Whose Story Is It Anyway?
Over the years I’ve had a number of experiences that left a lasting impression on me, supercharging my belief in the value of doing ‘with’, not doing ‘to’. One such experience taught me that it really matters whose story is being told and who is telling it.
In this instance I was contacted by a local Council, asking me to facilitate a couple of public meetings to discuss Council’s proposed rate rise. The two meetings had already been scheduled and advertised. They were expecting a pretty negative reaction from ratepayers and were looking for someone to “manage the room”.
It was a pretty constrained and uninspiring brief, but in the few days prior to the first meeting I hatched a plan that, I hoped, might make the process more meaningful and useful to all.
The first public meeting arrived. I did my best to ensure Council made its case clearly and that ratepayers were heard. Council told their story of budget pressures and the need to repair things such as roads and bridges. After everyone had been heard I asked everyone to indicate their level of support for the rate rise, by placing a sticky note on a ‘spectrum’ from very low to very high. As expected, people on the whole didn’t want to pay higher rates. No surprises there.
Then before closing the meeting I called for some volunteers for a working group that would meet the following week with Council to dig deeper into the rates issue. We left the meeting with a dozen or so volunteers, many of whom were quite actively opposed to rate rises.
On the appointed day the group convened at Council and began a day of sharing, listening, questioning and learning. The day included a bus tour around the city to see first-hand the problems with existing infrastructure. The netball courts were unsafe. Rusty guardrails on the mountain road were no longer fit for purpose. The century-old wooden bridges were desperately in need of replacement. Stormwater drains needed work.
Working group members came back from that trip saying things like “I didn’t realise how bad the mountain road is” or “I had no idea it was so expensive to replace a drainage culvert”. At the same timer, Council staff heard stories about hardships among the community and the surprising expenses that small businesses faced.
The next evening we all went back for the second public meeting. This was another large event, open to all community members. This time, members of the working group were invited to share their experience and what they had learned. While much of the detail was the same as Council had already presented, these community members were telling their story. They spoke about their roads and bridges, and their kids who need safe sporting fields.
Was it received differently to Council’s story? Definitely. The final act of the process was to once again ask everyone at the meeting to indicate their level of support for the proposed rate rise on the same spectrum of support. And wouldn’t you know it? This time around, the majority was in favour.
When stakeholders get their fingerprints on a process, when they are extended the respect required to learn together, they are able to write their own story about the dilemma, rather than accept someone else’s. And this story carries a different power.
Whether you are the CEO of a Council, a Health Care organisation providing services to clients, or a manager with a team to work with, inviting your stakeholders to write their own version of the story can be an essential component of success.
Oscar Winners, Net Zero and the Skills Gap
Everything, everywhere, all at once is a great title for an Oscar-winning movie but according to one commentator it’s also the essential approach for progress towards a low carbon future.
I recently attended a thought-provoking panel session hosted by the Institute for Sustainable Futures (my alma mater as it happens), where global specialists on transition planning and implementation talked about the road ahead. It was more than a throwaway line from a panellist that everything, everywhere, all at once is what we need to be doing. Reaching net zero is hard and requires all hands to the pumps.
We heard that what is required is a “global collaborative effort to scale up” the transition across all sectors and all countries. That got my attention, along with the ensuing discussion about the economy-wide shortage of skills necessary for helping companies transition to low carbon operations.
What are the skills of doing everything, everywhere, all at once to meet our Paris commitments? Obviously there are a lot of technical skills required, such as scenario planners, financiers, electricians and a thousand others. Yet I believe there is a less obvious capability that will be needed and that is the suite of skills required to work across business-as-usual boundaries to make the systemic changes needed. These include:
Systems thinking as we grapple with whole supply chains and circular economies to find smarter ways to do more with less.
Experimental mindsets we will need in order to try things that just might work (and just might not), and to learn as we go.
Relationship building, essential to making the connections across networks of stakeholders, even where we are in competition for resources, market share, scarce dollars and scarcer people.
Customer, community and stakeholder engagement required as we bring the whole system into the room (figuratively and even literally) to co-create new ways of doing business.
To do everything, everywhere, all at once we will need an awful lot of collaborators, which raises some questions: Where are companies going to find people with these skills, and where are people going to learn those skills? Where are you going to look?
