"We often hear, 'This is really great! And we can't, because we don't have everyone on board.'"
Paul & Karen talk about creating change by starting small – and without everyone.
Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.
Karen:I'm Karen Gimnig.
Paul:And I'm Paul Tevis.
Karen:Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is "Do we need everyone?"
Paul:Spoilers? No. Now let me explain what we actually mean by this. One of the things that Karen and I run into fairly often when we're working in an organisation- or we're working with the group, we're working with the community, is that oftentimes there is, it may be the people that we're working directly with. But they're part of some larger whole. And one of the things that we often hear is, "Hey, this stuff that we're talking about is great." It may be this way of making decisions. It may be this idea of relating to each other in real, authentic ways. It may be a particular way of executing on projects, working on certain things, whatever that thing is. We often hear, "This is really great! And we can't, because we don't have everyone on board." And one of the questions that we often find ourselves asking in this situation is,"Do we need everyone?" And our contention is that, in general, you're never going to get everyone. And no, you don't actually need everyone. But there's some nuance to this that we want to explore a little bit as we're trying to make a shift within a larger group. What can a smaller group actually do? And how do they go about that?
Karen:So I think the first thing I want to be clear about is that, we do think that a smaller group, defined as the people who want to do this thing, generally can. But that's a different thing than suggesting that we get our friends, who are the in-crowd on this and go off in a cloistered, secret, private way to have our secret password club, that nobody knows about, and others feel excluded from. That would not be what we're suggesting here. But on the other hand, it's not useful, I think, to say, " We really, really want to do this. Therefore, all of you have to come. And if you won't come to it with us, and you won't invest in it, and you won't put your time in it, you're hurting our ability to do it. You're disabling us from being able to do it. You're taking away our agency." And so what we're looking for is a middle ground, where you're not separating off in the sense of a divide. You're saying, "Anybody who wants to do this thing is welcome within, within reason of what makes sense to want the thing. 'Cause obviously, there could be some variance to that thing is. But essentially, if the reason that we're not doing it with everyone, is because not everybody wants to. Then what you want is to get a small group, where you've defined "This is what we're wanting to do. This is what what involvement and engagement means. This is what the energy requirement would be, or the time requirement, or the vulnerability requirement, or the training requirement". Whatever it is, "this is what it takes, we think, to do this thing well." And any one who wants to do those things, and be part of it, is welcome. And we want you. And anybody who doesn't is, welcome to not. And we're not going to feel bad about that. We're not going to be in a tug of war about it. We're just going to go off and do our thing.
Paul:Yeah, there is definitely a great power to that, being invitational in that way, and saying, "Hey, you were invited to be part of this and we don't feel it's necessary to force everybody. And in fact we feel it's often counterproductive to force people." One of the things that I struggle with around this, and that I struggle with, and I work with groups around it, is that usually, the people who have discovered this Agile way of working, Non-Violent Communication. Any of these things, they get really excited about it. And that one – that excitement can be rather offputting and alienating to people who aren't as quite excited about it. And two, there also hasn't been enough, sort of, skill development within the group of people who is excited about it, to be able to work skilfully with people who aren't on board with it. And so that's the other thing. So one of the things that I try to do is I try to tamp down the enthusiasm. That actually, one of the techniques that I find works reasonably well is, we're not going to make a big deal out of it. And so sometimes it's, "Hey, yeah, we are going to try this," or "We're going to have a book club that we're going to get there. We read this thing, we're going to practice this particular set of techniques. And anybody who wants to is welcome to join us." Sometimes it's not even that. Sometimes it's just, "Hey, we're already a subgroup of this organisation." Like, a team, or a group of teams. For example, I work in an organisation once where there was a group of teams that were really interested in getting better at giving feedback. And honestly, they wanted more feedback was really the thing. And so, what they recognised was that there were a bunch of people who were kind of all worked together, on a semi-regular basis, so they just set up a little experiment to play with it. They didn't tell anybody else in the organisation around it, they didn't- I mean, albeit, they kind of said to the manager, "Hey, we're doing this thing." And he was like, "Oh great!" He had buy in, but he didn't have to do anything about it. They didn't tell HR, they didn't tell anybody. They just kind of did it. And then, you know, it went on for a while and people started to ask about like what was happening. And that was the point where they actually started to talk to other people about it, but only when they asked. And so actually, by damping their enthusiasm about something that they were actually very excited about, it allowed them to practice it, to develop the skill a little bit better, and also to be able to relate to other people who weren't as enthusiastic about it a lot more skillfully.
