Quick Fixes: How to adopt a strategic mindset, lose that chip on your shoulder, and know when to walk away (Transcript)

Please note the following transcript may not exactly match the final audio, as minor edits or adjustments could be made during production.

Anne Morriss: Hello everyone. Welcome back to Fixable from the TED Audio Collective. I'm your host, Anne Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach. 

Frances Frei: And I'm your co-host, Frances Frei. I'm a Harvard Business School professor, and I'm Anne's wife. 

Anne Morriss: Frances, today we're indulging our favorite kind of episode, the Quick Fix.

Frances Frei: Oh, I know that we say every type is our favorite type, but this one really is our favorite type. 

Anne Morriss: In part because, you know, this is a show where we believe meaningful change can happen fast. And in the spirit of show, not just tell, we're gonna try to prove it today by quickly answering three questions we've received from you, our amazing listeners.

Frances Frei: What do you have for us today? 

Anne Morriss: Our show today is all about controlling what we actually can control, which is our own mindset and behavior. So we're gonna talk about how to level up mentally to lead an organization, how to really move on from conflict once it's resolved, and how to know when it's time to walk away from something.

Frances Frei: We're gonna do all that in 30 minutes? 

Anne Morriss: That's our objective.

All right, Frances. Our first voicemail is from a caller who is a senior leader within her organization. She's doing lots of things to gain the skills to lead an enterprise: getting her MBA, doing executive coaching, but she also wants to learn how to prepare mentally for being in charge of an entire organization.

So let's listen to our voicemail. 

Caller #1: Hi, Frances and Anne. I currently manage and oversee a prospect management team. My problem is my mindset. I wanna level up my thinking from being in the weeds as a manager to adopting a broader perspective as a senior leader within the organization. What key areas should I focus on? What questions should I be asking? What type of mindset shift should mid-level managers make for career growth? 

Frances Frei: What I appreciate about it is the intentionality that she wants to bring to it, which makes me very optimistic. And also, it is a big question of when do you pay attention to the detail and when do you helicopter up?

Anne Morriss: Yeah. 

Frances Frei: And go to the big picture? And how do you traverse going back and forth? 

Anne Morriss: I think the easier place to start in this journey to enterprise leadership is to really think about strategy, because she's moving from. Inheriting a strategy that another team probably designed to now thinking about, okay, how do I really interpret this for my team and then one day, design a strategy myself? 

Frances Frei: I really like that because you should understand the strategy really well before you do any culture work. Yes. 

Anne Morriss: Let's spend, um, a minute on this question of strategy because I feel like it is a word that can mean nothing and everything inside an organization.

Michael Porter, who's considered the godfather of modern strategy, defined it as deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value. Right? And so, you teach a beautiful class called Better, Simpler Strategy. 

Frances Frei: Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: How do you think about it in the kind of, the real world of building organizations?

Frances Frei: So strategy describes how we're gonna win. And what Michael Porter said there, he put a couple of words that were important, is that if I win the same way you win, we're gonna race to the bottom and just charge, just compete with each other on price.

Anne Morriss: Mm. Right. 

Frances Frei: A good strategy is one where I'm making a set of decisions that you are not making.

So your dance space, my dance space. But if we're both doing the same thing, it's hard. So you wanna make a unique set of choices, and then what are the choices I should make? Ones that are based on my unique strengths. And what are the choices you should make? The ones that are based on your unique strengths and your unique insights.

So strategy is a plan to win, hopefully with some differentiation so that other people can get paid. 

Anne Morriss: So we can get paid. And other people can't just steal your plan. 

Frances Frei: Exactly. 

Anne Morriss: Okay. So let's bring this back to our caller. Let's say she's mid to senior in the organization and has been given a plan to execute on that someone else probably decided was a strategic use of her time. I think where my head goes on this is inviting her to get very curious about how this plan that she has in some way inherited is linked to the strategy of the entire organization. 

Frances Frei: So I want her team to know what's our plan to win? If I look back at what I did today, how do I know I made a good set of decisions or a bad set of decisions?

That's our understanding of strategy. Like you went after these customers, you didn't do this, you used this as a high priority. This is a low priority. Like all of that stuff is dictated by the strategy, but it's not gonna be written in any book. That's down to the unique unit of analysis of you. Right? So we need people to help us figure it out.

