414: How to Create Space for Strategic Thinking with Howard Tiebel

Speaker A: What comes to mind when you hear the phrase strategic thinking. For a lot of people, it's annual plans and long meetings and spreadsheets and complicated frameworks. But strategic thinking is actually something different. It's less about creating a plan and more about developing the ability to see possibilities, to anticipate challenges and make better decisions. Before you ever put a plan on paper, Today's guest explores what strategic thinking really is, why so many leaders confuse it with strategic planning, and how some simple behaviors can dramatically improve how you think. If you've ever felt stuck reacting to what's right in front of you instead of intentionally shaping what's next, this conversation is for you. Today's guest is Howard Tybell. Howard is the founder and president of Tybell Education Consulting, a national firm that helps nonprofit and educational institutions navigate change, strengthen leadership, and build high functioning teams. With more than 35 years of experience, he is known for helping leaders align purpose, decision making and accountability across complex organizations. And he hosts the Navigating Change podcast featuring national voices on leadership, culture and innovation in higher education. Before we dive in, if you were expecting a promo for Podcast plus, well, I am wrapping it up at the end of July because I've got some bigger things in store for you this fall. Here's the good part. The episode guides that used to live inside PodcastPlus are now free for everyone on my newsletter. So if you want the guide for this episode and everyone going forward, head to themodernmanager.com and sign up and they'll land in your inbox every Tuesday. Now here's my conversation with Howard. Thank you so much for joining me today, Howard. I am beyond excited to have you as a guest and I feel like I just need to give a little context for this because we have only recently met, uh, maybe six months or so when we both joined the same board of the Chautauqua Institution, which I have to also give a little shout out to. Chautauqua. If you're listening and you've never heard of this very long sounding, awkward spelled word, chautauqua, you should check out Chautauqua Institution. It is an incredible place to go, uh, to enrich yourself and your family, to learn to be around other people who are learners and love the arts and recreation and religion and there's just so much, there's something for everybody. It's an amazing place. But Howard and I got to know each other on the board and I was like, oh my gosh, Howard is amazing. We are such kindred spirits. I need to have you on my show. And the more I learned about you and the more I got to see you show up in meetings, the more impressed I have been. So I'm really happy to have you with me today.

Speaker B: I feel the same way. I feel like we're total kindred spirits in terms of the professional work we do and what we love doing with people.

Speaker A: All right, well, I'm, I'm appreciating that you said I could pick the topic for today because you do a lot, you do a lot of stuff with leaders and with managers. So I want to talk about strategic thinking because this is something that comes up, um, in so many conversations that I have with managers around how do I get my people to be more strategic? For so long, it has felt like strategic thinking happens at the top of an organization, but it doesn't always happen happen in the day to day work or kind of throughout the organization. We have kind of our strategic leaders and then we have everybody else. And that is just not how how work should happen, in my opinion. I think everybody needs to be a strategic thinker. But becoming a strategic thinker is kind of like a black box, at least to me in a lot of ways, and I think to a lot of my listeners. So why don't you start with just giving us some context of how do you define strategic thinking and how is that different from strategic planning or other kinds of way we might think about strategy or strategic work?