I'm making my own small contribution to closing the skills gap in April, with a short workshop on the core collaborative skill of co-defining the dilemma. Check it out and book .
Diving in to a collaboration mystery
“It has been great just to spend time on this together. We so rarely come together like this.”
“I was pretty sceptical walking in but having been a part of this workshop over the past few days I feel quite positive. It has been a very useful.”
When I hear comments like these from participants in workshops I’ve been facilitating I find it gratifying of course. But I also find it a little frustrating. My automatic thought is “if it’s so useful, why don’t you do this more often?”
I can’t remember when participants last found that the time spent working together in the room wasn’t useful. So it has always puzzled me that workshops with diverse people from across the organisational system aren’t a regular thing. I know I am biased but they feel so self-evidently productive from where I sit.
The quotes above are both from senior leaders in state government at the completion of a set of workshops I recently ran. Over three days this group tackled the task of creating a high-level plan for a new bit of complex policy. It is challenging work involving some quite challenging concepts and practices, yet after three days they felt they had made excellent progress.
So why aren’t workshops among senior people more of a thing?
I put this question to the project team, who had so ably helped to design and facilitate the sessions (big shout out to them). Their blunt reply was that “most workshops are pretty crappy”.
At which point it all made sense. Why would busy leaders want to come together for those terrible ‘talkfests’ we keep seeing? In their shoes I would run a mile too. Yet the opportunity cost of not coming together regularly seems very high, when I consider how productive diverse groups can be. Not only do they foster new ideas but they build shared understanding and much greater ownership of and commitment to the outputs. Doesn’t every leader want that?
The message seems clear. Nobody wants to waste time in a talkfest, and poorly-managed meetings have given all workshopping a bad name. But a thoughtfully designed and facilitated ‘workfest’ is a different beast. While I understand the impulse to avoid poor meetings, a great workshop always adds value.
At least I now know why workshops aren’t more common; People are understandably scared of wasting their time. So my next question is how can organisations best avoid poor meetings and boring talkfests while finding ways to do productive work together?
Hmmm…that’s a good topic for a workshop…..
The image is of a game of Underwater Hockey, a great sport that was a big part of my life at one time. If you haven't played it, go and check it out where you live. Like all team sports it involves lots of collaboration, and successful teams are more than the sum of their parts. photo credit Caleb Ming for ESPN
Being comfortable with discomfort
I was having recent discussions with a group of leaders at a client in the middle of a major restructuring exercise.
Our conversations had been ranging over the challenges of supporting staff through such changes, while also managing their own feelings about the potential impact on their roles.
A lot of the feedback they were hearing was about the uncertainty of what the change might mean, and the desire for more certainty.
They shared a lot about the range of emotions being reported- ranging from quite excited, through disappointment, frustration and anger, to quite fearful.
There was also a recognition that staff were reacting in various ways to the thrust and detail of the changes.
The difference in responses also surprised them, ranging from quite prepared to move on quickly to working differently, through to some staff quite resolute that nothing would need to change for them.
This generated quite a discussion in the group as to how to manage such widely varying reactions and expectations, while at the same time supporting staff the best way possible.
While the group’s inherent desire was to help “fix” the situation, there was a growing recognition that allowing people to “sit in the fire” was probably more appropriate- allowing them to take their own time and actions for appropriate pathways to emerge.
The tension for this group of leaders was the desire to “do something” to help (ie my role as a leader), while recognising that doing less may be as useful.
This felt a bit uncomfortable, weighing on the group members as it challenged their desire to know and be on top of what was happening.
But they also reflected that such new behaviour was probably a more appropriate response when facing such a significant and challenging change.
One of the group crystallised their learning quite nicely when they said “I’m getting more comfortable with the discomfort”, and reported that was also informing their actions in working with staff.
Resetting your collaboration
In Stuart’s , he identified some signs that a reset might be necessary. Let’s look now at what a reset might look like….
Having decided that something needs to be done, the typical response is to focus on structural, process and content issues. For example, the way we are set up, and the way people are working, especially the behaviours we see and don’t like, redesigning meetings or agendas, getting a better facilitator, managing the meeting dynamics better, calling out poor behaviour, etc.
While these might help, a much more useful approach is to focus first on the relationships. You might think of this like the Titanic and the iceberg - it’s what’s below the waterline that can sink the collaboration. And the relationship element is below the waterline; harder to see and trickier to deal with, but much more likely to allow smooth sailing when tackled.