Anne Morriss: And I feel like the work and the mindset of an enterprise leader is, it is my responsibility to make these links clear to my team. And so if she can find the language to describe it in a way that's accessible to the people on her team and then make it discussable, then she's starting to build the real muscles of a true senior leader inside this organization.

Frances Frei: What senior leaders do is they help people interpret strategy for their specific context. That's what they do in their presence. In their absence, they have created a self-fulfilling prophecy so that people are constantly thinking, well, what would the strategy guide me to do here? Because some things I'm doing today, it's super clear. I know I should do this. I know I shouldn't do that, but a new prospect calls. Is this one that I should go hard at or go easy? I've never seen this kind of prospect before. That's where it's gonna be all of my understanding of the strategy of whether or not that's the one I'm gonna do. And so I want the team to be able to operate in our absence and come to us for help, versus I'm there with a clipboard guiding them on what they should do with each one.

Anne Morriss: I think you make a powerful point, and this is where we've been going in this answer, of the distinction between doing that work in your presence and in your absence. I'm thinking of our friend Jan. 

Frances Frei: Jan Carlson is perhaps my favorite CEO. He was the head of uh, Scandinavian Airlines back in the early 1980s and had just a storied turnaround. 

Anne Morriss: Which is still one of the great turnarounds of, of modern business history. What he ended up doing was creating this very powerful, essentially comic book, right? Featuring a sad plane that then by the end of the story, was a happy plane. Was a happy plane that really captured the strategy in a way that anybody could understand, even if he wasn't in the front of the room, to your point, with a clipboard explaining how it was all gonna work. 

Frances Frei: One of the reasons that those stories are so powerful is that, you know, the airline industry, you can imagine every document that was written about strategy before Jan Carlson came by with his comic book. Oh, heavily regulated. Can you just see all the dust collecting?

Anne Morriss: Oh, my, my throat closes at like the, the manuals on the shelf, the deck that, like a thousand pages deck, consultants like us, you know, oh, put together. 

Frances Frei: We don't make decks for exactly this reason, but I do think that you can imagine like all of this heavy work. And what he did is thought, what do people need to know to guide their behavior? And so he made a 20 page comic book that gave people enough understanding of the context so that they would know what to do in new circumstances. And so what I want her to think about is what of the context does your team need to know so that when a new situation arises, you understand it well enough.

So a big thing that, that Jan Carlson did is it helped people know what's a good customer, what's a bad customer? What kind of services are we gonna provide? What kind of services are we not going to provide?

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. 

Frances Frei: These are all strategic decisions. How do we know our decisions are aligned with what's going on in the company?

I need to understand the company well enough to do it, and for me to understand the company well enough, I think we should all take Jan Carlson's lead, which is, do you have the equivalent of a 20 frame comic book? So that's the mindset I would be getting at, is how do I set the context in the minds of my employees so that when I'm not there, they know what to do?

Anne Morriss: Okay, Frances, our next question is about how to show up after a conflict has been resolved. So let's listen to this voicemail. 

Caller #2: The question I have about a challenge at work is around how do you get over it when you have just like a chip on your shoulder about someone or you went through a conflict that is objectively resolved, but you still just can't get past whatever is bothering you about this person or this, this issue such that it really affects your work and you know that you could be doing things a lot better if you could just let the dang thing go, but you can't.

Anne Morriss: Oh, I'm gonna let you kick us off on this one, Frances. 

Frances Frei: Well, what I love about this question is it's got the, both the professional and the personal, and I'm, I'm very good at this professionally. I'm terrible about this personally, I have not let go some of the things my siblings did to me when I was 10, but I am quite good at doing it professionally.

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. 

Frances Frei: So, and I hadn't thought about it before this, so let me, let me see if I can get there. You often say that leadership is the act of imperfect humans leading imperfect humans. And I think the first thing to realize is that I'm not perfect and I have no expectation of perfection of someone else, which means other people are gonna make mistakes.

So if we were having conflict, either somebody else did something wrong or I did something wrong and there was a tone about it. 

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. 

Frances Frei: That there was an infraction of that. Well, if I think you should be perfect, I'm never gonna let it go. 

Anne Morriss: Right. 

