Employing Differences

Employing Differences, Episode 62: What's our vision?

July 20, 2021 Karen Gimnig & Paul Tevis
Employing Differences
Employing Differences, Episode 62: What's our vision?
Show Notes Transcript

"When we put a word like creativity or diversity or sustainability into our vision statements, very often what we're doing is picking a comfortable word that each of us will interpret to mean the thing we would like it to mean. Theoretically, we're documenting our alignment. In fact, the words that we have in there represent anything but alignment."

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Karen:

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

Paul:

I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen:

And I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul:

Each episode, we start with a question and we see where it takes us. This week's question is, "What's our vision?"

Karen:

So we're talking today about vision and vision statements. And I'll throw in value statements and possibly mission statements, as those get sort of interchangeable. So we're not going to try and distinguish between those so much as talk about kind of what happens when you get into conversations about those. And one of the things that seems really clear to me is that the actual shared or aligned vision or values is a different thing than the statement which is a different thing than the conversation and sharing and process of developing a statement. Each of those things has its own value, or its own usefulness in an organization. And I think we often get them confused. That often in our sort of production kind of mindset that we often bring, as we say,"Oh, we need a vision statement," and so we go about trying to create a document, that the goal then is to create the document. And I think often then we miss the point, because for me, the really valuable thing about that is the conversation. It's the sharing of understandings, the exploring of understandings, the curiosity, and the seeking alignment, and the discovering of lack of alignment and the kind of working through and then even shifting. Like, "I started out thinking that this was what I thought our vision should be, and in the interchange and the exchange, I hear other perspectives, that also makes sense to me." And so all of that sort of growth, personally, as an organization, relationally that happens when we show up and get really honest and authentic with each other is probably the most valuable thing and also a thing that often doesn't happen.

Paul:

Absolutely. Having worked with a lot of different groups on in workshops to do this kind of thing, where we're going to come up with, these are our team values, or this is our mission, or this is our vision for where we're going to go any of these kinds of things. I've worked with groups to try to do this. And I think one of the places that they go wrong, or where they don't get quite as much out of it as they would otherwise is that people have a tendency to confuse the conversation and the documentation. The conversation is the process of working through all of the misunderstandings, disagreements, the generative piece, the stuff that happens in the collaborative space between people. That's the conversation. That's where that actually happens. And the problem is, is that by and large, if you're not there, and you're not part of the conversation, you don't get the benefit of that. And we often feel like well, we need to produce something, ao that the people who aren't here because they haven't joined the organization yet for future generations, we need to document these sorts of things. We we want to try to capture enough of what was in those conversations, that it will be useful, that we can refer back to, that we can document those kinds of things. But I actually think that's not how a lot of groups approach the idea of writing the stuff down. They think the purpose is to have a thing that's written down. And for me, if you're going to write something down, if you're going to document it, the point is have the rich, deep conversation and then go, "So what from the conversation do we want to remember, do we want to share with people who were not here?" By putting the focus on the conversation, I think we can actually have a richer exploration of it. But unfortunately, I think the document tends to be the focus of the work. And as a result that can give the conversation short shrift.

Karen:

Yeah, but Paul, rich, deep conversations are scary and hard.

Paul:

Yes, they are!

Karen:

And I think that's why we have all sorts of mechanisms and ways to escape them. So we focus on the document. We decide we don't have time for all of that, you know, touchy-feely stuff. We summarize very quickly. And I think one of the things that's particularly problematic that we do as we focus on the document, and maybe we're unconsciously escaping the deep, hard conversations, is we just go looking for words that will make everybody happy. And so we we say a thing, "We value creativity." Well, does creativity mean each individual person is going to go off and do their own thing? Does it mean we have a collaborative space? Does it mean we really welcome like totally off the wall ideas and are willing to explore things that seem impossible? How far are we taking that? What do we actually mean by that? And I think when we put a word like creativity, or diversity, or sustainability, into our statements, very often what we're doing is picking a comfortable word that each of us will interpret to mean the thing we would like it to mean. And so theoretically we're documenting our alignment. And in fact, the words that we have in there represent anything but alignment, if we actually want to use them later.

