Planning all the way through to success: also known as, Will the bookcase fit through the door?
Two people struggling to fit a large bookcase through a door.

Planning all the way through to success: also known as, Will the bookcase fit through the door?

Over the past year, you have probably read a lot of articles about empathy and mindfulness. They often focus on putting ourselves in other people’s shoes and being in the moment.  Sometimes, empathy and mindfulness are the key to getting multiple people, or groups, to successfully work together to meet complex goals. What can feel to you like a constraint or barrier to your work will look very different with some empathy for the "constraint" team and the ability to spend some time in the moment understanding why it's designed the way it is.

The analogy I think about is a large bookcase meant to go into a room. Suppose a team collaborates to create a large, elaborate, high-value piece of furniture. It’s an impressive step forward to work together to create something so great, versus what could have been accomplished alone in the same time. And then, when it’s time to get the furniture into the room, they realize the furniture was designed and built to be too large for the room’s doorway. It turns out that for the furniture to take its rightful place in the room, you need to apply the same collaborative spirit, growth mindset, and creative approach to designing the “door,” as you did to build the furniture. 

Two people working together to craft a bookcase.

There's no question I see this process in my personal life. The bookcase is the list of activities, events, hobbies, etc that are important to each of us in the family. We work together as a team to support each other's interests. But then there's this doorway - me, in this case - and my capacity to drive people where they need to be, and/or balance competing priorities. Often, the doorway is too small. Or I'm sitting in a parking lot after driving someone to an activity, editing a whitepaper and half thinking about how to prioritize the hours left in the day. The solution, of course, is to prioritize further, communicate more openly, and do it all with a sense of humor and empathy. Without those adjustments, the tension is palpable.  

This tension created by mis-sized doorways can also be found in my work life, and perhaps in yours too. 

Two people struggling to fit a bookcase through a doorway.

Take the product-sales-customer balance.  At Microsoft, we’ve made a monumental shift to develop industry capabilities for customers (see Why I love Industry Clouds). Our engineering teams are building products more cohesively than ever, on a Microsoft Cloud that is more capable and scalable and secure than ever, to solve the hardest customer problems, ever. That’s the bookcase. Our desired outcome is to get these sophisticated industry capabilities to complex and rapidly changing customer organizations (the room) through dedicated, customer-obsessed, and multi-skilled sales teams. The sales teams are the company’s doorway to the customer, and they are doing incredible work to adjust for the pace of change on both sides - the bookcase crafters and the needs of the "room". What can really help is for engineering teams and the teams that support them to periodically take time to put the bookcase down, listen deeply to our sales teams to develop deep empathy, and collaborate across all teams make sure the system makes sense, works well, and supports incredible customer outcomes end-to-end. 

Another example is people management. Our team, and many at Microsoft, are growing. We are hiring amazing, diverse teams (the bookcase) into existing organizations (the room). The doorway is the process of onboarding employees, and training managers to expand their capabilities and capacity. This imperative is greater than ever this year, when existing team members have not been able to welcome and support new employees in the ways they're used to. In some organizations, new hires might only get a simple Teams call introduction. One of the best practices we’ve developed on our team is to create a fun video interview so that the team can get to know the employee in a more personal light. We’ve also discovered the value in identifying job “twins” that act as a new employee’s partner. Together, the twins create an on-boarding guide unique to their position. The guide is designed to provide a roadmap, and document their experience as they get acquainted, shadow each other, and work in parallel together. We have gone through a v1 implementation as our team grows, and are looking for opportunities to improve and optimize the process. We're trying to apply empathy and mindfulness to the constraints and hopefully design a better overall system.

A person admiring a finished bookcase in place in its desired location in a room.

You probably have experienced similar situations – your own set of bookcases, doorways, and rooms. At home, and at work. The solution is to listen and learn at every point. Collaborate as a team to improve the doorway, and incorporate your newfound knowledge as you build the furniture.   

 

Good food for thought. I think about Data the same way. Data is seen as the new oil (its the amazing "bookshelf"), however organizations going through digital transformation with data need to be thoughtful and know how to balance it with what is known and what we learn as we go...

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