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From Talk to Action: The Power of a Single Baby Step
Excerpt from Lead Conversations that Count: How Busy Managers Run Great Meetings
(Rowntree Press, 2021)
You have invested a lot of your energy and time to lead a conversation that builds goodwill, clarity and connection. You still need to ensure the ideas and understandings you’ve created in your conversation don’t dissipate once people leave the meeting or Zoom room. You’ve moved the ball down the field, but you aren’t across the finish line until you transfer the momentum from that meeting into tangible action and change.
As an early mentor of mine used to say, imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen is creating an agenda that doesn’t allow enough time or mental bandwidth to consider the next steps. Without attention and planning for action steps, the impact of your conversation will evaporate shortly after its conclusion. Unless you transfer the clarity and decisions into the day-to-day reality, it becomes just one more piece of information that burdens your cognitive load. When you don’t make a plan for action and nothing changes as a result of the discussion, is it any wonder so many people feel like meetings are a waste of their time?
To get focused on action-taking, ask what will be different tomorrow? Who is taking responsibility for which actions? When does that work need to be completed?
Talking about developing a resilient culture is great, but what will that look like? How will people interact and engage with clients or each other? How does that impact the processes and systems in place? What do you need to do more, start doing, or stop doing?
Don’t just talk; act. Implement. Execute. Often the best way to figure something out is to take one single step. Choose something and move. See what works and build from there. Appreciate what didn’t work and let it go.
Focus on taking action instead of making everything perfect. Set it up as an experiment to see what works and what doesn’t. Mistakes only indicate failure when you repeat them, not when you learn from them.
Inertia and analysis paralysis suck the energy out of teams. Don’t try to shoehorn in discussions about implementation and priority-setting at the end of a crammed agenda. Design opportunities to keep that end in mind right from the start of your meeting.
It comes down to this. A baby step, taken consistently, is more impactful than a giant leap now and then.
Take Action
Before you begin the meeting, be specific and identify 2-3 actions you know will be needed to implement the decisions of the group. You can even include the need to clear action-taking as part of your setting the context for the meeting right upfront.
Ask for people’s input on actions, and build opportunities into your agenda so people can take stock and design their actions arising from the discussion. Give your team a voice and their ingenuity and clarity about the most impactful next steps may surprise you.
Resources
James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. Avery, 2018.
David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Penguin Books, 2015.
Author Information: This is an excerpt from Lead Conversations that Count: How Busy Managers Run Great Meetings by Carolyn Ellis (Rowntree Press, 2021). For more information on the book, please visit www.LeadConversationsThatCount.com. This article may be shared provided the author information is included.
