Matt Schlegel

You were born to be a player. You were meant to be here. This moment is yours.

– Herb Brooks

Woohoo—it’s time to kick off the project! Your team has developed a plan to get to the goal and is chomping at the bit to get started.  In Enneagram Change Management Step 7, the team spreads their excitement to all stakeholders and enthusiastically promotes the plan to get the resources — people, tools, money and time — to embark on their mission.  Put your best cheerleaders forward and get the buy-in to proceed.

Excerpt from Teamwork 9.0

Now that your team has identified the best path to the goal, your problem-solving team should be revved up and ready to charge down that path. However, the broader group of stakeholders will not be at the same excitement level yet. Now is the time to inspire that wider group—including the executive sponsors—to the same level of enthusiasm as the team. It is time for the team to sell the plan to all the stakeholders. It is time to tap the dynamic of Enneagram Type 7.

People in sales or political roles will understand this phase of problem solving well. A salesperson or politician must present a story with a bright future and receive permission to proceed and create that future for their customers or constituents. Step 7 of problem solving is similar.

When I facilitate problem-solving groups during Step 7, I recommend that the team create a presentation that tells a story. The first part of that story sets the stage: you remind your stakeholders of the pain they are experiencing because of their daunting problem. To make this more dramatic, let’s call the problem the dragon. Then, you introduce your heroes, the team of highly credible and talented folks ready to face the dragon. You may want to share some examples of havoc wreaked by the dragon, and some stories of early, unsuccessful attempts to slay the dragon. Then, you will want to share your heroes’ insight that exposed an alternative path to addressing the dragon problem. Finally, your story will explain the careful preparation the heroes have made to tame the dragon, thereby eliminating the problem once and for all. And, there you stop.

What do you think that your executive sponsors/decision-makers will do at this point? In my experience, having facilitated this process many times, the response is unequivocally “Go Get That Dragon!” I have found that all reasonable requests for resources—people, equipment, and cash—are made available for the Dragon Taming Quest. Also, there is a strong sense of empathy about the shared problem and anticipation of the beautiful world in which the dragon no longer terrorizes the citizens. That anticipation is infectious, and the executive sponsors will feel it. The broader organization will eagerly support your heroes in their quest, too. That widespread support is important since taming this dragon will not be easy and will require everyone’s cooperation.

I may have stretched the dragon metaphor to the limits here, but I think it does highlight the important step of having the team get explicit permission from the executive sponsors in order to proceed. This is similar to a sales process. I recommend that the team enlist the help of an enthusiastic, people-oriented salesperson-type to assist them in creating and telling a compelling story. Once your team has received permission to move forward, you arrive at Step 8, in which you act to solve the problem.

How do you promote a project to get buy-in from stakeholders?  Do you put together a compelling story that excites your audience?  Do you put your most enthusiastic team members forward to tell the story? Do you instill excitement into all stakeholders before moving to action?

[Video Transcript]

Now that you have your plan, the team needs to take it back to the broader set of stakeholders for buy-in. Enneagram Type 7 is often called the enthusiast. They’re the ones who get people excited to try something new. In Step 7, you socialize the plan with your organization. You remind everyone of the problems they face, and show how the plan will solve those problems. Done well, this socialization will lower barriers and resistance during implementation.

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If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!

— Benjamin Franklin

Once you have verified that you have a viable solution, you can  plot the path that takes you to your goal. In Step 6 of Enneagram Change Management you develop the plan that solves the problem. You optimize the path considering all important metrics — time, cost, quality, resource availability, etc. You anticipate risks and work to minimize and mitigate them.  In Step 6 you are looking into the future, into your crystal ball, envisioning the successful solution to the problem and all the steps that will get you there.

Excerpt from Teamwork 9.0

Enneagram Type 6 is at the core of the Head-Thinking-Anxiety center; as such, 6s will actively pursue minimizing their anxiety. Uncertainty and risk increase anxiety the most for Type 6s. Therefore, they naturally prepare for the future by planning ahead and seeking to minimize risk.

Type 6s can look at a number of scenarios and, using their anxiety level as a guide, instinctively spot the one with the fewest unknowns, the fewest pitfalls, and the highest likelihood of success. Using the pro/con analysis generated in Step 5, the 6 can assess each scenario and plot a path into the future to foresee likely outcomes. They can predict which ideas have the clearest path to the goal, because those ideas cause the 6 the least amount of anxiety. This Type 6 dynamic comes into play in Step 6 of problem solving.

The Path of Least Danger

Having worked through the logical analysis of Step 5, the team will have reached a general consensus as to which ideas are the most viable and favorable for getting to the goal. This is the indication that your team has naturally arrived at Step 6, the Planning step. You can treat these favorable ideas as the framework for your solution—the skeleton, as it were. Now it is time to add the meat.

If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!

In this step, the meat includes all the details associated with associated with following the plan to achieve the goal. What resources are needed? How much do those resources cost? Who needs to be involved, and when? What is the schedule for implementation? All these details need to be mapped out for presentation to the stakeholders responsible for allocating those resources. Enlisting the help of a team member with project management skills makes sense at this point in the process. It is exactly this skill set that comes into play in Step 6.

