EP 11 Making Fewer, Better Decisions: with Brian Duggan | Deep Work Out Loud
Brian
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Julie Harris Oliver: Welcome to Deep Work Out Loud, the thinking that fuels our life, our work, and our leadership. I'm Julie Harris Oliver. This is the podcast where I sit with another professional coach and we do some work around a single concept and idea, a piece of inspiration, something that we're chewing on in our coaching.
And if we're very lucky while we're talking about it, we might demonstrate what coaching might look and feel like for a couple minutes, but we'll see how it goes. It's all an experiment. With any luck, you'll leave with something that you can apply and use in your work or in your life, or both. Today I'm here with Brian Duggan.
Brian is a New York based executive leadership coach and OD consultant. Having worked with thousands of leaders across the globe, he's seen the gamut of organizational changes that leaders face, and during some of the most challenging times, he's also seen firsthand what it takes for leaders to rise to the occasion.
And how much those needs are changing with the world. He holds a PCC credential through the International Coaching Federation and is also [00:01:00] certified in the Hogan Leadership Assessment, Leadership Circle Profile, DISC assessment, brain-based coaching, immunity to change and knowledge management. Basically all the things.
One of the most important aspects of Brian's approach is that he's been both on the outside as a coach and on the inside running internal leadership and organizational development functions. His practice marries a global leadership perspective with a deep connection to organizational context and strategy, and is grounded in research-backed leadership models, science-backed coaching frameworks, gestalt psychology and Adult Development theory.
Welcome, Brian.
Brian Duggan: Thanks for having me. It's very clear how much of a nerd I am.
Julie Harris Oliver: Well, you do all the studying.
Brian Duggan: I love it.
Julie Harris Oliver: So why don't you tell us really quick, what was your journey into coaching?
Brian Duggan: So my journey into coaching was actually a little accidental. I went to school for theater, specifically for directing. Originally moved to New York City with intentions of working on Broadway, doing all [00:02:00] that. And I got here and quickly learned that while I loved the craft, the industry was not for me. Really just needed to figure out what that was about.
And so what I asked myself was, how can I basically do what I wanted to do every day as a director, but not in the theater? And the way that I was taught how to direct was really about asking questions. It was helping actors think more deeply or more broadly about their character, about the scene, about the world that they're trying to present. And so after a lot of research, I started to hear more and more about coaching. Now, this was probably 15, 16 years ago. And so coaching was definitely a profession. I would say probably not as prolific or widely known as it is today.
And so in my mind I thought, well, coaching is not a real job.
Julie Harris Oliver: That's not
Brian Duggan: can't do that, right?
That's not a thing. I also was younger and so I thought I don't have the right experience, the, the life [00:03:00] experience. But eventually I met a coach, his name is Mark Shaw. He sat down with me for an hour and without me realizing it coached me.
Julie Harris Oliver: Hmm.
Brian Duggan: At the end of the conversation, I felt so clear. I felt grounded, motivated, excited for whatever was to come. And he looks at me and says, that's coaching. At first, I didn't get what he meant, and I said, what do you, what do you mean? And he said, what, what I just did with you is coaching. I signed up that night for my first coaching certification, which was through, , ipec, the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching, which Mark was actually my trainer for that.
So the, the, the timing of all that worked out quite well. And from there I just kept really loving it. I loved having these deep, meaningful conversations with people. And throughout my career, I've been really fortunate to have been surrounded by some excellent coaches and consultants who just invested in me and kept helping me hone my [00:04:00] craft and, and discover new ways of coaching or new tools to support my coaching. And so that's how it happened.
Julie Harris Oliver: You were not the first theater person to come through these doors. , And I think about that a lot 'cause I, I also went to New York for acting training in my, in my Utes. , And there is something so similar, you know, when you're talking about, , really the human condition and what makes people tick and why people do the things they do.
There's so much overlap and it's, it's, so counterintuitive that there would be any, , correlation between that or that theater. People would be really great coaches.
But, , it has borne out time and time again.
Brian Duggan: You know, I think when you really look at the core skills of theater and coaching, there's a lot of overlap, right?
You are, as an actor, you benefit from deeply listening to your scene partner
and understanding what their objective is, understanding where they're coming from. I think also so much of coaching is taking [00:05:00] action towards a goal, and that is, that is acting, right?
You have your objective, you have your tactic, and so I think even just in that regard, it makes sense. And I think for me, the directing piece, like, yeah, I asked a lot of questions. As a director, I think. It also really lends into some of my OD work as well, because I have to think about larger systems. I have
to think about groupings of people, the environment that they're in, implications of things that might impact how a person shows that.
Things like lighting and sound. Yes. That's not gonna necessarily come into my OD work, practically speaking,
But I
Julie Harris Oliver: bigger
Brian Duggan: the sound, the kind of metaphorical sound that's coming into the room.
Right? And so I think they play really well together.
Julie Harris Oliver: they really do. And getting to the thing actually that's underneath the thing.
Brian Duggan: Hmm. Oh yeah.
Julie Harris Oliver: So what did you wanna talk about today?
Brian Duggan: So well maybe we'll get to the thing underneath the thing, but something that I [00:06:00] have been really focused on in my work is getting senior leaders to make fewer, better decisions. And why is that?
Julie Harris Oliver: Say more.
