problem than we thought because I just got back from Asia and saw this…”; or, “This is even harder because I learned our competitors are launching their new version this quarter....” More and more smart talk gets added, and the situation discussion turns into a bigger and bigger situation hairball.
Sure, it's important to use some time to note and understand the situation, but you can just feel it when everyone has internalized the situation and then…you keep talking about it! Talking and talking and talking about it. You can feel it in your stomach when the meeting is not going anywhere, and you're still talking. The talk gets smarter and smarter and the forward motion everyone is craving never happens.
Situation discussions are basically this: collectively admiring the problem.
Situation vs. Outcome
The way to break through this type of stall is to train your team members to catch themselves having a situation discussion, and then say, “Let's stop talking about the situation and let's try to define an outcome that we want to achieve.”
For example, one of the most common situation discussions that I guarantee is happening hundreds of times at this very moment in business meetings around the world is the following “mother of all situation” discussions:
This is very important, but we don't have enough resources to do it.
Here is a specific version. We need to improve the quality of our product to be more competitive, but all of our resources are tied up on creating new features. We can't fall behind on features, and we have no extra resources. But we really need to improve quality. But we don't have the budget…and around and around.
Instead of adding fur to that situation discussion, let's take this situation discussion and turn it into an outcome discussion. Here is an example. Note how resisting situation talk allows the discussion to move forward:
● Okay. We can't afford to fix all the quality problems, so let's stop talking about this in a vague way. Let's talk about some concrete things we can do on a smaller scale that would make a positive difference. Which quality problems are having the most negative business impact right now?
● There are two issues in the user interface that our biggest customers are complaining about. (Situation)
● How about if we fix those two problems first? (Outcome proposal)
● But that doesn't take into account the issue in Europe. The quality issues in Europe are related to difference in governance laws. (Situation)
● I suggest we fix only the top one issue in the United States right away, but we fix the top three in Europe now too (Outcome proposal), as we have more pipeline held up in Europe.
● But that doesn't solve our overall quality problems, which are related to the fundamental structure of our product, which I have assessed is slowing our sales pipeline growth by 20 percent. (Smart talk. Rat hole. Situation)
● What outcome do you suggest we target to solve that particular point? (Challenge to smart talk)
● I don't know, we just need to fix it. It's really important. (Situation. Stall)
● That is still situation discussion. How about we fix the problems we just listed first, and right away we train the sales force on how to help customers work around these platform issues temporarily? (Outcome proposal)
● But when can we fix the main platform? We don't have the resources to do it. (Age-old situation)
● Let's look at doing a platform release one year from now. After we fix this initial round of quality issues and release this current round of features, we then prioritize the platform changes and get it done. (Outcome proposal)
● But if we do that, we'll fall behind our competitors in functionality again. (Shut up. Situation)
● We need to agree that if the platform change is a priority, we must get it accomplished no matter what our level of resources – even if we need to move resources from the work to add new functionality. (Outcome proposal)
● We will work with marketing and sales to improve our conversion rate in the part of our pipeline that is with customers not currently affected by the platform issue. (Outcome proposal)
Note the difference between situation and outcome conversation.
Outcome discussions can be long and painful too, but the big difference is that they are going somewhere. Outcome conversation is productive conversation. It leads to action.
Outcome vs. Next
There are many other benefits to moving from situation conversations to outcome conversations. One of the other great things about outcome-oriented conversations is that they can be used to resolve disputes. When you are talking about a situation and what to do next, “next” is a concept fraught with opinion and emotion. It might involve someone giving something up or stopping something. It might involve doing or learning something new. “Next” has all the personal investment of the present wrapped up in it. So to get people to agree about what to do next if a clear outcome is not defined, there could be a million possible choices, all laden with personal investment, experience, insight, opinion, and emotion.
But instead you can pick a point in the future and say, “Let's describe that point. Let's agree on that point in the future.” Suddenly everyone's focus is shifted away from their invested and urgent personal space, and it is placed on a goal that is in the distance. It breaks the emotional stranglehold of something that threatens to change right now.
The other benefit is that if you can agree on what the point in the future looks like, it reduces the set of possible next steps from a million to several. There are far fewer choices of what to do next to serve a well-defined outcome. You can have a much more focused and productive debate.
Describe What It Looks Like When It Is Working
To force the conversation to be about concrete outcomes can be a difficult skill to master. But it is worth the effort. It's the only way to move decisively forward.
If your group is having trouble with this, here is something you can try. When I'm working with a team that can't seem to get their minds around which outcome to focus on, I ask them to simply describe what it looks like when it is working. If the desired outcome were working the way you needed it to be, what would you see? What would be happening? What would people be saying and doing? What would employees, customers, partners, analysts, and media be saying? What would they be experiencing?
Once you start describing what the concrete desired outcome looks like when it is working, you will be able to land the plane. For example, I was working with a team who needed to execute a successful product migration from an old version to a new version. They naturally started talking about the situation, the complexity, the expense, the possibility of customer attrition....But when I encouraged them to start describing desired outcomes, one person said, “We'd have enough customers successfully using the new version by February 1.” Then others added these descriptions: “There would be a combination of existing and new customers successfully using the new version”; “Existing small and mid-size customers would be motivated and volunteer to migrate on their own”; “Our largest customers would be confident to migrate because they felt guided and supported by us to make sure their migration was successful.”
By focusing on describing what it would look like if it were working, they were able to define outcomes that were concrete enough to suggest the specific necessary actions. This
