Playing To Win
Exceptions & Rules
Managing a Universal Tension in Strategy — And Life
There was plenty of follow-up from last week’s article on lessons from strategic tensions at Tennis Canada both on social media and directly to me. I liked lots of it — there were many good insights. But one in particular, from Australian Rob, warrants a deeper dive. So, I have dedicated this follow-up Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) to Exceptions & Rules: Managing a Universal Tension in Strategy — And Life. All previous PTW/PI can be found here.
Exceptions and Rules
In his note to me, Rob pointed out that Borfiga (VP of High Performance) built a “framework” that “will be correct most of the time” — and I am going to call that ‘rules’ — and Brett (High Performance Consultant) pushed for exceptions to the rules. I like his framing of exceptions because Brett didn’t object to the existence of rules — he just wanted there to be exceptions when he believed the rules would produce a counterproductive result.
Rob speculated the following: “My inference from your focus on tension is that Brett would have been unlikely to be able to build success in Canada by himself (possibly too undisciplined?).” Rob didn’t realize how right he was. When the Tennis Canada CEO left to take over as CEO of the UK Lawn Tennis Association, he hired Brett in a more administratively intensive role — and Brett was much less successful in that role than he had been in a less administrative role at Tennis Canada.
Finally, Rob hit the nail on the head when he asked: “So in this particular case, the challenge is how do you keep contentment across the Canadian Tennis group when one “chubby” kid is let through in contradiction to the framework but not others?’’
I have to say, the question reminds me of the challenge of pirate captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. In this 2003 film (in the category of generally puerile action movies that my wife knows I love — like Galaxy Quest which I also quote often), the star-making vehicle for Keira Knightley, she plays the plucky, no-nonsense Elizabeth Swann, kidnapped by Barbossa (played beautifully by Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush) and his pirate ship. In her attempt to negotiate her freedom, she invokes the ‘Pirate’s Code,’ and Barbossa dismisses her attempt by asserting that “the code is more of what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.” Per Rob, Barbossa has the tricky challenge of upholding the Code — but not always sticking inflexibly to its rules.
Reliability vs. Validity
Answering Rob’s question requires diving more deeply into the universal tension between reliability and validity because the Borfiga vs. Brett tension is a specific manifestation of a global tension. I mentioned reliability vs. validity in passing in the previous piece, wrote a whole piece earlier in this series, and dedicated an entire book to it, The Design of Business, back in 2009. (Parenthetically, of my thirteen books, this is the one most beloved by academics. It has seven times the academic citations of Playing to Win, but one-quarter the copies sold — an accident because businesspeople are the target of my books.)
One force in human endeavors is reliability — the desire for a dependable, consistent, and replicable outcome. In the Tennis Canada case, Borfiga is reliability-focused — creating a set of rules to produce a consistent outcome. The opposing force is validity — the desire for an outcome that meets the desired objective. And just as clearly, Brett is validity-focused — customizing however necessary to produce the desired outcome. Every person is inclined to favor either reliability or validity. They can learn to appreciate the other force, but one always feels easier than the other. And they are in fundamental opposition.
The tension is universal. It is present in all systems. Too much reliability and the system grinds to a halt. Too much validity and it goes off the rails. The combination is awesome — a replicable outcome that meets the desired objective.
How to Nurture the Balance
This gets us back to Rob’s key so what: “The challenge for leaders in all of this is how do you protect your culture and enable the exceptions?” That is, how to you create an environment based on empowering rules but constructive exceptions? For me, the answer is a combination of two things: understanding and respect.
With respect to understanding, the key for both reliability-oriented and validity-oriented colleagues is to see reliability and validity as having different but equally rigorous production processes.
To produce reliability, you have to utilize a limited number of variables — only ones that are objective and quantifiable. That minimizes judgment and avoids bias — and is designed to produce outcomes that are consistent and replicable (but it is only to a point — all human systems are reliable until they stop being so). To produce validity, you need to utilize a broader number of diverse variables, both quantitative and qualitative. To utilize variables of this sort, you have to embrace judgment and acknowledge the inevitability of bias. That production process attempts to find the productive exceptions to the reliability-driven rules.
The production approaches are so different that reliability-oriented colleagues often don’t understand the logic behind the techniques of their validity-oriented colleagues — and equally vice-versa. Validity colleagues think reliability colleagues are arbitrary and simplistic. They don’t see them as trying their hardest to build a dependable, repeatable engine. Reliability colleagues see their validity colleagues as sloppy and dangerous. They don’t see them as trying to benefit from nuances in a nuanced world. As a result, colleagues fight each other — and try to get each other fired.
