Diagnose Before You Delegate

Diagnosis is often an overlooked step in goal setting, project planning, and execution. I have come across many projects where a senior leader proclaims a worthy goal, some get excited, and most nod — after all, the goal sounds right. The leader then delegates the goal down the hierarchy, and six months later, little progress is made. Eventually, the following year’s planning cycle arrives, and old goals are replaced with new ones, repeating the drill. It’s a symptom of a slowly decaying organization with low performance and little accountability.

A more common occurrence is paltry outcomes: goals are well-intended, sound right, are delegated appropriately, people start with excitement, but then encounter execution hurdles; timelines slip, results don’t materialize, people lose faith in the goals, and the goals fizzle out sometime later. So much time and energy lost.

Such instances are relatively common in large organizations due to the sheer complexity of problems and the numerous layers of people involved in completing tasks. Reason? It is usually not an issue of intent or team competence, but rather the missed crucial step of leaders not diagnosing the problem before crafting goals, launching projects, and delegating them down the organization.

I have made this mistake myself a few times. In one case, I led a goal formulation exercise to set goals, delegated them to the respective teams, and waited. Nothing happened. Reason? I had just assumed that everyone knew how to break the problem down and execute. Big mistake. Recognizing this, I conducted a root cause analysis, an effective diagnostic tool. I gathered a few in front of a whiteboard and began asking questions about the problem, how they were attempting to solve it, the hurdles they were facing, the assumptions they were making, and so on. That exercise blew my mind, as I found that the team was stuck due to some technical hurdles, unclear problem decomposition, self-imposed constraints, and unhelpful assumptions. That diagnostic exercise helped me figure out how to bring the project back on track. Participants of that exercise also enjoyed the process as they saw a path forward, and their moods lifted.

In another case, we had a big organizational goal, but one of the teams took some shortcuts in the architecture for expediency. I was uncomfortable with those shortcuts but didn’t act. The team gained the initial momentum, but that didn’t last long. Execution slowed down as complexity and debt accumulated. My mistake was not intervening early to diagnose the problem and set the appropriate course of action. In that situation, I didn’t challenge the prevalent beliefs that led to those shortcuts.

The lesson is to incorporate diagnosis into your leadership practice. Diagnosis is a valuable tool for enhancing team performance. You can’t drive change and improve team performance without incorporating diagnosis before and even after delegating. Ignoring diagnosis makes you a laissez-faire leader, i.e., one who does not feel the need to provide direction, distances themselves from poor team performance, and eventually avoids accountability. On the other hand, an effective leader would employ diagnosis to form crisp goals, design metrics that matter, craft constraints to drive focus, and design the proper execution rituals for high performance.

But how do you go about diagnosis?

First, begin by moderating the bias for action. You must pause everyone from jumping into action to instead focus on developing a thorough understanding of the problem space, the nature of the outcome, and the constraints involved. Some may get upset with you for holding up everyone, but it is necessary. In one case, when a CTO inspired everyone to pursue an ambitious goal, everyone ran to execute. However, six months later, it became clear that people were running in different directions, solving the easier parts of the problem while ignoring the more difficult parts. Meanwhile, skeptics remained on the sidelines, as they did not see a clear path to success; they waited for the project to fail or for someone to rescue the project. The project regained its traction only after an intensive diagnosis was conducted to establish a structure, set guardrails, and implement a prioritized sequence to solve the problem.

Second, when diagnosing, cut through organizational layers. Don’t prematurely delegate the diagnosis to someone. Be active during the diagnosis. Never hesitate to ask questions. If your organizational hierarchy consists of multiple management layers, don’t hesitate to go down a few layers below to bring people to a common forum, set the stage, and get down to diagnosis. Don’t worry about not respecting the management layers. Involve them in the process instead.

Third, use diagnosis to discover prevalent assumptions. Ask questions to understand how others perceive different aspects of the problem. What one team considers a significant problem may not be a major issue in the broader context. Similarly, a minor inefficiency or inconvenience at the team level may compound into a bigger deal at the broader organizational level. What may be an efficient approach at a team level may be expensive at a wider level due to its side effects. A well-conducted diagnosis helps you develop shared context across your teams — all participants in the diagnosis benefit from that context. Shared context also helps improve trust because everyone is heard and receives a more comprehensive understanding of the problem. You may also discover prevalent beliefs and attitudes, and learn about how work is done. For example, you might find the prevalence of a fixed mindset or helplessness regarding particular challenges, such as known but often overlooked process inefficiencies, technical debt, and rarely questioned issues, as well as misplaced assumptions about peer teams. Diagnosis helps remove that fog.

Use diagnosis as a leadership tool as often as you need. Simply asking questions is a good start. Consider frameworks like the “five whys” to ensure your diagnosis is exhaustive.