WHOA - I did not see that coming!
You know the drill. You walk in the door, expecting nothing more than social niceties and you make your way to your work station via the kitchen, having psyched yourself up for an orderly day punctuated with pre planned commitments, deep thought and moving the business forward. That ain't going to happen! You find yourself confronted with urgent and important requests and curveballs. You get sucked into firefights and having to let go of your good intentions. You mutter under your breath "how, in a modern world supported by an information superhighway, did I not see this coming? ", "Why wasn’t I warned?", "Who should have been across this?", "who let me down?" You mentally bookmark, and then, in a nanosecond, lose the intention to answer these questions as you become sucked into today's curveball management. Is it a case of 'the team just not watching properly' or is it a case of 'the team members not wanting to tell you bad news'? The answer to both options could be YES!
As a psychometric testing specialist with more than 30 years' experience, my greatest interest centres around the personality traits and abilities that can expose you to curveballs. This is the first of a series of four reflections dedicated to helping you to understand and minimise curveballs.
Curveball Origin 1: Looking in the wrong places
We have found that those team members who are effective at proactively scanning their environment for threats and opportunities do so through a number of trait-based lenses.
Case Study: Bill versus Ted
The following case study involving Bill and Ted is based on their responses to a reputable and valid personality questionnaire that we, at Shadow Consulting, often use as part of a battery of assessments within selection and/or development processes.
Bill will show a strong interest in hard data and will keep up with the play in terms of commercial information. A pronounced emphasis on depth and detail predicts that he will not gloss over the top or lose sight of important detail. A pronounced interest in the soft data enables Bill to build in aspects such as key player motives and relationships. However, Bill tends to focus on the here and now and may need encouragement/support in terms of longer-term scanning. Furthermore, Bill is less well placed to proactively scan for relevant and potentially impactful competitor related activity.
Ted is a big picture operator focusing on the conceptual and longer term. Whilst he will likely show moderate awareness of competitor activity, he may miss some of the detail. Furthermore, Ted may not be particularly proactive around seeking and analysing relevant hard commercial data and, therefore, runs the risk of underestimating the importance of such data as an indicator of trends. To his credit, Ted will like to test the validity of information provided to him and will not fall victim to misinformation. Ted will also be relatively mindful of potentially impactful soft data.
The above analysis can be used to identify potential blind spots that could otherwise lead to unwelcome surprises if left unaddressed. If Bill and Ted were in the same team, they could have all the bases covered, depending on how their manager harnesses them. To avoid surprises, the important take-outs are:
Make sure anybody entering your team is across enough of these lenses to intercept curveballs.
Know which team member can be relied on to provide insights for each lens.
Understand your team's lens deficiencies and put in place compensating strategies (systems, personnel, outside agents etc).
The above notwithstanding, it is important to accept that context is everything.
Stay tuned for our next chat in relation to the analytical abilities required to understand and synthesise information from a variety of sources.