Paul:

And your point about escaping the difficult conversation, I think is exactly what happens there. Right, that we start to dig in, we think oh and actually, this could be a real thing in groups where it's like, you think you have a lot of agreement going in. You're like, "Oh, this should be easy, right? We agree on a bunch of things, those will be fine." And then you start to get into the conversation. You discover that you don't actually agree on stuff, that you have differences of opinion and viewpoints and experience and things like that. And then that starts to churn things up. And so oftentimes, we'll kind of turn to that, like, "Well, we just need to get something written" as a way to not have to have a deep conversation, not to sit in that space of disagreement. And as a result, yeah, we just kind of pick these words that we can dream into. They're noncontroversial. And it's a thing that I actually encourage with groups when when they are doing this kind of work when they're trying to do mission statements, vision statements, value sorts of things. I actually encourage them to write things that will push people away. Where someone may actually read it and go, "Well, this is not for me." There's an improv exercise that we used to do where you're suggesting activities for people to perform, and you're miming performing them. It's called"Yes, let's!" So somebody says,"Let's ride bicycles." And then everybody who's on the stage, who's doing this in workshop, you know, says, "Yes, let's!" Except if they really don't want to do it, in which case, they leave the stage. And one of the things that we talk about with this is, try to make suggestions, try to read the group in such a way that exactly one person leaves. So you're getting a sense of what is really the heart of what's going on with this group, but is just slightly out on the edge. And so I think it is valuable if we're gonna actually try and come back and use these value statements, these mission statements, these things later on, they actually have to stand for something, which means that they can't be noncontroversial.

Karen:

Yeah, I think that's true. And the other thing I think I want to frame here is that even if we aren't escaping the hard conversation, the other reason we don't have it is we don't know how. We think we're all in alignment, we think we're just looking for words, it doesn't occur to us or if it did occur to us, we wouldn't know how to actually have a conversation that reveals the differences. So I'm curious, Paul, as you do this work, what kind of frames and structures; how do you actually have those conversations?

Paul:

So one of the things that I may have mentioned before, but oftentimes, when I am working with teams that are starting up, I'm doing a sort of team chartering with them. And one of things I always ask is, you know, "How do you want to work together? What's the atmosphere or culture you want to create when you're working together?" And that is kind of designed to give you really kind of weird, neutral, non-controversial words. You know, when people say, "Oh, we want it to be supportive." Or "respect" is actually the one that always shows up. "We want it to be respectful." And I just stop and ask, "What does respect look like to you? What are the behaviors that indicate respect?" And then people kind of stop right and I go, "Because I want to tell you about a team that I worked with once where the way you knew if they respected you was that they would argue with you." And it was just it was there was something about that team where if they didn't take your ideas seriously, if they didn't respect you, they wouldn't argue. But as soon as they actually started challenging you on stuff, you knew that they respected you. And I always kind of end this with, "So I want to be clear about in this group, what do we actually mean by'behaving respectfully?' What are examples of things that would be respectful? And what are examples of things that would not be?" And as individuals will start to throw those things out, you'll discover stuff that is in the overlap. That one person's like,"Oh, yeah, this is how this is a totally respectful behavior." And the other person's like, "If you did that to me, I would be convinced you hated me." So I tend to go a lot to examples. Let's take this very vague concept, this again, non-controversial word, like respect, or creativity, or any of these things and say, "What are examples of that?" Let's talk about and where have you seen that before? Where have you done that? When have you been an environment where you felt this value, or this vision, or this, you know, was really being embodied? And let's actually talk in some detail about that. So it's really in the details, that I find that those differences can get explored. And oftentimes, people's perspectives get shifted by it. Because they start to understand someone else has had a very different experience than they have. And when you're doing it in that kind of space, they can get curious about it and empathetic about it.

Karen:

Yeah, I tend to go that direction too, of "How can we get really tangible?" So another frame I often use is time travel. Okay, so we're two years out, and it's been perfect. We've done that thing really, really well. We've been hugely successful with it. And I can tell because I see.... or I hear... What's actually happening that lets me know that we're doing that thing? That we're being respectful, that we're being creative? So both what are the behaviors, and also what are the outcomes that we would see? And I think it can be worth even kind of running a few hypothetical decisions. So you know, we're gonna be sustainable. Okay. And so does that mean, we're gonna, pick always the most, what if we're choosing between energy efficiency and water use, like if those come against each other, or, we can choose a recycled product, or some other reduction something or all sorts of things. So, it comes up in all kinds of ways. But if you start looking at what kinds of choices or decisions are we likely to make for which this value might come into play? Let's talk about a few of those, hypothetically. How does that play out for us? And not that we'll be tied to that decision-making process but what does it show up about how we actually live the thing. Because I think what you're pointing to is that agreeing on a word doesn't do much for us. It's having an actual shared understanding of "Yes, this is what we believe in." This is in a way, it's a standard we want to live up to. And we name it in part because we won't accidentally always just land there. We need to pay attention to it, we need to set it out as a vision, we need to strive for it, to get to it. And we got to have some clarity about what that is.

