You don't need a mediator, you need a deadline


The golden age

The year is 2022. COVID is winding down. Haha just kidding, it isn't really! But for real, there are vaccines and my coworkers all get them, so we meet more in person again. I do more 1-1s face to face. I host a revenue kickoff on my patio in 52-degree weather so the immunocompromised among us feel safe to join. Depending who you ask, we are either not taking the public health menace seriously enough or we should get over it already.

I rent a weird Airbnb in Edmonds, WA for a residential exec team offsite. The house has an incredible view of Puget Sound, a bedazzled piano, and a definite sense that someone was murdered there once. I had restaffed the exec team the year before, and this is the first time that the entire group is meeting in person.

It's a huge moment for the business and we have big decisions to make. I'm psyched to be bringing everyone together, but opinions are strong and the vibe is kinda manic. It escalates quickly, and before I know it, several people are locked in a heated, opinionated battle over priorities. It takes everything I have to wrestle the conversation back to productive.

It's not the first time this has happened. I was constantly mediating between leaders with diametrically opposed perspectives. How could I get them to work together without always being in the middle of the conversation myself?

Two to Solve

Some of my most trusted work allies have started off as rocky relationships. I thought about this a lot coming out of this offsite. The execs on our team were motivated, smart, and they wanted Textio to succeed. They had different ideas about how to approach our challenges, but I had complete faith that everyone in the group wanted us to be successful. If anything, I appreciated that they were willing to show up honestly.

Still, I needed to find a better way for them to hear each other. So I did something new for me: I assigned them partners, and then I got out of the way. I called it Two to Solve.

Here's how Two to Solve works:

  • Group people on the team into pairs. Focus on pairs that either have difficulty collaborating or who don't have much opportunity to work together day to day. The idea is to forge new collaborative relationships.
  • Give each pair a week to meet and identify a problem they are both passionate about solving. It can be anything important to the company: a product or customer concern, an issue with internal operations, or anything else. But both partners have to agree it is important enough to work on.
  • Each pair works on jointly on their chosen problem over the coming quarter. At the end of the quarter, they present their work to the rest of the group. It might be something they built, a new process, new data they uncovered, or anything else.

Two to Solve is a two-for-one idea. Ideally, you find good solutions for some real issues. But more than that, leaders feel responsible for solving problems at the company rather than casting blame. They have to slow down and hear one another. As a result, they build trust and muscle memory for future collaboration.

Does Two to Solve work?

In my time as Textio's CEO, I tried Two to Solve several times. It didn't work every time, but it did work every time I set up the right accountability structure.

Two to Solve works when people take the accountability just as seriously as the rest of their jobs. The cases where Two to Solve failed me are exactly the cases where I let people deprioritize the effort because I didn't make it a standard part of the quarterly goals that I used to assess performance. As always, the work that you compensate shows what you truly value.

But once I implemented Two to Solve with a real accountability structure, it became a huge accelerator. For instance, I once paired up our VP of People with our VP of Design. By the end of the quarter, we had completely redesigned our company benefits collateral, and as a result, more employees were able to take advantage of our benefits with less manual work from our HR team. That was a nice operational improvement on its own.

However, the real value went far beyond that one project and quarter. Because they'd gotten into the habit of talking every week, the VP of Design started seeking feedback from the VP of People on all new product designs. Since Textio customers are HR and Talent Acquisition teams, this made our products so much better for customers right out of the gate.

The bottom line: If you're trying to build team cohesion, Two to Solve is a great way to bring critical partners closer together. Make it a real accountability, and you'll find lasting benefits long beyond the initial project.

Kieran


If you like Two to Solve, check out my other lightweight exercises for building high-performing and connected teams. I wrote down my three favorites here.

My latest data stories | Build like a founder | nerdprocessor.com

kieran@nerdprocessor.com
Unsubscribe · Preferences

nerd processor

Every week, I write a deep dive into some aspect of AI, startups, and teams. Tech exec data storyteller, former CEO @Textio.

Read more from nerd processor

Seattle vs. San Francisco As a long time Seattleite who has traveled to Silicon Valley a ton over the last decade, my trips always follow a predictable trajectory: Day 1Wow! It is like Stanford meets Disneyland here! Everyone is living in the future! This place is magical! Day 2I love the intensity. I am using my brain in stretchy ways, talking to smart people about interesting problems. (Also, my kids are in Seattle and I am only responsible for myself, so yes I can meet you for that 9pm...

Data story fails Over the last year, I have uncovered a lot of interesting data about how work works. For instance, who knew that a third of job candidates are straight-up ghosted after completing interview loops? (Everyone who has ever interviewed for a job, that's who.) I also discovered exactly how AI has absolutely destroyed my inbox, and that foundation models have statistical bias baked in. And lots more. Sometimes the data turns out to be exactly what I expected. Yay? I guess it's nice...

How not to do operations [Setting: An exec team is meeting for their monthly metrics review. It is 4pm on a busy Thursday afternoon. Several people sit around a large oval conference room table. A few of them type rapidly at their laptops. The rest are rapt with attention, listening to the speaker.] CEO: So where are we with AI? [execs look at each other uncomfortably, 60 very long seconds of silence go by] CTO [sheepishly speaks up]: Well, we've got some great features in the pipeline! CEO:...