Karen:And I think you're pointing to a thing that I see really reliably with these kinds of changes. Which is, you get people who are really excited about it, and people who are very hesitant or suspicious or doubtful about its effectiveness. And so the people who are excited about it bring it in and start doing it. And they're brand new. And they aren't doing it very well. And the people who are doubters go, "See, yeah. It didn't work." And it gets dismissed at that stage. So I love this idea that by not bringing in everyone, by not promising the world, and, "Look! How exciting! And, frankly, by not even advocating so much for "We all have to invest in this", you can actually set yourself up for success. Because you can build the skills for the good thing to be the good thing before everybody is kind of in; that 'judging doesn't work or not' kind of stake. If you've got some expertise on it, before it's landing on everybody, there's some real advantage there.
Paul:It's one of the things that I found, is really useful for bringing in something new to sort of any group, or any organisation is, is we want to start small and not assume it's going to save the world. And just see what we can do with it. Let's actually learn about it. Because once we've got something that is actually working well, it's way easier to expand that. And so starting with that, one of the techniques that I will often work with people who, who can't see how they could get there from here around, is just actually saying,"You know, what could you-" whoever 'you' is in this small group or whatever, "What could you do that wouldn't require any permission? Any additional resources, any time, or money, from anybody else?""What could you do, entirely within your scope, where you are all actually empowered to make the decisions around this?" Because people will often get hung up on "Well, in order to be able to do this, we need to get buy in from somebody else." And so just by starting from the place of "Let's assume you can't get buy in from anybody else about this at all, what could you still do?" Start there.
Karen:Yeah, I like that a lot. And that can be graduated as well. Okay, so "We need a little buy in, and we need a manager to 'Okay' us to spend a few hours a week". Or "We need some amount of training and some investment in that", something. But again, that smaller 'buy in' that we're looking for, what was the smallest volume we could be looking for elsewhere? So even if it's not something, what's the smallest that we can work with? And I want to mention something here that I think throws people off in this regard. Which is, very often, when you're looking at a new program, Agile or Non-Violent Communication, or once you mentioned and I've add Sociocracy to that, you can add, you know, lots of things. Very often, the people who teach those things are, not shockingly, really big believers in them. And I have personally heard, some of those coaches, trainers, consultants say things like, "This will only work if you get everybody in your organisation to take days of training", or like, "Everybody really invested in getting trained and doing it and you need everybody on board or it won't work." And I just want to say I'm not a fan of that. That doesn't mean I'm not a fan of the thing they're teaching. But that approach. My story about that is if that's true, then it doesn't work. Because the likelihood that you will get everybody invested to that kind of level, is so tiny. That if that's the starting point, we have to get everybody involved or we can't have it. Probably, we can't have it. That might be different in your career, or in some kind of hierarchical organisation. That might be different if you have lots of resources for training, and people are getting paid. I mean, there may be cases where you can and that's great. I know, that. But if you can't, let's get realistic about that. And maybe find a trainer for that same subject that isn't so hung up on this "You have to get everybody trained." Because I know that message is out there. And I'm just happy to go on record as saying I'm very suspicious of that piece of the message. And I know trainers work excellent on other things, and I would absolutely trust their expertise in other ways. But, they get into that thing, and I just think it gets groups really stuck. And it works counter to what you're saying, and the advice that I'm sitting with, I'll roll call of start small, do what you can, implement a few things gradually build it in. And just to keep that in mind that there may be small things you can do in that direction, even if you run into a particular trainer who is telling you otherwise.
