Several years ago, I had a client come to me with a brilliantly designed Balanced Scorecard. He was CFO of a small tech company, and he had done it all by the book. The Scorecard showed how all kinds of internal objectives and activities would create market success and positive financial results, very clearly. The areas that required investment and expenditure were very precisely laid out and justified. If it had been a class, I would have given him an “A+”
So what’s the problem, I asked?
Nobody else is buying into it, he said.
Why? To make a long story short, he had gone into his office, shut the door, and laid out his view of how the company would be successful. Only problem was, he didn’t get anyone else involved in the process.
The best plan in the world will not succeed if the people responsible for implementing it don’t buy in to the program. “Buy in” requires that all concerned get to say their piece, and believe they’ve been heard, whether their idea is adopted or not.
In most of today’s complex business planning situations, two (or more) heads are better than one. How to bring out the best collective intelligence of a group?
An effective, collaborative planning exercise requires a balance of two kinds of conversations:
Divergent thinking is a process of exploring possibilities, brainstorming, different or emerging perspectives, thinking outside the box. The wise leader encourages these contributions from everyone involved.
And, at the end of the day, there needs to be a focus and a plan. This is convergent thinking – out of all those possibilities, where will we focus?
I’ve heard a lot of leaders say “We operate by consensus around here”, but I seldom believe it. Often the appearance of consensus is like one of those elections in a country where, say, 95% of the voters support the incumbent. It’s just that people don’t dare to voice what they really think. Everyone would like to believe that a consensus is desirable – but it’s not always possible. If everyone has had their say, however, and understands the reasons for picking that focus, you’ll have a much happier team.