Employing Differences, Episode 191: Where do we go from here?

"When people ask, 'Well, what's the best way to make a decision?' is where we fall into the realm of 'best practice.' And the thing is that there's very little actual best practice when it comes to humans working together, because of the complexities of things like this. A good practice in a particular situation is not necessarily going to be a good practice in another situation."

Karen & Paul discuss how knowing where to go from here requires understanding where "here" really is.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Karen: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.  

[00:00:13] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis.  

[00:00:14] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig.  

[00:00:16] Paul: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is "Where do we go from here?"  

[00:00:24] Karen: So this is a question that came up as Paul and I were talking about working with clients. And particularly working with the folks who are trying to craft a plan. A plan for a meeting, or a process, or a culture change, or whatever it might be. 

[00:00:39] Karen: And how do we know what to do? And of course, this is the sort of thing that sometimes Paul and I get brought in to help with. But people also ask, "Well, how did you know? How did you know to do that activity?" Or "How did you come up with that plan?"  

[00:00:58] Karen: And we thought we'd talk some about "Where do we go from here?" And "What are the things that we consider and think about to get where we're headed?" 

[00:01:10] Paul: It's the 'from here' part that's often a little tricky. Because particularly when we're not part of a group, we don't necessarily know what the group is capable of at any point. But that's actually the thing you need to figure out. Because we can have all sorts of great vision for how we want it to be. 

[00:01:26] Paul: We've talked about this before, about like, what is it that we want? "We want to reach a decision in this meeting", or "We want to reach a decision in a way that actually fosters relationship between us rather than making us bitter enemies." Those as it pointed out, point out our two different goals that sometimes we don't think about..  

[00:01:45] Paul: But also those are two different goals that you might have based on the current state of the group. One of the things that you need that we often are thinking about when somebody says, "This is our goal. This is what we want to do. We want to get to a decision here", or "We want to provide more feedback to each other", or "We want an organization that works more like this." 

[00:02:05] Paul: One of the things that I think Karen and I are always kind of doing is going "Well, what would that look like from where you are now?" "What would we need to be thinking about?" "What are the pieces you would need to be putting in place if you wanted to be moving that direction?" And "What might some of the problems with doing that be?" 

[00:02:24] Karen: So one that I think comes up often, and isn't a good model to work from, although it would apply in other places, but there's a decision that needs to be made. And if I'm getting consulted about this, it's because it's not going so well. But what I think is really important is to start with "Where are we now?", as Paul said, the current state? 

[00:02:45] Karen: What do we know? And not just what do some of us know, but what do all of us know? Or, you know, do we all have the same relevant information? That kind of thing. Where are we emotionally? Are people very emotionally engaged in this or not? And also in that sort of emotional realm, often do we have a lot of disagreement, or not? 

[00:03:07] Karen: Or do we have a lot of people who don't know what they think; they haven't thought about it yet. They haven't considered it, as opposed to a lot of people who have considered it a lot, and did not all come to the same conclusion. And therefore the disagreement piece.  

[00:03:20] Karen: And then I look at what skills do we have? What abilities to listen to each other, what abilities for different meeting structures. 

[00:03:28] Karen: You know, if you want to do a spectrum exercise that we talked about a couple of episodes ago. "Have we done that before?" And therefore, we can do it pretty efficiently or if I'm going to do a spectrum exercise, do I have to stop and teach a spectrum exercise? Because we've never done it before, that kind of thing. 

[00:03:43] Karen: And also, if we're on zoom, am I working with a group that is very tech savvy? If I'm working with a bunch of computer programmers, I can throw up an exercise on a Miro board and know that they're going to navigate that pretty well. Even if they haven't used Miro before, they'll adopt it quickly. Probably. I'm dealing with a group of largely senior citizens, not so much. So maybe I got to figure out how to do that in chat.  

[00:04:04] Karen: All those kinds of things come into play. Like, what have I got to work with? And then what resources do we have, particularly time and willingness to invest time and effort into it. 

[00:04:17] Karen: So, all of that is about where are we now? So, we want to make a decision, but what is the context that we're starting from? Because sometimes, someone in the group looks ahead and sees 'We're going to need to make this decision.' And they're the only one who knows anything about it. 