Speaker B: I've done over the years, so many strategic plans with companies, nonprofits, um, universities. And a strategic plan is the outcome of something. It becomes the thing that historically used to sit on the shelf. And we're better at having something being a living document. But ultimately, a plan is the output of the thinking. So the place to start is to recognize your strategic plan is not the actual design. As a matter of fact, what's so fascinating, you know, if you think about, if you had a strategic plan, you often talk about, if you're in a company, the mission and vision of the institution. Well, what I found over the years is the actual conversations where you're designing the mission, the vision and the plan and is more important than the result because by the time the results out and done, then people get back to work. But that's exactly your point, which is really so central to what I've seen over the years, is that we are so dominated by solving problems in the moment. Put aside crisis management. That happens everywhere. You are always having crises. One of the fundamental things that we'll teach folks is the Difference between problem solving and navigating concerns. The principle of navigation is being able to in a sense see the forest for the trees. And if you watch most teams, all it takes is one person to say this is what we should do. And we are dominated by everything as a problem to solve before we even understand what the problem is. So strategic thinking precedes strategic planning and thinking requires something different. Now the other thing I'll add to this is people often interpret thinking as being, you know, if I said what are you thinking about? It feels private, right? I'm thinking, well, what's really going on if you're working with others is strategic thinking with others, which is different than private thinking that we go through. So what are some elements of strategic thinking? Well, they would be things like where we're going is not intuitive, embracing alternatives, being able to recognize that we're using our imagination. And I'll describe an actual way that we do that while non strategic thinking is linear, doesn't embrace alternatives like this is what we want to do. It's the problem solving mindset. And non strategic thinking doesn't use our imagination. So the first step is to cultivate with others. Let's step back and think creatively about this and use our imaginations. And there's a way to do this which is not about what's right in front of us, but something that was coined by Cameron herald this principle of having a vivid vision. So let me stop there for a moment maybe because I'd love to have this be a conversation with you because I'm sure this is provoking for you some ideas.

Speaker A: Oh, so many things that that's coming up. I mean first I just love this idea that strategic thinking happens before strategic planning. That it's the thought process and the framing of those conversations and what you're discussing that then leads you into a more linear conversation around what are we actually going to do now? So I really appreciate that distinction and it reminds me of the divergence convergence model that we have to start in a divergence way. And that's where the strategic thinking happens. As you're saying, we kind of pull up and pull back and then we can go into a convergence model where we're getting into the actual choices and decisions and making those strategic choices to move forward. So I just feel like there's so much here, but I want to make sure everyone else is coming along with us too. And so I'm wondering if you can share a story or an example of a strategic conversation that a team had or that you've had that is somehow different from the maybe the choices you would have made if you had jumped straight into that linear planning, problem solving mode.

Speaker B: So I'm going to marry up, um, strategic thinking with this principle of having a vivid vision, because that's where we step back. So vivid vision is not a looking forward exercise. So for example, if we're working with a company and they want to do their, you know, where they want to be five years from now, well, that's, you know, an element. Let's have a strategic plan. It's like, okay, let's slow down. And it's also about the people in the room and how they're going to orchestrate stepping back. So how do you get people to step back and to, to get out of a linear way, what are we going to do? Mindset. So what we'll do, and we recently did this with an organization, is we will frame a success story. It's now 20, 30, it's four years from now. We have been written about in the New York Times about this phenomenal success we've had in pharmaceuticals, higher education. Pick the industry and they're writing a story about our phenomenal success. What did they write about? What are people feeling? What are you actually seeing in there? So what we'll do is we'll get people in that conversation and what will start to happen starts slow because we're often even in the way we speak about it. You know, this is what I'd like to have happen. No, what's been produced, that was the success. So we have now entered an entirely new market and we have created a new product that we didn't have before. And it is now something that is, um, proliferating and it's gotten airtime all over the world. And what's fascinating about this is the importance of getting to people recognize this is not the plan. This is giving ourselves permission to, uh, use our imagination to think about what success could look like. Now what we'll do is we'll have them actually on sticky notes privately brainstorm these ideas. Now, why private brainstorming? And I'm sure you know this, the difference between private and public, there was some research done on this, is that if you put a team of 20 people together and you put them in small groups and you say, oh, it's brainstorming, your small teams. The people who are comfortable speaking up and dominate either consciously or unconsciously, will take over the conversation. And then what will happen is everybody else, especially if they're more shy, uh, they won't have a voice in it. So private brainstorming is okay. For the first 10 minutes, no talking. I put music on the background. Everyone writes down things that they see as in place. They put them up on the wall and then together. Now they read them together and then they put them together in themes. So what? One theme is culture, one theme is technology. Because they, uh, and, and so you got four teams out there doing this. They're, they're coming up with these ideas, they circle them and then they share with each other. And nine times out of 10, a group of, whether it's 10, 20, 50 people discover that they're more on the same page than they realize. And I'll ask them at the end of this, was that a useful exercise? Because sometimes I wonder getting people into this non intuitive framework if they find it to be useful. And I have yet to hear people go, no, this hasn't been useful. Because you know what it is? Vision inspires. Strategy is simply how we're going to get there. So if we step back from strategy, even, even the thinking side, this is a way of getting us to actually step into, you know what, it is possible. It's actually something that is a different conversation we can have, which is being able to cultivate productive moods because there's a lot of negativity and also fear. If I said to you, where do you, you know, let's talk about where you want to be in six months? Everything is going to be about constraints. That's why you want to pick a time out in the future. But the real work is getting us to sit in that future versus talking about it as a future state.

