Employing Differences, Episode 195: Can we adopt this?

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

[00:00:15] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis.

[00:00:17] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig.

[00:00:19] Paul: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, can we adopt this? And we're not talking about puppies.

[00:00:29] Karen: Although there could be a correlation there, there might be a nice metaphor. So the can we adopt this is a frame of a question that a facilitator might get in the lead up to a meeting where there's a proposal, there's a policy, a proposal for some kind of decision that wants to be made. And the idea is we're going to bring it to the meeting and the group will adopt it. And very much like when you walk with small children by a box outside of a grocery store with puppies in it. And the kid says, can we adopt it?

[00:01:04] Karen: It's so cute. It'll be so fabulous. It's so wonderful. Often the person bringing the proposal is very passionate and very excited and and has an image in their head of how this is going to go. And all they're seeing is the cute and excited, but they're not seeing the pee on the floor. 

[00:01:28] Karen: And it turns out it's package. And a lot of the time what we're, we're going to propose that a lot of the time that first document or that first description or that first explanation of the proposal is actually not crisp and clear enough to be ready to be adopted.

[00:01:50] Paul: Yeah. There are really two things that are going on there, right? One is that what is usually in that document or in that proposal is not actually an accurate reflection of what's in the mind of the person who wrote it, right? They don't realize what isn't on the page because they're filling in all of the details around it. And the other thing is that inevitably when there's some mess around it, it actually distracts usually from the central message, the central thing there. 

[00:02:28] Paul: One of the things that I've seen all the time is that people will bring a perfectly reasonable idea. The thing that they're trying to do makes a ton of sense. And the way that they've structured the thing that they want people to vote on. People don't know what it says, they don't know what the idea is that's in there, or even if they like the central idea, they're all of these niggling little details that they really just latch onto and that distract from the ability for the group to actually adopt it.

[00:03:04] Karen: Yeah, there are a number of ways that I think document drafting, proposal drafting goes sideways. Another of my favorites is, that the proposal is written in the language of where we are now. So if we did this, what would happen is. Well, the minute that you've adopted it, it no longer makes any sense because you've put the tenses in sideways. I've seen communities with team descriptions. The community is ten years old. They've had their policies in place for years and years. And the team description says, we'll create a policy for guest room reservations or whatever the thing is. 

[00:03:40] Karen: The team is never going to create a policy for guest room reservations because they did that once ten years ago. But it's still in the team description because what was adopted wasn't written for its long-term use as it was implemented. So these are examples of where poorly written documents create confusion, either as they're being adopted or after. But it's really hard when you start with that kind of document and you sit in a room with ten or twenty or more people to try to get that language cleaned up, in a large group setting.

[00:04:20] Paul: And sometimes people think, well, and in different groups, right? It's like, well, they go, well, that's going to be such a difficulty to do that. We just won't even bother to write it, right? You know what I mean, right? I've seen, you know, I've worked in some groups where they're not necessarily required to have written policies for all these various things. It's more of a like, well, we just kind of agree that we're going to work this way, right? and then it never gets written down, because that's the other failure mode, is we go, well, it's too much work to have a written proposal, so we're just going to kind of wing it.

[00:04:50] Paul: And then people say, well, do you agree? And I was like, with what? The thing about having an actual written document or policy or proposal or thing like that is I have a concrete thing that I can say yes or no to. I have a concrete thing that I can say, I like this part, I don't like that part. I think it is actually really important when we're talking about wanting to do a thing, particularly when it involves, you know, some use of the group's resources, like we're going to spend some money or we're going to spend some time, we're going to do this, or it represents a change in the way that we're operating.

[00:05:25] Paul: I think it is actually really important to write things down so that we all are talking about the same thing. And it requires a fair amount of editing of making it crisp and clear so that we are actually talking about the same thing. Because when you get documents that are super vague and super weird, then we all imagine that there are different things in there than there actually are.

[00:5:50] Karen: Yeah. And I think the other crisp and clear thing is to pull out anything that's not actually about the action of the decision. Very often that passionate idea bringer has laced reasoning all the way through. We should, you know, spend our money this way. It's going to be fabulous because it will do this and this and this and this and these wonderful things will happen. 

[00:06:12] Karen: None of that is actually the decision that needs to be recorded. There may be a second document where they wax on about all of their reasons why it will be wonderful. But for the proposal part, it may not always be a short document. Some proposals are complicated. But you just need the language that talks about what it's going to do. We are going to do this thing. And all of the wonderful reasons why that's a good idea are not actually part of the proposal itself.

[00:06:41] Paul: And what that really kind of points to is the fact that oftentimes whoever it is that is very passionate about this, has the idea, is the proponent of it, really wants to move forward, has the vision for it, they may be exactly the wrong person to actually write that proposal, to write that document. Because it's a different skill set to do that, to get that to that point, to get it to the point where it's crisp and clear. And in some ways, being too close to it is a thing that's going to get in the way of writing a good document like that. 

