OUTCOMES NOT RULES

Last week we came together for our quarterly company meeting – a ritual and a key part of the Fourth Floor culture.

A time for the whole company to celebrate, recognise and reward the many great colleague achievements from the previous quarter. It’s also a time to check in, and provide clarity about our north star.  

We talk a lot about individual autonomy and empowering teams. As leaders we need to recognise the importance of giving our teams the confidence to do so. Taking opportunities such as company meetings and 1-2-1s and providing clarity on our shared goals gives our team the time and space to feel informed, and confidence to work with the right intent. And this develops the outcome mindset (using the guardrails of mission, vision and values to focus on outcomes, not get caught up in rules and bureaucracy).

Using the OKR framework brings this to life. We dedicate time to step through the quarter objectives and the outcomes we are trying to achieve. We are clear with the measures that determine our success. This clarity allows our teams to operate with intent, empowering them to build the action plan they know will have the biggest impact. This shared sense of goal, creates a sense of belonging and purpose, which I hope is not only motivating but provides a feeling their contribution is valued.  

Now in reality, understanding how to contribute and the actions needed can be hard to identify. What needs to be done and being clear on what doesn’t. This decision making process can be complex, especially when the problem has the potential to impact numerous stakeholders.  

But problem solving is part of all of us. Our brains are attuned to creating solutions and making decisions. The primary function of the brain is about digging into our memory developed from previous experiences, learned behaviour, our imagination, our creativity, and distilling this into a measured response. However, the vast external stimuli we manage on a daily basis may well create confusion, clouding our judgement. Plus our brains will process differently, following a variety of human cognitive paths. The pressure of a client demand, an unrealistic delivery deadline, the expectation of hitting a target, a pressurised and noisy physical environment. They are all factors that can contribute to our teams feeling blocked, lacking clarity and trapped.  

Leaders need to be accountable for adopting working practices and optimum working conditions that suit our teams. We need to recognise certain environments are not conducive to effective work. We need to embrace the potential that neurodiversity can offer. And we need to provide the guidance and tools to ensure our teams feel they can achieve the outcome, through supporting the breadth and depth of problem solving. 

With my technology and service management background, I’ve spent considerable time problem managing (some may say fire fighting!). The idea of critical technical systems being unavailable for any amount of time within an organisation is frightening and nobody wants it. It’s why we have the nuanced ‘five nines’ uptime metric to deliver against. Within the storm of a major incident, you have clients breathing down your neck, asking for updates and time to recovery. Your teams work long difficult shifts, and within the melee of it all, you end up wasting time and effort resolving part of the system that isn’t the actual root cause.  

Ineffective root cause analysis is expensive. So tools and techniques to develop problem solving are important. My go-to, is based on Six Sigma, and Five Whys. A problem is presented to you, and in order to establish the root cause, you ask the question ‘Why?’, five times. We used this as the basis for one of our meeting break out exercises. Each table was asked to write a statement for a real world problem, handing it to the table next to them for solution generation. I was hugely moved when two of the seven tables identified their problem as being related to a lack of diversity in the gaming industry. Our FF mission is to ‘inspire and enable human creativity’ driving outcomes for all to thrive. The challenge is real. The Five Whys, all came back to human opinion as the root cause. And this is not something we can solve ourselves. But we can most certainly drive the right outcomes through our own action, building equitable solutions.  

And these solutions will develop. They will develop by ensuring my teams feel empowered to make those decisions, and do the right thing. Through encouraging the freedom of thought, spending time using divergent thinking, thinking outside the box and getting creative. Cutting their own path, being courageous, removing boundaries and innovating. And then convergent thinking to bring ideas back to how to generate the biggest shared impact and outcome. 

So as I reflect on the week’s events, the key takeaway I hope FF teams heard and future teams learn, is to be confident in yourself, be courageous in your thoughts and feel empowered to drive outcomes. Our current and future leaders need to recognise the importance of operating with true clarity on intent and impact, encouraging the outcome mindset. And I remind myself that outcome alignment, the shared goal and a sense of personal belonging  and contribution has the potential to deliver huge value to our teams but also the clients, creators, consumers and audiences we serve.

Because, I am constantly reminded:

‘We are what we do’.