Speaker A: Wow, I love this. I'm thinking about it.

Speaker B: Uh, what do you love about this? Because this is what we do in our work. I love that you love this. And I'm curious what you love about any of these elements.

Speaker A: So first is the really important, and I think so overlooked piece of this that M you mentioned is that we think about the future as where do we want to be? Let's write a goal statement for where we want to be. And even with a team you might just be planning six months out on a project and you think about the goal statement. And that is a very different way of thinking than having a rich vision of success. And we don't take the time to sit in that future state and really write it out in a way that makes it like real, where you can taste it. And it reminds me of an, uh, activity that I've done with my team a couple of times over the past years of creating a newspaper or a magazine where we say, okay, we're on the COVID of a magazine. What does it say about us? Why have we earned this position? What did we do? What have we done? And it's the same thing. And it's. You get to a layer of detail that you don't get when you're writing a goal or filling out a strategy document or slide deck and describing all the things you're going to do. It's not the same and it doesn't inspire people in the same way. But when you have that rich vision, you're right. It gets you out of your own thinking and constraints, which is so hard to do, and gets you into that place of belief, of possibility.

Speaker B: And the key thing that you just said here, that as people are listening to this thinking about doing this, for example, if they have a team, is to pick a timeout in the future that's far enough out where we don't fall into constraint thinking, but not so far out. I mean, it used to be the case, you know, 20 years ago, I would do this and say it's 10 years from now, 10 years from now, the world's going to look very different. Even three years is far enough out. That what it does nicely, if you want to have a little bit of action oriented in it, is it's far enough out that we don't have to think about the how as much. But it also, then when you start putting together the plan, you can really have a conversation about how you're going to get there. So the timeframe is key. And then having this milestone. I mean, the real example where this all came from is we were working with a university that one of their board members said to the senior team, when I ran my company, we created a fictitious, fictitious New York Times Magazine article of the future. And it told a story about the woman who was running to be president, but it was from 2051 M. And what did the institution need to be back in 2020 to produce somebody of this caliber? And you turn the page, you see things that they don't even have in place. And they gave it back to their board. And it transformed the board's sense of what's possible. Um, and one of the. One of the really amazing things is this was an institution of higher ed, um, and a Jesuit institution at the time. When we did this back in 2012, there were no boards, black Jesuit presidents. And you turn the page on this fictitious magazine and there's A black individual with a collar. And it's a fake interview with him talking about inclusion before DEI was even a term. So now you fast forward 10 years, or actually nine years, and I get a call from a board member, and he said, did you see the Boston Business Journal? I opened it up. They hire their first black non Jesuit president. And he traced it back to the conversation back in 2012. So what I say when people see this, I said, vision matters. And by the way, you're planting seeds for the next generation that is going to inherit your ideas.

Speaker A: Oh, wow. So, uh, powerful. It really shows that what you were able to imagine and envision is directly tied to what you're able to actually do. It's so incredible.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: All right, I want to shift us back towards strategic thinking. Part of this, because we talked about the vision now, and we need to get into the piece around, um, bringing your team in, because as you said, it's not an activity that you do by yourself. I mean, we all can be strategic thinkers in our own day to day, but it's something you often do with your team. So how do we engage our team and get them to be strategic thinkers with us? Especially when we're coming from so many different places and so many different perspectives and so many different backgrounds and have different values and, you know, different, um, you know, ways of showing up?

