What Would You Do If You Weren’t Told What To Do?

Let me run a thought experiment:  “What would you do if your weren’t told what to do?”

You know the goals you must achieve, let’s say quota-based, or similar revenue based attainment goals.  If you are in a non-selling role, think about project goals/deadlines or other important goals.

You have all sorts of resources to help you achieve them, tools, technologies, processes, programs, and so many more.

But your job is to figure out what to do to achieve your goals.

• How would you spend your week?
• How would you get the work you needed to get done, done?
• What would you stop doing?
• What would you do more of?
• What would you change?
• Who would you ask for help in getting what you need to get done, done?

Or, let’s make it simpler, you are planning a meeting with a prospect/customer.

You don’t have a script.

• What goals would you establish for the meeting?
• How would you ensure that you and the customer were aligned in what should be accomplished in the meeting?
• Do you know enough to carry on your end of the conversation, helping the customer move forward?
• Do you know what resources are needed to support what you want to achieve?

Or, your pipeline is weak.  Can you figure out the 2-3 most impactful things to improve your pipeline or the results you achieve?  I’ll give you the easy, though perhaps not the best, answer:  More top of funnel!  But other than more top of funnel, what else might you consider?

In any aspect of your job, could you figure out how to achieve the goals, without being told what to do and how to do it?  Could you figure out where to get help, what resources might be available and how to use them?

Could you figure out the things you should stop doing?  Things that are a waste of time, bad habits that persist?

Unfortunately, too many sellers, and managers, don’t have the ability to figure these things out.   Or they rely on AI and agents to do the stuff they can’t figure out what to do.

Too many robotically follow scripts and playbooks, even when they see they aren’t working.  They persist in doing what they’ve always done, or been told to do.  

Even at a management level, the reliance on dashboards has reduced conversations into, “This dial shows red, you have to turn it to green…..  This chart shows you need more in your pipeline, you need more….”  Seldom do they consider, “What might we change?”

How did we get here?  I think a few key things have contributed to this:

1. Organizations purposefully or inadvertently train people to be dependent.  “This is how we do things here….”  Recognition that rewards compliance rather than initiative.
2. This creates an over-reliance on processes, structure, and KPIs.  This has created a form of “learned helplessness.”  Where everything is prescribed, people lose the ability to figure things out for themselves.  These things that are supposed to help us succeed, actually prevent people from learning how to succeed.
3. Fear of failure.  If we don’t follow the scripts, or if we try something different, what happens if we fail?  What’s the risk of failing by doing something differently or failing by doing the same things as everyone else?
4. Individually and organizationally, we get a weird sort of FOMO–a “safety in numbers.”  If everyone else is doing the same thing, why should we be different?
5. Finally, the sheer volume and pace of work.  People are drowning in to-do lists, activities, constant shifts.  It’s easy to follow the playbooks and scripts.  Too often we don’t have the time to figure things out, appreciating the relief of being told what to do.

Something amazing happens when people start figuring things out for themselves.  They start exploring, experimenting.  They look at what others might be doing, perhaps things they could adapt. 

What does “figuring things out” look like?

1. When something isn’t working, people who follow the script, ask “What should I do?”  People figuring things out think, “What’s happening, why?”  They examine their recent experiences to see if any patterns emerge.  They try to understand if they are missing something.  They try an experiment, doing one thing a little differently; testing and refining it until it produces what they need.
2. When customers aren’t responding the way we expect them to respond, those who follow scripts just keep plowing on.  “Maybe the demo will be a hit….”  When we seek to figure things out, we might think:  “Do they understand what I’m really asking?”  “Do I understand what they are saying?”  “Is this important to me, but not them?”  “Is there something I’m missing, how do I figure that out?”
3. When managers see things not working with their people and teams, they double down on the pressure, KPIs,, sometimes resorting to PIPs.  To figure out individual performance problems, they need to understand, “What are they doing differently than everyone else?  Why?  What is most helpful in getting them to change their behaviors?”  When the team is failing, “What is changing that is making it more difficult for them to achieve their goals?  
4. When managers want to encourage their people to figure things out, they create cultures where this is encouraged.  They develop people’s skills and capabilities around curiosity, critical thinking, problem solving.  They tend to ask questions more than providing answers.
5. When people start figuring things out, they start becoming “students of their professions.”  They learn from others, read, collaborate, experiment.  They trust their own judgment, knowing when they must adjust or change.  They develop resilience, learning from their mistakes.  They develop greater confidence in their own ability to succeed.

Before I close, there is an “elephant in the room.”  It’s the reliance on AI and AI Agents.  There’s an emerging term called “workslop.”  It is the acceptance of AI generated mediocrity.  What happens is that rather than using AI to challenge us, we use AI to do the work and to provide us the answers.  These answers have an aura of feeling good–the LLMs present them using very compelling phrasing.  We accept the generic emails.  We use the meeting summaries that miss the meaning of what happened in the meeting.  We provide AI generated proposals, focused on great form but weak content.

We start relying on things that are adequate-ish.  Never outstanding.  And the more we rely on these things, the more we lose our abilities to learn and figure it out ourselves.  We even lose the ability to evaluate the quality of the AI generated work.

The problem isn’t so much the AI, but how we use the AI and what we surrender when using it.

AI can be very powerful.  Particularly when we use it to help us think differently.  To challenge us with different ideas and perspectives.  To find the weaknesses in our arguments.  AI is a terrific tool to help us figure things out–not give us the answers.

So what are we to do?  How do we get started?  How do we develop our skills to figure things out?

For each of us:

1. Pause more often and ask “Why?”  Why are you doing what you are doing–is it out of habit or following the script, or is it because it’s the thing that matters most to you and the people you are working with?  Why now?  Why do it at all?
2. Begin experimenting, start small, but learn.  Try something different in a meeting.  Try a different approach in your outreach.  Experiment with how you are managing your time and activities.  In each experiment learn.  Did it produce what you expected, why did that happen?  Did it fail, why did it fail, what should you change?
3. Become a student of your profession.  Read widely, learn from your peers.  Reflect on the successes and failures, your own and those you see with others.  What can you learn, what might you change?

Leaders can create an environment stimulate this shift.

1. Recognize and reward initiative, not compliance.  Celebrate creative problem solving, thoughtful risk taking.
2. Focus on asking questions, not giving answers.  Rather than telling people what to do, ask, “What are the most important things you should do?”  Guide people to developing solutions themselves, rather than dictating them.
3. Make it “safe” to try something different.  Virtually nothing we do in selling isn’t recoverable.  A bad call or meeting can always be fixed.  We can learn from our losses.  Encourage people to experiment, work with them in testing new ideas before they actually execute them.

What would you do if you weren’t told what to do……  You’d figure it out!

Afterword:  Here is the AI generated discussion of this post.  Enjoy!