Brian Duggan: Yeah, so I work with a lot of folks who go from what I'll call one level of leadership to a higher level where maybe they were doing more, managing lots of contributing through one or two folks, and then all of a sudden the whole landscape changes and they now are responsible for dozens of people, huge portions of business, whole departments, even going into an executive position. And what I see a lot of folks doing at that level is just owning everything, making all of the decisions, having to be the person who says, do this, don't do that. And I get it. They're there because they're an expert. They also are probably making those decisions because it's comfortable. It's what they know. I have found [00:07:00] though, is that there are some other considerations that leaders can take when it comes to what their job is, which is being that really top down strategic leader. And so I've been working on what I'm calling a governance model, but it's also a dynamic leadership model, and there are a lot of different aspects to it. I don't necessarily want to go into the entire model just yet because I think for our conversation we can kind of focus on just an aspect of it.
Julie Harris Oliver: Okay. You're not gonna pull up graphics and charts.
Brian Duggan: No, not yet. Not
Julie Harris Oliver: Okay. Okay.
Brian Duggan: , So let me actually, I wanna share some, some research with you first.
So I think it was in 2019, McKinsey released a study around decision making. And this number is gonna sound a little scary. And it, and it is, which is senior leaders make anywhere between 70 and 80,000 decisions a year. It's a
lot. It's a lot of time. Now, what that research also showed [00:08:00] was that up to half of those decisions are either not important enough for them to be making or are low impact decisions.
Julie Harris Oliver: Makes sense.
Brian Duggan: Now, if you think about your average day, if you're a senior leader, my guess is you come in the morning, you've got back to back meetings. No time to think everyone's coming into your slack or to your teams and saying, what do I do about this? I have a fire Help me boss. And so the stances that leaders typically take is one of two things, and this is where the, the model starts to come in. The first is voting. Voting is when I make a clear decision, I say, let's take this action, or even I'll do it, right? So often I see senior leaders just taking the work back from their direct reports or even from colleagues because they'll just do it better and faster.
Julie Harris Oliver: easier.
Brian Duggan: So my argument is that leaders should absolutely be voting, right.
Voting tells us where we have responsibility and accountability and where [00:09:00] our authority should be. The challenge is so often we're working on those decisions that are not worth our time. Or worse, there's somebody else's job.
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Brian Duggan: And so my, a lot of my coaching work and work with leaders is helping them get really clear boundaries around the work that they should be focusing on. Now, the second stance that leaders will often take, and I'll say that this is better, but still not best. The second stance they'll often take is sharing their voice. Now a voice is when I don't have authority, I don't have the responsibility to get something done, but maybe I share feedback, I share an opinion, I give advice, voice.
When it comes to governance and roles and responsibilities, voice is really important when we need that expert opinion, right? So again, I'm not saying leaders, senior leaders especially, should not be using their voice. Here's the issue though, especially when [00:10:00] you're in a position of power, your voice is going to have weight. Sometimes your voice might even be perceived as a vote.
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Brian Duggan: You'll say, you know, I think it could be a good idea for us to consider doing this at some point, and then next week you find out your team started a work stream on this idea that you are not even fully baked on yourself yet. It happens all the time.
Julie Harris Oliver: A casual comment in the hallway. Suddenly there's a whole committee. Yeah.
Brian Duggan: positing after a book you've read. Now there's a work stream,
right.
We don't, we don't want all that wasted time and energy on that. The other thing I'll offer is that voice can sometimes stop really important discourse or what I'll call positive conflict from happening. And so I'll give you an example. Two folks on your team are working through a problem. They come to you and say, boss, what should we do? You're now the tiebreaker. You are taking away an opportunity for them to really figure out how to solve the problem for themselves,
and it's their job. So again, [00:11:00] I'm not saying don't cast your vote. I'm not saying don't use your voice. Really be intentional about where you're using it and if it's worth your time. So at this point, you might be wondering, okay, Brian, you keep telling us what we shouldn't be doing. What should we be doing instead? What I offer is that as you get higher up into leadership in any organization, your job becomes less and less about voting or voicing and more about vision.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yes.
Brian Duggan: That probably makes sense, right? And what I will offer is that it takes a lot of work because it's not just about setting vision, it's about resetting vision, resharing vision, reminding a vision. So much of your job is creating shared reality around where we're trying to go, what good looks like, and what your expectations are. So I'm just gonna pause there to just get your reactions or thoughts.
Julie Harris Oliver: I'm gonna say yes and to all of [00:12:00] that and working backwards, because having the clear and consistent and communicated vision. Is the thing that allows the other people to use their voice, make those decisions, do those things. And I would, I'm a bit, , and I don't know if stern is the right word, but I do think that when you get into that position of leadership, most of your job is helping develop the people underneath you, which you're not doing if you're just coming in and making all the decisions and weighing in on everything and taking that power away from them.
Brian Duggan: I'm so glad you mentioned that because for me, vision actually is, , a dynamic
stance. And what I mean by that is it can be broad organizational vision or it is vision into things like my performance. And so just like you said, part of a leader's job is to help the other person see themselves better
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah.
Brian Duggan: and see what could be, right?
There's the performance aspect. Hey, here's where I need you to. Change [00:13:00] or how, I'm noticing you're not showing up in the ways that are, are my expectations of you. That kind of performance based vision. Then there's developmental vision, which is, hey, direct report. I've noticed you've put a lot of effort this year into increasing your client engagement, supporting your clients to spend more, whatever the case might be. , I'm really impressed and I'm starting to wonder what might be next. When you think about what's available here in the organization, where we're headed, where do you see yourself? Where do you wanna grow into? That's also vision
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Brian Duggan: and what we're not saying. Voting. I think you should go this way, right? Or you're gonna go this way.
I'm promoting you here. That's what we're doing. That's voting. Voicing would say, I think you should go here. I think that would be a really good option. Vision is saying, where do you see yourself? How can I help you get there?
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah. And also I see something in you.
