7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 19
I was in a business conversation today. I thought I was being clear. I gave what I believed were straightforward directives — here’s the problem, here’s what I need done, here are the actions to take.
One person on the call almost point-blank refused to accept the message.
After a lot of going around, I realized it wasn’t that my words were wrong. It was that their understanding of the problem was different from mine. The solution I was prescribing didn’t make sense because they were stopped by their own mental model of the issue — and I had never checked whether we were looking at the same thing.
That wasn’t their fault. It was mine.
Here’s what I should have done. Before I prescribed a solution, I should have started with the problem statement. Here’s the issue. Here’s what I understand about it. Here’s how I see the pieces fitting together. Does everyone in this room see it the same way?
If they did, we move forward. If they didn’t, I’d have the chance to adjust my framework before I tried to build on top of it.
Instead, I assumed everyone was already crystal clear on the problem. I skipped the foundation and went straight to the fix. And the fix made no sense to someone who was standing on different ground.
Once I walked it back — restated the problem, rebuilt the understanding, asked “is this correct?” — everyone agreed and we moved on. The solution was the same one I’d proposed at the start. It just needed the foundation underneath it.
That ten minutes of conflict resolution could have been two minutes of consensus building at the top.
David Willis 