Control The Clock is the first play in the new playbook, replacing Obey The Clock. Chapter 3 of L. David Marquet’s book, Leadership is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say – and What You Don’t opens with the story of a disastrous Academy Awards program; the show where the presenter announced that La La Land was the winner of Best Picture. It wasn’t! While there were many contributing factors to the embarrassing episode, the probable root cause was the perceived need to hit the program time marks. The presenters let the clock cloud their vision. They were in performance mode: redwork. They let the clock control them rather than letting their mind control their actions. 

Daniel Kahneman described the difference between System One and Two Thinking in his book Thinking Fast and Slow. System One Thinking puts actions together to get the job done. This type of thinking is weaker for interpreting and synthesizing new ideas. System Two Thinking’s role is to combine new information and make decisions. To stop System One from rushing ahead, System Two needs a pause or interruption. The clock trapped the captain of the El Faro in System One Thinking. He was Obeying The Clock and taking the shortest route. There were no mechanisms to pause the process so everyone died. At the Academy Awards, presenters followed the clock and went along with the process. 

Marquet states that red work is brittle, and blue work allows us to adapt. Much of typical leader-follower conversation inhibits pausing and shifting to thinking stances. The captain of the El Faro provides many examples of inhibiting thinking stances. Closer to home, I recently listened to a team leader begin a conversation with “I know this is a stretch but we have to get it done so everyone get to work.” The statement precluded any discussion. They followed the comment with “Oh, any questions?” Followed by a short pause then “Bake!” They must be a fan of the Great British Baking Show. I hear versions of that conversation several times a day. It is as if the mantra is “Don’t think, just do”.  The language leaders use can either make pausing easy or difficult. Leaders must use words that make the shift out of focused System One Thinking into System Two Thinking possible. The language a leader uses contributes to an environment of psychological safety. Use it wisely. The earlier team leader could have said, “We face a tough challenge what are our options?” or “How can we mitigate the risk?” While not perfect these questions shift the team into thinking mode. What would have occurred if the captain of the El Faro had asked for and discussed options?

An experiment: Listen to the language used in meetings. Does the language support collaboration and discussion? Can you rephrase the language so that it allows a pause to reflect and consider decisions? If you are the person speaking, step back and re-phrase so that a pause can occur.  The focus on removing preemptive statements and other direct barriers that push people into redwork without thinking to stop questioning decisions is important.  

An experiment: Listen to the language used in meetings. Does the language support collaboration and discussion? Can you rephrase the language so that it allows a pause to reflect and consider decisions? If you are the person speaking, step back and re-phrase so that a pause can occur. 

Another of the four techniques is the idea of preplanning a pause. This is a visible way of signaling that a pause is possible. Most agile techniques use time boxes to switch between doing and planning – red work and blue work. In Scrum Sprint Planning, Sprint Review and Retrospectives are pauses. Any method with a daily sync (i.e. Daily Scrum or Daily Stand-up) includes pauses. Built-in pauses allow people focus because they know they will have time to replan in the plan. 

Even pre-planned pauses can fall prey to poor execution. For example, a Daily Scrum where someone assigns work and collects status is not a pause. Neither is a status meeting where any deviation from the plan evokes a grilling. In those situations, the goal is to smile and get through the meeting. The clock is in control.

Previous installments of our re-read of Language Is Leadership

Week 1: Logistics, Introduction, Foreword – https://bit.ly/3sTqyu3 

Week 2: El Faro – https://bit.ly/3RnkUue 

Week 3 The New Playbook – https://bit.ly/3Llgmki