Brian Duggan: Yes,
Julie Harris Oliver: get where you wanna go and what a gift that is, and how rare does that, how rarely does that happen? [00:14:00] Like I can think of maybe three times in my life where a leader came to me and said that, and typically like that's big or small. That's a changing moment in your career.
Brian Duggan: Well, and I think that gets to how I think about leadership in general versus Managership
leadership is how I, IM, yeah. Leadership is how I impact other
people. That's it. And, and leadership is defined by who I am. It is not a set of skills like managing is. And when we lean into articulating or building vision with other people about their life, about their passions, what kind of impact can we have on people when we do that?
It's remarkable.
And you're right, I, I think a lot of leaders don't take that time. I'd even go as far to say that perhaps part of the reason why they don't do that is because they haven't done it for themselves, or someone hasn't done it for them.
Julie Harris Oliver: And I think a lot of times people don't realize how much [00:15:00] impact they have either way. I know John Amaechi was, , I recently heard him say something about your direct report, children know who you are and they know your name and they know how you behave during the day.
Brian Duggan: Hmm
Julie Harris Oliver: And I think people don't think about that at all.
They're just going along doing their job. But you know what? You are affecting your direct reports families by how you act.
Brian Duggan: You're, you're really helping me expand my own theory, which I really appreciate because as you're saying this, the word that came up for me was reputation.
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Brian Duggan: And so as a leader, part of my vision management is also my reputation.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah.
Brian Duggan: What is the vision that people have of me? And that's a scary question. Right?
And I can't tell you how often in coaching that is, where a lot of the conversation tends to, we have to start sort of thinking ourselves thinking about ourselves in a more objective [00:16:00] stance to be able to really come to terms with the reputation that we might have and and deciding how we might wanna change, or just because of that.
Julie Harris Oliver: Really how do you wanna show up? How do you wanna feel? How, what do you wanna do? How do you want people to experience you? It's a, it's such a simple question and it's so complex and requires a lot of thought and a lot of practice.
Brian Duggan: I think that might be the intention of. These stances is actually intention and creating some shared reality around how we're showing up. I feel compelled to share the other two stances, if
Julie Harris Oliver: Go. Go.
Brian Duggan: So I still think vision is like the one that I want leaders to start with.
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm.
Brian Duggan: Getting clear about where you have vote, right?
Where my responsibility is voice is where I share my expertise and opinion. And then there are two more stances and these two stances. When I have shared these stances with other leaders, I've noticed some reaction at first because it actually feels counterintuitive. So I wanna explain a little bit.
Once I [00:17:00] share the stances, the fourth stance is void. In other words, what are the things that are in the business that I don't actually need any vision on? That could be a distraction to me that might pull me away from important work. My belief, especially because of how complex work is today, that good matrixed organizations have pockets of intentional void. Let me give you some
examples. Your company is going through a merger and acquisition. There are some legal reasons why most of the folks in the organization can and should not know what is going on.
Julie Harris Oliver: Sure.
Brian Duggan: , Same thing with an employee relations case. If someone is in investigation for their privacy, for all the other people involved, there are a lot of good reasons why people shouldn't have vision into what's going on. What I'll also offer is, I think void helps to create more role clarity and boundaries for folks. And so let me give you maybe a less [00:18:00] obvious example.
Julie Harris Oliver: Okay.
Brian Duggan: A couple of organizations ago, I was not involved in our hiring process, but I did a lot of work in learning and development org development, and so I would often get pulled into our TA process, even if I wasn't necessarily a part of it, and I got asked to be a part of something in a time when I was really busy, and it was actually not even necessarily a typical recruiting process. It was an influencer marketing thing that happened to also involve a little bit of recruiting because they needed to find influencers. I got way too involved in this thing that I really have no business being a part of, and I'll offer that because of my experience, because of my values. I distracted their process because I started to offer my voice in a way. That really ruffled some feathers and it created some question marks for them that they probably didn't need to have.[00:19:00]
Julie Harris Oliver: Hmm.
Brian Duggan: So I think as leaders, intentional void is really important. Where are the pockets that you find your direct reports, your team getting distracted in? Where are they kind of putting their hands into work that they probably shouldn't be doing because it's taking away from their current work? I wanna offer some other additional thoughts though. Which is one, this is not to say that people should not engage in things outside of their role, right? We want people to engage in culture activities. We want people to experience new types of work. Maybe there's a cross-functional experience that gives them an opportunity to try something out.
So I'm not saying that we should void people from those experiences, oppor or opportunities, so long as it does not take from their work. The last thing I'll offer here with Void is that I find many organizations have what I like to call a leaky void, which is somehow everyone knows about this thing that's happening, but we [00:20:00] don't actually have all the detail and no one's really sure who's owning it or what's really happening. And then eventually we find out as a company or as a team, this is the thing that was happening in the background. This happens a lot when leaders confide in their direct reports or their peers about, I'm so frustrated that this thing is happening. So that's one reason why it happens. I also find in organizations where there are many single points of failure, it can also happen because sometimes we have to bring in an expert to share their voice or to cast a vote, but we can't give them all the details as to why we're asking them for these things. And so void is tricky. , I don't wanna suggest that it's an easy thing to manage. And the thing I didn't mention actually, to all these different stances that I think leaders can, can take is that it's dynamic.
There are periods of time where I need to avoid myself from work, and then because of the nature of the work, something changes.
I need to now have vision into that work, or I need to be providing [00:21:00] vision into that work because something shifted.
