Employing Differences, Episode 169: Can we take this apart?

Paul: [00:00:06] Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Karen: [00:00:12] I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: [00:00:14] And I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: [00:00:16] Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, "Can we take this apart?"

Paul: [00:00:23] One of the things that we often find ourselves in as facilitators, and that a number of people that I know find themselves in, as people in positions of authority in organizations, is dealing with complex situations. And so when we have situations where there are a lot of moving pieces, where there are parts that influence other parts, where, honestly, a lot of the difficulty is the fact that you can't grasp the whole thing at one time. And we need to deal with that as a group.

Paul: [00:00:57] What do we do about that? How do we help a group not just be overwhelmed by all of the details, by all of the interactions, by all of the moving parts in a particular situation, in order to be able to make some progress?

Paul: [00:01:11] So I'm going to make a disclaimer up front. One of the things we know is that in complex situations- and honestly, in systems that have sort of any sort of human element to them, you cannot fully isolate the pieces from each other. There's always interactions between them. That's what makes these systems complex. And we're going to use complex here in a sort of lay definition.

Paul: [00:01:32] There are some of you who are listening who might be aware of different theoretical approaches to complexity, and we're not using any of those terms in what we're talking about here. But one of the things that we want to talk about is an approach that you can take to help a group to start to get its arms around a complex situation, a complex problem. Something that they want to do, which is which is to act as though with an acknowledgement that this isn't quite true. 

Paul: [00:01:59] That there are distinct components that we want to look at one at a time, and that we want to start to see how they interact, but not to try to hold the whole thing in our heads all at once. There are challenges with doing this, and it's not the only option you have for this. But we want to talk today about is a little bit of the "So, how might we do that?" "When might we want to?" and "What might be some of the benefits and some of the challenges, of trying to take a situation that is complex, apart?"

Karen: [00:02:30] So I'm working with a group on a budget process that has complexity on the income side, as well as the expense side, which is unusual for this particular type of group. But that's the situation they're in. And some existing cash that can be spent in lots of ways.

Karen: [00:02:46] So there's all sorts of things in play and it's a newer organization so they don't have historical data to base budgets on. So there's a lot of variable things going on, a lot of things shifting and changing and a lot of different approaches that could be taken. And this is a group of people who some of them are really happy with spreadsheets and math and some of them really aren't.

Karen: [00:03:12] But all of them are affected by the outcome. All of them have a stake in the decision. All of them need to participate. So you can't just say, "Oh, the people who are good with numbers, they'll go off and take care of this." That's not going to work.

Karen: [00:03:24] And so we have to keep everybody included and nobody can really hold all of the variables at once. It's just more than is going to fit in any one brain. But some people can handle more than others. But we absolutely have people in this group who aren't going to track lots of numbers and spreadsheets and equations and math, which is fundamentally what's going to drive decisions, understanding how it's going to roll.

Karen: [00:03:52] So I have been working with this process, trying to figure out how do we keep people engaged in the process, recognising that many most are not going to hold even probably half of the various variables all at the same time.

Karen: [00:04:06] So how do we take it apart? And the strategy that I have been using with a fair bit of success, I will say, is to take one piece. "At this meeting, we're going to talk about this one thing. And of course, it relates to all those other things that you're going to tell me it relates to. But for tonight, we're not going to talk about all of them." Where 'This is where we are with each of them. This is what's going on with each of them.' We're just going to touch and then we're going to stop. Because the focus for tonight is this one piece.

Karen: [00:04:38] And what happens if we make shifts around that piece? And being able to do that, there's a lot of boundary setting, I think that's necessary, like being really clear. We know those other things are important and we will talk about them at some point. But in this moment we're not so getting clear about that boundary.

Karen: [00:04:57] And then the other thing that I think turns out to be really important with this, is to start that one-part conversation. With enough information sharing that everybody gets front of mind. The relevant sort of facts or data or constraints or whatever relates to that one piece.

Karen: [00:05:17] We start with that sort of front of mind and then we dig into that one piece making room for both whatever information might exist about it. And then also the emotional piece that needs to happen around that one piece. How does that piece push people's emotions. One direction or another, and where do we kind of land on that?

