SuperInfluence: The Gap Analysis
In This Episode
Do you ever feel like your ideas aren't taken seriously? Or that it's hard to feel a sense of progress or accomplishment? Learn how SuperInfluencers use the gap analysis to strategize about what gets done and how to measure if it's been successful.
Wanna dig a bit deeper? Check out the research referenced in this episode:
Transcript
Vanessa Tanicien, narrating: Hello, and welcome to The LeaderLab, the podcast powered by LifeLabs Learning. I'm your host and LifeLabs, leadership trainer, Vanessa Tanicien. In each episode, my Labmates and I distill our findings into powerful tipping point skills — the smallest changes that tip over to make the biggest impact in the shortest time. LeaderLab listeners, we're continuing the conversation on SuperInfluence, specifically what can people do differently to impact the behaviors of others without resorting to authority. And here to help me unpack the next SuperInfluencing skillset is Ashley Schwedt. Ashley has a background in social work and she is our Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion here at LifeLabs Learning. And she's also given me a tattoo on the back of a moving bus. So welcome to the lab, Ash.
Ashley Schwedt: Thanks Vanessa. I am excited to be here with you today.
Vanessa Tanicien: I'm excited to have you here knowing that honestly, you are one of the influencers at LifeLabs. In my mind, one of the most influential people I've met. You got me to get a tattoo on the back of the bus. I mean, come on.
Ashley Schwedt: Not just you Vanessa. I gave one to our CEO also.
Vanessa Tanicien: I know. Matching. So, you know I love a strategic thinking tool. I'm curious, what is the skill that we're going to be walking through today?
Ashley Schwedt: Absolutely. So what I want to talk about today is one of my favorite skills, and I'm glad you see me as influential because this is probably the thing that behind the scenes I'm doing intentionally to gain that influence. It's called a gap analysis. What this is a strategic practice of identifying your current state and your desired state to define what the existing gap is that your project or strategy will close.
Vanessa Tanicien: What is the direct link to SuperInfluence? Like how do these things ladder up to each other?
Ashley Schwedt: Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad you asked. So let me actually just share a personal example to explain this a little bit. So like many folks, I love doing projects that I want to do, things that excite me, that motivate me, which is great, unless I don't share why these projects are actually important. And if I'm going to be influential, I have to be doing the work that matters most, that has high business priority. That's going to be seen by our senior leaders as the most important, otherwise I'll just be seen as a workhorse, which is fine, but that's not influence.
Vanessa Tanicien: No, nobody wants to be a cog in the machine. Come on.
Ashley Schwedt: Exactly. Exactly.
Vanessa Tanicien: All right, Ash, you've got me driving down the brain lane super fast. I need some research gas in the tank. Show me what you got. What's going on.
Ashley Schwedt: There's actually some really cool research around this. One survey of 10,000 senior leaders showed that 97% of them said that being strategic was the leadership behavior most important to their organization's success, not just behavior leadership behavior. And when I think of being strategic, it's thinking about the future and integrating it into the present, which is exactly what the gap analysis allows you to do. It doesn't matter if you have a title or not. It puts you in a place of having that leadership, having that influence, being seen by others as influential.
Vanessa Tanicien: Gotcha. That executive presence piece.
Ashley Schwedt: Exactly. Right. So you're actually saying, I recognize that there might be a problem here, but you're not just complaining. You're also saying, and here's what we can do to close that gap. So one other study that I actually really love about this in 2017, Nathan Wiita and Orla Leonard found that the key differentiators for high performers, one of the biggest ones was that they spend nearly 20% more time defining their strategy, meaning that they're translating the high level vision into clear, actionable goals. That clear actionable goal is that gap analysis, right, of where we're at and where we're trying to get to.
Vanessa Tanicien: And that directly relates to that high performance piece. You are a Jedi master.
Ashley Schwedt: It's just the gap analysis Vanessa.
Vanessa Tanicien: God, I love that. And I also kind of want to go into the murkier territory of like, what happens when people don't use a gap analysis? Like what are some of the negative impacts of just jumping into work or using your feelings to make decisions? Can you walk us through a little bit of that?
Ashley Schwedt: I sure can. I unfortunately have much personal experience here. Before learning this tool, I really just wanted to believe that my feelings were always right. I still sometimes want to believe that, but the reality is that if I'm just doing things based on what I feel or how I'm perceiving things. I don't have a holistic view of everything. That's not possible. Right.
Vanessa Tanicien: Right.
Ashley Schwedt: And so when I do that, I often am spending time and resources on things that aren't the projects that matter most. They're just the ones that I care about. And that's not a good use of my time if I want to be influential because influential folks are spending time on the things that matter most.