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Brian Duggan: And so our job is to also not hold the stances so hard and fast, but to be intentional before I share the fifth stance. Any
thoughts, reactions, or
Julie Harris Oliver: I do have thoughts and reaction to the questions my, 'cause I'm feel I'm feeling a little tightness in my chest when you talk about void. 'cause I'm thinking about it from, , I'm just putting myself in the position of when I was a leader in, in the business, la la, la. Knowing, knowing when I was doing it, my personality type of, I wanna know how every aspect of this business works so that I can have enough information to be super effective at my job.
And I don't have things coming at me that I didn't expect or not know the implications down the line of decisions that I'm making where I am. So I'm a little nervous when you talk about void, so
Brian Duggan: Hmm.
Julie Harris Oliver: I'm like, don't I need to know all the things?
Brian Duggan: you do. And so this is where void and vision are so interdependent on each other. Good void cannot exist without better vision.
Julie Harris Oliver: Say more.
Brian Duggan: For [00:22:00] me, good vision means I give the best context. To the right people at the right time.
This is sort of a knowledge management lens here. Some people think of this as internet. Some people think of this as weekly. All hands I will offer detail actually matters less than context and direction.
Julie Harris Oliver: Okay.
Brian Duggan: think the, the organizations that do vision really well remind people of strategic initiatives.
They give people the right context and content to pair with it, but they don't go into all of the INGLORIOUS details. I don't need to know all the different steps. I need to know why it matters. Likewise, I think it's rare and important when an organization can say, we know that you know, something is happening and we are not gonna talk about it because there are some important decisions that have not been made. If you hear about decisions being made. We get it. Rumor mills, travel fast [00:23:00] decisions have not been made. We want you to know, here's what we're thinking. Here's our decision making criteria, whatever the case might be. I think that there is power in disclosure, but naming what's happening in the moment. You don't have to give all the inglorious details.
You don't have to give the 15 page report, whatever it might be, and letting folks know what they can know and being really clear. This is what you can know. My belief is enough.
Julie Harris Oliver: It goes a long way to building trust. Yes, I can tell you things now. Yes. There are other things that I cannot tell you now that I may tell you later, or I may never tell you, but to, it's the opposite of gaslighting, right? Like, yes, you are not crazy. There's something going on and I cannot tell you about it for many reasons.
Here's what I can tell you.
Brian Duggan: And acknowledging that. It might be frustrating to hear that acknowledging or maybe even reminding them that this is not about them. This is about bigger things that are [00:24:00] other people's jobs. They need to figure this out. We will figure out what to do once we get the details. I think what I'll also offer here is my belief. If leaders spent their time making fewer, better decisions, in other words, voting less and voicing less, they could spend all of that same time. Then really focusing on vision, because to your point, when we have a really good map, we know where to go.
Most people are competent, capable, and motivated enough to do the right thing if they know what the right thing could look like.
Julie Harris Oliver: Right.
Brian Duggan: So it's not easy. I, I fully, and I would say that this doesn't work. None of this works if there isn't a really strong attention and energy put into vision.
Julie Harris Oliver: I'm sensing vision is the favorite.
Brian Duggan: For me, when you're a senior leader, [00:25:00] vision is what you are most responsible
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Brian Duggan: I think when it comes to cohesion and alignment, we are all responsible for knowing the vision and we are responsible for naming. When it doesn't make sense to us or when something isn't clear, that shared reality making is so important. I think when you get lower down into the organization, I would argue you should be spending more time voting. You should be spending more time voicing because your work and the complexity of it, and this is where we start to get into some of the other parts of the theory. When you get into lower levels of the organization, your work is more immediate, less complex.
Transactional voting is taking action. It is getting a piece of work done. It is making a decision. It is, even if you think about in a retail store I used to work for Apple years and years ago. One of the things that I loved about working in the retail store was how much autonomy they gave us as employees. [00:26:00] Our prerogative was to do the right thing, and they gave us pretty clear parameters and limits on what we could do with that thinking. And so if something happened with a customer and I wanted to give them a 10% discount, I wanted to give them a free phone case. I was told, do it. Don't come to me and ask, don't ask for permission. Do the right thing. And what that forced me to do was really measure how often am I doing this and. What are the decision making criteria that I'm going to use to determine, you know what, this person, they deserve a free case that's a $30 case. Well, maybe now it's probably closer to 45 or 50. This was quite a long time ago now, but they gave me autonomy and I could regularly moment to moment cast my vote in how I showed up in my work.
Julie Harris Oliver: And it sounds like you had very clear boundaries around what is my decision to make? Where are all the places that I can say yes.
Brian Duggan: Yep. And when [00:27:00] something became out of scope for me, either it was too big of an exception, I didn't know how to handle it, then my job became about using my voice. And so I was expected to come with my opinion. I'll give you an example again. At at Apple, I had a person who had gone through a really bad experience with the Genius Bar.
I think it's still called the Genius Bar, but for those that don't know, it is where you go to get your computer or your phone fixed. We messed up. I felt pretty confident about that. And the computer that they had brought in was so old that we couldn't necessarily send it away to get fixed because we didn't make the parts anymore. They had taken great care of their computer. The reason it stopped working was because of us.
So I said to the, the customer, I need you to give me about 10 minutes. I'm not gonna make any promises. I need to go see if I can do something. And that's all. All I'm actually gonna say in this moment. Can you give 10 minutes?
Yes. Go to my [00:28:00] boss. I explained the situation. Give him all the details. And I say, I think the right thing for us to do is to give this person a new computer. I can't do that.
Julie Harris Oliver: Right?
Brian Duggan: Would you be willing to. Take this take this idea and do this for the customer. And without hesitation, he said yes. Because I had done the work of articulating with my voice what the right thing was.
