Megan Dolce, Head Coach at RIPE
Why Your Team Keeps Having the Same Conversation
Behavior is the part of strategy nobody puts in the deck.
I have the privilege of sitting across from a lot of leadership teams. Different stages, different industries, different challenges. And when you sit in that many rooms, you start to see patterns.
One thing I see…we spend a lot of time on strategy.
Meeting after meeting doing “strategy” work. Offsites about strategy. Decks about strategy. Then another meeting to talk about the strategy we just spent two days talking about. You know what’s pretty scary to me? Spending all that time building a new strategy and showing up as the exact same leader to run it.
We talk so much about what we’re going to do. How much time do we spend on how we’re actually going to work together to do it? And what do I need to do differently as a leader to make that happen?
I cannot stress this enough. Behavior is an organization’s biggest competitive advantage. And yet, the behavioral work gets a fraction of the attention. It’s seen as the “soft” work, yet it’s where edge lives.
You can have the greatest strategy in the world. There are still humans who have to execute it.
Can they make a decision? Can they disagree with each other and move? Do they prepare before they walk into the room? When something isn’t good enough, does someone say it and make it better? Are they hungry to grow? Are they getting scrappy or waiting to have everything they need? When you agree to something, does anything change?
That’s the work that NEEDS to be paired with the strategy work. Because I can sit in a room with a leadership team and hear an incredible strategy, but if everyone in that room knows there’s a conversation they need to have and they keep finding a way around it, what exactly are we expecting to happen?
Which brings me to Ted Lasso.
“Be a goldfish, Sam.”
Ted Lasso
If you watched the show, you know the goldfish moment. Ted tells Sam to be a goldfish because goldfish supposedly have a ten-second memory. He made a mistake. Forget it. Keep playing.
I love that on the field. Allows us to move fast.
But I think a lot of organizations have gotten really good at goldfishing.
We have the conversation. We name the thing, we agree on what needs to change, and everyone leaves feeling good about it. And then we move on. Three months later we’re having the same conversation.
I often tell organizations, “I am a different coach than the one you met three months ago, and I expect you to be a different leader and a different team.”
I hold myself to that standard, and I hold them to it too.
The feedback should be getting better. The meetings should be getting better. Decisions should be getting faster. The leaders should be more resilient. I want to know that you spent the last three months building strength. Taking the harder path, doing the harder thing, getting uncomfortable. It’s easy to spend three months playing defense to your days and crossing off your long to-do list.
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Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast
If the team isn’t winning, I would bet it’s more behavioral, aka culture, than anything else. You know the saying “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”?
And I think leaders need to spend a lot more time on this. When you’re talking about strategy, ask what behaviors are required to actually deliver it.
Athletics is probably the easiest example. You can have two athletes with the exact same goal. They can even have the exact same training plan. But how they behave against that plan is what separates them. Do they put in the reps? Do they recover? Do they listen to coaching? Do they adjust? Do they show up when they don’t feel like it?
The strategy tells you where you’re going. Behavior determines whether you get there.
If we want to move faster, what does moving faster actually look like here? If we say we want excellence, what are we no longer willing to accept? What does excellence even mean? If we want more ownership, where are leaders currently stepping in and taking ownership away? If we say feedback matters, are we actually giving it?
And probably the biggest one. What have we already talked about changing that still hasn’t changed?
Organizations need to spend time not just talking about behaviors but implementing accountability strategies into the ecosystem…
Want to win? Change the behavior.
WE GOT THIS.
Dolce
P.S. Get Your Mind RIPE (Build to Your Potential) is the behavior work in book form. Practices built on RIPE’s tools. Grab your copy here.
A Simple Reflection Practice
What have we already talked about changing that still hasn’t changed?
This went out in Stop and Smell the F*cking Roses. A new letter lands in inboxes most Sundays, with a practice to run that week. Join now to get the next one.