Speaker B: Yeah. So what we just spoke about, what does success look like? Is the starting point, which gets you out of that. What are we going to do? Um, some of this I've discovered over the years is making distinctions to help people recognize some of the default behavior we fall into. So if I'm doing a session or I'm working with the team and they. What they want, the leader wants to have ultimately. And we're going to be doing this upcoming with a team. One of the things I'm going to want to evaluate and what people need to step into is what does it mean to step back? What does it mean to step back from what we can see right in front of us, and what are we looking to build? So strategic thinking is the capacity to get out of what you can, what you have in place right now. But the really important thing I said earlier is it's a conversation, you know, where these break down and this is where we can catch ourselves. So all it takes, let's say you have a leadership team of five people and you plan your day to do a strategic planning exercise. And you start with strategic thinking and you say, all right, let's. You make some Distinctions between non. Intuitive, Intuitive. Using our imagination and non. And what this forces people to do is something that is very hard today in particular is I'm looking to have people slow down. Slowing down is probably the biggest challenge that we face with folks. Um, we even do, believe it or not, in some cases, mindful breathing exercises to get people to slow down and recognize that it's not about the thing that they want to jump in because everybody wants to. It's a default behavior. It's like we're wired this way. Oh, I have an idea. Oh, I know what we should do. And what we need to do is slow down and stop. And, you know, we. We see this on a board, right? We're on a board together. And how easily it takes. And all, by the way, and all it takes is one person in the group. Let's say that everyone settles into it. We start talking about, or let's talk about some of the ways we want to grow. And let's use some of our strategic thinking. All it takes is somebody in the room to put their hand up and say, here's what I think we should do. And then somebody goes, you know what? That's a really great idea. The whole strategic thinking will implode. So what you need to do is have somebody in the team, whether it's you or somebody else being mindful of when the process is playing out begins to implode. Uh, so you can intervene and say, you know what? Right now we are not talking about what we're going to do. We're not actually talking about the actions we're going to take. We're talking about possibilities. And the distinction between possibilities and actions are really important to monitor in a team. Is that helpful?

Speaker A: So helpful. And it actually reminds me of a meeting I was in not that long ago where that exact thing happened where we were kind of discussing something big and broad, and one person said, well, you know, if we do this xyz. And the entire conversation then became about debating their approach. Instead of staying in that open. We're really just trying to understand what the situation is right now so that we can then eventually get to the place where we can debate ideas of what's the right next step for us. And so I saw that happening and I was like, wait a second here. I guess we've shifted the conversation now. I'm kicking myself that I should have stepped in and said, wait a second. Is this what we are supposed to be talking about? Or do we. Do we feel like we fully understand the situation first before we start debating this idea. But that wasn't my role in the meeting. And now that I'm saying that out loud, I'm saying, you know what, Mamie, you tell people all the time, you. You don't have to be the main leader to help facilitate it. So I'm taking my own lessons here.

Speaker B: Yeah. And you know what? It is not easy to do. It's not easy for people to do in the organ. This is what's missing a lot, is that people don't actually feel like they have permission to speak up. And if it's the person who, quote, is the boss saying, here's what we should do, it takes courage to say, all right, can I just make, um, an observation? One of the things we talked about is that we're going to explore ideas rather than getting down that path. Can we step back? That's a bold move, and it's something that we need to increasingly give ourselves permission and learn to step in. You said something else. Um, that is probably. That is a whole different path, but the difference between debating each other's opinions versus exploring each other's opinions.

Speaker A: Ooh, say more about this.