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Brian Duggan: And so I think that, I don't wanna say that any one stance is the one stance for us all to hold. Maybe I'm saying that a little bit with vision in terms of I have to, I have to know what good looks like. I have to know what our values are. I have to know what our goals are, and it's maybe more about how much time I spend in any one stance.
The further up in the organization I go, the voting that I do should really matter. It should be worth the amount of money that the organization is paying me.
Julie Harris Oliver: It's an expensive vote.
Brian Duggan: yes, if you're in a meeting and the only thing that they want from [00:29:00] you in that meeting is your presence. That might not be a good use of your time. In fact, there could be some indication that they don't feel like they have the authority to vote without your presence, and so I would offer, that could be something to investigate and maybe dig into. What would it take for them to be able to do this work without your physical presence there? Because you should be spending your time on the votes that matter, sharing your feedback and opinion on the level of work that you should be focused on higher up stuff. I'll give you another example of where I, I've seen a leader kind of voice down, this happens all the time. Someone says We are launching a new product, and someone very high up in the organization says, I don't like the color on that. I can
appreciate. Right. And you changed the whole thing, right? Six weeks of work scrapped. This happened actually at a couple organizations ago that I was at. They didn't like the color. The color that was presented was our [00:30:00] brand color, right? Our, our head of creative, our chief marketing officer, they had determined what our color identities were. The fact that this other person, who by the way, was just in a tangential executive position, all of a sudden created all this extra work because they didn't like the color. Now, the issue was the people that were presenting to this person didn't share that they had updated the brand identity and that this work had already happened. They were not looking for feedback on that.
Julie Harris Oliver: Right.
Brian Duggan: The feedback that they needed, they didn't get. So that was, that was on the folks that were coming to this executive. But also, dude, that's, that's not your voice to be sharing. That's not your job.
Julie Harris Oliver: Please tell me they had another conversation before they went back and rebranded.
Brian Duggan: I helped them figure out in their, so this is a, a whole different story, but basically their creative process was cumbersome and did not involve the right voices at the right time. And so, and they also weren't articulating what [00:31:00] voice they needed. So a lot of it was actually helping them look at their process and not this particular piece of work to, because this was a, a recurrent phenomena
Julie Harris Oliver: Hmm.
Brian Duggan: and we had to fix that.
I will offer, you know, part of the challenge here is that senior leaders like to vote and use their voice.
And so it actually kind of kept happening
in part because this senior leader had a really, really hard time not using their voice or vote on everything. They had a lot of social capital. They'd been at the organization for a while.
People respected and kind of feared them, and so they ended up creating tremendous churn and a lot of unnecessary work because they couldn't just focus on what their work was.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah, what's the thing that only they can do?
Brian Duggan: And that's a question that I want everybody in an organization and I'll, I'll offer, it's actually two questions. What's the only thing that I can do and what's the only thing I'm supposed to do? [00:32:00] Now, again, for folks that are trying to grow in their career, I wanna be really clear here. I'm not suggesting that you don't go out and try new things.
You don't work on projects that can help elevate you and give you visibility. Absolutely do that and be aware that that doesn't guarantee you anything and that you still have to attend to your job. At the end of the day, and I actually wanna offer a personal story here 'cause I think you're bringing up something that's not just for, for senior leaders. Part of the reason why I'm so interested in this work, just also acknowledging I haven't done the last dance, haven't forgotten that
Julie Harris Oliver: I haven't either. I wrote
Brian Duggan: part. Part of the reason why I'm so interested, interested in this work is that I have been too much of a go-getter in my life. I have been burned out. I have been really just steamrolled in work because I have tried to take on too much. And so for folks that are individual contributors, I want this to [00:33:00] be a liberating structure actually. I want you to be able to be more intentional and objective in where you put your time so that you don't attach expectations to something that you may not have a whole lot of control over. So, lemme give you an example. I was working for an organization that I loved deeply. Really great values, great culture, going through a lot of change. And I knew that wasn't necessarily accepting that, but things were sort of evolving. There was a time when this organization really celebrated and allowed for people taking on new areas of work and almost creating roles around it. And, and so I tried to do that. I tried to take on more work to show them that my idea was a needed idea for the business. And I'm not gonna go into too many details for, for the idea itself, but here's what matters. I kept taking on extra work and volunteering for things or saying [00:34:00] yes to what I'll call emerging responsibilities that were not part of my actual job because I wanted to prove myself. And so I started voting and voicing on things that were way out of scope.
And because I was putting so much energy and attention on these things, and Al also kind of keeping my job relatively, you know, good in terms of performance, I started getting expectations about what that would lead to.
Julie Harris Oliver: Hmm.
Brian Duggan: I started getting a different layer of vision because of conversations that I was having and really tried to convince people this is needed, but the vision that I was missing is what the business actually needed. While I thought very strongly in my own opinion that the business needed these ideas or these responsibilities, this new role, the fact is that there were things that I couldn't see that I was avoided from for good reason about how the business was changing.
Julie Harris Oliver: Hmm.
Brian Duggan: And so [00:35:00] it came to pass. That I got real, I got pissed.
I felt
betrayed. I felt like I was being let along and look, was I fair to feel those feelings? Sure. The reality was that the business was making a big change and my CEO couldn't tell me exactly what that change was. But what they did say was, I get that you really want this to happen. It's not gonna happen. Could they have handled it differently? A hundred percent. They could have told me months earlier because they knew also, it was very clear that I was gunning for this and that I made it clear to
everybody that I really wanted this new role. So they could have done better for sure, but it gave me such an important lesson on. How much I did not put a boundary around my time, around my energy, around what my responsibilities really were, and it created so much contempt and resent for an organization [00:36:00] that months earlier was the favorite organization I'd ever worked at in my life.
