Getting an Outside Look

Getting "another opinion" is often heard in the context of health care diagnosis and business strategy in order to get an accurate picture of our own health or our own financial situation but sometimes "another opinion" is missed when a team is working on a strategy related to their own environment.

It is almost inevitable that a group of people working on a strategy will develop a sense of "group think" that can blind the team to objectivity. Having experienced the lack of healthy outside opinion, I've realized first hand the huge miscalculations that can be made in a strategic plan.

From a coaching perspective, getting an outside opinion is a valuable step to achieving success when crafting a plan to fulfill a goal. Most of us have "outsiders" who are friendly sympathizers and supporters of what we do but do not live daily in our world. Intentionally soliciting the opinion of such outsiders is actually one of the most strategic steps you can take in crafting a fool proof plan. Sometimes these outsiders are right under our noses but we are missing them and missing their valuable objective input.

Here are some tips on engaging outsiders to take a look at what you're doing:

• Is there someone who lives and works in what I call "a parallel universe" to your work that you can engage in helping you assess a strategy. Such "parallel universe" contexts are people working in similar fields, people who observe you on a regular basis yet not connected to your business or professionals from other disciplines who also work at developing projects similar to the one you're working on.
• Is there someone who has achieved what you are attempting to reach? If there is, are they accessible and willing to take a look at your context?
• Find someone with a lot of wisdom who has been around for a long time and ask them to take a look at what you're doing. In our culture, we tend to right off these people but they have been around the corner several times and have a wealth of knowledge and experience to share.
• Find a young person who is not from your generation and have them look at what you're doing and offer feedback. On the opposite spectrum from the previous tip, young people have a very different perspective and tend to be more idealistic and dream bigger and understand their culture and popular culture much better. Having their input can jog some things you haven't seen or expected or even thought possible.
• Approach the competition! If you and your team are tough enough and open enough, approach the competition and get their opinion. Short of fearing a possible sabotage in the advice that might be given, more often then not, healthy competition is desired and a healthy competitor could offer some excellent observations.

Dealing with Blind Spots

Sometimes as we go about plotting strategies toward a desired change [whether it be structural, technological or operational] blind spots occur where we or someone on our team is not aware of information necessary to achieve the change desired.

A blind spot can virtually disable a strategy, slow down a process or completely stall a plan for change. There is no greater frustration as a leader then when the process toward change is delayed because the necessary information was not available.

How can we avoid blind spots and be sure that all the information we need is on the table as we look toward implementing change? One of the important steps in coaching change is to help a client with getting all the possible information on the table. Sometimes this takes time - more time then we think but time well spent. Blind spots exist because an individual has been seeing information in one particular way. Try and help someone to look at a potential change goal from different angles. Here are some powerful questions to ask that can help with opening up a blind spot:

• Who do you need to speak with in order to gather all the information you need? [repeating the question "who else" continually to push the person to exhaust all the possibilities will help with this question]
• Who's input depends on the success of this change? [using "who else" again will push one to consider every possible person involved or affected by this change]
• How can you be sure you have all the information you need? [this question will cause the person to consider what they may not have thought of before]
• What makes you feel uneasy about this change? [this will bring up any remaining questions that exist]
• On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you that you have all the information you need? [this will help you gauge confidence - the more information a person has the more confident they'll be]
• If scored low on the previous question ask - "How can we move your confidence to a 9 or 10?" [again this will probe what else is missing and so needs to be part of a more confident approach]

As you can see above, two of the questions have to do with exhausting the people resource available. I specifically start off with these questions because I believe that people are the single most important resource to making good decisions. The more people involved the better chance at avoiding blind spots, both personally and among your team members.