Most news from outside the company gets a comment and nothing else. Someone mentions it and the meeting goes on. This Practice takes one of those moves and turns it into a question about work the team is doing right now. That question is what gets the news onto the agenda.

A tool that supports it

Trend Awareness is a behavior, and there are several ways to build it. One simple tool is “What? So What? Now What?” The three questions come from the educator Terry Borton, in his book Reach, Touch, and Teach.

Each question does one job. “What?” asks for the fact, with nothing added: who did what, and when. “So what?” asks why the fact matters to you. Here that means naming the customers or the piece of work it touches. “Now what?” asks what you’ll do about it, even if the answer is to change nothing.

Trend Awareness lives in the second question. Most people stop after the first, because repeating a piece of news is easy. The tool keeps you going until the news has a project attached to it.

When to use it

Use it when something changes outside the company, like a competitor’s launch or a supplier’s new terms. Bring it to a meeting the team already has. You’ll hear the signal in the hallway: “Did you see what they did?”

One move at a time is enough. It should connect to a project that’s open now, so the team can still act on it.

How to use it

  1. Answer “What?” in one sentence. Write the move down as a fact, with the source and the date.
  2. Answer “So what?” for yourself first. Which of your customers does it reach? Which open project serves those customers?
  3. Bring it to the meeting as a question about that project. Asking a question when a comment would be easier is the hard part.
  4. Close with “Now what?” Leave with one adjustment, or a clear decision to stay the course.

Example

An accounting firm is halfway through redesigning its basic bookkeeping package. On Monday, a large bank announces a free bookkeeping app for small businesses.

Before the weekly team meeting, one of the accountants runs the three questions. What? A bank launched a free app that records income and expenses for small businesses. So what? Its users would be the firm’s smallest clients, who buy only the basic package. That’s the package being redesigned. Now what? She doesn’t know yet, so she takes it to the team.

The usual way “Did you see the bank’s new app? Interesting.”
The Practice “The bank launched a free bookkeeping app on Monday. It does part of what our basic package does. Which of our clients would find it good enough? And what does that change in the package we’re redesigning?”

The team spends ten minutes on it and adds a monthly call with an accountant to the new package, something the app doesn’t offer.

Phrases you can use

  • “Something changed outside this week, and I think it touches our project.”
  • “Here’s the fact. What I want to ask is what it means for us.”
  • “Which of our customers does this affect first?”
  • “If this works for them, what changes for us a year from now?”
  • “So what do we do differently on this project, knowing this?”
  • For a leader, when someone does it: “You brought that in as a question. What did the team change because of it?”

How to know it worked

The team stops for a few minutes and something on the project list changes, even a small item. Next time, people bring outside moves to the meeting themselves. Over time, fewer changes in the market reach the team as a surprise.

In a Skill Deck Track on Strategy, a person can choose this Practice, and the meetings they already have show when they use it.

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