I, I can now look at this time with a different lens and know that I had my own part in this, and at the end of the day, it probably wasn't all that personal.
It wasn't really about me. I can see how I would do things differently now, and I can look back at this organization at that time with some of the same fondness that I had when I first started, and boy was it a hard lesson
and it was so hard.
Julie Harris Oliver: and how much time between when it happened and when you could have that kind of perspective on
Brian Duggan: Yeah, years. years.
a lot of intentional
development therapy. Really looking at myself objectively and truly. I don't know if I would have been able to see my experience if I had not come to this, this theory that I'm working on this, this leadership
stance. I'm not even sure what to call this theory just [00:37:00] yet, but I think it's given me a lot of healing actually, because I can now go, okay, before I say yes, how am I saying yes?
What is my stance? Am I making a decision? Am I sharing my opinion? Am I just trying to see what's going on, to see if it impacts or affects my work? Really putting intention behind my time before I do something.
Julie Harris Oliver: And it takes so much of the personal out of it, right?
Brian Duggan: W it takes the personal out of it. And ideally, and this is, you know, some of the, some of the, the hope of this is that it becomes a bit of a dialogic tool. And so when I say dialogic, what I mean is that we use this language to talk about how we work
together. And especially when we get higher into organizations, complexity increases the, the amount of time work takes increases. And so my stance will invariably change as the work happens. And so what that might look like is, [00:38:00] you know, I'm a senior, I'm a senior leader within a sales organization, and a product team is developing new products. I, I kind of wanna have some voice in that. I'm
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah, you do.
I've been in that chair. You wanna have a lot of voice about that?
Brian Duggan: Yeah.
And so, but as the sales leader, I have to understand when my voice is a part of it. And as the product leader, I have to understand when I need to bring in those sales leaders, my opinion is that early voice is better, right? That when we can get people's like, Hey, if we were to do this, would that be interesting?
How do you think your clients would react to that? What do you think are the unintended consequences of us releasing a new product? Because there are always unintended consequences,
right? And when we get that voice in earlier, we can also help people see, here's how I used your voice. That's another thing that I think is really important here.
If you're going to bring someone in for their voice, you have to [00:39:00] be willing to use it.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yes, and or if there's a reason not to use it, you need to tell them why.
Brian Duggan: Yes. Yes. What I, what I hold though, is if you are really not open for whatever reason, I'm not gonna judge you. Right. If you're not open to taking the voice in from others, make that clear from the get, I am telling you what I'm doing to give you some vision into this piece of work.
Julie Harris Oliver: I am finding, and tell me if you're seeing the same thing. , Generationally, gen Z has been told to share their voice and we wanna hear their voice, but then if you don't make decisions according to their voice without telling them why, here's what we thought about. Someone had tried that before and it costs $10 million, so we're not gonna do that again.
Brian Duggan: Yep.
Julie Harris Oliver: It's very easy to become disillusioned and they don't actually wanna hear my voice. This is bs. This is I think there, there has to be that conscious step.
Brian Duggan: So I wholly agree. I'm gonna add some seasoning
on top of it, which is, as you were [00:40:00] saying. About Gen ZI actually, I noticed, I transported myself back to being that young 20-year-old something. And I'm a millennial,
right? So not too much older, but older enough, older millennial, if you will. I had some of those same experiences. Maybe they weren't asking for my voice as much. Maybe that was the difference, right? But I'll offer two things here. I think in most decision making, it is easy for people to confuse and conflate vote and voice. In other words, if you're asking for my opinion in my head, I'm part of the decision making
process. I have a vote. And so when you don't take it, oh my God, I'm so offended.
Julie Harris Oliver: How
Brian Duggan: I had a vote on this.
How did you do this? And so being really clear, Hey, by the way, before you share your voice. I am voting on this, I will take what you say into consideration. I will try to, if it makes sense, incorporate it to what I'm [00:41:00] doing and I reserve the right, or I have the responsibility for the final decision. And so before you share your voice, you have to be okay with the fact that I might not take it
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Brian Duggan: and look it, this, this requires some real self-reflection. If sharing an opinion it not being taken really affects you, it might be a good reason to not share it. Right? Like if it's gonna, if it's gonna cause so much stir in your system,
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah. That that's your work and your discernment. Yeah.
Brian Duggan: The other thing that came up for me, and I think this actually ties into vision, is being really clear with people in what you want from their voice.
That could be decision making criteria. Here are the things that I need to consider as a part of this. We can't spend more than X dollars. It needs to increase productivity by, you know, Y value, whatever the case might be. Or the feedback that I'm looking for is how does this content land with you [00:42:00] emotionally? Or, I'm trying to be more concise. I'm worried that I'm too concise. Can you give me some information on how that's landing?
Julie Harris Oliver: Or what's an implication I might not be seeing right now?
Brian Duggan: Yep. If we get a real global lens of this, I think that this is one of the biggest misses that most engagement surveys have, that we don't give context, a head of engagement survey to say, here's what we're kind of curious about or what we're interested in, and then here's how we are going to use the information that you give us as part of engagement.
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Brian Duggan: I think that is one of the easiest traps organizations have is taking a lot of information, grabbing voice from people, and then doing nothing with it, or worse, ignoring the very clear messages for something else.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah.
Brian Duggan: And so this goes back to if you are not willing to take the voice, [00:43:00] then that might be a good reason to not ask for it. But no, and here's the thing I will say about, I'll say folks that are earlier on in their career, whether it's Gen Z, millennial, I think fundamentally people wanna matter. They wanna make an impact and they want their voices to be heard.