[00:04:34] Karen: Nobody else has thought about it at all. Well, then you're probably going to start more in the cognitive information route. Other times, there's a group that people know a lot about it, have thought about it. They may have even thought it out before, but we're back in it for whatever reason. And are absolutely on sides. 

[00:04:51] Karen: You're probably not going to do nearly as much information start and you're going to work the, what, where are the shared values? Where can we find common ground? I mean, you're looking for very different kinds of exercises and very different framing. Cause you're not going to get from absolute division to a decision that everybody can support and be part of without some intermediate steps. 

[00:05:14] Paul: And this is one of those things that makes it challenging. Like, when people ask, " Well, what's the best way to make a decision?", right? This is where we fall into the realm of best practice. And the thing is that there's very little actual best practice when it comes to humans working together.  

[00:05:30] Paul: Because of the complexities of things like this. Like, a good practice in a particular situation is not necessarily going to be a good practice in another situation. 

[00:05:39] Paul: And as you're pointing out your choice of tools that you're going to deploy, ways that you're going to go about trying to make a decision, is very much based on where they are now. You've kind of laid out a whole lot of factors there that you're going to take into account.  

[00:05:53] Paul: Every consultant will answer any reasonable question with it depends, but the true skill of a consultant is knowing what it depends on. 

[00:06:02] Paul: And that's kind of like what you're talking about, right? It's the being able to assess what are the relevant things in the current situation that are going to influence the choice of what's going to help us move in the right direction.  

[00:06:14] Paul: This is something that I do in my organizational consulting as well. I mean, you've talked about it in terms of decision making. But you know, I was working with a client last year where they wanted to improve the way that they were doing software delivery. They had grown quite a bit. And unsurprisingly, their old way of working was not scaling the way that they wanted it to. 

[00:06:33] Paul: And, I told them, I said, basically, when I come in to do these things, I have a list of like 70 different things that would be good if you could do them. But what I'm really doing is figuring out 'what are the core things on that list you can actually do from where you are now'.  

[00:06:49] Paul: And that's not a judgment in the sense of like, Oh, it's a moral failing that you can't do these 65 things. It's just the factors that influence them are not in play. Like, you don't have the types of lines of communication. You don't have the types of team structure. You don't have the types of information sharing that would be required. You have a lot of division between this group and that group, which makes this thing, you know, impossible. 

[00:07:14] Paul: And so I think that that's the thing that when you do any of these types of work, that require you to make decisions about the right tools to use at the right time. When you do that type of work, you just come to appreciate it. You come to internalize it. And then someone who doesn't know that type of work comes to you and ask what they think is a very simple question, right? How should we do this? , And it can actually be really hard for us to answer!  

[00:07:39] Karen: And very often I answer with a lot more questions. Folks ask me all the time. Well, this is the problem that we're having and how would you approach it? And even if they've sent me 2 pages of email, which is lovely. I'm still going to be asking "So can I meet with the group that's kind of working on this? I need to ask questions and get a feel for..." just all of that data.  

[00:07:59] Karen: And honestly, almost anything in an email isn't enough. I need to hear people talk about it and be able to answer, ask, questions in the moment, that kind of thing  

[00:08:06] Karen: Unless if I'm a member of the group, as you've said, if I'm not coming in from outside, I may already know some things, but I think what you're getting to there, Paul, that is so important is. There may be intermediate steps. There may be good enough for now. Like, this is what we can do now and that moves us in the right direction. 

[00:08:25] Karen: And there may be things that 'We want this'. And ' We can get that, but we can't get that in 1 meeting or 1 training or 1 policy or 1...' There's not a plug and play way to get there. There are just ways that we can move in that direction.  

[00:08:40] Karen: And, of course, most of the time, if it was easy, we'd be doing it already. 

[00:08:44] Karen: So, it's not easy. Which means it's going to take some investment, of time and energy. And so, 'Do we have that? Is there a willingness to spend time and energy on it?"  

