I don’t want to be discovered as incompetent”.
Disagree and commit - Dan Harper
The commitment you can make as a leader is to support the decision with your actions and see what happens. You do not have to believe that it is a good idea - only that there is enough of a chance that it is a good idea to risk what limited resources will be spent on it.
Don’t try to convince outliers or dissenters that their thinking is wrong - no one can know if it is or isn’t until the experiment is concluded.
The New Playbook
Red work and blue work
Red work is the active production work that benefits from reducing variability and a prove mindset.
Blue work is the reflective collaborative thinking processes that benefit from embracing variability and an improve mindset.
The six leadership plays
Red work
Transition from red work to blue work with control the clock, not obey the clock.
Complete, not continue.
Blue work
Collaborate, not coerce.
Improve, not prove.
Transition from blue work to red work with commit, not comply.
Connect, not conform.