Frances Frei: But if I understand that you should be as imperfect as, for example, I am, and I sure don't wanna be judged by all of my worst behaviors. And I think the act of forgiveness, and you don't even have to tell people you're forgiving them, but the act of forgiveness is so empowering. And so somebody did something that was justifiably hurtful to me. Am I going to be tense every time I see them, that is, they get all the power, or am I going to forgive them for the action or the tone so that I get to be the best version of me? So you see how powerful forgiveness is? And so I forgive people without ever having spoken to them, and it just allows me to metabolize the holding onto it. It is powerful to me to forgive others. 

Anne Morriss: Mm. I love that as a banner for this. I'll tell you where my head went.

Frances Frei: I feel like you're very good at this personally and professionally. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. I don't know. I'm, I just was just really moved by what you said. I don't know how good I am. I think you're, you're my new hero in this one. I think where my head went first, is this conflict really resolved? If, if she can't get past it, is there something here that still needs to be cleaned up? And when we think about getting better at this, one, I think you gotta forgive yourself for not being great. Oh, I, I see a lot of people beating themselves up for not being comfortable with conflict.

It's a fundamental biological competitive advantage to get along with people. Our ancestors were very good at it. That's why we're all walking around this planet. So it is built, literally built in our genes to, it's part of our evolution to be uncomfortable with conflict. And so that's not necessarily a signal that anything is profoundly wrong when we start feeling that discomfort.

So I love, there are lots of great tools out there to get better at this. I love the original scholarship on this, a book called Crucial Conversations. I don't know what edition we're on. I think there's just terrific, there's terrific advice, frameworks, examples, just practical ways forward that clean up any kind of conflict in including conflict that is somehow lingering.

So I think that is one pathway here. And the advice in this book and in in many others is listen actively, own your part in the outcome here, apologize if you need to. I think these are hard earned truths that I think resonate even years after this work was done. But if this conflict is truly resolved, like because if where we are in the storyline is that she did all this work, they got to a reasonable resolution, it's time to move on and she's still getting stuck.

So if that's where we are, I think there is an invitation embedded in this experience to get really curious about you and your own wiring and your own experience. Because often what's happening in situations like this is that whatever traits or behaviors that are triggering in this other person are often traits and behaviors within ourselves that we haven't forgiven ourselves for.

And I, I'm gonna recommend my favorite book, which you have still accused me of never reading. 

Frances Frei: Dark Side of the Light Chasers? Oh my gosh, oh my gosh people, I'm not, I've never seen her read it. That's all I can say. I'm, I've never seen her read it. 

Anne Morriss: I, I'm about to save you thousands of dollars of therapy. I actually checked on Amazon how, like you can get a used copy for $8.99. And what Ms.. Debbie Ford offers in this book is lots of really fun exercises to get in touch with what she calls her shadow side. But if you've done the work, the conflict's over and you are still getting stuck, the chance that this is an inside job is not low.

Frances Frei: It's a hundred percent. It's all you. And stop tormenting the other person. Do all of this work with your shadow side and all of that without bothering the other person. 'Cause it's resolved with them. You are the problem, it's you. 

Anne Morriss: But that's very hard to do on our own. In my experience, you gotta bring some third party into the mix.

Frances Frei: Yes. But not the person that you had the conflict with. 

Anne Morriss: No, but you gotta do some work around what is this thing that is not totally resolved in you. So that's where I would push this caller. Yeah. Uh, I think the power of forgiveness, of course. Absolutely. And if there's still work to do, go do that work. But if you, if you do both of those things and you're still stuck, then $8.99 baby, is gonna, is gonna get you very far down the path. 

Frances Frei: Dark Side of the Light Chasers.

Anne Morriss: All right. Our final question is an email from a listener who wants to know when it's time to walk away. 

Frances Frei: Oh.

Anne Morriss: So our listener writes, I started a small company a few years ago. The business hasn't been as successful as I had hoped, and running a company has been different than I expected. There are parts I enjoy, but others that I don't. I'm wondering how you know when it's time to call it quits. 

Frances Frei: Right now. Right now it's time. Now the bigger question is how do I know that? I'm pretty sure I'm right. But listen, to have your own business, you have to wanna do it, and be so energized by doing it, even despite mounting odds against you. So if there are some odds against you and you're already second guessing it, it's just so much easier to work with someone else to go do something somewhere else.