Healthy collaborative relationships create a safer and more stable working platform in which to deal with current and emerging issues. So what can help reset the relationship and set you up for success in your collaboration?
- Acknowledging the history. Often there is baggage around what has happened before that impacts our behaviour, for example a past event that sticks in our mind and causes us to mistrust what others do. Surfacing some of that history and the consequences for each of us can help clean up the baggage. While this might be seen as opening old wounds, unacknowledged baggage can paralyse interactions, while respectful inquiry and acknowledgment in a safe environment can allow people to move on
- Checking and testing assumptions. Making visible our respective assumptions can be quite revealing, and allow us to test and explore the views we hold about others, and they about us. We can be quite surprised, and sometimes shocked (how could they believe that about us…..?), but we are then in a position test them and consider the implications for our work together. This can be quite cathartic, providing new insights and understanding of why people (us and them) may act the way we do.
- Putting yourself in the other’s shoes. This is where you try to see the world from the other person or group’s perspective. What really matters to them? What do they deeply care about? What makes them tick? What does their boss look for in their work? For example, one group might value social equity, and another may value technical expertise. If each perceives any situation only from their own perspective, misunderstandings and assumptions about motives might make it really challenging to find solutions together, leading to confusion and frustration. Taking time to hear how others think and work provides more shared understanding, facilitating more useful joint action on the difficult issues.
Sometimes clients are concerned that these activities will take time and distract from getting solutions. On the contrary, such reset activities can be a critical and essential investment in a robust working relationship, avoiding risks to solving key issues of structure, process and content. Is it time to reset your collaborative relationships?
What migraines taught me about overmanaging
I suffer occasional migraines which can be quite debilitating, especially at work when you just can’t concentrate and you just want to lie down and close your eyes.
I now manage them overnight with some specific medication, but previously they would impact me when I was facilitating group work.
On one occasion I was working with a group and was keen to help them get a good outcome. I would usually ensure the process was well designed and organised, pay close attention to the relational dynamics, and intervene throughout to help them.
In this case, I woke with a migraine, and dragged myself to the meeting feeling pretty terrible. Given my state I did the minimum setup and just relied on the group starting the conversation about the topic. Feeling as I did I had no energy to intervene, so just had to sit there and let it happen around me.
To my surprise, I found the group functioned remarkedly well, and maybe achieved more in terms of both their relationships and the difficult topic than I could have hoped.
When I felt better, I reflected on my insight, and subsequently tested my hypothesis around intervening less.
My learning that day has helped inform my practice- that stepping back, intervening less, and trusting the group is powerful in getting better outcomes.
That doing less is actually more.
Shared Direction- “What does good look like?”
I was working with a client late last year in an alliance meeting and the discussion turned briefly to the quality of the relationships. There had been a history of poor relationships between the client and an alliance partner which was affecting project delivery, and the group was reviewing a list of activities they had developed to get the project working effectively.
While a lot of the emphasis was on the business activities like road maintenance, asset renewal, etc, the team had also identified some other key contextual issues they felt needed attention if the goal of improved performance was to be achieved.
These include smooth communication, improved trust, good relationships and inclusive culture.
One of the senior managers asked some useful questions that got the group thinking- “what does good look like?” and “how would you measure good?” in regard to improving the relationship.
It highlighted a bit of a shortcoming in the work the team had done in generating the improvement plan- the list of actions that was intended to get the project back on track.
While they had a solid picture of what improved performance would look like around the technical aspects of the project (eg road maintenance), and also had some tangible indicators to evaluate process, they were lacking similar rigour for the contextual issues, which were recognised as essential to sustaining the technical improvements.
It prompted them to spend time in thinking through the answers to the two questions for each of the contextual issues.
For example: They shared their perspectives on what a ‘good’ relationship might look like/ feel like/ sound like, and came up with a picture or “light on the hill” to guide their activities.
It now supports them as they work together by guiding their behaviour as they can ask a question like “is what I’m doing helping move us towards that intent?”
And they also developed some indicators around that picture of success- subjective measures to evaluate whether they were making progress in the right direction. One they experimented with was “scoring” a relationship checklist monthly.
