Don't forget to use your Spock brain

In my last post, I encouraged people to use their Kirk brain in business. Now, let's look at the flip side - engaging your Spock brain.

In many organizations I've worked with, people often make decisions using "gut feel," or based on who's complaining loudest, who's got the most compelling story, and things like that.  Guess what - there is another way.

Give me the facts

With many business decisions, you can learn a lot just by looking at what's already happened.  Gather data on the current situation, look at historical trends, and see what patterns may emerge.  This is often a good way to identify root cause of past issues, and sanity check your hypotheses for the future.

Go beyond the hype

How many times do you choose to do something because "everybody is saying x," or "I just talked to Joe, and this is a big problem," or some other seemingly compelling claim?

It is easy, particularly when you are working with someone who knows how to push the right buttons, to make decisions based on emotional pleas or drama.  While these claims may be a good indicator of where problems exist, don't just rely on "latest & loudest" to drive your actions.  Gather data, assess the situation, and determine whether you really have a good handle on the problem (both in nature and magnitude) before you jump to action.

This is also a place where it makes sense to document the evidence, rather than relying on word of mouth - as the saying goes, sometimes the story grows in the telling.  Forcing the discipline of writing down the problem, steps taken, and other aspects of the situation can serve well to take some of the emotion out of the discussion.

Sanity check (aka "Use someone else's Spock brain")

When you're too close to a problem, your perspective can deceive you.  It may be helpful to join forces with someone else who can take a more detached, objective look at the situation.  Often, they will ask questions you haven't asked, identify pattern you didn't see, or bring a different set of experiences to bear on the problem which can help you come up with new solutions.

How do you know if you aren't using your Spock brain enough?

There is not one litmus test, but some good indicators that your organization may be ignoring the facts are:

• It feels like you are making the same mistakes over and over again, which means you are ignoring data from the past;
• It feels like certain people always get their way in your organization because they know what emotional buttons to push to derail the current plan in favor of their new pet project;
• Your priorities keep getting changed based on fire drills and crises;
• You find that no matter how hard people work on fixing problems in the business, they never seem to get better.

The bottom line is that you should ensure you aren't letting the Tyranny of the Urgent, or Management by Hype cause you to do things that perpetuate the problem.  Taking a step back and using your Spock brain to look at the facts is a useful skill for any manager.

Don't forget to use your Kirk brain

If you have to communicate controversial or significant changes to your employees, chances are you spend a lot of time working through what you want to do, why you're making he decision, and so on.  Then, at some point, you communicate the changes.

But sometimes, the reception of the message isn't what you anticipated, and people respond negatively.  Why?

Spock vs. Kirk

Chances are, you used your Spock brain a lot during this process.  If you're a Star Trek fan, you know that the Spock brian is the home of logic, reason, objective thinking, and such.

Often, the key to making changes go more smoothly is to consciously engage your Kirk brain.  Again drawing from Star Trek, the Kirk brain is the domain of emotion, passion, intuition and personality.

When you plan your communications strategy, spend some time thinking through the reaction to your message - not from Spock's perspective, but from Kirk's perspective.

• How will your message be perceived by your "audience?"
• If you were hearing the message for the first time, without the benefit of the logical discussion and time to digest the details, how might you respond?
• What hard questions are likely to come up?
• And so on.

There is a good possibility you won't know the answers to these questions. After all, we don't know what we don't know.  What next?

Borrow a Kirk brain

At this point, it may be a good time to team up with a few people from your employee population who can act as 'sounding boards'  and help you anticipate where your message could have unanticipated negative effects.  If you go this route, a few things should be made clear up front:

• Before engaging in a detailed discussion, assure your sounding boards that you will take their input seriously (I'm assuming you will, of course).  In return, insist that they not undermine your message by letting it "leak."
• Make it clear that input does not equal a vote, and that there's always the possibility you will not alter your message or decisions based on the input.

During the process, be candid and open as much as you can - and this candor and openness should go both ways. Don't hold a grudge if you don't like what your sounding boards tell you (if you feel like you won't be able to do this, don't engage with sounding boards - you probably won't get positive results anyway).

There are plenty of resources out there for helping managers and companies deliver messages well and to help people through change.  But I think one of the most important resources is right there in your Kirk brain.

By the way - if this topic makes your brain hurt, take a break and (in full color) see what happens when Kirk fights Spock. And, of course, if you have thoughts, best practices, or good resources on effective communication of difficult topics to employees, please share.