That is a human condition. When we are lower in an organization or more junior, there are less opportunities for that. And so I believe that there is a grabbing at that, right? That I want to, I wanna feel like I matter. I wanna feel like my voice is being heard.
Julie Harris Oliver: I wanna prove myself. I wanna show them.
Brian Duggan: And so the other thing I want to caution organizations away from is just not asking for anything
Julie Harris Oliver: Hmm.
Brian Duggan: because you'll just start getting it right if you don't find the appropriate places to bring them in to get their feedback, to get their insights, to have them vote on something.
'cause there also might be opportunities for more large scale complex voting with many people, even [00:44:00] lower in the organization. And, and multi voter decision making is really hard. So that's a whole separate conversation that we can get into.
Julie Harris Oliver: If I could just jump in here with a real life example, what, what came to mind? It's as if you are, once you're an adult and your parents or your in-laws are someone who likes to, has given you advice your entire life. And at this point you don't wanna hear it anymore. But you know what, you're gonna hear a lot less of that unsolicited advice if you actually ask their advice for very particular things,
Brian Duggan: Mm-hmm. Find the ways to involve them in the right way,
Julie Harris Oliver: right?
Brian Duggan: whatever their role is. And I, I really appreciate that you brought in family dynamics because my secret hope is that this idea of redefining how we see our role, which is maybe the, the crux of all of this is to be able to objectively look at my role and the dynamic nature of it, and choosing how I show up, that we [00:45:00] also look at the other roles in our life.
Partner, mother, citizen, every single thing that we do can, I believe, fall into one of these five stances. Is it a good time for us to talk about the fifth one?
Julie Harris Oliver: Yes.
Brian Duggan: Okay, so this one for me is the spiciest one. I think it will require me giving a little bit more context for the rest of the theory. So I'm gonna try to do that very quickly.
Julie Harris Oliver: Okay.
Brian Duggan: I'm actually just gonna give the rest of the theory, but it's gonna be super quick and it's, I'm gonna not go into all the different and glorious details. So when I think about the work that I'm trying to help people with, it is first being able to understand where I exist in an organization or a system within my role. And then how do I show up in my role? So where do I exist? How do I show up? That targeting system has three. Aspects to it. The first is level. Anyone who works in compensation can tell you about leveling [00:46:00] studies. They do all the different breakdowns, competency modeling uses levels. The idea is I should, at any given time, know at what level of the organization I exist.
It tells me the length of time. The work I typically spend on is the complexity of that work, how many people are impacted by that work, and how broadly it affects other parts of the organization. I don't want to say that there are only, you know, four or five levels in any organization. I think it's gonna depend on the organization, but I first determine my level of authority. It also helps me understand above and below, right, who is making decisions or sharing voice above me. Who am I'm responsible for, below me. Then I have my zones. These are my neighborhoods of work. And just like neighborhoods, sometimes they get rezoned. Right. So I might have a piece of work around client management, and then all of a sudden my client load gets a lot bigger.
That zone expands. I have to be [00:47:00] aware of how much space that's taking up in my regular work to understand if it's gotten more complex, if it's gotten more rigorous, or if it's gotten smaller, maybe, right? Maybe we've sunset some kind of virtual reality thing for ai, and so now I'm spending a lot less time on that artificial reality space, and so I would argue a good role should have three, maybe four zones that give me the general categories of my work, and then this is gonna hopefully make sense within my zones are lanes.
These are the physical pieces of work that I'm doing in a given
moment. Now, if you're lower in the organization, you might share a zone with many other people. so you all have your own different lanes of work happening at any given time. That helps us understand the density of work that is required and sometimes the density of work that might be over dense, right?
Where do we have too many people in a zone? Or where do we have too many people working in specific lanes of work? So all of that's a targeting [00:48:00] system. The reason why I wanna share this is, is for this last stance, because I think it needs to be informed by these kind of three targeting systems. The last stance is veto.
Julie Harris Oliver: I was trying to guess what the V word was gonna be. That encompassed all those. Okay.
Brian Duggan: So I'm curious, when you hear veto, what do you imagine that means?
Julie Harris Oliver: am I gonna say no to?
Brian Duggan: What am I gonna say no to? I'll offer that's voting.
Julie Harris Oliver: Oh, okay.
Brian Duggan: So think about what
veto is in
politics.
Julie Harris Oliver: put a stop to it. Overruled.
Brian Duggan: Overruled. Someone above me has said, actually, we're gonna do something else,
Julie Harris Oliver: Actually, no.
Brian Duggan: Yes.
So veto is when someone above me overrules a vote
that I or other folks that I'm working with have made,
Julie Harris Oliver: Ah, that's a bummer.
Brian Duggan: it's a bummer.
I will offer. This is the stance that I want people to use the least.
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Brian Duggan: Because if it's overused, it strips [00:49:00] people of their authority and their autonomy.
It can start to have people questioning or second guessing themselves. They start to wonder like, is this actually even my work? Or are you actually just gonna make all the decisions anyways?
Julie Harris Oliver: am I doing?
Brian Duggan: Yep. And what I will offer is that I see a lot of senior leaders vetoing a lot.
Julie Harris Oliver: hmm.
Brian Duggan: Now, part of that is. Stuff is changing so much and they go stop working on that. We can't
work on that anymore. Now we have to work on
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah,
Brian Duggan: again. If you were spending more time on, really every ounce of energy and time is spent on vision and you stuck to a vision, or if a vision starts to change or evolve, your job is to say, here's how it's changing. We need you to figure out how that impacts the work that you're doing. But they're the ones, the people below you are still the ones ideally responsible for figuring out how the work that they've done can translate into this [00:50:00] updated vision. And I, what I think a lot of seniors assume is that I don't wanna, I don't wanna waste too much time.