So that's why I was joking, I was playfully doing that. But, but in general, how do we know when it's time to call it quits? Because it's a irreversible decision, like you're gonna close the company or you're gonna sell the company, you want to make sure, so exhaust yourself that it isn't explanation 1, 2, 3, or four, right? You haven't had a vacation, you're not working out. You are like, just make sure that it's not the other things. But if this really is the dissatisfaction with the status quo and you don't feel like you can change the status quo, so you have to endure? Oh, you get one precious life on this planet, and I would rather you not spend it enduring something that you know you're not gonna like.

Anne Morriss: Yeah, I, I feel like the ghost of Peter Drucker is haunting this episode, but he said some variation of we often overestimate what we can accomplish in a year, but we underestimate what we can accomplish in five years. So I have lots of follow-up questions that we can't ask 'cause this caller is not with us, but I am interested in his expectations. Right? So where had he hoped to be by this point? But even what had he hoped to achieve by starting this organization? Not just financially, but what was the payoff, small P, that he was hoping for his life? Was it, you know, meaning or engagement? Freedom? And I, I would push him to actually do an analysis that doesn't just take into account the surface level success of the organization, but also what he came to do by building his own business. So I think there, regardless of what happened with this company as a going concern, there's gonna be a ton of learning for him about who he is, what he wants, what the next step may be.

Yes, to your point, he has one wild and precious life. And the analysis has to include what's the opportunity? 

Frances Frei: The opportunity cost. Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. What, what else might he go do? But let's do, uh, an honest and thoughtful analysis of the difference between Day Zero and where he is now in terms of his understanding of himself, of his goals, of his dreams of this industry, of the opportunity itself.

I think Kanter's Law, everything feels like a failure in the middle. Can we really push on what failure and success means for this guy individually before making a decision about his next move? 

Frances Frei: And for folks out there that have a small business and you're not at this point yet, it's worth it to do the work of what are the signposts that are gonna be useful indicators for you? So these are my objective, I think you said in one year and five years. But when should I be concerned? Having a proactive, uh, view of it might help my just waking up one day and feeling it. So I like that idea of having a deep sense of what does progress really look like? 

Anne Morriss: And on a whole bunch of different levels. 

Frances Frei: A whole bunch. Not just financial. 

Anne Morriss: He might have learned a ton about himself, which is why he's getting restless, even though the business is far away from his revenue goals. And I think when he does this personal analysis over how he spent this time building this company, let's get the full calculus. 

Frances Frei: If you're restless, that's actually a really good sign, 'cause it's like an active, agitated state versus like subdued and just uninterested. That's a very bad sign. Right? But restless is, uh, like active and, and maybe I can go metabolize something else. I got from the tone of the, and it's just a few, it's just a few sentences, but "the business hasn't been as successful as I had hoped. Running a company has been different than I expected." It feels very generic and it isn't just popping with passion. 

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. 

Frances Frei: So my, what I would say to this listener and to others is that you are losing the active passion is a very important signal. A very important signal. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. And I love your use of the word signal because if, these are very hard moments. I had to shut down a business that I started. It's, it's a wrenching decision, and if you step back and just look at your own emotions as data, your own experience of expectation versus reality, if you can create a little bit of oxygen around this moment, you're gonna be able to think more clearly about the next steps.

Our friend Luvvie Ajayi Jones talks about moving towards energy. 

Frances Frei: Love that phrase. 

Anne Morriss: And I think that would be our advice for this caller is to trust where you are finding energy and not finding energy in your life and as you look back on this experience, I think that's gonna be among the most interesting and useful data to you.

Frances Frei: And restless is energetic, like that's an active state. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. 

Frances Frei: Which just might mean you have to pivot. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. 

Frances Frei: Whereas lethargic is a much different signal that it might be time to go somewhere else. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. If you're consistently dreading going into the office and solving the problems you need to solve to make this business work, that's very important information.

Frances Frei: Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: Thanks for listening, everyone. Your participation helps us make great episodes like this. Please keep reaching out to us directly. If you wanna figure out your workplace problems together, send us a message, email us, call us, text us. You can reach us at fixable@ted.com or 234-FIXABLE. That's 234-349-2253. 

Frances Frei: And we learn from every one of your messages, so keep sending them in.

Anne Morriss: Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective and Pushkin Industries. It's hosted by me, Anne Morriss.

Frances Frei: And me, Frances Frei. 

Anne Morriss: This episode was produced by Rahima Nasa from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Cheng, Daniella Balarezo and Roxanne Hai Lash. 

Frances Frei: And our show was mixed by Louis at Story Yard.