Employing Differences, Episode 129: Can we really do this?

Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

I'm Paul Tevis.

And I'm Karen Gimnig.

Each episode we start with a question and we see where it takes us. This week's question is, "Can we really do this?"

So, what we're aiming at here is a situation where we realize we don't, within our group, have the skill that we need to accomplish the thing we're trying to accomplish. There was a particular example, as is often the case with these episodes, of a group that I'm working with that's trying to make – a series of decisions, actually – but decisions on a pretty tight timeframe. And they're really complex and overlapping, and what in formal facilitation terms we call a big hairy mess. What do we do with that? I was trying to coach the person who was going to facilitate this meeting, and the facilitator kept saying to me,"I don't have the skills to do that. I hear what you're saying, and I hear you could go this way or that way, but I don't have the skills to know when to go this way or that way. I could get there, I can learn it, but I'm not going to have it by this meeting next week." I respect that, and I'm not doubting that that's actually the situation. And we talked a little bit about, "Well, is there someone else in your group who could facilitate?" And the short answer is, "No, we don't have that skill in our team." And I think the problem is largely the same if the skill is a certain type of coding, or an ability to use an Excel spreadsheet in a certain way, or whatever that skillset might be. I think what we're wanting to tackle here is, what do we do as a team, if we are faced with the reality that there's a fairly essential skill to the thing we're trying to accomplish and we're missing it?

So there's a couple of different options you have. We need to recognize this is super common. Teams and organizations and groups face this all the time, where are they don't have all the skills that they would really like to have within a particular group. And they've got a few choices of how to handle that. I think often we don't realize what choices we have, so we feel stuck. What we want to talk through here is a little bit of a few ideas of how to get unstuck. The first place that I often go to is assuming that they're correct. That that the level of skill that is currently present – in the group or in the individual – that that's there is not sufficient to easily reach the level of quality that they want. Because that's often what we're talking about. We can't very easily see,"Yes, we're going to achieve this standard that we would like." I think at that point, we have to start to ask the question, "Well, what if we did it anyway?" Because one alternative is not doing it at all. Is doing it with the present level of skill better or worse than not doing it al? Or likely to be better or worse than not doing it at all? And any of those answers are actually valid. It could be let's just say something like open heart surgery. If I don't have somebody who's got the necessary skill, then maybe we should wait until we can get a surgeon who does. The complications could be worse. Doing it unskilled might be worse. But if it's something like we're trying to make a decision around this thing, and we recognize that it's going to be contentious, and there's going to be some conflict, and it's going to be difficult and hard, we might also recognize that actually we're working with a group that's pretty resilient to that kind of stuff. So while it might be bad in the short term, and the meeting and the process might not go as smoothly as we like, we could get an answer out of this, we could get a decision that we need to clean up a little bit afterwards, but we're willing to accept that. And that's better than not making a decision at all. So there's a range of of possibilities out of that. And I think we need to step back and recognize it's not a binary choice of either we have the necessary skill or we just don't do it. There's a range of things that may show up in the middle there.

Yep. And I like that sense that it's not binary. It's not just, "Do we do it or do we not do it?" And I think another thing to look at is, "What can we do with the skills we do have?" So is there a way like, in this example, what we'd like is a person who can facilitate a really good meeting. That may not be going to happen. We may not have that. But could we draw on everybody? Could we have a conversation and say, "Okay, I know I don't have the facilitation skills to manage the kind of conversation I expect we're going to have about this. So I'm willing to try to facilitate it, but I'm going to ask you all to try to self-regulate and not speak longer than you need to. Try to self-filter, and if it's really a major concern, bring it, but if it's bogging down the system,and it's not actually essential, maybe don't say that thing." How can we as a group deal with a situation that we're in? And again, whatever that skill set might be, could we do this a different way? Could we have a different approach? Do we consider a majority vote decision instead of a consensus decision if we're lacking the facilitation for the consensus decision? How can we leverage the skills that we do have on the team more broadly? And I think we do that so much better, if we're willing to say out loud in front of everybody, "I don't actually have the skill I wish I did for this. I'm not going to be as good at this is I want to be. I can't do the thing we're asking for. This is what I can do. And this is what you all are one of you or some of you could do to help me with it." Which might actually land you in a more collaborative space than you would have been if one person had the skill.

