Over the past eighteen months, my company was on a journey to obtain medical certification for our software product. When we first set off, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. None of us had any experience with this field, to the point that we didn’t even know how to evaluate consultants. In software engineering, one often has to bring solutions to problems that have not been solved before. So my fellow engineering managers and I donned our engineer hats, and set out to do extensive research to see what we are up against.
We did our best to shield our teams from this process. We figured we’d let them focus on known quantities, until we reach a point where we can clearly communicate requirements and expectations around our new reality as a medically regulated company. The intent was noble - spare the team from dealing with ambiguity and the stress that comes with it. The result, however, was a team caught mostly off guard when the expectations finally came. More so, some of the processes we designed to meet the requirements were blind to certain nuances that a hands-off manager could not observe. We just work a step too far removed from some processes to know all the facts, and decisions should always be made the closest to the facts as possible.
Positioning myself between ambiguous company needs and my team is a healthy part of my role as a manager. Converting a business need or an opportunity into a clear requirement takes time and effort, and most days, I prefer for my reports to spend that time focused where the desirable outcomes are clear and attainable. Knowing when and how to pull team members into the noise, realising when a report or the team could benefit from tackling a less clear challenge on their own, is, ironically enough, a far more ambiguous art. It most definitely is not a science.
As always, when it comes to developing intuition for high stakes topics, I prefer playing to grow. Pandemic is a cooperative that allowed me to fail safely many times, and explore this dilemma. Hitting a bit close to home these days but developed in 2008, Pandemic places you in a team of CDC (Centre of Disease Control) agents fighting an outbreak of four lethal epidemics across the globe. On your turn, you can perform four actions - move, treat the disease where they are, build a CDC outpost, exchange information with another agent, or conduct research to find a cure. Four might sound like a lot, but it’s never enough.
Once a player has taken their turn, you’ll be fighting hard not to chew your nails as you uncover where infections are spreading into. If at any point you need to add an infection token where there are already three of them, an outbreak occurs and tokens of the same colour spread from the city to all neighbouring cities, which sometimes causes a chain reaction.
The players all have a hand of cards of four different colours, representing their knowledge, limited to seven cards. Each player has a different role - maybe you’re the dispatcher, who can move other characters on their turn instead of only themselves. To find a cure, you must hold five cards of the same colour, and conduct research at a CDC outpost.
You and your team are racing against a doomsday clock. To win, players must find a cure for all four diseases. However, if too many outbreaks occur, any of the infections spread out of control, or the deck of cards runs out, you will immediately lose the game.
I think now would be an interesting time to state that as a board gamer, I don’t much care for Pandemic. I played it to a point where I veritably solved it, and, barring extreme bad luck, could always solve the puzzle it laid before me without actually needing the support of a team. Recently, though, I’ve had the chance to play it again, and from my position as a manager, I found new interest in it. It has become an exercise in avoiding quarterbacking, an exercise in controlling my presence. I found myself avoiding from providing solutions, rather turning questions back at those who presented them and guiding fellow players through breaking down possible pathways. As a leader, I find Pandemic a great space for training myself with applying a lighter touch, even when all eyes are on me and I have the solution.
Refreshing to hear a manager say we were wrong. A great resource on the value of involving subordinates in dealing with ambiguity is Ender's Game and the Shadow Saga by Scott Card.