We've gotta do this right now.
Julie Harris Oliver: But it's crazy making for the people below them,
Brian Duggan: and it creates some cost.
An actual lost cost, right? When we think
about all the time and energy that people waste on working on something only to then be told, stop working on it,
Julie Harris Oliver: So are you naming VETO so that people can be conscious of, let me do the other things so that I don't have to be in the position of veto.
Brian Duggan: that's part of it,
right? So I want people to be really, really conservative and judicious with
how they use veto, right?
That w when I do it, it's because ideally whatever I am having to undo with this person's decision or with their work, it is because something that they did not have vision into that they were voided from happened and not changing course would cost the [00:51:00] organization too
much. I'm gonna give you an example. And look the example that I'm gonna provide, you might think, well, that's preventable, Brian. Yes. We can
argue that all day. And yet
Julie Harris Oliver: it happens all the time. Okay.
Brian Duggan: So some kind of, this happened at a few organizations ago. We had a really big, I'm trying to be thoughtful about how much I share.
We had something big happen that required us to lose a lot of money. That's all I'll say.
Julie Harris Oliver: Hmm.
Brian Duggan: that loss meant we had to change a lot of our plans. And one of the big things that we had to change was hiring. Now we were in process with a bunch of candidates, like organizations often are. And so if we had hired those people, it would've put us in a financial position that would've made things really, really
bad.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah, like say you didn't get that big contract you were expecting, you didn't get that big client that was gonna fund 10 new positions.
Brian Duggan: Yep. So our leadership said we have to go on a hiring [00:52:00] pause.
We have to. We have to. If we can keep these people warm, great, but we can't continue on the process. And this is never good. But there were a couple of cases where we had to resend offers. Now ethically, I never ever want to be there, right? And you could argue that the reason we were in this circumstance was because of all the things that we've already talked
about.
They weren't spending enough time really focusing on tomorrow, on the complexities of tomorrow, on the future, on creating that shared reality. And it happened.
And so in those circumstances, yeah, we might have to veto. But veto is what? What is required of veto is that the decision has to come from above me. My stance, or my theory I guess, is that another person who's a peer or who is in a different zone of work, a different lane of work, doesn't actually have the authority to veto my work. That [00:53:00] being said, social capital is real.
Julie Harris Oliver: Hmm.
Brian Duggan: And so what I have seen in some organizations is a person who is really liked, who is favored by the CEO, by the founder, whoever says, I don't think we should be doing that, and then it does get vetoed. And so for that person, what I would encourage is to get really clear on whether or not that's your thing to worry about. How much negative impact are you having on this other team that does not report into you, onto the business, onto your market share? What are all the unintended consequences of you saying, I don't think we should do that just because you don't like it. Now, what this all gets to here is, I think some of the most important work with vision is positive conflict at the top.
Julie Harris Oliver: Hmm.
Brian Duggan: You cannot have shared reality if you have not done the work of really wrestling with your vision. And that means [00:54:00] everyone shares all of the things that they don't like,
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Brian Duggan: but that you work together. And this is where things get really complicated for executive teams because the voting that you do likely has a lot of voters. It's not just your decision anymore, that the complexity of the work actually requires many people at the executive level to be voting on something. But if you do not do the work of wrestling with each other
positively,
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Brian Duggan: then you're gonna be left with a lot of silos and disparate ideas of what the vision is. And my, my guess is a lot of vetoing because
that thing that shouldn't be happening, that's my thing.
Julie Harris Oliver: well, you have to put all the assumptions on the table. So that people aren't developing their own visions that all kind of sound the same when you say them out loud, but in reality you have completely different pictures of what that is.
Brian Duggan: yep. So those are the, that's the kind of theory in essence.
Julie Harris Oliver: That's pretty good. And so, what do you call it? All vote, voice vision, void veto.[00:55:00]
Brian Duggan: So the whole thing to be a little cheeky, I call it the five V role model.
Julie Harris Oliver: Oh, that's cute.
Brian Duggan: And it's, it's inclusive of the stances, but also the level zones and lanes. There's a lot more thought in terms of level zones and lanes, but there, that's very systems thinking. It's very nerdy. We don't need to go into all of that detail for today.
But, but the idea is it is a tool to talk about your role and your responsibility.
Julie Harris Oliver: I love it when you're writing your book.
Brian Duggan: We're in process. , I don't know how long it's gonna take, but I've been, I've been writing a lot. And so we'll, we'll see when it happens.
Julie Harris Oliver: Let us know and we'll tell everybody all about it.
Brian Duggan: sometime, maybe in the next year.
Julie Harris Oliver: Wonderful. Brian, thank you so much.
Brian Duggan: Thank you so much. I really appreciate this. Thank you for letting me nerd out with you for, you know, a good hour.
Julie Harris Oliver: it was so fun.
Brian Duggan: Thanks.
Julie Harris Oliver: This has been deep work out loud. I'm Julie Harris Oliver. I'd like to thank Brian Duggan for joining the podcast. If any of this resonates with you, please subscribe, leave, review. It's on all [00:56:00] the podcast places. If you'd like to work with me, you can find me at julieharrisoliver.com and let me leave you with this invitation.
What might it look like for you to spend some time getting really clear on what roles you were taking on and when?
And can you get really clear on your vision and start communicating it as much as you really need to. Try some things. Report back. Thanks for listening. See you next time.