The Blank Sheet Exercise

What does it really take to start fresh?

If you’ve been a member of the board or C-suite for long enough, there’s a good chance you have thought about starting all over again. Choosing new members for the board or executive team, adopting a different business model, or perhaps redesigning the organization so that it could really work the way it should. Usually, the idea of starting over with a blank sheet is just a fleeting whim, not connected to any real intention to take action. But what if it wasn’t?

Whether it’s your life, or career, or a change in the way you run the business, there can be real value in thinking about what you would do differently if only you could. To unlock that value requires a two-step process. First, you have to give more than a passing thought to what you would change and second, you need to force yourself to act, which requires that you face the fears that are holding you back.

When it comes to what you would change, it’s usually easy to come up with a list of things that you find annoying, unnecessary, distasteful, unsatisfying, concerning, or not in keeping with your values and aspirations. Whether you know it or not, you have an internal GPS that guides you as you move through life. That GPS does its best to steer you toward the outcomes you hope to achieve for yourself and your organization. Nevertheless, your GPS, like the one in your phone, only provides directions; it doesn’t force you to follow them and it can’t keep you from deciding to go somewhere you don’t want to go. Other pressures, usually from those around us, instruct us to go against our preferences in order to remain aligned with the expectations others have for us. Or, sometimes, we find ourselves giving into a preference of our own that feels good in the moment but isn’t the best for us in the long run. Either way, it may take a fair amount of time to realize that we are off course, which is when that thought of starting over kicks in.

Recognizing that we are off-course isn’t always easy. We train ourselves to endure a certain amount of pain in order to achieve a goal we have set for ourselves, or to accept that the world will never be perfect. When we do, we tell ourselves to ignore the signals from our internal GPS. Do that for long enough, and we may wake up somewhere far from where we intended to be. While the course deviations may each be minor, they can add up over time. One day, we can be in a meeting where something relatively minor takes place that triggers a blank sheet moment and we suddenly realize that everything has gone terribly wrong and we aren’t even certain how it happened. We have a dreadful feeling that it’s too late to do anything about it because it would involve so much disruption, so we let the moment pass and carry on like the good soldiers that we are.

But what if instead, we use that moment to step back, reflect on why we are feeling lost and take action to address what’s wrong? What if instead of being a good soldier we assumed the role of responsible leader and saw it as our job to make things better? If we can do that, the list of things we find troubling can become a source of inspiration, spurring us into action. We then start to follow our GPS again and as we do, we immediately begin to feel better.

Since pressures from every direction are constantly tugging at us to ignore our GPS, learning to take advantage of blank sheet moments can become a form of continuous improvement. As we steer back on course day in and day out, the corrections are easier to make than if we let them build to a crescendo and have to literally change everything at once.

But suppose we have let things build up to the point where significant change would be required to realign our direction with our purpose. What then? Do we take two aspirins and wait until the morning? Of course not.

You could just fire everyone or sell the company but wait. It probably makes sense to think things through a little. Here’s a process you can follow.

1. Get in touch with what’s wrong. It may be that you have been putting up with the situation for so long that you aren’t certain who or what is really causing the problems you are experiencing. Do some deep thinking about your list of what is troubling you and assign a cause or causes to each one.

2. Verify your hunches. Find an objective party to review your diagnosis of the situation to see if you have it right. You may need to turn to an external consultant who can collect information from different sources that confirms or disproves your hypotheses. If you are about to make significant changes, you don’t want to just shoot from the hip.

3. Identify your biggest concerns. If you haven’t already addressed the issues you have identified, there’s probably a good reason. Something has been holding you back. Bringing this fear out of the shadows and into the light will allow you to address it rationally. For example, there may be a long-standing member of the executive team who has been underperforming for quite a while. You have known you need to address the situation, but you have imagined the discomfort associated with having the conversation that says it’s time to go and so keep putting it off. In the light of day, you know the right thing is to get on with it and that you and the organization will be better off from having finally addressed the issue. Even if you need to arrange a handsome payout to ease the pain, you’re making an investment in your future well-being and that of the organization. Shutting down a business or abandoning an investment that hasn’t paid off is tough, but how many nights have you lost sleep over it? Those blank sheet moments are telling you to start fresh, no matter how messy or embarrassing things will be for a brief moment in time.

4. Share your intentions. If you act on your blank sheet ideas, people are likely to be nervous. Is this just the first move with more to follow? Is the company in trouble? In fact, you are taking actions that if understood, many people would agree with. Shareholders aren’t as troubled by big changes as they are by not knowing why you are making them. If you keep making them and nothing good happens, that’s another story. However, if you’ve followed the process outlined here, you’ll hit the mark more than you will miss. So be sure to communicate what has been troubling you and why you have decided to act.

Move on. No second thoughts or regrets. The period right after you make a major change is always going to be a bit bumpy. Emotions, including your own, will run high. Stick with it; the benefits will show as you begin following that internal GPS. 1. And if you do get off course again, don’t be afraid to pull out a blank sheet of paper.