Vanessa Tanicien: Gotcha. So we want to figure out those high leverage moments. All right. So in true LeaderLab fashion, I want to try this on for size Ashley. So can you walk me through how to do a gap analysis?
Ashley Schwedt: Yeah, let's try it. So Vanessa, what I want you to do is to think about a project that you want to work on, something that you think would make an impact at LifeLabs. What is it?
Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah. I've been talking a lot about some of the product initiatives that are coming down the pipeline, but it's only because it's real and lots of things are changing at LifeLabs. And one of the things that I think would be really helpful, especially as we onboard a ton of new facilitators is a centralized place for research documentation and learning. Right now, it exists, but it's in a lot of different places which can honestly make it challenging to onboard some of these new folks and have them understand the research the way that they need to in order to teach to the quality and standard that we have.
Ashley Schwedt: Absolutely. I totally hear that. So I really like what you said, because you said that I think that would help. Right. Or something that I feel like would help. Yep. So here's where the gap analysis comes in. Let me ask you Vanessa, how would you actually measure your success here? What metrics would you look at?
Vanessa Tanicien: Oh, I guess there are a couple of things that I can look at. I could look at facilitator satisfaction or teachability scores. We actually rank our workshops to make sure that they have those resources that they need to be taught effectively. And then from a product standpoint, just making sure that the research is noted somewhere. So that is another place. And then ease, ease of access, I think is another thing to think about. So it's kind of hard. These seem hard to measure Ashley.
Ashley Schwedt: I'm glad you said that because I'm about to blow your mind, Vanessa. So you mentioned a few different things. I'm going to split check them for you. So the first one that you mentioned was confidence of facilitators, right? The second one was location of information and the third was ease in finding information. Is that right?
Vanessa Tanicien: Yes. Those are the three.
Ashley Schwedt: Okay. Which one do you want to focus on? Which is most important to you?
Vanessa Tanicien: This is how you know you're an expert facilitator, because you're already breaking this down into these three different components. I will say ease. As we are onboarding these new facilitators it's super important that they're able to self-lead here. So ease of access.
Ashley Schwedt: Great. So how can you measure ease?
Vanessa Tanicien: Great question. The first thing that came to my mind is facilitator perception, I guess like on a scale of one to 10, how easy is it to find this information? Does that suit the question?
Ashley Schwedt: Yeah, absolutely. I love perception as a measurement because it's something that we can always measure against because we always have a perception. And so let me ask you then thinking back to the gap analysis, you talked about using perception as your measurement. So what's your desired state? What would make you feel successful in terms of people's perception of ease?
Vanessa Tanicien: I'm going for a solid A plus, 96%. That's what I want.
Ashley Schwedt: Great. So the desired state is that 96% of facilitators think it's easy to find information about research.
Vanessa Tanicien: I mean, when you say it that way, it makes it so simple. Yeah. That's the metric that I'm after, I guess. Yeah.
Ashley Schwedt: Cool. Well then the next step of the gap analysis is to figure out what your current state is. So asking the same question now, before starting the project. So that way you can feel the progress and close that gap as you go.
Vanessa Tanicien: You know what I also think is cool is that, what if the facilitators are at 93%, it's totally going to change the way that I'm thinking about this potential project, which is also really nice for my own energy management.
Ashley Schwedt: Absolutely. Because I hate to break it to you Vanessa, but if they're already at 93, is this really where you should be spending your time?
Vanessa Tanicien: Probably not. So the bearer of bad news, but in the most influential way, I love that. So that brings us to our LeaderLab listener experiment. So Ashley, what are we asking folks to experiment with in their laboratories of life?
Ashley Schwedt: So I want folks to try your own gap analysis. So first thing I would say is think of a change area, something that if changed would make you, your team, or your org better. After you do that, I want you to identify your current state, put some kind of numbers on it, operationalize that variable, then put numbers on your desired state. Where do you want to get to? What would tell you're successful? Here's the trick. If you don't know, you have to measure it, you have to find out. So again, first thing, think of that change area. What would make a difference? Second, put numbers on the current state, numbers on the desired state and then you're on your way to having influence.
Vanessa Tanicien: Sounds so simple. You make everything a little bit easier Ashley. Thanks so much for being here on the lab.
Ashley Schwedt: Thanks Vanessa. It's great to spend time with you.
Vanessa Tanicien: And that's a wrap of another episode of The LeaderLab. Make sure to subscribe and share this with at least one other person so we can all be SuperInfluencers. It's pretty awesome. The LeaderLab is executive produced and hosted by me, Vanessa Tanicien. NeEddra James is our senior producer and Alana Burman is our director and editor. If you'd like to hang out with us on social, go ahead and find us on LinkedIn at LifeLabs Learning and on Twitter @LifeLabsLearn. To bring training to your team, head on over to lifelabslearning.com. See you...
