Getting the Senior Team Onboard with Alexander Pett

The next subject we're going to cover is leading high stakes conversations, getting the senior team on board. And we've an expert in that Alexander Pett, welcome. Thanks. Great to be with you, man. Great to be with you. And we're moving along on the book and we're at, I was telling you before we came on air about the importance of this. And I wonder, did this actually become.

So important that it should become before everything else should be even like in the preface of the book and it like this is like how to get you on to the pitch if you're gonna be playing corporate innovation corporate exploration in the first place and i thought i'd start with a quote here that will speak so truly to our audience they'll hear this and they're gonna go oh man i wish i did that cuz that's what i read you said getting and sustaining a senior level commitment innovation is the top.

Of every corporate explorers. List for critical success the typical corporate approach is to have a good news story to tell positive customer feedback technical achievements on the product development roadmap and new partner signed up however you tell us the good news story approach is a trap it lowers tension in the senior team making it harder to talk about substantive issues resolve challenging problems and get authentic agreement.

So you think you're making progress and then when you get to real progress You're totally undermined by somebody. Maybe you'll tell us what's going on here. And what do you see in the field?

I'm in there to help develop them and their effectiveness and help them think about how they're delivering their strategies. And so in that process, as I observe them at work, I often see corporate explorers coming in to pitch their ideas. recommendation. They're thinking, they're update getting buy in and maybe from the point of early investment even just for early experimentation. And so I see the result of that and I can see when it's working and when it's not.

And that sense of, do you want to find the disagreement or are you over advocating trying to steer people to an agreement is one of the first traps.

So maybe let's introduce what you do, because I'm jumping straight here. And we'll do a longer episode in the future, because I'd love to do more on this. I think it's so important. But the whole idea of introducing tension, early productive tension in the team becomes so important with the people who ultimately the people are going to fund the idea and make it live in the future. Yeah, I think the two initial thoughts on that.

And the first one is, in my work, I would say that it doesn't matter how competent, capable, experienced, values driven you are how phenomenal your brain is, if you can't deploy that contribution through conversation. And so it is the deployment tool. It is the engagement tool. It's how you actually create and enable change. So that's step one. Step two, then, is needing to be conscious of how you create this level of, as we're calling it, productive tension.

And I'm going to describe the levels because I think that the basic level is low tension. And then people are thinking about, well, who knows anything they're thinking about the previous meeting, the next one they're sneaking in some emails into the executive meeting or something like that. And then it's obvious when you've got too high tension, when there's people that are doing immediate pushback with a heightened level of frustration or irritation or impassioned disagreement.

And actually Just either side of productive tension, you've got two zones. One is passive engagement, and one is passive resistance. And the problem is, they can both look like productive tension, and they're not. One is, I'm nodding, smiling, huh, ing. And I'm not necessarily engaged. And the other is, I'm doing the same, uh huh, huh, but actually, I might be irritated, or starting to think, no, there's no future in this.

And the critical element that's going to pull you out of that is, do you create? The production tension how you maintain it and actually how you close the whole conversation off to be sure you've really got a level of authentic engagement in buying that thing you talked about so the the nodding the person in the room or the persons with their body language saying everything about the hate your idea if we go back a step and go.

You have to understand that as a corporate explorer there's going to be resistance because you could be maybe changing their value or their perceived value in a company maybe they think i'm gonna lose my corner office maybe i'm gonna lose some of my team maybe. The company is gonna reallocate some of the investment from my department to this new budding idea so you gonna have all those reasons behind it as well and i thought about how really what you should be doing.

Before you encounter that person is maybe going meeting them beforehand and maybe you share a bit about that so behind the scenes before this boardroom conversation ever takes place what type of work should you be doing as a corporate explorer.

And often that's misplaced or misbalanced and the over emphasis is on advocacy and protecting of someone's own function or business area. So there is something about you're trying to enroll people into that role of leadership for the whole organization and leadership for its longer term future as well.

So there is something about even the pre conversations can be inviting someone to take that perspective and to step up into that higher order, a level of leadership where they might make choices that feel that they are perhaps taking funding and support from a core part of the business, but for good reason. So there's a mature element to that dialogue. And that one on one work is pretty key for that, I think.