Paul:Mm hmm. Well, and I think about an organisation that I was in for a while, and ended up leaving, where I kind of applied some of these techniques where we tried not to make a big deal out of stuff. We, you know, we were an isolated group within a larger organisation. We had sufficient levels of buy ins, sort of, within the group. And so we started, worked in a new way, in a particular way, and we saw a lot of benefit from it. And there was a limit to how far we could expand it. And one of the reasons why I ended up leaving that organisation was because I had bigger dreams. And I could see we've kind of done all the good that we could do, but also we'd done some substantial amount of good. Like, the way that that part of the business was now operating, was way healthier, was way more humane, was way more fun to be part of, than before we started. And so I hear the piece that sometimes people say about how, you know, they paint this picture of"This whole organisation's going to be amazing. And in order to do that, you have to get everybody to buy in." Here's the thing. If this technique, if this set of tools, if this whatever it is, is it all worthwhile? Then doing it, just a little bit, should make things better than they are right now. And so that's really where I try to go on this. Yeah, it would be great if we got everybody to do this. But how much better can things be, if the people who are interested in it right now, actually started doing it? Actually built these skills, started working together in these ways, had these types of relationships. Just think about how good that would be!
Karen:Mm hmm. Yeah. I want to give one other caveat here, which is, we started with the question of "Do you need everyone?" And said, "No, we don't think you need everyone." That is a different statement than saying "Pick and choose the comfortable pieces of the new thing", which is not what we're saying here. I think that's a different failure mode and we could probably do a whole episode on that. But saying some of us are going to do it even though all of us aren't. And that may some ways limit how much, but we can do 100% behind. It's a different thing to say, "Well, we're only willing to do the comfortable parts", and "the stuff that gets vulnerable", and "takes some time". I mean, these are the people who say "We're going to do Agile, but we're not going to do retrospectives because there are too much time."
Paul:Mm hmm.
Karen:I think that will significantly change the results that you get. If core pieces, you go, "Well, that's uncomfortable. So we're not going to do that." Try it out, see what the results are. But I'm suspicious of that, in a different way, than to say "Some of us are going to do it, but not all of us." That feels a lot more solid to me. So I just want to distinguish between that. Because if we're using the "Well, we don't have to do all of it" as an excuse to avoid the hard parts, we might be avoiding the essential parts.
Paul:Yeah. So, to sum up where we've been here today, when we're talking about adopting a new way of working, or a new way of bein, or changing something about the way we relate to each other, or operate. So, when we think about adopting things like Agile, or Sociocracy. Or NVC, or any of these other things. Where it feels like we need to have everybody on board in order to do them. Our advice is that, actually start with the people who are excited about it. Who are willing to do it, who want to do this sort of thing. That you don't necessarily need everyone, and then probably don't. If you actually do need everyone, it's probably not going to work. But start with the people who are interested. Invite others who are interested, and willing. But also, don't let your enthusiasm, for this particular method or tool, or a way of being or working, drive other people away. Don't try to sell the people who are skeptical on it. Instead, what we're suggesting is that, it can be very useful to start with where you are and actually practice. Actually start doing this thing in this way. Get through the pieces of learning that you need in order to actually start working in this way, using these skills, these tools. And then you can start to think about if people get curious about "What are they doing over there?" Or you can start to share, "Hey, we've been working on this. We've been trying this thing, and here are the results we've been willing." That may attract more people to that way of working. And that can expand the scope that you can operate in. But do be very clear at the outset. What are the things that we could do without anybody else's permission? Or with minimal buy in? Find ways to start small. Because those are things that you're actually likely to be able to do. And then go and do them. But do actually adopt the practice, the technique, the tool, not just the pieces of it, that are comfortable. Not everybody has to do it, but make sure you're actually doing it. Because we think when you do that, that's going to change the results that you're getting, change the ways that you're working. In ways that, while they may not be perfect, they may not be the ideal. If everybody in the organization did them, they're going to be better than where you started.
Karen:That's going to do it for us today. Until next time. I'm Karen Gimnig.
Paul:And I'm Paul Tevis. And this has been Employing Differences.