The shift from reactive to creative leadership is a shift away from stuck-ness, overwhelm and powerlessness toward agency. Core to the shift is a refocus of our attention from what we don’t want to what we do want. And then what?
This is a really important question because it gets to the heart of creative leadership—open, curious, and grounded—yet it’s often where things go off the rails.
What v. How
Once we know the “what”, the next question we usually ask is, “How will we do it?” This is not a bad question, it’s just not where we want to start because lots of good ideas, intentions and goals go south when we collapse what we want with how we’ll do it too quickly. Here’s why:
HOW might get us what we’ve already got.
Robert Fritz says when we operate from what we already know, based on past experiences, assumptions, judgements, interpretations and hunches, forward progress slows or stops. You’ve likely heard how this goes:
We’ve already tried that and it didn’t work
Doing X will require Y and Y is impossible so we can’t do X
If I’m going to go for the role, I’ll have to work 24/7 and I can’t do that
That’s a great idea but how will we afford it? Implement it? Sell it? Liv with it? Yadda yadda yadda
Asking how out the gate is a limitation when we need expansion.
HOW can derail enthusiasm.
When we go straight to how we get bogged down by real and imagined constraints: “So and so is the worst offender AND he’s the top producer” or “Gossip and blame are just part of this culture, so what’s the point?” How many times have you felt the air go out of the room when the conversation takes these turns? It’s because the limiting thoughts around how we’ll do something sabotage the process and before we know it, we’ve retreated from our intention or lost sight of it before we’re out the gate.
HOW gets us thinking about solutions too soon.
Faced with a challenge or goal, leaders and teams often default to “How will we solve/address it?” Again, not a bad question, but if the conversation kicks off with debating solutions, several things can happen: the loudest voices get the most airtime, solutions may be half-baked and false narratives may bubble up because the what wasn’t fully explored.
This happened with a team I was on a while back. We wanted more alignment and accountability (our what). We sat around a conference table and started firing off solutions: a retreat, firing someone, hiring someone, creating a dashboard, etc. We sort of spun out, losing energy and focus. Our intention started to feel impossible because we went too quickly to how and never quite created the kind of team culture we all said we wanted.
The Creative Process
So rather than following What with How, Robert Fritz suggests we follow the creative process which is exactly how creative leadership (& living) happens. The process is just three simple steps that move us from where we are to what we want. Funnily, none of the steps actually address how:
Step 1: State what you want (as an outcome/result)
X dollars in revenue
Team alignment and accountability
Effective (& fewer) meetings
Step 2: Identify what currently exists
This is a clear-eyed, objective, fact-based assessment of your current state; the more you list the better your eventual solutions will be
Don’t include assumptions, hunches or subjective measures
The tension created between what you want and what exists is the engine for this process
Step 3: Determine next steps based on where the facts lead you
Based on the facts, you start to “see” what needs to happen next and the work of figuring out what needs to happen begins
Make no mistake, the process can be messy and it takes effort to agree on the priorities and ownership, but you’re not debating at the level of opinions and hunches which goes nowhere. In fact, on teams I’ve worked with who embrace the Creative Process, there may be heated dialog but there’s energy, collaboration and real progress. Even fun.
The tension between our future desired state and our current state is exactly the kind of tension we want to invite in, not the dulled and defeated experience we have when how cuts to the front of the line.