And it's this pre work that needs to be done. So I'm going to show on the screen The five steps of how to create tension and maybe you bring it, bring us through this from framing the issue all the way around.

So even when you think you've got agreement, sometimes you're just surprised and there's something going on politically you weren't quite aware of. So there's that challenge. But even in that moment, before I talk about that, the sort of the methodology, there's that need when you get the pushback to really be Disciplined in making yourself curious rather than either over advocating or becoming vis-a-vis defensive and that rather than that. But this is the reason why.

No. Tell me more about why you're concerned. I want to understand that. And even though it can feel like you're giving the detractor airtime in the executive or the board, it's the most crucial thing. And what I've really noticed over what 20 years of doing this work is that people are rarely stuck on a memory of not having been agreed with, but people are really stuck on not having been listened to. And sometimes from 10 years ago.

So that sense of the listening and the validation of someone's value in their comments is a crucial part of enrolling them in that moment.

It's okay for this to happen , a healthy argument is okay as long as you don't lose it as long as you don't lose it like in the boardroom, but I think that piece is so missing from not only a corporate explorers world, but most business people's world, most people's world

So I asked them over a barbecue in the summer. They're probably like, Hey, we're not at work. Can we just eat? But they very kindly engaged in the conversation. And their reply was, it's more like 98 percent is pre programmed. So there's this need to genuinely buy into the fact. Although I can function very well on a daily basis, there is a flaw and I have a set of blind spots and there's stuff that I just can't see.

And if you go into a meeting like this with that knowledge embedded in your gut almost, then there's a readiness and a willingness to think, what can this person see that I can't see, that needs consideration? And if you don't and you do the opposite and you over advocate, you'll get defensive. Okay, now you just put yourself further back and you don't look so credible. The other colleagues in the board meeting,

Okay. I thought about that there's a great quote of david eagleman brilliant writer about the brain and he said your brain is essentially. In this dark dark room watching a theater through your eyes of what's going on through all these tentacles which are all your sensors and emotions to tell it what's going on and if we understand that if we just accept that like you say then you're gonna go look, , we cannot know what's happening out there.

So therefore we need to engage all our people, all the people around us, our families, our children, as these sensors for more information around us.

So the idea, first of all, is framing. There's a lovely Scottish saying, an answer framing saves a pound of time, that I heard years ago. But the framing, what are we actually here for? And there is this critical thing is, what is this conversation for? Because quite often I've listened to pitches, and only partway through do you realise what they're here for, what they're actually asking for. And that sense of purpose is so crucial for getting attention in the office.

So first of all, this is a conversation for what is this a period? This is the early time of investment? Is it buy in? Is it collaboration support needed for early experimentation, or whatever it is?

This is the what if we do and what if we don't. Why should the individuals in the room care? And what's important about this is we so often talk about why we care, not enough by why others might care. And so that sense of pulling up into the bigger picture of you mentioned earlier, what would draw the attention of this group, what would invest that goes into be invested in the conversation and actually participate fully, that's pretty significant. And then you're into the conversation.

And actually what the crucial connection between this, the name mistakes, and compared perspectives is to ask the question, let's find out what people are thinking here. Now clearly there might be some particular structure or process, there might be some information you're looking at, but you want to test early on, really early on, what any reflections or any comments at this point, any, anything people need to understand more before we press into this conversation.

And this idea of early engaging, and you watch when individuals advocate too much. The simplest way of describing it is like a triangle. Think about all the research, analysis, insight, data, information you've got that's taken you into that room. And the risk is often that people share the wide base of the triangle, and build up to the point, rather than the other way around, which is actually what's the point, and you can dip into the other pieces of information as you need it.

So you're seeking the different perspectives in the room, and this is where you're going to find some supporters, maybe some detractors, or people with different points of view. One of the traps here is you can start to get multiple points flowing in the conversation, multiple moves, and we'll reference that framework in a moment. And then suddenly it's pretty hard to actually make sure the thread is maintained. So a level of assertiveness is really required.