Plan A/Plan B

At this point, you still may have a couple of viable paths to get to the goal. You may want to split your problem-solving team into smaller groups of advocates for each viable idea and let each group build a plan. As the details are fleshed out, you will see which idea has the shorter schedule, which has the lower cost, which requires the fewest people, and which has the fewest uncertainties and risks. With that knowledge, the team can develop a Plan A and a backup Plan B.

In Step 6, you will have decided the one or two ideas or sets of ideas that get you to the goal and solve the problem. You will have put together a detailed plan to implement the ideas. The team is now prepared to present the plan to the stakeholders and sponsors, especially those who can allocate the resources necessary to make the plan come true. Now is the time to promote the plan!

Does your team take the time to plan the path to your goal?  Do you anticipate and mitigate risks? Do you have a fallback plan, a Plan B?

[Video Transcript]

Step 6 is where your team takes the most promising idea and builds a project plan that gets you all the way to the goal. Who does what and when? Type 6 is often called the questioner. Their brain is constantly asking questions. What if this happens? What if that happens? They’re constantly on the lookout for pitfalls and developing strategies to avoid them. In Step 6 of problem solving, you’ll want the team to build a low-risk plan that gets it to the goal. The plan can include risk mitigation strategies and contingency plans.

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Analysis Is the Critical Starting Point of Strategic Thinking.

— Kenichi Ohmae

Every idea has its pros and cons. Each idea needs to be analyzed and compared with others to determine which are best—those ideas most likely to successfully solve the problem and help the team reach its goals.  Enneagram Change Management Step 5 moves into the analysis phase of problem solving in which the team thoughtfully considers all ideas and develops the pro-con, cost-benefit analysis of each.  This analysis will form the basis for decision making in the next step.

Excerpt from Teamwork 9.0

The transition to Step 5 represents a movement away from emotion-based processing towards logic-based thinking. Enneagram Type 5 is in the Head-Thinking-Anxiety center and the Enneagram dynamic best suited for data collection and detailed analysis.

Recall that Enneagram Type 5 is the internal anxiety type concerned with accumulating resources. This behavior extends to collecting information, making the Type 5 dynamic ideally suited for gathering all the data necessary to properly analyze each idea. With the data at hand, your team can perform cost-benefit analyses, generating the facts crucial to deciding which ideas are most viable for achieving the objectives and solving the problem. During Step 5, your problem-solving team must move into the Type 5 dynamic, carefully and logically analyzing all the promising ideas.

Analysis, Not Paralysis

Most ideas have their good points and bad points, their pros and their cons. It is important for you to move your problem-solving team quickly through the assessment of these pros and cons. If you call a 100-minute team meeting and you have 12 big ideas to examine, keep the pro/con analysis of each idea to 8 minutes. You will find that your team is usually able to discuss the important points of each idea in those 8 minutes. If some are left unsatisfied with the time limit on the discussion, encourage them to elaborate their ideas in a follow up email. By moving to each idea in turn with a fixed time limit, you can avoid getting caught up in minutiae and digressions.

Remember, some of your team members will excel during Step 5 and will want to explore the nuances of each idea. Conversely, others will find this detailed analysis tedious and boring. You want to strike a balance to ensure that the analytical folks have a chance to show off their stuff, while moving quickly to get through all the ideas and keep your entire team engaged.

Recall that in the Ideation step (Step 3), I suggested that you ask participants to set aside their negative reactions to ideas. During the Logical Analysis step, you take the opportunity to revisit those negative reactions. Encourage those who have strong feelings about any idea to communicate their thoughts and feelings at this point.

In the time since team members had their first emotional reaction to an idea, the intensity of that reaction will have subsided. Anyone who had a strong negative reaction will now be in a better state to calmly explain it. I find that letting some time pass is an effective way to rationally explore the emotional reactions to ideas without letting those emotions rule the process.

After spending a few minutes on an idea, would you feel like you had done a proper analysis? Of course not! Often, the team will not have all the information necessary to adequately analyze each idea during the meeting. In order to perform a proper analysis, ask for volunteers. The biggest proponents and/or opponents of a given idea will be usually be eager to collect any additional information the team feels it needs. If the need arises, I may call a separate meeting so the team can review the pros and cons of each idea to everyone’s satisfaction.

At the end of Step 5, your problem-solving team will have a rich set of ideas, with the pros and cons for each idea spelled out. The analytical folks on the team will have chimed in and provided the data and assessment that the team needs to move forward. You are now ready for Step 6, the Planning step, which I affectionately call “finding the path of least danger.”

Do you take the time to carefully analyze the positive ideas generated by your team?  Do you have the team weigh in on all the pros and cons from their diverse perspectives?  How do you avoid overanalyzing ideas and falling into paralysis by analysis?

[Video Transcript]

Having a handful of positive ideas to explore, it’s now time to turn to the left brain activities, starting with analyzing each idea for feasibility. Enneagram Type 5 is often called the analyzer. In Step 5 of problem solving, you want to perform pro/con and cost benefit analysis of each idea. Out of this step comes the top one, maybe two ideas to solve each problem that the team is pursuing.

Thanks for watching. If you found this helpful, click on the thumbs up button, subscribe to the channel and get notifications of future episodes. If you have a question, please leave it in the comment section and I’ll get to it as soon as possible. Thanks again.