Paul:

Yeah, the shared understanding is fundamentally what you're going for. The whole purpose of having something like this is to help create shared understanding. And the other thing that you said that I think is actually critically important for any of these types of things mission statements, vision, statements, values, things like that I always ask, "What is the purpose of this? What will we use it for? How will we use it in the future?" So then we can do what you're suggesting, which is we can road-test it. We already have the scenarios in mind, it needs to help us make decisions about this, or it needs to be able to do this. And so as we're working it part of the process needs to be let's try it out. And let's notice what happens when we try to apply it to a situation where it might help us. That's another thing that people get wrong about these sort of mission statements, vision statements sorts of stuff is that they're just like, "Well, we need to have it." No, it's valuable if you are able to use it, if it's able to help you in some way, if there is enough shared understanding of what it is that you can then use it sometimes remind yourselves collectively, okay, our mission here is to do this thing, to have this kind of impact, to do these sorts of things how can that help us with the challenge that we're facing right now? Which is a whole other episode, a thing that I actually really like to do is have groups use their mission statements and their vision statements and their values actually applied in problem solving. But when you have these incredibly vague, wishy-washy, non-controversial things, they don't actually help you that much. So I think it is important to be clear about what the purpose of having the documented thing is, and then test it against whether or not it's actually useful for that.

Karen:

Yep. And then I think there's a whole other level of testing that you and I were talking about before, which is revisiting and testing is this still working for us? Is this still valuable? I think one of the places where groups can get sideways on this is, well we adopted the mission statement division, the values, and then some new people joined. And they knew when they joined us, they had that statement. So they have now chosen to be bound by that. And if you're wanting to be in a collaborative or cooperative kind of space, telling people they have to be bound by something they didn't start out engaged with, probably isn't gonna serve your relationships very well. And so I think it's really important to look at that as, yes, it is a thing, and maybe it's part of your onboarding process, as you're asking people, "Do you do you fit here? Do you want to do this?" to look at that and have a conversation about it and engage with it, that's another use you could have for it. But at the end of the day, once they've joined, they've joined. And if your current membership doesn't have alignment, pretending that you do, by way of an out of date vision or value statement isn't going to help your process any. And so I think it's just important to be willing to look at it and say, Okay, how have we changed? Maybe it's because new people came in. Maybe we had some experiences that taught us some things. Maybe we thought that creativity was the number one goal, absolutely, that was our space. And what we learned is we'll go broke if we don't get some productivity and efficiency into the system. And so maybe we've shifted priorities a little bit around that or thought differently about what it means. And so if you are going to grow and evolve as an organization, and I don't necessarily mean grow in tangible ways, maybe it's grow in terms of skills, and knowledge and efficiency and various things. But if we're going to be dynamic organizations which, there's another one of those words, you can interpret any way you want but but I suspect we do want to be able to evolve and change and improve, then we have to expect that these kinds of statements will be reviewed. And not just to get a new statement, but to get a realignment of where are we and who are we and what do we stand for now?

Paul:

Yeah, those conversations the "revisit" conversations particular always tricky, because I mean, fundamentally, any document that you produce of this type is a snapshot of something at a moment in time. And it is likely something that you would like to have some permanence to it. You're writing it down, because you would like it to withstand some of these changes. Like in some cases, these really are things I've worked with groups before where they say, "Hey, we're about to hire a bunch of people. We actually want to be able to articulate like who we are," so that we can help onboarding folks so that we can actually also kind of look at who do we want to be hiring, this kind of thing. And I'm like, okay, that's great. And I'll help you do that. And also recognize two years from now, because you will have hired all these people, you will be a different organization. So it can be useful to try to articulate what do we want to preserve, but then also being able to periodically go, "So regardless of what we said we wanted to preserve, who are we actually now?" And that's where I wish before those kinds of revisit processes, I had a drug that I could give to people that would just give them like amnesia about what the old thing was. Because oftentimes, the people who went through that process or who were around when that got created, are very, very anchored into whatever those words are. And usually going back and trying to go let's tweak four or five words doesn't generate the actual difficult, deep conversation that the group needs to have now about who they are now. And so I in some ways wish that they would just forget that they even had a mission statement and go, "You know what? We should really come up with a new a new vision, because we haven't had one before. And we should do that now."

Karen:

I think that's a great place to kind of wrap us up that really looking at what is our vision? And really asking that question, "Where do we have alignment?" Taking time to have the deep and meaningful conversations. And that a frame for those conversations can be using examples and what would it look like? What are the behaviors that go with that? What are some hypothetical scenarios or decisions that we might make that can give us a deeper understanding of how we're going to apply this. And then to really look at framing that language or drafting that language in a way that it's usable. And that it will sort out, that some people will be uncomfortable with it, that it's not universally accepted necessarily. Maybe within your group there is but that there's some sorting, are folks in this vision or not. And that what you're recording actually reflects the alignment. So not the wishy-washy words that everyone's comfortable with. These aren't comfort statements. They're alignment statements. And so where are the spaces of really clear alignment that you're all working for. And then expect to revisit them over time both because there will be newcomers, and also because we change and organizationally, we change and we learn and we grow and if we want those statements and that more importantly, the alignment that they describe to be present in our organization, it is important to slow down and have those deep conversations from time to time.

Paul:

Absolutely. Well, that is gonna do it for us for today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen:

And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences