(2022-09-16) Tan Unpacking Boris

Vaughn Tan Unpacking Boris. This article explains why conventional goal-setting is usually self-defeating, and how organizations can free themselves to act more autonomously and effectively by focusing on tradeoffs instead. I call this tradeoff-oriented process Boris.

this article is about Boris for organizations, but I first developed the process for individuals.

The problem with goal-setting

they still end up working at cross purposes to each other. The organization’s leaders have usually agreed among themselves on what shared goals to pursue, but have not agreed on what those shared goals means in terms of implications for their respective areas of responsibility.

organization’s internal leaders spend a lot of time and often spend a lot of money going through a goal-setting process for agreeing on shared goals.

False agreement about goals is profoundly costly

More than a decade ago, I worked for a while as one of the Googlers tasked with aligning OKRs across Google’s Product Team.

We often spent more than an entire quarter across the entire company on developing OKRs and rolling them up and down from the whole organization down to individual contributors

The result was always the same: At the end of the year, teams would be working at cross purposes to each other, individuals on the same team working at cross purposes with their teammates

The deep cost of false agreement is that the various parts of the organization — from the leadership down to the rank and file — are unable to act autonomously, effectively, and happily

Boris fixes the problem with conventional goal-setting

Why conventional goal-setting sucks

instinctive approach to goal-setting is what I label “conventional,” and it has two key elements:
It focuses on identifying goals (or targets or objectives or whatever) and ensuring that the organization converges on a set of agreed shared goals, but
Does not focus at all on making explicit and clarifying the acceptable and unacceptable tradeoffs in achieving those shared goals.

When individual stakeholders act to achieve those shared goals, they almost inevitably choose actions which represent tradeoff patterns that make sense for their areas of responsibility but usually conflict with initiatives in other parts of the business.

Example: False agreement at PrintCo

agreeing on the goals of increasing revenues and profitability in the next year (pretty bad goals for a product team)

Sandra’s strategy is to push the sales team hard on selling a particular long-established existing product line because it has a well-understood target market which isn’t yet saturated

Sandra’s tradeoff: Focusing on this product line means there’s no good sales resource to do any pre-sales for a new product addressing a different target market.

Meanwhile, Petra intends to focus the product team’s attention on launching a new product built around a new environmentally friendly proprietary ink technology

Petra’s tradeoff: Focusing on delivering the new product line means there’s little product support for software updates to existing product lines to keep them comparable with competing printing systems.

The problem is not that these organizations don’t agree on their shared goals. It is that they don’t agree on what tradeoffs they are willing to make to achieve them.

The Boris process

Each Boris workshop consists of four stages:

Stage 1: Elicit individual tradeoff patterns

Stage 2: Establish initial overlap

Stage 3: Negotiate to convergence.

Stage 4: Strategize around collective tradeoffs

Example: PrintCo does a Boris

Before the workshop, Sandra, Petra, and the rest of the C-suite separately write out their individual goals and non-goals

Sandra would have prioritized selling the existing product and deprioritized any pre-sales activity for new products. Petra would have prioritized bringing the new product to market and deprioritized existing product improvement Are thise "goals"?

Stage 2: Establish initial overlap.

Stage 3: Negotiate to convergence.

In Sandra’s and Petra’s cases, the conflict between their acceptable tradeoffs (sacrificing pre-sales for new products and improvements on existing products) becomes instantly evident.

Participants in the group negotiate with each other about what tradeoffs everyone will eventually agree to make. For Sandra and Petra, this means trying to change each other’s mind about the best way forward.

This negotiation over tradeoffs happens with every other participant. It takes several hours and emotions can run high at times because often taken-for-granted beliefs are being challenged and discussed in the open.

Stage 4: Strategize around collective tradeoffs.

Eventually, they agree that Thelma will delay all but two of her new R&D hires, and Sandra will accept a 65% unconditional compensation package for her team in Q1 and Q2 in exchange for a 15% higher commission rate on any ink revenues for the next 3 years. Wow this is a lot of detail for a year out.

Why Boris works

Resource constraints (bottleneck) mess up conventional goal-setting

unless specifically pushed to do so, we pay no attention to what we are willing to give up to achieve the goals we set. And conventional goal-setting doesn’t push for attention to tradeoffs.

Achieving any goal requires taking action. Taking any action where resources are limited always means making tradeoffs—choosing to give up some things so that you can get others

Different tradeoff patterns lead to different actions

The pattern of tradeoffs you choose is important because it is a frame that determines the actions you can and will take to achieve your goals. People who choose different tradeoffs end up taking different actions even if they are pursuing the same goal. (Tradeoffs are only 1 factor.)

Tradeoffs reveal situations and values

tradeoffs have to be made explicit, then negotiated between stakeholders.

First, the tradeoffs you’re willing to make reveal more about the situation you’re in than the goals you’re trying to achieve

Second, your tradeoff pattern shows more about your values than the goals you’re trying to achieve.

Coordinated action is impossible without agreeing on tradeoffs

Not-so-intuitive aspects of Boris

With every Boris I do, it’s becoming clearer that Boris is effective because of its side effect of revealing individual values. This happens in a largely tacit and unpredictable way.

Boris is difficult but worthwhile... three related outcomes:

Outcome 1: Individual clarity about tradeoffs.

Outcome 2: Group clarity about tradeoffs.

Outcome 3: Pragmatic next steps for continued alignment.

Would "dependencies" be a more useful frame? These teams are dependent on each others' support activities. And they're freezing their plans for a year of roadmap. Both of those are contra Agility, Context, and Team Agency.