BREAK THE MOLD™ Newsletter // Articles from Nichols Cauley CEO, Alan Whitman, detailing the pathway to scaling and challenging professional services leaders to think differently to enable sustainable growth.

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Progress Is Supposed to Be Hard

We were reviewing an acquisition opportunity as a leadership team, and one by one, opinions on the opportunity were shared.

They sounded something like:

“It sounds great, but we don’t have…”

“We can’t do…”

“Oh, and another thing, what about…”

The objections were flying on all the reasons we couldn’t or shouldn’t pursue the opportunity. I felt like I was losing momentum in the room and we were settling for familiar, comfortable answers. Then, one of the leaders chimed in:

“Alan, this would be really hard.”

Bullseye.

Now, to some, that remark might be a white flag. A signal to drop the conversation, and pivot.

Not for me.

When I hear that something will be hard, I know we’re on the right track. Somewhere along the way, “this is going to be hard” turned into a reason not to do something. But why should that be the case? Because from my experience, everything worth having sits on the other side of battling through the hard stuff to figure it out.

Being hard is just a sign that we’re on the right track to doing something different, something that breaks the mold. And that’s worth pursuing.

Now the key is how to effectively navigate the conversation in order to turn “this is going to be hard” into an actionable path forward, not an immovable roadblock.

Hard is information, not a verdict.

Change is hard and it takes time. Progress is hard and it takes time. Business is hard! That’s okay.

We shouldn’t treat hard things as a warning or reason to stop, saying something is hard is simply a description of the terrain that sits between us and a better future state.

If something is genuinely easy, it’s typically because it’s already a clear, proven path. It’s familiar and comfortable. Someone (probably even us) has already done it.

Abstract is hard. New is hard. Different is hard.

Letting new ideas and initiatives die on the vine because they looked hard is a lost opportunity.

As leaders, our job is to help our people lean into hard things and guide them down the path in an effective manner.

The question that converts hard things into a path forward.

I’ve learned that the questions we ask as leaders are the clearest indicator of the results we’ll produce.

“Can we do this?” gets you a yes or a no. “Is this possible?” gets you a shrug or a confused look. Those are binary questions, and they let everybody answer out of the roadblocks and barriers they can already see.

So I don’t ask those questions. I ask a different one.

“What will it take?” cannot be answered with a no.

It makes people define and map out a solution instead of hiding behind convention, and it turns an opinion into an estimate. It also changes the assignment because you are no longer asking the room to vote on whether something can happen. You are asking them to collectively think about what it will take to accomplish it.

How to guide a “What will it take?” conversation.

Now, I recognize that the effectiveness of this approach lies much in the leader’s ability to navigate the conversation. So here’s a simple process I’ve found to be effective to ensure these WWIT conversations are productive.

1. Ask the question, and mean it.
Words and tone matter, and people can hear the difference between a real question and a rhetorical one. This isn’t rhetorical. Hold people to answering it.

2. Take the commitment off the table.
Make it clear that the goal is to define what it’s going to take, and then we’ll decide whether we want to do it or not. The process of defining what it will take isn’t a final decision and no one is being held to what they say during this process.

3. Acknowledge the barriers, then set them aside.
There will be roadblocks, they are real, and people need to hear you say so. I’ll say something like: “I know there are roadblocks, AND what will it take to get it done?” Then work the thing as though you were building it from scratch.

4. Push deeper. Don’t take the first answer.
You will hear something like “we just have to do it,” or we need to make more calls, bill more hours, put in more effort. That’s not an answer.

If that approach produced your current results, why would more of it produce different ones? Ask what is actually standing in the way of the action, and what is causing the inaction. You need more clear answers.

5. Land on a defined end point.
Whatever it will take to accomplish what you’ve set out to define, name it. It might be money. It might be time. It might be headcount, or a system, or a person you don’t have yet. “A lot” is not an answer, and neither is “a while.” You are after something specific enough to act on. That’s the moment an idea moves from abstract to actionable.

6. Then start layering in the objectors.
Every bold idea meets resistance: fear, change, money, politics, or a desire to keep things exactly as they are. Start to layer them back into the process now and discuss how to overcome them. This can be tricky to navigate, but with a path clearly defined, I typically find that people are more creative in how to navigate barriers.

That’s your roadmap for facilitating the conversation. Will it always produce something you can act on immediately? No, it won’t. AND I’d suggest there’s still immense value in the exercise because it isn’t really about the solution you land on. It’s about the process you took to get there and what it uncovered.

Don’t let hard things derail you.

Most organizations treat “this is going to be hard” as an answer. Our job as leaders is to hear that same sentence as a signal. Hard usually means new, and new is where the differentiated results live.

But hearing the signal isn’t enough. You need a process to act on it, and that’s what those six steps are: a repeatable way to turn the thing everybody agrees is too hard into a defined path with a real price on it.

Run this WWIT process a few times and notice how the temperature in the room shifts. People stop bringing you reasons not to do something and start bringing you paths forward. As a leader, that’s immensely valuable.

So the next time your team tells you something is going to be hard, go find out what it will take.

With intention,

Alan Whitman
CEO at Nichols Cauley

ps… what’s something “hard” you’re working through in your organization right now? Would enjoy hearing from you, and we can all get better by discussing things with other leaders.

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