Speaker B: So person's hand goes up and says, you know, I think what we need to do is hire three more salespeople to help us grow this part of the, uh, organization. And then somebody in the room goes, I agree. Next thing I know, that idea is closed down. And what I mean by closed down, or somebody says, you know, I don't think we need three people. I think we should put the resources into X, Y, or Z. And then somebody else says, you know, uh, what? This is what I think. Well, everybody's waiting to share what they think versus, you know, I think we should hire three new salespeople if someone was paying attention. The alternative, we teach people how to do this, and it's a behavior shift. Can you tell me why you think we need three people? Not as a challenge, but as a way to explore. And next thing you know, what gets uncovered is what's behind the judgment. We need three people or we're not doing a good job. There's a lot of opinions that get expressed, and instead of exploring each other's assessments, we call them, and this is, uh, an area of speech act theory. What we do is we debate them. I like, I dislike, I agree, I disagree. And we never get into what's behind this. You know, I'll give you a simple example. I do a lot of public speaking. This is a diversion. But, uh, it's the same Example, people will come up to me periodically and say, I love your talk. Now, it used to be the case. I said, thank you, which is the valid thing to say. Now what I say is thank you. Can you tell me what you liked about it? And I'm not looking for praise, but I got to tell you, when they tell me what they liked about it, I learned something. So what we need to learn to practice is when someone shares an opinion that we're willing to dig into it with them. And it's as simple as tell me more, or I'm curious why you say that. And then the conversation begins to expand. But you can see that what requires to do that is people have to slow down. And you can also see, you know, we're on the same board together. And I've worked with lots of boards. This is a hard thing to do because everybody's got opinions, and they think their opinions are right. So you're getting started here. You're getting me. You're getting me going, oh, my gosh,

Speaker A: I feel like we could go on forever, but we're actually running out of time, which I'm so sad. So, uh, we're going to have to start to wrap up. So, Howard, can you tell us about a great manager that you worked for and what made this person such a fabulous boss?

Speaker B: I love that you. You're asking me that question. So I have run my own company. I have been, quote, the Boss for. In 2027, it'll be 40 years, believe it or not. So I haven't had. Well, actually, the boss. My bosses are the people that we partner with. Right. The institutions, the companies we partner with. I'll give you very quickly two examples. One is a mentor when I was in my 20s, who said to me, why don't you get up and try and teach this one thing? And I had never taught before. And after I did this, he said, you know, you're very good in front of a room. And I didn't know that, but it was somebody that believed in me. Um, and I can even say Eric Vogt. And he ran a company. And then this was one of many. A number of mentors over the years that have made a difference for me in terms of a boss. Let's talk about a partner or a client. My best clients are the ones that do something really well, which is not easy. One, let us do it. Let me do my job. But also, don't disengage, because sometimes consulting capacity, one of two things happen. They, uh, know what they want to do. And there's no room for what I see as possible. And I just follow what they say, but I won't do that anymore. I'll be candid. But the other way is disengaging and thinking. I have all the answers. A great partner is somebody who is willing to engage but also willing to allow me to do the work that I think we do really well. And that's a partnership. So, uh, that's how I'd answer that question, given my years of being on my own.

Speaker A: Well, my experience is exactly the same, and it is completely analogous to being a manager. You have to give your people enough space to leverage their own strengths and follow their direction and do their work the way that works best for them. And don't leave them out unsupported with thinking that they're. They got the ball, they're good, You're. You're totally out. You have to have that middle ground. That is. That is definitely the goal. All right, and where can people learn more about you? You also host a podcast, so tell us all that good stuff.

Speaker B: So they can go to tibelinc.com and it's EI, not I E, so T E I B E L I N C dot com. And on that webpage, you'll see a lot of free resources. There are written resources that we've done over the years, and they're cataloged by different categories. We've got, like, you, like, over 200 podcasts that we've done over the years, um, around organizational development, innovation, strategy, and so on. And those are the best ways, uh, for people to learn more about our work.

Speaker A: Fabulous. Well, thank you so much for coming on today and giving me another chance to just pick your brain, because I feel like I learn something from you every time we talk. So thank you.

Speaker B: I feel the same way about you, Mamie.

Speaker A: If you found today's conversation helpful, the guide with the episode's key takeaways is yours free when you sign up for my newsletter@themodernmanager.com Also, make sure that you follow the show, and I hope you'll share it with another manager who you think would get something from it or leave a quick review so that other people know it's worth giving a listen. Thanks again for joining us. Until next time,