The following is a guest post by Al Pittampalli of the Modern Meeting Standard and author of Read This Before Our Next Meeting.
Can you imagine each time you saw a police car, slowing down, stopping, and asking the officer, “Am I going too fast?” What a slow drive that would be. Luckily, we’ve created a traffic system which allows us to continue at our current speed, making it incumbent on the officer to pull us over when we’re going too fast.
One of the biggest time wasting activities in an organization is waiting for approval from someone else. All too often those sign-offs lie on the critical path, putting a screeching halt to your forward momentum.
Sometimes it’s for good reason, the opinion of the approver is valuable. Moving forward without it can be risky, sometimes reckless. But let’s be honest – that’s the exception. More often than we’d like to admit, approvals are an exercise in cover. The approval seeker wants to shirk responsibility and the approver wants to feel in control.
This kabuki dance kills speed, and enthusiasm.
The solution? A simple phrase: Unless I hear otherwise. Built into these magical words is an implicit declaration of autonomy, a bias towards action, and a presumption of trust.
“This web page is fully designed and ready to ship, Gladys. Unless I hear otherwise, I’m going to publish it tomorrow.”
Of course, unless I hear otherwise, is more than a phrase, it’s a culture. One that recognizes the importance of speed, even at the sacrifice of the inevitable mistakes, and yes – even failures.
In a world that’s moving faster than ever, we should all be testing the speed limit pretty regularly. See the true speed limit isn’t what’s on the sign. It’s the highest drivable speed at which you don’t get pulled over. But if you’ve never been pulled over, how do you know how fast you can really go?
Great post. I’ve been using ‘unless I hear otherwise’ for a long time and, at last, other people are also catching on. As you say, there are times when seeking approval is the right thing to do, but these are a lot less frequent than people believe. You have to take responsibility for your own work and actions and only seek approval when it’s critical / sensitive.
Thanks for the post – I hope more people adopt the principal and that, collectively, we all get a lot more things done.
Ady
@adycoles Thanks for reading, Ady.
I think the real barrier to this is insecure leadership – leadership that wants to justify their job by requiring that everything is filtered through them. But the “unless I hear otherwise” may be the key to still acknowledging their authority while moving along. That’s a great phrase to try out!
I’ve been using this phrase in Norwegian for a long time. I’ve been working at a University, and things can be really slow at times, so a phrase like this is very important to get anything done 🙂
Great advice.
— The approval seeker wants to shirk responsibility and the approver wants to feel in control.—
I strongly disagree with that sentence. I, like most other professionals, do not shirk responsibility. I love responsibility. The problem is bad bosses. Bad bosses who don’t allow employees to make mistakes and/or have responsibility.
But everyone who has a boss that chews you out if you take responsibility has learned th hard way to ask for permission. Because in the end, it is not worth damaging your career over.
It’s easy to blame the boss, Gerard. I’d argue, taking no risks because you don’t want to rock the boat, is way more damaging to your career.
@al.pittampalli I have encountered countless organizations where rocking the boat was and still is the best way to damage your own career. In the end, employees avoiding conflict will damage the organization, but hey, if that is the culture an organization creates, fear to rock the boat, that is what they get.
@CoachCharley Hey, check this user @walmartmarket
@productivesd Timo! How are you doing over there? 🙂 Best wishes!
@TMNinja Doing great, thanks for asking! What about you?
@productivesd Doing great! Very busy… no joke intended. 🙂 Under the weather but still kicking. 🙂