Over the past couple of weeks, I have been reviewing process standards with the team. We have also been looking at new product offerings and all the activities required to, ultimately, get them to customers. I have found myself saying, "we need to find the best way to do "x"". Each time that word - "best" - comes out of my mouth, it shocks me as to how ambiguous and, ultimately, meaningless it really is. Best? In what regard? How can we measure "best"? How does that help the team move forward with certainty towards a goal?
How about substitute "best" with "optimal"? That really was a question I posed to myself after hearing the phrase "…best way to…" fumble out of my mouth again. I was playing Words With Self…just games.
All that internal dialog did prod some deeper, although now, very obvious, thinking about this concept of "best". Fair warning, the following insight(s) aren't earth shattering - you'll get some facsimile of these ideas in just about any leadership book - but this experience helped me to curb my use of the phrase "the best way to…" & has revealed other benefits.
Define Conditions & Outcomes Through Questions
It almost happened again. I was talking to our retail packaging lead about bringing apparel in-house for us to fulfill. We have never offered apparel or items with different designs and sizes. My first inclination was to give him the task to "find the best way to store apparel items." But I caught myself and flipped it to a question: "how can we create a storage system for apparel where 1) monthly inventory counts can be done in less than 5 minutes 2) products are protected from dust/dirt 3) packaging errors stay below .5% of shipments?"
That exercise forced me to be very deliberate and clear about goal(s) and outcomes. The employee left the interaction with zero ambiguity about the expectations. It also had the benefit of leaving the solution in that employee's hands - not mine. I gave him the "what" & left the "how" to him. I have a tendency to think out loud and offer potential solutions because I love to brainstorm and troubleshoot. But, that's not how I want to interact with my direct reports; it doesn't do them any favors when I think for them or bias them to potential solutions. (How would I like it if my boss came to me and told me how to do things?)
Will he find the "best" solution the first time? That's probably not the right question to ask. The point is, there is room to experiment and iterate solutions. But, the first solution he identifies will - at a minimum - satisfy the three requirements. With clearly defined outcomes, the employee has a sense of ownership, and we've avoided the worthless ambiguity of finding the "best" solution.