Introduction and Episode Question

[00:00:02] Paul: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals. 

[00:00:08] Karen: I'm Karen Gimnig.

[00:00:09] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:11] Karen: Each episode we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, who signed off on this?

[00:00:18] Paul: So this is a question that I literally asked this week. And it's a question that we think is sometimes useful to ask and depending on the way you go with it can reveal some useful information and is sometimes not the way you really need to go in a particular situation. So I wanna talk about what came up for me, why I asked this question, what we were dealing with it. And Karen and I, can I explore how this idea can be useful?

The Real-Life Scenario

[00:00:42] Paul: So situation is I'm helping to run a particular event. There's a group of about five of us that are helping to make this thing happen and we get this, sort of, you know, a few days before the event, this request, the sideways thing coming in. Basically someone saying, Hey, I'm gonna be doing this thing during this time.

[00:01:00] Paul: How do we make this work? And the group of us who are coordinating kind of look at each other and are just like, where did this come from? Like, this is not great. Like this was a complete surprise. We didn't know what was gonna happen. The sort of the logistics that this person is asking for are gonna be troublesome and we're trying to figure out how to make this work.

[00:01:19] Paul: And at some point I just found myself asking who signed off on this? Because while there's a group of us that's coordinating and making things happen, we're not the ultimate decision makers for certain parts of this. And it's not clear where the decision came from. And so I just found myself going like who made this decision. 

The Importance of Asking 'Who Signed Off On This?'

[00:01:38] Paul: And what Karen and I wanna explore is why that might have been useful to ask and what useful information could come out of it and where that question could sometimes go sideways.

[00:01:49] Karen: I think I'm gonna start with sideways. So, I mean, who signed off on this? It can honestly just be an expression of frustration. I've had my expression of frustration, then I'm done. I think that's fine. But the place I wanna be careful, we don't go is blame. This is a terrible idea. Who do I yell at?

[00:02:05] Karen: Is probably not useful. Or who do I gossip about, or who do I grumble about? Or who do I, you know, wish horrible things on in my unconscious mind or whatever. Anything in that sort of blaming space is not so useful.

Avoiding Blame and Finding Solutions

[00:02:19] Karen: I think we wanna be careful that if we're asking who signed off on this, we're asking it because it's helpful to us to have that information. And I think it can be helpful because it gives us an understanding of why it might be important. I mean, sometimes, hey, it came from the CEO of the company and we know better than to ask questions. If that's what he wants, he gets it. Maybe that's the culture or it came from the person who set up the venue, who has been working on this for months and we just came in to do our little part.

[00:02:52] Karen: If it came from them, they must know what they're talking about. There must be a reason we'll deal. Or maybe it came from somebody who didn't like, who thought this was the way it went, but they didn't actually know and they didn't check with anybody who knew anything. And it's a good idea to push back and say, Hey, maybe not.

[00:03:10] Karen: So sometimes just knowing who it came from in and of itself tells us how we wanna deal with it.

[00:03:17] Paul: It's useful I think in two ways there that I wanna divide. One is like sometimes knowing who signed off on this, you know, it's like, okay, that means that, oh, it was this person. Okay, this really isn't a changeable decision, right? We may know, like from that, oh, okay, the decision's been made. And so we just need to figure out how to work with it.

[00:03:38] Paul: Or it may be a case of like, oh, well, if that's the person who signed off on it, we now know where to go if we wanna get more information. Why did they make this decision if we need to be flexible around how we're gonna carry it out? So going back to my example, hey, if instead of doing exactly what this person asked for.

[00:03:58] Paul: We'd like to pull these two things apart. So part of it would happen during this time and part of it would happen during this time. Is the original decision maker gonna be okay with that? Like we now know who we can go ask because if we're trying to make things work, we wanna make sure we understand the constraints that we're actually working within.

[00:04:17] Paul: And I think that's where knowing where to get more information is a useful reason to ask that question. I agree with you about blame, right? It's not, it's not that I want to go to them and yell at them, it's I wanna go to them and go, cool. So I wanna make you aware of this thing we're working to make that work. This is what we were thinking about doing. Is that good? Like, are you good with that? 

