Operations is a Food Fight!

Three moves that modern data leaders can make to combat the chaos.

Let’s skip the dashboards for a minute and talk about something far messier.

Operations is a Food Fight

Ask anyone who’s run a process, from anything as simple as a family picnic to a multinational corporation and they’ll tell you the same thing. “It’s chaos!”

If you don’t believe me, here’s a test. The next time you’re with more than two people, ask this question: “Is it cold or hot in here?”

I asked this at church once while adjusting the thermostat. The responses struck me by how contradictory they were yet completely convinced of their accuracy.

That’s the reality of group dynamics. Not just disagreement, but confident disagreement.

So what’s a Modern Data Leader to do? Start by accepting it. Recognize that you have a hard enough time controlling and disciplining yourself. The challenge is so much greater when leading a team. Everyone has ideas. And everyone believes they are right.

Here are three methods to help you stay clean in the midst of the foodfight.

• Acceptance
• Consistency
• Timing

Acceptance

We’ll start with the hardest one first. Accepting the chaos. Chaos comes in multiple forms. Unpredictability, shifting tempo, and outright illogic. All of them force us to recognize a simple truth. We are not in control. We can influence, we can persuade. We can create conditions where less chaos is possible.

But we are not in control.

No one can “make” anyone else do, feel, or say anything. This can be a very threatening thought. In my mind, the “If, Then” machine starts running (but my wife also says I’m a robot, so your mileage may vary).

Accept that (mostly) you can control your thoughts, words, and actions. So in the middle of the food fight, you have a choice: you can throw more food or start cleaning up.

Consistency

Since our agency ends with ourselves, the best thing we can do is be consistent. This doesn’t mean being a stick in the mud. Or unchanging in how we think. Living and working in chaos demands that we remain agile and flexible.

The consistency Modern Data Leaders employ is not rigidity, but reliability in their approach and communication.

I was watching this documentary about the Battle of Fallujah during the Iraq War. It followed the story of a group of US Marines as they sought to capture Fallujah. The chaos was everywhere and deadly.

What struck me was the approach of Col. Gilbert Juarez in the midst of chaos. In some of the worst moments, after trusted leaders of the unit were killed, he acknowledged the weight of everyone’s loss. He told his troops to take a moment to grieve. But then he got back to his message. “We have a job to do. We still have other soldiers out there. Let’s get the job done.”

What stood out to me was that he didn’t scold them for having feelings. He acknowledged the effect of the lethal chaos, while getting them back on the mission and their goal. One of his soldiers even acknowledged that he had no idea what the Colonel had said, but it was how he said it that had re-focused him on the mission.

Of course, war and the work world are not the same, but the lessons still hold.

Timing

The timing of your leadership matters. You can say all the right things, but if it’s at an inopportune time, it can get lost in the noise.

Modern Data Leaders are the ones who have the patience to hold their tongue. They wait for the ideal strategic moment to share their insight. At Action, we do our best to embody the principle of “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”

That means waiting until your team is ready to hear you. Waiting for people to tire themselves out doing things “the wrong way,” so that your message will resonate and have a better chance of changing their behavior.

Timing is the last piece. Waiting for the right moment to speak and act. It’s a form of leverage. You’re patient enough to wait for the moment where it will have the greatest possible impact.

Modern Data Leaders act. They don’t spend their time telling people how things should run. They wait for the right moment and then they move.

Till next time.

Shaun

Shaun Davis, your personal data therapist, understands your unique challenges and helps you navigate through the data maze. With keen insight, he discerns the signal from the noise, tenaciously finding the right solutions to guide you through the ever-growing data landscape. Shaun has partnered for 10 years with top data teams to turn their data into profitable and efficiency hunting action. Learn more about Shaun.