So actually before we move on to that point, I'm conscious that you've got these three different points in the room already. Let's handle those. Is that okay? Yes, that's fine. Good. And off you go. And that sense of assertiveness isn't objectionable. I, in my experience as exec team's board, just want clarity. Where are we in our conversation? And if you don't take responsibility, quite often the chair doesn't necessarily, and then your credibility is hurt.

So make sure you've got that right flow, and you'll pick off the point, and then you get the other points coming through once the early ones have been attended to. Then we're looking for the common points. Where's the alignment? Where are the concerns? Can you chunk those up? Can you sum them up? And you've got to work out, do they need resolving then? How are you going to report back with that information? But you're giving a clear sense of the lie of the land and testing it as well.

That's what's so crucial. That sense of involving the board or the team in the process. In that moment, and then there's an agreement on what's next. And so there are four steps. There's clarity. What are we here for? Are we having the same conversation? We've got the same expectations. There's recognition. What level of buy-in, agreement, alignment or disagreement is there to that topic? And as you work through that, you're getting in place to commitment. to the lead to change.

And the two traps are one, that over advocacy early two, then jump into action, rather than really taking enough time to make sure you've got that level of clarity and the recognition in the room before you move to get agreements. That's essentially the cycle you're running through. And you might find you run through that several times in a meeting, depending on what's required.

Sell your point with empathy for the people in the room and i thought that that's why this is so important and hence probably why you're in business as long as you are doing this work because we all need help in that respect.

Of being successful because they're slightly myopic about their own thinking. And that is a gift to the organization. But it's helping those individuals in particular just really pull back from that intense advocacy for their thinking and recommendations to the broader conversation they're required to actually create and facilitate. If they can think actually their job is to own the conversation in the room, not just own the outcome, then that's a helpful mindset.

And I just want to say, We're going to come back at a later stage, Alexander and I, we're going to do a deeper dive into this because it's so important to help you succeed.

Actually, what we could do is, that kind of bringing some energy to it. And there's bystand. Bystand doesn't translate brilliantly. It sounds passive. But actually, the bystander is looking at the dynamic and where the flow of conversation is and commenting on that. Actually, hold on a minute. Before we go to action, I heard different views in the room, which sounded significant to me and if they're not answered, I think it's going to slow us down later. Does that sound like a fair concern?

And I think there are two others. There's asking questions and answering questions as well. But this work gets the heart of the flow of dialogue. What is and what isn't helping make progress. And there's this lovely technique where you can just assess a dialogue from each person's name, who's moving, opposing, following, and bystanding. And you get a sense of the pattern developmentally. But for the Corporate Explorer, there's a real need to notice, where are we?

Is there too much follow and not enough oppose? And you think, surely it can't be this easy. Well, it probably isn't. Something isn't being surfaced. You might be in that passive engagement or even passive resistance. And I think as well, that sense of being willing to facilitate the dialogue, looking for the oppose, following up on the support and just making sure you've got an appropriate mix you'd expect to have when looking at an issue that might be quite challenging to those in the room.

But one thing keeps coming back to mind and i'm thinking of maybe as a final thought is again that person in the room. Who undermines you cause you talk about that and i was brought up old wounds for me cause it happened a lot for me and then i know good therapist i don't know if they could do that work. Even, like you say, you do this work, sometimes you're going to come across those people. What's your advice for when you do?

So I think that's the first step for me, which is I've got to own that and own how else might I engage with you. I think the second thing is that, you're just inevitably going to hit blocks. And so the political work, the pre work, the follow up and having enough advocates in the room, of course, is a key part of doing that. But the main challenge is that outside the room, we're all cool and calm and we can think very straight.

And I've sat with corporate explorer teams doing their prep work, and they just have got run through their presentations, really sharp, really clear, really looking to get a dialogue flowing, and then you watch them in the moment, a little bit of pressure, and then it tips usually into over advocacy, defensiveness, tension goes too high, and then someone else has to intervene to try and change that, then the credibility of the individual and the project starts to suffer.

So it's that sense of really being prepared, really know what your real work is, and that how you handle it can be as important as your answer, because the moment you start to look defensive, then others might start to buy in less to your recommendations.