Don’t lick the cookie

You’re at a 5 year old’s birthday party and you’ve made it through playtime, pizza, and singing happy birthday. All day you’ve been looking forward to eating the cookies your partner made, sitting tantalizingly on the counter the entire time. As you finally go to grab one you see there’s only one left and “that kid” is walking up to them. You know, the kid who always knows how to push everyone’s buttons. He looks at you and then slowly leans down… and licks. the. last. cookie. Then he walks off.

This might sound like a stretch, but this happens in our jobs as well. You’re trying to solve a problem, and another team swoops in, claiming it’s “their remit” or “falls in their job jar.” They call meetings, send emails, even go to your boss. It’s their problem to solve (or not to solve in some cases). They licked the cookie.

Why do people lick the cookie?

As frustrating as it can be, there are understandable reasons why this phenomenon happens: fear, insecurity, or even genuine confusion. Before we get into solutions, it’s useful to explore the motivations.

Not Invented Here

I’ve been guilty of this one. Early in my career I was leading a software development project building a framework. We were convinced our framework was great as we’d spent over a year on the implementation, tools, and even a sort of marketplace. Another team had been building applications for many years and sort of backed into building a competing framework along the way. In my mind, it was far inferior to our solution: it didn’t have documentation, tools, or a marketplace.

I spent a significant amount of time trying to convince the other team and various leadership that they should be using our framework. It was obviously “better”. We’d bargain and get some concessions so the other team would back down. And then a few weeks later, I’d find out they’d invested even more in their framework. This project was my baby. I’d spent years at this point building the plumbing, the buy-in, the team, and the program. This all culminated in a high-level meeting with senior executives in the room. After an hour of presentations (including mine) the decision was to stop trying to merge frameworks and focus on the applications that lived on top of them. Each team could continue on with their “competing” frameworks.

I was livid. After the meeting I marched into my boss’s boss’s office and demanded an explanation. He graciously let me vent for 10 minutes and then asked me one question: “what are we here to do?”. I paused. I knew what he was aiming at. We were all working where we did because we believed in protecting the country, serving its citizens, and doing something bigger than ourselves. He said “if we leave the frameworks separate and focus on the applications, will the mission get done?”. I knew the answer and I knew he was right. It took a few more weeks (or maybe months if I’m honest) for the lesson to settle in, but I’ve never forgotten it.

I was licking the cookie and I’d forgotten about the broader mission.

Empire Building / Protecting

Leaders, teams, and individuals can fall into this trap, often unconsciously. They’ve built their team, gotten headcount, increased budget by signing up for more and more work. Unfortunately, the environment or culture can reward this unintentionally. In my first real leadership role, I was responsible for a team of employees, contractors, and a reasonable budget. I worked hard to make strong hiring decisions, get the right contracts in place, and generally be frugal with the budget I’d been given. I got to the end of the first full year and like a proud child going to their parents for approval after cleaning their room, I went to my bosses and showed that we’d come in under budget. Their response was not what I expected. It went something like, “okay, well now that’s your new budget for next year”. I was shocked! I’d saved money and thought I’d be rewarded with the same budget (or more) the next year. That environment rewarded empire building and incentivized keeping excess headcount and resources around to hedge against future budget cuts.

Fear

Fear of irrelevance. Fear of losing funding, resources, or people. Fear of looking bad. The situations I’ve observed where someone lays claim to a space and then chooses inaction are often motivated by fear. Maybe in the past a leader had an experience where a “competing” team built a feature/process/product better than they did and they lost face or even budget as a result. Perhaps they don’t work in a psychologically safe company/team and they’re worried that someone else delivering in an area they perceive to be theirs will result in them getting in trouble or getting laid off. There are many reasons a team or leader acts from a place of fear, but much like a cornered animal, the reaction to a perceived threat can be swift and vicious.

Role & Responsibilities Confusion

Anecdotally, this is less likely to happen and easier to resolve when it does. There are times when two different teams have lack of clarity from leadership on how their work fits into the bigger picture and end up working in an overlapping space. In some cases, organizations intentionally allow this because they value internal competition to breed the best solutions. In those cases, it’s likely conflict is not only inevitable, but desired. In the vast majority of cases it is simply confusion and lack of information stemming from poor planning or communication.

Impact

What’s the impact of licking the cookie? As we’ve seen in some of the examples above, it often results in at least the following:

• Excessive meetings
• Wasted time across teams
• Slowing down progress
• Negative impacts to trust and relationships
• Decreased motivation (for your team and other teams)
• ACTUAL impact to the business or mission

How to Spot if you’re Licking the Cookie

This can be tough because often we don’t learn these lessons at the moment. Much like my personal example above, we learn them by getting it wrong and then reflecting. However, now that I’ve gone through that I think there are a few things to look out for that could be signs you’re trying to lick the cookie:

1. Do you find yourself spending more time focused on conflict with another team about the right way to do something instead of thinking about how to move the broader organization or business forward?
2. Are the escalations you’re involved in more focused on roles & responsibilities instead of resolving differing opinions on a specific technical/product/project decision?
3. Do you find yourself getting defensive when people or resources are discussed? For example, re-org discussions that may require some of your team/org to be moved to another leader.

If you answered yes to any of these, it doesn’t mean you’re already licking the cookie, but it’s probably worth some reflection on how you got to ‘yes’.

Leadership Strategies

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” - Harry S. Truman

Okay, so how do you deal with this when you see it? (If you realize you’re the one licking the cookie, refer to the previous section for reflection. Ideally, you’ll also have a leader or peer to offer feedback, as I did in my example.).

Be Proactive - Communicate early and often about what your team is working on. Write internal posts about things your team is investigating or exploring. Absolutely avoid the “big reveal”. This will pull any licking the cookie convos up so you can have them early and deal with it.

Seek to Understand - If you see a situation that looks like it’s going to be a licking the cookie situation, go spend the time to understand the other team. Why are they building the thing they’re building? What is their timeline? Will it solve the problem you were planning to solve? If you’ve done this early in the process, you may find you don’t need to build that thing. You may also find they are relieved you’re gonna solve it for them.

Own the (company) Outcome - What is needed to make the company / mission successful? Does it really matter who builds the widget, owns the policy, executes the program, or manages the tool? Maybe it does, but if you focus on the business objective first it can help provide clarity on what matters and what is just ego.

Clear Roles & Responsibilities / Escalation - Escalate if you need to and after you’ve worked through the other suggestions. If you need to escalate, do it after you’ve gathered the data and filled out as much of the RACI as you can.

We, not Me - If you join forces can you achieve the same outcomes? Is this an opportunity for collaboration and maybe even achieve the outcomes faster or more efficiently?

Conclusion

I didn’t come up with the phrase “licking the cookie” and I really wish I could remember where I picked it up along the way, but I’ll never forget the lesson I learned when I was the one licking the cookie. It’s helped me throughout my career try to focus on the business goal, hold ownership loosely, and ultimately be more successful than I otherwise would have been. Sometimes I find myself getting frustrated about ownership or someone else doing what I perceive to be my job. When I do, I remind myself that it’s the outcome that matters. If someone else is going to do it, then great, I’ll spend my time on something else that’s important. If you find yourself spending more time thinking about other people and teams than you do about what you need to deliver as a leader or how you can contribute to the overall success of the business, then take a pause and check to make sure you’re not the one licking the cookie.