Often, members of a leadership team jump into a conversation and they quickly latch onto a solution. In effect, they are saying, “Here’s something that might make things better.”

The problem is that this rush to a solution skips the steps of first identifying the specific problem, and second, making sure that other people have bought into the problem being worth solving.

When you skip these steps, some of the leaders think they’ve reached an agreement, and weeks or months later are surprised because nothing happened. There was no action, and the reason is that there was no actual agreement.

The most effective teams pull up when a conversation like this arises and ask themselves a few basic gating questions:

●   What, specifically, is the problem we’ve identified?
●   Is this important enough to warrant our time and effort?
●   Should we solve this now, or can it wait?
●   Are we the right people to solve this?

This can be a hard habit to establish, especially since most leaders get to the C-suite by solving problems. There’s a certain satisfaction in doing so.

But when a leadership team takes on too much or is too quick to jump to action, these behaviors can cascade into an organization. It can result in a whole lot of activity that may not be strategic or even necessary.

I’ve found it productive to share with my clients a straightforward ABC framework that I learned earlier in my career. ABC stands for Attention, Buy-in, and Change; these three steps go in this order, and if followed, lead to the best results.

Attention requires focusing all members of the team on the same issue. It means framing the issue (or problem) itself, as well as specifying your intent.

Buy-in comes when you answer the question, “Why should I care?” That can mean examining the stakes – both upsides and downsides – and looking at the data to help you understand, is solving this problem going to have a material impact on our business, or barely make a difference at all?

This is how you begin to generate buy-in, which only occurs when others start to realize… this means I’m not going to achieve my objectives… we’re really at risk of upsetting our customers or employees… this means we may not deliver on our targets for the year… this could affect my career (!)

Change only happens after the first two conditions are satisfied to motivate action. If you skip either of those steps, the odds are very high that there will be no change.

Just because a management team is talented does not inherently mean they are disciplined in how they work together. In most cases, each leader is coming from a different part of the business, and has a different view of what matters most. To foster collaboration and drive sustained change across the business, remember ABC. It works!