Month: April 2021

Teams reason better

Teams collaborate better than individuals on a wide range of problem-solving for two reason:

  • People are exposed to points of view different from their own. If the arguments are good enough, people can change their mind to adopt better beliefs. This requires structure, such as “Yes…but…and“
  • The back-and-forth of a conversation allows people to address counterarguments, and thus to refine their arguments, making it more likely that the best argument carries the day.

Both of these work to reduce bias and subjectivity.

Principles of Team Collaboration

There are a few principles to make this team collaboration work.

  • Clear purpose: What is the reason for the collaboration? What’s the business case or business need? Without alignment on the purpose and its underlying importance to the organization, the collaboration will fail. The scope will start to change, or other priorities will take precedence. 
  • Clear process: How will the collaboration take place? What are the steps? What is the timing? Who is responsible for what?
  • Clear expectations: What is the specific goal or outcome we are striving for through this collaboration? 
  • Clear support: Problems will arise that the team cannot handle on their own. In those cases, what is the escalation process, including who and when? 

Ensure these are in your team ground rules, measure success and perform continuous improvement.

Emergent shakeups

Shakeups at Emergent

There is a lot to understand in this story. As congressional hearings unfold, and the shareholder lawsuit works the way through the courts, I hope we learn more about the how’s and the why’s.

Leaders in the Way

In “How Leaders Get in the Way of Organizational Change” in Harvard Business Review, Ron Carucci discusses ways leaders can create problems in change.

The three main pain points he discusses are:

  • Scope naiveté: Underestimating the work
  • Change laziness: Overestimating the organization’s capacity
  • The perceived pet project: Misjudging how others see you

Great article, I strongly recommend reading it.

For each of these democratic leadership is an effective path to avoiding.

  • Idealized Influence: By holding oneself accountable you spend the time to understand the organization’s capacity
  • Inspirational Motivation: Moving from pet project to what is best for the organization
  • Intellectual Stimulation: Strive to overcome scope naiveté
  • Decentralized decision-making: Get the organization bought in to accelerating the change
Photo by Zen Chung on Pexels.com

Share your stories

As we move through of careers we all have endless incidents that can either be denied and suppressed or acknowledged and framed as “falls,” “failures,” or “mistakes.” These so-called falls all enhance our professional growth. By focusing on the process of falling, and then rising back up, we are able to have a greater understanding of the choices we have made, and the consequences of our choices.

Sharing and bearing witness to stories of failure from our professional and personal lives provide opportunities for us to explore and get closer to the underlying meaning of our work, our questions of what is it that we are trying to accomplish in our work as quality professionals. Our missteps allow us to identify paths we needed to take or create new stories and new pathways to emerge within the context of our work. As we share stories of tensions, struggles, and falling down, we realized how important these experiences are in the process of learning, of crafting one’s presence as a human being among human beings, of becoming a quality professional.

We may not have asked for a journey of struggle when we decided to become quality professionals, but the process of becoming tacitly involves struggle and difficulty. There is a clear pattern among individuals who demonstrate the ability to rise strong pain and adversity in that they are able to describe their experiences, and lay meaning to it.

It is important to recognize that simply recognizing and affirming struggle, or that something is not going as it should, does not necessarily lead to productive change. To make a change and to work towards a culture of excellence we must recognize that emotions and feelings are in the game. Learning to lead is an emotionally-laden process. And early-stage professionals feel exceptionally vulnerable within this process. This field requires early-stage professionals to hone their interpersonal, technical, and organizational skills, all while turning their gaze inward to understanding how their positioning in the organization impacts can be utilized for change. Novice professionals often struggle in terms of communicating ideas orally or in writing, being able to manage multiple tasks at once, staying on top of their technical content, or even thinking critically about who they are in the broader world. Early-stage professionals are always on the brink of vulnerability.

Share your stories. Help others share theirs.

I’m organizing a PechaKucha/Ignite event as part of the ASQ’s Team and Workplace Excellence Forum to sharpen our stories. More details coming soon. Start thinking of your stories to share!

Royalty-free stock photo ID: 642783229