[00:08:54] Paul: Yeah, and I think one of the things that keeps that willingness level higher than it would be otherwise, is having some agreement about what that direction we're trying to move in is. And oftentimes when we're trying to go somewhere, we have a vision of what that might be.  

[00:09:10] Paul: But that vision can be overly specific. Right? It means, 'Oh, we will have a decision by the end of this meeting." "Uhh, okay!"  

[00:09:18] Paul: Which is more important to you? Having the decision, having it by the end of the meeting, having people not shouting at each other? Like, we want to create a broader sense of "If we were moving towards the thing that we wanted, what would it be like?" 

[00:09:31] Paul: How could we tell that we were moving that way? Because then that way, as the group is starting to develop more of those, as we're taking those intermediate steps, people can see, "Ah, okay, we haven't gotten to exactly the thing I thought we were going to. But I can tell we've moved in that direction." You know, I'm feeling that there is more free flow of information in the group. 

[00:09:53] Paul: It feels like, Oh, there's more trust here. It feels like we're getting faster at making these types of decisions. Like, I find it really useful at the beginning of that process.  

[00:10:04] Paul: You know, when I can see you're not going to get there in one step, you can't get to where you want to be from where you are right now, it's very useful to spend some time with the group, figuring out how would you tell if you were moving in that direction. Because then that, as you, if you're assessing that as you go. 

[00:10:22] Paul: You know, you do a thing you can do from here and then you go, did that move us in the direction we're trying to go? Or are we closer to where we want to be?  

[00:10:28] Paul: That keeps people's stamina up, in terms of being able, and having willingness to keep at it and going, 'Okay, we didn't get there in one step and I can see we are moving that way.' 'I wish it was faster. And we are going that way.'  

[00:10:41] Paul: And so I think that's one of the key things to do. Is to figure out what that is and then continually assess it as you're moving.  

[00:10:48] Karen: And celebrate!  

[00:10:49] Paul: Yes!  

[00:10:51] Karen: Take time, not just, Okay, yeah, we're doing it, but to actually say, "This is great!" 

[00:10:56] Karen: "Two months ago, this meeting would have looked like whatever. Now look what we're doing. This is great!"  

[00:11:04] Karen: I think sometimes people are afraid to celebrate intermediate steps because we didn't finish yet. Right. We're not everything we want to be. So we aren't going to celebrate yet. And I'm just going to say, celebrate the gains, celebrate the wins when you get them. 

[00:11:16] Paul: Yeah! And there's a thing that one of my mentors talks about, which is the, " Noticing you did it wrong sooner is a form of progress." It's like, "It used to be it took me two weeks to figure out I'd done this wrong. Now it only takes me an hour!" That's progress! Soon I'll be not making the mistake. Cause I'll be figuring it out in real time!  

[00:11:32] Paul: And again, that's a thing that's worth celebrating!  

[00:11:34] Karen: For sure! So I think what we're asking today with, "Where do we go from here?" is really focusing on that 'Where is here'.  

[00:11:42] Karen: We've had other episodes that we talked a little bit more about where you're trying to get to. You need to know that too.  

[00:11:47] Karen: But if you really can get into 'here'. And ' What is the thing that's in our way?' 'What is the thing that's stopping us from being where we want to be?' And 'How do we address that piece?' or 'What is the next step in the direction we want to go?'  

[00:12:02] Karen: It's great to start with some visioning about 'This is the direction we'd like to move in.' 

[00:12:05] Karen: 'This is what we'd like more of', 'This is where we want to be headed'. Because that helps people be bought in, and willing to put the time and energy into the things that make real change in an organization. Or that make really good decision making, when the decisions are hard and in any kind of organization.  

[00:12:22] Karen: But that paying attention to what are the emotional needs? 

[00:12:25] Karen: What are the knowledge needs? What are the skill sets that we've got? And what then is realistic to think we can accomplish that will work well, from where we are, in the direction that we're trying to head to. And then pausing from time to time and saying, are we moving in that direction? How do we know that? 

[00:12:43] Karen: And if we are celebrating, yay, we're making progress!  

[00:12:48] Paul: Well, that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.  

[00:12:52] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig. And this has been Employing Differences.