Paul: [00:05:38] A lot of what you're talking about there is really around- its boundary setting, right? You're taking this, you're drawing somewhat arbitrary lines between pieces of it. And you're saying, "All right, we're going to draw the lines this way and we're going to talk about each of these sections sort of in turn."

Paul: [00:05:53] And you're acknowledging that these aren't really separable. You're actually sometimes probably even drawing specific connections to this relates to that piece over there, which we're not digging into in detail tonight. This connects to that thing over there. And one of the challenges.

Paul: [00:06:07] But the useful thing to do is to keep bringing people's focus back to where you have chosen to draw the boundaries around this discussion 'at this time'. And to do so, my experience is often to do so kindly, yet firmly. When somebody wants to go over there, or they want to go outside the boundary that you're hoping to draw here, to acknowledge "You're right, this absolutely impacts that other part of that process. And we're going to try not to deal with that tonight." We're really going to try to- our focus here tonight is to sort of bring back around. And that, that is managing that.

Paul: [00:06:45] It's sort of on two levels. One is you have to you actually want to encourage and acknowledge the fact that people are getting it, right? They're seeing that this is connected to other stuff and at the same time sort of usefully direct them back, right? So keep them on topic.

Paul: [00:07:00] But the other piece of that is, that means you're asking people to not complete a line of reasoning. Or to leave something dangling, and that can be anxiety inducing.

Paul: [00:07:13] And so one of the things you have to watch in a group is, as you're trying to steer them back to the thing that you're working with right here and now, acknowledging there are things over there you're not digging into right now. What is the group's capacity for handling that? Are they being overwhelmed by the fact that this is connect to other stuff or they want to go somewhere else, or can they stay usefully inside the boundary that you're trying to draw on that?

Karen: [00:07:40] Yeah, I think that's a really important point to sort of track where is people's anxiety. And as much as they can kind of see the roadmap- and this is, I will say a tricky thing because when I'm facilitating a process like this, I don't have a complete roadmap at the beginning because each step depends on what happens at this meeting is going to shift where I go with that or the other. So I kind of only know a step or two ahead.

Karen: [00:08:06] But what I think we can do is draw the whole picture. So with this budget process, I created a diagram that had all the pieces and had sort of arrows and things connecting them. And I made some assumptions. And I said they were assumptions and I said we could change them. So we laid the groundwork of we may not stay with this, but for this conversation we're going to assume these things that are plausible or even likely that we'll decide, but we haven't decided them yet. So kind of holding that. We haven't decided yet, but we're going to play this out. Having solidified, having held some of the variables, so that we can play with the others. But having that visual organizer that says 'here are all the pieces and how they relate to each other'.

Karen: [00:08:54] And typically at the beginning of a meeting, I'm putting that visual organizer up and I'm saying 'this is where we are with this piece', 'this is where we are with this piece', 'this is where we are with this piece'. 'This is what's happened in between meetings' or that kind of thing. And tonight we're focused "here". You can put a big star on the thing that you're working on, or having that visual thing.

Karen: [00:09:13] And that I find really helps with what you were talking about, Paul, about the boundary setting. When you need to pull people back in, you can go back to that diagram and say, "Yes, here's that connection you're talking about and this is what's going on over there, and this is why I want to keep us focused over here."

Karen: [00:09:31] But having a visual map of the various pieces in their relationships helps a lot of people get grounded. And as they wander off, or as the complexity kind of overwhelms them cognitively, they're not keeping track. They don't know where we are anymore because there's so much cognitive work that's more than they can quite hold that giving them that visual anchor to get back to so we can reset is super helpful.

Paul: [00:09:58] And if people are coming up with connections that you haven't already caught, that can be really useful. Because you know, it's one thing to be able to say, 'Right, yes. This thing that you're bringing up that would lead us over to there', it's already here on the diagram. That can calm people down. Because they go, 'Oh, great, I know that that's already there.'. 

