Transcript of Your Next Best Move: Leadership Lessons: Strip Your Dead Project for Parts
Hi everyone, Bobbie LaPorte here again with my weekly leadership tip for your Best Next Move, where I help you see continuing curveballs as an opportunity. We’re done reacting to them, or pausing, waiting for a new kind certainty to return. This year I will help you actively use your personal agency to accelerate what you want to accomplish in 2022.
Recently in one of these vlog posts How to Lead When Priorities Keep Changing, I shared with you an example of a real-life curveball scenario that would throw most change-hearty leaders off-base, and how to respond from the perspective of opportunity, not resignation.
This week, I wanted to drill down a bit on that scenario and share more guidance about how to make the most of these tough project curveballs….
Strip your dead projects for parts
To recap: here was the scenario. You’ve been working on a strategic initiative with your team that has high visibility in your organization. Your team is energized and excited about their work on this important project; it has been their focus for several months now and your peers are taking note of the exposure this has given you and your team.
Your boss calls you to a meeting – which you think is to compliment you and your team for their hard work and the progress they have made. You walk into the office, ready for the high fives – and instead, he throws you a curveball. The project is now off the table…the CEO has a new focus and wants to take a different direction.
You are stunned. You know your team will be demoralized and demotivated, and you worry that the impact of this will reflect on your stature in the organization.
So now what do you do?
I am guessing that for many of you that sounds familiar.
So here are some questions to ask yourself…and potential actions to take to create an optimal, beneficial and generative response:
- What did your team members learn from this project? Are there skills, new knowledge, new perspectives they have gained that could potentially contribute to the emerging needs of the company?
- Emerging is the key here: all organizations are in flux; as a leader it is your job to help your team – and your manager – see how they can help your company get ahead of what’s coming
- Also, what did they learn that built capacity in themselves? When we are so close to a project AND we are then disappointed in the outcome… it is hard to see a silver lining. Your job as a leader is to help connect them to their strengths so they can amplify them
- Are there any new processes, deliverables, insights they developed that could be used elsewhere in the company (or that you can share outside the company, in industry forums where others might see the benefit)
- How can you promote (in an authentic way) this experience you and your team had – take the best of what they’ve done, the intrinsic value they’ve created (because there ALWAYS is value in failed/stopped ventures) with others in the organization
Bottom line: today’s leaders need to be navigators, value creators, and connectors for their teams when the curveballs keep coming.
So, that’s my tip and guidance for this week. I’ll see you next week. In the meantime, use your personal agency to make uncertainty a part of your success strategy for 2022.