That is the thing. Specialization gets in the way of collaboration a lot. Because what it does is it says, "This is the person who has this skill, therefore, they're the only one who can or should do it." And that by itself is not collaborative. What we're actually saying is that a lack of specialization can actually help the group become more collaborative, because it asks each of us who's in the group to figure out, given the skills we do have and given who of that is if you are the person who "should" be demonstrating that skill, who's in that place, and you're like, "I don't have that," being able to ask for help from the group is super useful. Depending on the environment you're in may be super scary, but that is a thing that grows the collaboration muscle. Because now what you're doing is saying, "This lack of skill is not my problem. This lack of skill is our problem. How do we want to address it collectively?" And actually that piece of skill gap can be a really useful thing – in organizations, in particular – for growth and development. It's a thing that I work with a lot. This shows up all the time, in organizations where they say,"Well, you know, we want to do teams, but we, we don't have all the people who have all the specialties. We don't have enough to put one of them on every team. So instead, we're going to split this person between seven different teams." And that leads to all kinds of trouble. And so instead, what I often end up advising is saying,"Acknowledge the skill gaps in the teams you're creating." You're right, there's nobody on this team who is a software architects, and so this means that that is a gap. And what I expect if you're in the position of being the person who's putting this team together to be able to say, "I expect all of you are going to need to develop skills in that area. You're going to need to do this collectively. Tou don't have one person who's going to handle it, I expect that you're still going to do it." And then ask the important question, "What support would you need for that? What organizational support can we provide for you each to develop the skills that would be necessary to do that?" That, as it turns out, creates much more collaborative teams, but also creates much more resilient teams throughout the organization. So in some ways, by understaffing slightly, you can actually lead to better results. But we get stuck in this place of thinking we have to have experts for everything in order for a team to have any chance of success.

Yeah, and I think you're touching on the possibility of you might want to hire in some help or create the possibility of hiring in help. And, very self serving as this advice is, you might think about hiring an outside facilitator, if that's a resource you have. If on the other hand – as this group is – your group that's going to need to continue making decisions and you don't have the budget to just always have an outside facilitator, there's some value in what you're talking about of,"Okay, we work through this one." And then the corollary to that for me is think about what the cleanup will be. Is it we're gonna have to make peace with a less good product, whether that's a decision or a piece of software, whatever it might be? Is the cleanup that we're going to have stepped on each other's toes some, and we need to go do that relational follow up? Is the cleanup that we're not going to make that decision in one meeting as we might have if we'd had really good facilitation? We need to figure it's going to take two or three, and perhaps some working behind the scenes in between maybe. Or what else is that? So when we're looking at, is it better to do it or not do it? "Okay, we're gonna do it not as well as we'd like to, what do we want to be prepared for?" So that we don't do it not as well as we like to and then beat ourselves up for that when we saw it coming. We knew this was what was going on. So that we can be peaceful about where we are, and legitimately address whatever comes from going ahead with the thing that wasn't ideal.

I think that sort of circles us back around to the beginning, which is – to track where we've been – this whole idea of when we find ourselves in a situation where we have some sort of skills gap, we don't have all the skills that we feel would be necessary to achieve a result at a particular level of quality that we want, what do we want to do about that? We are faced with the choice of doing it or not. And I think the the range of outcomes that are possible, when we choose to do it, we just need to be cognitive of it. Is doing it badly better than not doing it at all or not? And foresee a bit of what those potential consequences are, recognizing that if we do decide to go ahead and do it, we're going to need to prepare to clean up from those things later. And then also leveraging the skills that we do have in the whole group. Rather than going to our default of putting all the burden on one specialist to make sure this thing happens and that happens at the level that we want, what can we do collectively to each contribute towards making it possible with the level of skill that we do have? If we don't have the world's greatest cat herder, to what degree can we ask the cats to be slightly more well behaved and need less herding? How can we address it that way? And actually thinking about how when we do that, that means our problem solving becomes much more collaborative. It creates an opportunity for us all to contribute and all to grow. And we may actually, in some cases, in the longer term get better results by doing it that way. And that sometimes, if we're in a position where we're building teams and putting the teams together, we might actually creatively create some of those gaps in order to spur collaboration and growth, whereas if we staff up with nothing but experts, they might never collaborate with each other because they don't have to. The work won't be as interdependent. But being foresighted about what are the likely results of not having the levels of skill that we might like to have there, and being ready to deal with the consequences of that and clean it up and have a plan for how we might want to do that. Not being surprised by when what we thought might happen does actually happen.

I think that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig.

And I'm Paul Tevis. And this has been Employing Differences.