That is why a key job of the leader is to help each side understand the production process and the underlying logic of the other side. That is because understanding leads to the other key feature — respect. If they don’t understand it, they won’t respect it. If they understand it, they will grow to realize that the two stances and production processes are complements, not substitutes. They won’t fear and loathe the other side — as they do without understanding. And that will balance rule-making with exception-taking.
A Mea Culpa
The Tennis Canada escapade taught me an important lesson: I didn’t use the right level of intervention, a subject about which I was taught 20 years ago by one-time colleague, Diana Smith, herself a student of Chris Argyris. When trying to get two people were aren’t working productively together to become productive, you have the choice of three forms of interventions in a hierarchy.
First Level: Bypass
This is the least intensive and aggressive form of intervention. If it works: great. If not, you have to take it up a level (or two).
In a bypass intervention, your first task is to diagnose the dynamic that is causing the unproductive interactions and outcomes. You then make interventions that counteract the dynamic without explaining the underlying dynamic to the battling parties — hence the name ‘bypass.’ You try to make progress by helping to more productively deal with the conflict without digging into the source of the conflict with the individuals involved.
For example, in the Tennis Canada situation, you would tell Borfiga that you really appreciate the importance of rules and can see how what Brett is doing doesn’t uphold the rules. But assure them that Brett respects them (and in his heart he did respect the vast majority of what they did and Borfiga’s exceptional track record) and just feels that occasionally — not much or most of the time — there are special circumstances that justify an exception. And you tell Brett that you appreciate that the occasional exception to the rules is really important to him but recognize that it offends the established rules, and we can all agree that they are there for a purpose. So don’t go in guns blazing. Affirm the rules but ask politely for an exception.
That kind of bypass intervention can help the parties lower the temperature and come to a working accommodation of the interests of both — in the Tennis Canada case, a set of rules but with the occasional exception when Brett felt strongly and could make a robust case.
Second Level: Name
This ups the ante and risks raising the temperature in order to get it back under better control.
In this case, as the moniker suggests, you name — i.e., make explicit to the parties — the dynamic that you see causing the fights and impasses. In the Tennis Canada case, it would be something like: “We have fights and impasses because on the one hand, Borfiga wants rules for all situations and think exceptions produce all downsides with no upside benefit, while, on the other hand, Brett wants exceptions in situations that don’t conform to the rules and treats any objection to his call for exception as unreasonably doctrinaire. This is going to keep happening until the situation becomes fully untenable and damages Tennis Canada. We need to work together to come up with a way to have respect for the rules but a process for making exceptions when they are warranted.”
Naming takes more time and can cause tempers to flare— because they would rather not have their behavior openly discussed. However, it doesn’t cause the work to come to a complete halt, as we will see is the case with engage.
Third Level: Engage
This is the most aggressive and trickiest and should only be used when a name intervention fails. If you have already taken the principals through a naming intervention and worked up a solution but they don’t change their behaviors, you need to up the ante. You need to confront both sides on why they have continued their previous behavior when it has been identified as causing problems that are hurting the organization?
This tends to get hot and contentious and typically the principals need to be taken offline for more intensive work — typically first individually and then together. It halts the process of working together until progress can be made, so it is the most intrusive intervention.
Diana’s advice to me, as (then) a novice in doing this kind of work, was in 85% of cases use bypass, 10% name, and 5% engage. I tend to be a careful and dutiful student and took her advice to heart. That is why it drives me nuts when I teach someone this technique and they engage the next day — and it (inevitably) blows up in their face. But in this case, maybe the initial advice stuck with me too long. At Tennis Canada, I bypassed — and it worked for nine years. I failed to take into account that the solution depended on me — even though in retrospect, it is obvious. You live and learn…
Practitioner Insights
Recognize the universality of the tension between forces of validity and reliability. There will always be a tension. Anybody who doesn’t recognize it is a fool — sad to say
To be an effective leader of others, you must learn to recognize both in action in real time. When a human resources person says, “that proposed salary increase is not in line with the Hay Points,” that is reliability speaking. When a salesperson says, “I don’t care what corporate policy says, if we don’t bend a little on trade terms, we are going to lose this customer,” that is validity speaking. Respect them — equally. If you take sides, you will have lost.
If you think the conflict in question is a unique, one-off — then bypass. Try to negotiate a resolution for the situation that will leave both parties reasonably satisfied. If you think it will be systematic, name it and try to come up with a fix that is reliability oriented enough for one side and has enough flexibility for the validity oriented side. And if the conflict keeps rearing its ugly head despite your efforts, then bring in an expert to engage — and watch the expert and learn.