[00:04:40] Karen: And I think there are times that it's a really good idea to ask the question for all those reasons. 

When to Ask and When Not to Ask

[00:04:48] Karen: And there are times it's not, I mean, there are times that we like, if it's not gonna be changeable, right? If we already know that ship has sailed. The big delivery of a thousand water bottles already happened.

[00:04:56] Karen: It's they're here, we're going to have to pay for them. Probably not helpful to say who signed off on that. I mean, unless we think that it was an error on the water delivery part or something. But like there are things like the ship has sailed, it's already done. There's no one doing it, there's no changing it.

[00:05:11] Karen: And at that point, unless I just need to vent a little and I wanna do that quietly and carefully in a way that doesn't upset other people, it's probably not gonna be useful to ask the question who signed off on it. On the other hand, I think there are times that we're like, well, it's just always been that way.

[00:05:26] Karen: It's a really good idea to stop and say, but should it be like, does it actually work well? Is it changeable?

[00:05:34] Paul: I think there are times when we actually don't ask the question. When we should go, when this thing is happening, right? And we're, ah, we gotta figure out how to deal with this. Right? It's like, it can be useful to go, well wait a minute, hold on. Who made this decision so that we can find sort of the limits of what we need to do?

[00:05:49] Paul: Or like, do they care at all? I think sometimes we shouldn't just accept that things are as they are without validating it, right? And just going, well, we've just gotta deal with it right? And at the same time, if the situation, as you point out, really isn't changeable then that information necessarily useful to us.

[00:06:05] Paul: I think the question is useful to ask or not. You know, depending on if it gives you information that helps you cope with the situation in a more effective way. That reveals more about what your range of possible responses are. And so I think that's where, that may be my sort of test for it.

[00:06:23] Karen: And then I think we framed it this way because that's how it came up in Paul's world this week, but being very thoughtful about tone. And I think especially as, as I think you sent it via email, where you don't get to decide the tone with which it is red. You may wanna be careful about how you present it because it certainly can land as though it's challenging authority or as though it's trying to disrupt systems. Like it can be upsetting.

[00:06:50] Karen: So I think Paul, probably you knew your audience and it probably went fine. But being thoughtful about how we ask it. So maybe instead of who signed off on this, who is this important to? Why does this matter? Where is this coming from? That kind of thing. That's a little less oppositional in nature, but it's asking the same question.

[00:07:11] Karen: So again, that if we're looking for, is this changeable, what would it take to change it? What are the limits around it? If that's what we're looking for, we think it can be really useful and there might be other language that you wanna use.

[00:07:25] Paul: Yeah, getting to that sort of space of like, who should we direct questions to when we're thinking about how we're gonna work with this, who do we need to involve? It's about understanding kind of who you're, in some cases, stakeholders are around whatever it is you need to do.

[00:07:40] Paul: Right? Because this is really about a situation where it's not cut and dry, how the people who need to carry out the results of the decision need to do it. We actually have a lot of flexibility about what to do, and we are maybe under informed about the appropriateness of certain choices.

[00:07:59] Paul: And so it's really, it's about equipping ourselves to make sure that we are navigating through that uncertainty in a way that later on someone isn't gonna say, well, who decided to do it that way to us.

Wrapping Up and Key Takeaways

[00:08:12] Karen: So just to wrap us up for today, we started with the question of who signed off on this. And we think it's a super useful question. And in the extent to which it leads us to defining how changeable the thing is, what limits there are around it, who we would need to talk to if we wanted to change it, or who would we go to if we wanted more information about those limits and how changeable it is, all that kind of thing.

[00:08:36] Karen: We think it's not useful if you're in the blame space. It might be useful for venting if you do it carefully. But it is the sort of thing that you wanna be thoughtful, especially by email. We always think, be especially thoughtful about tone on email and you may wanna use different language. So you may wanna be asking, where do I go for more information about this?

[00:08:55] Karen: Or what are the parameters around this? Those kinds of questions rather than who signed off on it. But we think that it's a super useful thing in most cases because if we know where to go, then we often can manage the situation in a way that is more useful, more productive, more successful for everybody's goals and get to the place we wanna be.

[00:09:15] Paul: Well, that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:09:19] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.