The team now see that it is essential to be clear on what success looks like for both their technical or content challenges, as well as their contextual or social challenges, to be confident that the solutions that emerge will be resilient and sustainable. Ie the value of that “Light on the Hill”
Trusting the data in co-design
Revealing the hidden dilemmas when collaborating
I was working with a client a few years ago, and he was a bit stumped.
He was leading a team working on improving performance in the health system, and was facilitating a collaborative initiative between nurses and a number of health districts (hospitals) on the vexed question of staffing and resourcing. A big emerging issue was nurse ratios ie number of nurses to patients, and the task was to work out an acceptable level that the nurses union would support, the hospitals could afford, and was politically acceptable to the Minister.
As part of the work, his team had been trying to gather data from the health districts about the current situation, but they were struggling as the hospitals seemed unable to provide the data. He speculated on a number of technical reasons why they couldn’t get the job done, and was at his wits end as to how to proceed- “I’m out of tools in my toolkit” he said.
When he was prompted to asked some different questions ie why is it so hard to get the data?, he was able to tease out a new perspective (for him!)
He discovered that all the data was readily available, but wasn’t shared because of the lack of trust between the hospitals and his team, and the nurses union, and the Ministers staff.
The hospitals felt they would probably be disadvantaged with any solution, as had happened to them previously. They certainly didn’t feel safe to admit to that lack of trust, so the reasoning focused on the content- we don’t record that information, we can’t access those records, etc
My client’s work then shifted to building a new relationship with the hospital hierarchy to build sufficient confidence to share information that could help them tackle key issues together.
On reflection, my client recognised that they had been focused on the content aspects of the problem (ie the data), and learned new skills and thinking that enabled him to identify the less obvious contextual issues that were also critical to finding shared solutions.
Take a different viewpoint
Just back from a road trip around western NSW and Victoria (a poor but enjoyable substitute for the covid cancelled skiing trip to US!)
We were keen to see some of the silo art that is proliferating across the country, and I took my camera drone to get some footage.
We spent a day exploring about 8 silos in the Victorian Mallee, and I shot each from the observation area as well as using the drone.
As I perused the footage, I was struck by the different views I was able to obtain (see video here) and how it enriched the perspective and the experience of the artwork.
It reminded me of our collaboration work- the importance of seeing more than one viewpoint when tackling a complex situation, and being able to obtain the various perspectives from those involved to build a clearer and more complete picture of the situation prior to seeking solutions.
It also reminded me how challenging it can be to draw in those perspectives and how we may need to get creative to see and understand those other views (we don’t always have a drone!)
How do you shift the collaboration narrative?
In Stuart wrote about the case for collaboration, by revealing the prevailing narrative that often frustrates attempts to collaborate authentically and effectively. I want to explore how investing in a systematic approach can shift that narrative, avoiding those pitfalls of business as usual. Because if you want different outcomes on your project you have to do things differently, not just tell yourselves that you are collaborating.
To run a new narrative requires us to develop and practice new behaviours, so I want to explore and share our experience of how those behaviours can be developed and sustained.
Organisations traditionally use one or a combination of methods to develop new ways of working and to change behaviour:
- Mandate - believing that if it is right and you want it enough, it will happen – a bit like “tell, them, tell, them and tell them again”
- Facilitate - use external resources to help us behave differently
- Toolbox - buy in a new set of processes to guide a different way to work
- Training - equip people through a series of sessions to learn and practice new ways
- Coaching - supporting staff as they attempt new behaviours
While these often do deliver the expected results, in our experience changing the collaborative narrative requires more effort in shifting the thinking, combined with developing new ways of working. The two processes needed to be closely integrated and practiced over time for sustained outcomes, otherwise the new insights and learnings quickly atrophy and people returned to the old ‘business as usual’ behaviours.
For instance, a new tool or process for listening can be learned and used, but if the prevailing mindset is one of expertise and knowledge, the new tool is unlikely to change the narrative from telling to asking.
And while people may be encouraged and supported in the value of asking, unless they have some additional practical techniques for listening, they may rely on what they know, unconsciously compromising their intent to be open and listen more.
Also a lack of confidence in new ways of working can also compromise the new intention of working differently.
So it’s the systematic combination and interplay of new thinking, new processes and new practice that drive a powerful new narrative, and not any one of those on their own. So if you want better outcomes from working together better, the case for a new business as usual is clear.