[00:07:10] Paul: So one of the things that I think is really useful to do in one of the groups that I'm in, I've recently gotten roped into this, where someone's like, you're really good at this thing. Could you help us write up this proposal? Right. Because it's very clear. To me, it's clear what they want to do. And the notes so far have been, as you just said, packed full of, and here's why.

[00:07:31] Paul: And I'm like, the why is important, but not in there. Let's pull this apart. Let's pull it out. I'm vaguely in favor of this proposal, but that's kind of the right level of support that you probably want from the person who's actually writing it out. Because they can see, okay, here are some rough edges to it. What if we pull this thing out? Because you get to have a little bit of dialogue. And as you kind of alluded to earlier, trying to do that with a group of ten, fifteen, thirty, fifty people is a terrible use of their time. And you're never going to get there.

[00:08:07] Karen: Yeah. And I think facilitators sometimes, well, I'm supposed to be unbiased, so I can't write the proposal. And I just want to say, because you're unbiased, you might be the perfect person to write the proposal. And the thing that I just caution about when you're a member of the group, which very often meeting facilitators are. Don't offer to write a proposal for someone if you are totally opposed to it. Like you've got to set yourself aside. 

[00:08:33] Karen: This is a ghostwriter kind of role where you're not trying to change their story. You're not trying to change what they want. You're not trying to trick them or take away something that they value. You're just working through with them what is it that they are trying to say and putting it in crisp and clear language. But I think that's absolutely a role a facilitator can have or find somebody else in the community that's good at it. But what you don't want to do is keep throwing the draft back at the passionate person who's not good at writing it and telling them to try again. 

[00:09:05] Karen: They get frustrated. They feel like they're being put off. Like that's not good news. You want to be that helpful person, but also you want to not start a meeting with a document that just isn't workable for, and it really is for clarity. It's not because we don't like it. It's not because we're disagreeing about it. Those are things you work with in a meeting, but messy language is a really rough place to start.

[00:09:30] Paul: Well, and coming back to the idea that, you know, a facilitator is someone who helps makes things easier for the group. What you're really doing in that process is you're making it easier for people to understand what they're being asked for their opinion on. Right. It's about, again, about clarity. Right. It's like, is this now clear that people would agree or disagree with it? You're making it easy for them to say yes or no, right? You're making it easy for them to say, I would be in favor of this if it addressed these things, and I can tell that it doesn't because it explicitly says this other stuff. It is about ease, and it is about helping the group make better decisions and helping them have an easier time making those decisions.

[00:10:11] Paul: So for me, it totally falls within the realm of a facilitator and the appropriateness of helping out with that. It may be that you as a facilitator don't have the skill set for that. You're not great with that, and that's okay. But at that point, probably the useful thing to do is to figure out who can you hook this passionate idea bringer up with, who is good at that, who can help with that. 

[00:10:37] Paul: And it is in their best interest and the group's best interest for you to push back on something at that level of unrefinedness being put onto an agenda to say, "Hey, can we adopt this?" Because if you recognize the group is really going to struggle with this, they're not going to be clear about it. If you're looking at it and you don't really know what it says, then it is probably in the group's best interest. 

[00:11:04] Paul: And it's in that person's best interest, the interest of the person bringing the idea to not bring something like that, because a badly presented idea will often sour people on the proposal to begin with. And it just gets it off to a bad start. So for me, it's entirely appropriate to say this isn't ready yet. It's not clear. People are going to have a really hard time adopting this or not. So if you try to bring this now, I don't think it's going to go well.

[00:11:34] Karen: So our topic today is about can we adopt this proposal, this decision, this whatever. And, and we are suggesting that the first thing is it should be written down and then it should be written down as clearly and concisely as possible without reasons attached, without other sort of cluttering language, but just absolute clarity of what the decision is, presumably in the tense of what will be useful after it's been adopted. 

[00:12:03] Karen: You know, for the years to come when it may be in play, for example. And that if the person bringing the idea doesn't have that document in place, which can be very short or much longer depending on what it is, but if they don't come with that document ready to go, because they're passionate, because they're excited, because they're not that good a writer, even though they're great at lots of other important things for the organization. 

[00:12:28] Karen: It's really useful to get somebody who has that skill to work with them to get their ideas into a form that the community can really work with them or the team or the group can really work with them. And you want to do that before the meeting so that what comes to the meeting is understandable, is accessible, and is really available for a meaningful discussion from a shared understanding of what it means. And then the group can move forward, and that serves everybody.

[00:12:59] Paul Well, that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

[00:13:03] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.