If you watch any college or professional football games this season, you’ll probably see at least one team running out the clock. It’s an effective strategic play. (For those who aren’t familiar with it, if you’re leading toward the end of the game, you can try to keep possession of the ball and use delay tactics to keep the opposition from getting another chance on offense.)
Unfortunately, this play has migrated from the football fields (and basketball courts) to meeting rooms. It’s a troubling tactic there because it wastes people’s time, depletes their energy, and reduces their engagement.
Recently, I’ve observed various groups:
- Analyzing issues over and over in multiple meetings without moving to take any action. These groups define “analysis/paralysis” mode of operating.
- Deciding to take action in one meeting and then revisiting their decisions the next meeting, leaving them and their teams not sure of who’s in charge or what’s going on.
- Debating inconsequential matters while devoting no to minimal time on the big strategic issues that affect their future fate. One group I recently worked with followed a “Let’s fiddle while Rome burns” meeting agenda. They had asked a task force to start work on a conference for 2013 yet were not addressing the fact that they were hemorrhaging cash so fast they’d expire by 2012.
When I experience these situations, I put communications on the back burner even if some of the individuals in the group say their top priority is communications. Trying to explain what they’re doing is like putting lipstick on the pig—even if they say they believe in transparency. From a substance standpoint, there’s nothing there.
Instead, I suggest interventions to help them change the game or at least the way they play it, so they can break through the roadblocks.
For example, three effective tactics in my experience are:
1. Change the players. Or at a minimum add at least one team member, the more unconventional the better. New blood changes the dynamics, provides a fresh perspective, and may break the logjams.
2. Change the rules—or processes. Sometimes people hang onto the old ways of doing things as a crutch or excuse not to take any action. If you take them away, they have to move.
3. Bring the outside in. By inviting outsiders to come and share what’s happening with other organizations or talk about trends, you’re also able to change the perspective which can change perceptions. (As an external consultant, I’ve generally been hesitant to advocate this approach as I didn’t want to be accused of blowing my own horn and profession. After hearing unsolicited feedback lately from individuals about the power of the outside perspective, I’m now talking about it.)
These three tactics get things moving, and help shake the group out of its complacent state. For example, the organization that’s in financial duress took all three of these actions and is making headway to redefine its strategic direction.
Even when groups aren’t ready to change the world, they don’t deserve to implode—which is a real possibility.
As the best-selling author and business guru Jim Collins writes in his book How the Mighty Fall and Why Some Companies Never Give In, “Whether you prevail or fail, endure or die, depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.”
What are you doing to keep the ball moving for yourself and those you work with?
Liz Guthridge is a consultant, author, and trainer specializing in strategic change communications. Department leaders of Fortune 1000 companies hire Liz and her firm Connect Consulting Group LLC when they need their people—who are confused, angry or in denial—to adopt complex new initiatives so they can quickly change the way they work. For more information, contact Liz, liz.guthridge@connectconsultinggroup.com or 510-527-1213. Follow Liz on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/lizguthridge.
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