Three Words to Lead By: Practical Direction for Managers

Why Mission, Vision, and Strategy Aren’t Enough-And How ‘What Three Words’ Can Guide Your Team

Direction setting for new managers

The words Mission and Vision get bandied around all the time in business. Oh, and Strategy, of course. Strategy, like leadership, mission, and vision, is a word overused in phrases where the desire is to increase workforce motivation. Such words have been made more popular by the MBA types who have attended business school and come out having been convinced they are strategy experts. The landscape of the economy is littered with the corpses of companies run by headstrong individuals with MBAs who have never learned to manage. They see strategy as highbrow, deserving of their status and intellectual. Yet, as Frank Slootman in Amp It Up states,

"There are tons of articles and books on the topic of business strategy but relatively few on execution. That strikes me as remarkable because in practice it's hard to separate strategy from execution… If you don't know how to execute, every strategy will fail, even the most promising ones."

The reality for most managers is that the strategy comes from above. And it rarely changes. The board and the C-Suite leadership team are the ones who decide that your firm is a full-service global provider of financial services. Or that you will expand or contract in a given geography or market segment. They determine which regions receive investment, which markets to prioritise and how scarce financial resources are allocated to which businesses. As I wrote in Before You Step Into The Office, "You aren't the strategy person. Yet… That comes later." Like a new graduate, a new manager must focus on bringing results to their day job, not laying out frameworks or blue-sky thinking. The first-time manager's day job includes your production and your team's output.

At the tail end of 2015, the Fixed Income Division (FID) in which I was part underwent a substantial restructuring. The market-wide revenue wallet had materially shrunk since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). Too many global and regional competitors were chasing the same clients. The strategy was determined that FID would remain an essential part of the international market's business, but would have to shrink and reset for medium-term opportunities. Therefore, as the FID leadership team, we were told to present options for shrinking the division by 25%. One in four people would lose their jobs as a result. The strategy was set for us. We had to determine how best to execute it, create a plan of attack, and give direction to the survivors. One of the most impactful and high-value things we did in the aftermath of this restructuring was to, on one page, articulate what we would now do differently. I took the lead in London for our EMEA regional team, as the rapid changes created an information vacuum that needed filling. A vacuum that the financial services press would fill with gossip and rumour if we allowed them to. With such a drastic change, we could not pretend to have the same depth and breadth of client offerings. Providing direction empowered the managers of the remaining three hundred European fixed-income sales and trading professionals by giving them clarity and permission on what to focus on. They could engage with our clients with confidence, and crucially, our clients knew that we were still there for them, just in a narrower, more focused way.

What3words describes itself as "the simplest way to talk about location". They divided the world into three metre squares and gave each square a unique combination of three words to make finding and sharing exact locations easier. What Three Words is also a powerful technique for proactively seeking feedback in the workplace. Especially to understand how other people experience you in action. In Before You Step Into The Office, I stated that to cultivate self-awareness, you should ask yourself, "What three words would my closest colleagues use to describe me?" The next step is to ask several colleagues who work closely with you a slight variant of the question, "What three words immediately come to mind when you hear my name?" The final stage is to ask the question once more. This time, "What three words do I want people to use to describe me?" The answers to this short series of questions are an effective way to take control of your personal brand (which exists whether you cultivate it or not) and lead to small changes in behaviour that generate an outsized impact.

A past coaching client used a variation of the What Three Words technique to change the direction of his new team. Roger (not his real name) had started a new role and was now in charge of a team of professionals spread across the globe. During the interview process for the role and immediately after he took over the team, Roger collected feedback from stakeholders and team members to better understand the current strengths and areas for improvement of the people he was now responsible for. By putting in this effort upfront, he could quickly distil what he heard about the existing identity and DNA of the large global team into three words: reactive, slow and unfocused. The description he uncovered starkly contrasted with the expectations placed on him by his management and crucial stakeholders, including clients who had regular daily interactions with his teams. The difference between the current reality and the desired goal was substantial.

By investing the upfront time and effort, Roger gained a powerful kickstart on how the global team should approach their work in the days, weeks, and months ahead. The What Three Words approach provided Roger with the foundations of the one-page direction summary to co-create with his leadership team, giving them clarity, confidence, and, crucially, permission on what to focus on and hence combating the noise and distractions arising from other people's priorities in the workplace.

You can follow this approach by asking the following questions:

• What three words define the current team and how they operate?

• What three words describe what the team should aspire to?

• What does the team need to do to bridge the gap?

What Three Words is a powerful heuristic that managers should use. Providing direction is the first step in positioning your team to successfully deliver and execute tasks and achieve the desired results.

📫 - A quote that I am currently pondering

"Trajectory is more important than position."

Jimmy Carr

🧾 - An absorbing and insightful (short) read

Perhaps your direct reports don't want those regular 1-2-1 meetings that seem to have an almost "you'd be negligent if you didn't" quality about them. An interesting and provocative alternative viewpoint on a staple in almost all managers’ weekly schedules.

🤔 - If you did have the answer to this question, what would it be?

"The question isn't who's going to let you; it's who's going to stop you?"