Paul: [00:10:16] Sometimes they still want to really dig into it. And then you just kind of have to, you know, gently nudge them back as best you can. But sometimes that's new information. You're like, I didn't even think about the fact that there was a connection. No one had thought about the fact there's a connection. Let's capture that. And so now we have this. 

Paul: [00:10:31] And that also will calm people down because it's the sense of like, "Great, I don't have to hold on to this, so we're not going to lose it. This thing that I care about is the thing that I noticed is captured. It is part of our process. When we get to talking about over there, it'll be waiting for me."

Paul: [00:10:46] I think that's oftentimes a really useful thing to be able to do. And that's a thing that can allow people to bring to, even though they may want to go over there, to bring their focus back inside the boundary that you're trying to create there.

Paul: [00:10:58] And I do think another thing around this, because I've facilitated processes like this, is recognize that 'How do you know when you've drawn the lines incorrectly?' Right? You had a theory about, great, we're going to break it up into these parts and sometimes you just discover, 'Oops, like that doesn't work for this group for whatever reason'. Sometimes you just do need to shift.

Paul: [00:11:21] It's like, "Oh great, maybe I drew the lines correctly, but I put them in the wrong order". That we really can't talk about this thing until we've talked about that piece over there. At least we've talked about it a little bit.

Paul: [00:11:32] And so being ready to jump out of the boundary that you thought you were going to draw to either shift it to change topics to go, "Okay, actually, you're right. It seems like with this group, we can't dig into the details of how we're going to allocate the money on the expense side until we've gotten into some of the stuff. There's too much uncertainty that sort of got its hooks into us around the income side."

Paul: [00:11:56] "So while we've been planning on going over there tonight, I'm wondering if it would be useful for us to talk at least a little bit about this other piece instead." I've certainly had that with groups where- because any time you're trying to draw those boundaries, right, you're creating constraints on the conversation that can happen.

Paul: [00:12:11] And sometimes you're accidentally over constraining the conversation where the group actually needs to talk about something else first. And until they get to, they're not going to make any progress on the topic that you're hoping that they'll talk about tonight.

Paul: [00:12:26] And so being ready, that's one of the things to be aware of, that if you are going to try to break things into pieces. All of that is a theory about what are the pieces that it would be useful to break it into and what is the useful order to go through them in. And be aware of the results of your experiment and what you may be picking up on that tells you you need to revise your theory.

Karen: [00:12:48] Yeah, that flexibility is really important. And it's part of maybe the last thing I want to make sure we touch on in this episode, which is trust.

Karen: [00:12:56] If you're going to put those kinds of constraints, if you're going to ask a group to talk about what you want them to talk about and not what they may have wanted to talk about, there's going to have to be a great deal of trust. By the group in the facilitator, or the leader. 

Karen: [00:13:13] And so you really want to think about how much trust do you have to start with. If you don't have a good relationship or a trust built, you may have to do more contracting. "Hey, this is how I'm thinking about approaching this. I'm thinking about breaking it up. Would that work for you all?"

Karen: [00:13:28] If you have high trust, you may be able to be a little more heavy handed and spend less time in that negotiation. So there's that piece. And then there's the piece about continuing to build trust. And some of it is that flexibility that you're talking about, Paul, of 'if it's not working, change it'.

Karen: [00:13:44] You don't build trust by doubling down on your own bad idea. You build trust by responding and engaging with what's real in the room and being willing to say, "Yep, I was wrong. What I thought was going to work isn't. And so now let's shift." That's trust building behavior. It doesn't always feel like it. It feels like we look foolish and like we made mistakes. But in fact that's not how that goes.

Karen: [00:14:06] And then the other piece is to make sure that when you're telling them we are going to talk about that, that we do then talk about that. It can get tempting to think, "Okay, we said we were going to talk about this thing, but now it looks like we don't need to because we went a different way or whatever." And if you're going to make that choice, you've got to make it very transparently and with consent.

Karen: [00:14:28] So, "We said we were going to talk about this. It feels to me like we don't need that anymore because of whatever. Does that work for all of you?" And if the group says, "Yep, you're right, we don't actually need to talk about it anymore. No problem."

