Any manager can be innovative by reframing even undesirable options through three different perspective-taking approaches.
When faced with a challenge that immediately yields undesirable options, you should listen for the "siren wail" of the unknown, for within this ambiguity lies variety to resolve your dissonance. There are three easily applied perspective taking enhancements that can help contain or open boundaries and scope.
Multiple perspective enhancement: This approach seeks other perspectives. This can be input from others (you would be surprised how often we don't seek consultation), or a more analytical use of perspective. Additionally, DSRP teaches us that perspective can be a point or a view. In other words, we can view an idea, person or thing and give our perspective (analysis), and that object of our perspective can then look back at us with its own perspective orientation.
When seeking multiple perspectives of others, don't forget Ulrich's boundary judgement query structure of "Who is/ought...?" For example, asking ourselves who is being consulted in this situation?, is followed up with who ought to be consulted in this situation? If we consult no one, we are considering ourselves to be the ultimate expert of this dilemma-when in fact there are probably other experts (e.g., human resources, legal, peer manager, mentor, etc.). By having more eyes on the undesirable option and the situation that yielded it, we open up mental capacity and perspective which should enhance the option. Another way to seek other perspectives is to seek experts through books, podcasts, and training.
Another multiple perspectives enhancement is to look at the option, and have it look back at you. This might seem odd, but it is an effective perspective which leads to altered or new options. Let's say you have been forced by his behavior to terminate Dave. When you look at that option, you believe this is your only option based upon his performance, and unwillingness to change. But when this option looks back at you, it can be seen you have not exhausted every approach, and in fact haven't tried anything other than traditional methods. For example, you could have Dave be part of a team that enhances the impact of the company values on individual performance-Dave may quit, but more likely he will gain a different perspective and new beliefs and change his behavior. Further, if you sought other perspectives on similar situations like negotiation or selling ideas (books, podcasts, etc.), you would probably identify other orientations to your "forced" choice.
Enhanced outcome enhancement: With enhanced outcomes, we project out ideal outcomes and build into the option, actions that will yield the larger benefits. It is a conceptual bundling-you roll up the option into a larger project, thereby justifying higher costs that would cover the limited position.
Let's say you must report out an overly extended timeline to a high profile project and this will violate stakeholder expectation Instead, you can project a much different outcome:
Project what will be: "A few months into the project, I run into my teammates in the cafeteria and they are having an exciting discussion of our project and the great progress we are making. They are highly motivated by our successful acceleration of the timeline and everyone is excited about the benefits of our project."
Identify ideal future-state conditions: What future conditions would have to be in place to make this vision moment possible? Well this would require that we quickly work more efficiently than we currently are capable and our daily interactions would need streamlined, decreasing downtime. We would need to have exciting benefits built into the project and effectively communicate them to stakeholders. We would need expertise in project management.
Identify the current-state conditions and obstacles: This team has never worked together before-in fact most have never met. We will have a learning curve that will eat up significant time on the front end. None of us have project management experience and our processes are manual. These issues will not only slow down and increase the demands of communication, it will also be a factor throughout the project.
Identify actions that will overcome the current conditions and close gaps to the ideal future state: We will need to select an automated workflow platform easy to use that will facilitate communication and tracking. The team could also as a group receive high caliber training on agile project management practices, and problem solving. The training will be a shared experience that will facilitate getting to know each other and facilitate collaboration. We add a project manager from within the company or hire one to facilitate the project. We perform similar enhancements of the project outcomes and design ways to keep stakeholders excited about progress and benefits.
Now the options are to keep the current longer timeline, or to add these additional enhancements (with higher costs) to facilitate efficiency and communication. This will allow us to meet stakeholder timeline expectations and increase benefits of the project, and their communication. This works because it releases you from your current problem, and transports you to a future happy state, and you suddenly realize that you are just limiting yourself by limiting your potential outcomes.
Conditional enhancement: This is where we add 'bumpers" to the option to limit its impact. Simply put, we may CAPA for correction and prevention, or create policy that limits similar occurrences.
With perspective taking, we mix things up and remove cognitive bias, reframing the situation to facilitate creative thinking and unlocking innovation.
The maps in this blog were created with Plectica™
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