I injured my back over a year ago and while I was recovering, I dialed down the intensity of my workouts. I needed that habit for awhile. It helped me heal. It’s now outlived its usefulness and I need a new set of habits.
The same is true at work. Habits outlive their usefulness. One place we often have habits that don’t serve us is decision-making. If you find yourself regularly bemoaning a lack of agency or you don’t hear people stepping forward with new ideas or solutions – those might be signals that it’s time to examine the behavior you say you want, agency or ownership, and your own habits around decision-making.
Here’s how I’d get there:
Define the behaviors you’re looking to activate. One behavior I associate with agency is decision-making by those closest to the work. What behaviors don’t look like agency? A teammate who waits to see the “rule” or “process” to guide each decision or a team that sits in paralysis, waiting for consensus or for a leader to direct each decision.
Identify the practice or habit you’ll use consistently to invite and support the desired behavior. This move often requires self-reflection. I may need to own that I’ve set in motion a pattern that isn’t serving us well – I’ve gotten in the habit of asking that each decision come to me for my sign-off or I’m weighing in on decisions that should be delegated. Once I name and own the “old habit”, I can propose a new practice that actively disrupts the “old habit.”
Ask for – and act on – feedback that helps you adopt new practices. Maybe that looks like working a new question into your team meetings where you ask, “where am I gumming up the works?” or “what’s a decision you need to make where I’m slowing us down?” or “what are you waiting to do because you think you need approval/permission/invitation by me or someone else?” If we want agency, let’s ask people to tell us when they’re holding back on something because of the real or perceived need for approval.
Three other things on my mind this week. This podcast episode with Colin Campbell about working through grief. He has practical guidance for those grieving and those supporting someone in grief. This Spring Pea Ravioli recipe is on my “to cook” list…but I’ll swap out the ricotta 😝. This advice column that contained this nugget, “We continually generate stories to make sense of how we feel. But it does not follow that the stories are true.”
– KBD