Karen: [00:14:41] But if you've said you're going to talk about it, you got to talk about it. Which applies to anything else that if we say we're going to cover things, if we say we're going to do a thing, if we say we're going to have a meeting, all those things. We need to keep doing that trust building. Because the boundary setting that we're wanting to do, the constraint that we're wanting to put in, will not work if people don't feel safe in our care and our facilitation. So that trust piece is just really essential.

Paul: [00:15:08] Absolutely. So to track sort of where we've been here today, we're talking about helping a group make decisions and work through a complex situation. Something where you can't really hold the whole thing in your head at the same time. Where there's lots of interactions between various bits, recognizing that probably nobody can hold all of those.

Paul: [00:15:28] But particularly when you're in a situation where you have differing degrees of people's ability to hold all the pieces, to see all the variables, to notice all the connections, and they still need to be involved in it.

Paul: [00:15:40] So it's not the case that you can just send this off to a few experts who will come back with the answer. Where you really need to engage a large and a varied group in a process that can't really be held all at one time. How to take it apart effectively? That is one strategy to say, "Hey, we're going to divide it up into these pieces. And we're going to try to move through them sort of in this way to start to come to understand those pieces, and how they relate to each other individually." 

Paul: [00:16:10] Recognizing that what you're doing there is you're creating a boundaries within the larger piece, and how you need to work with a group as you're working through that. To sort of stay within those boundaries, to work with the pieces as has been identified, to work with that 'how-to'. The importance of recognizing that there are connections between those, right? Pointing out, "Hey, this is not completely isolated from all of the other parts, this does connect to other things."

Paul: [00:16:34] And then still sort of guide people gently back. Firmly, but kindly, pointing out when people are wanting to stray outside of the boundaries that you've drawn, that can be really useful.

Paul: [00:16:45] It's also important to recognize the signs that the group is usefully not wanting to stay inside those boundaries. Like, staying inside the boundaries is going to be somewhat anxiety inducing. Because people can sense that there's other stuff going on that you're not talking about.

Paul: [00:17:01] And so being able to sort of capture and hold that, having a clear- a clear, but not necessarily complete map of where it is that you're going, of what the larger picture is. So people can see how what you're doing fits into that. To be able to direct them back to, but also to be able to acknowledge, "Yes, these connections to other parts of the process that you're bringing up are either already captured, or we're going to add those connections to our understanding of that." 

Paul: [00:17:27] So that people know that that doesn't just live in their heads, that can help them sort of stay within those boundaries.

Paul: [00:17:34] Also, it's important to recognize that your theory of "We're going to break it into these pieces and we're going to move through them in this way" is just that - it's a theory. And you may discover that that's the wrong way to break things up for this particular group.

[00:17:46] So as someone who is leading a process like this, being willing to pivot. When you notice that, "Nope, this is not going to work. This was a plan, we need to move to something else" and then recover from that, can be really useful.

Paul: [00:18:00] And to do that with some grace, to be able to recognize that. And in any of those steps that you're moving through, to always be gauging sort of what's the discomfort level of the group and also what's the trust they have in me as a facilitator, or as a leader, of this sort of process?

Paul: [00:18:16] And are those well matched? Can I push them to move a little further, move a little faster, or do we really need to ratchet back? Am I doing things that create trust in the process and trust in me as someone who's helping them move through that? Or do I need to slow down and create a little bit more?

Paul: [00:18:31] Do I need to contract a little bit more firmly up front, or do I have enough trust that I can move kind of quickly through those things?

Paul: [00:18:38] So none of this is simple. These are all- this is a complex process. If there were a simple way of doing it, we wouldn't be having these conversations. But recognising that sometimes your best approach, or at least a reasonable approach to a complex system, is to break it up into pieces and to take it apart. Recognising they're not fully isolated from each other, but that that can be a useful strategy for helping people to get their heads around the problem in a way that they couldn't before. And at the very least, to make some progress.

Karen: [00:19:07] And that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: [00:19:12] And I'm Paul Tevis. This has been Employing Differences.