Archive for the ‘Collaborate’ Category
Don’t Bother Me, I’m Busy Talking to Myself
Just because you have a budget doesn’t mean you know what you’re talking about
I just finished with a client who refused to take direction.
What’s that? You think a consultant should not give direction to a client? You could not be more wrong. That’s exactly what a good consultant does. It’s just that a consultant’s direction doesn’t look like orders or demands. A consultant’s direction looks like alternatives to the usual and invisible way of doing things.
Sometimes we need help seeing what is right before us. We are soaked in teams that are steeped in detail that is loaded with the talk that just circulates between people in the know. This adds up to a set of increasingly narrow word choices that are interesting only to the team. Those words sound like gibberish to anyone on the outside.
My client continued to talk in the insider terms only they understood. And they would not be dissuaded. In the end, they approved copy that ensured no one outside their little circle would understand.
Which feels like failure to me.
This doesn’t happen often, but it’s a bummer when it does. And it makes me think again about how complicated communication is, and why it is so important to start talking earlier rather than later. And why it is critically important that we pull our head out of the huddle from time to time.
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Image credit: killythirsk via 2headedsnake
Lead By Explaining Something to Yourself Out Loud
Our Words Always Boomerang
Early in Dr. Luke’s account of the nascent church, a central character was named Peter. Peter was a guy who processed things aloud: he had a mind-mouth connection that sometimes got him into trouble. But in Dr. Luke’s account, Peter’s verbal processing framed what was an entirely new situation. Peter grabbed pieces of the Law and Prophets and combined them with what he observed to sort out what they were all experiencing. In doing so, he freed many to participate in the ongoing conversation. The resulting conversation was nothing less than explosive.
Walk with me: what happens when we release our perception into a conversation? It’s not the case that anything we say comes true. (Despite what Minnesota Senator Al Franken said as Stuart Smalley) But there is something in the mechanism of “saying aloud” that allows an audience to hear and respond. That audience may be other people. That audience may be the one speaking the words. Our audience can agree, disagree or whatever. But the words are out there, itching for response. Hearing our own explanations often has a much more profound effect on the speaker than anyone we are talking to. That’s why the teachers and professors I know all say they learn so much every time they teach a class.
My favorite leaders often use that mind-mouth connection to process out loud what the team is experiencing. It’s a kind of shop talk that results in meaning-making right in the work place. I can think of several of those out-loud-processings from people I respected that changed my perception of an organization or situation forever.
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When You Know Too Much
You should shut up
Sometimes you are in a meeting and you know more than most people in the room. I’m not writing about an ego trip here or an exalted view of self. I’m writing about a function of age and experience. You personally have wrestled with the three topics circling the meeting’s agenda. And most of that wrestling was two decades ago. You know the people and stories and ethos the leader is referring to from deep study of your own—and you reached your own conclusions about five years ago. You’ve been there. And you’ve done that. I’m sounding like an old guy.
That’s the time to take action: Shut up.
Not entirely, but show some restraint. Why? It’s tempting to say you should shut up to hide what a cranky old codger you are. It’s also tempting to say “Shut up” to give the neophytes an opportunity to make their own mess of things. But neither of those tell the whole story.
In a meeting yesterday a group of us talked about a set of communication (and theological) issues revolving around reaching out to a growing population of immigrants to the Twin Cities. I said too much—I realized this on the slick, snowy drive home. But then I realized: no, honest discussion is exactly the give and take, the push and pull, the misunderstanding followed by dawning group understanding. That is the way of human communication. It’s mostly messy.
Here’s the point: every communication event is fresh. Even cranky old geezers who know too much can learn, because the players are different and the times are different and frankly, new stuff is happening. All. The. Time.
So: bring your experience to the table, by all means. And steel yourself: results will vary.
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Image credit: Denis Dubois via 2headedsnake
If I Had a Parking Lot (The Parking Lot Movie)
That’s Fecund Ground for a Philosopher
If I told you there was a documentary about a parking lot and that you would not be able to stop watching it, you might disbelieve me. And yet. There is. And you can’t. It’s called, The Parking Lot Movie.
You can’t stop watching because of the cast of characters who each take their turn tending the unheated little hut that serves as the outpost for payment. They charge people 40 cents, or a dollar, or eight bucks and the world of the parking lot revolves around this simple transaction. The attendants are students, and recent grads and grad students. They are philosophers and professors and musicians and slackers and bikers and skateboarders. What they share in common is lots of reflection about the transactions they have with the public. These guys have lots of time to think.
This overeducated bunch connects the dots of culture from the seeming-lowest point on the food chain of work. They think about how people park and about how the car make and model and even the license plate reflect on the driver. They think about the irony of having to pay to park that lumbering, expensive SUV. They think about what it means to be a parking lot attendant, mostly. And the camera catches these comments, along with the transactions and events that drive them to the comments.
The only way to get this parking lot attendant job at the Corner Parking Lot across from the University of Virginia is to know somebody. And that fact is one key to the whole interesting film: it’s the little community of irrepressible attendants trying to sort out life together that turns a mundane job into a joyous window on life. But more than that, the guy who owns the Corner Parking Lot—Chris Farina—has a way of working with people, mentoring actually, that helps each attendant grow into the person they are meant to be. He’s boss, but he’s a parking lot visionary who has figured out how to help each attendant have ownership over the parking lot. And maybe their life.
This is a great film on its own. But I can imagine using it in a class when talking about collaboration or community—it’s a perfect illustration of both. And with the shop talk caught on camera and in context, it is a delightful and an all-too-quick 74 minutes.
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What Thinking Together Looks Like
Hint: Don’t picture a straightjacket for your brain or tongue
A few days back I quoted William Paul Young who said he wrote “to create and open space, not to reduce it.” Today Seth Godin posted practical, context-building questions that help move clients away from the “I’ll know it when I see it” notion that is anathema to any creative person.
I was reminded of a long, involved eleven-step process that lurked in a space between marketing and communication in a big medical device firm I worked for some time ago. The process was the Communication Director’s darling and had a lot going for it in the sense that it was orderly and helped set priorities. But the order and priority-setting locked all participants (of which where dozens) into endless recurring meetings and production of PowerPoint decks to present to each other. Again and again. The process helped us move forward at the beginning but eventually the process itself took over and became an end in itself. I observed that smart, competent and innovative people started clamming up in these process meetings because the process itself dictated what we could say and when we could say it.
Both Young and Godin rely on something like intuition as they give priority to human relationships to help create environs the invite us to think together. I believe this process of opening-up—all while keeping your eye on your goal—is what gives us space to do our best work.
And there is no formula for that.
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Image Credit: via 2headedsnake
Rob Bell and Our Costly Questions
Conversations to engage a generation of questioners
There’s a telling line in the recent story of Rob Bell in The New Yorker (“The Hell-Raiser”), where the author Kelefa Sanneh conjectured that in writing “Love Wins,” Bell was “dreaming of a world a world without arguments—as if the right book, written the right way, would persuade Christians to stop firing Bible verses at each other and start working to build Heaven on earth.” (60) Conjecture about what others are dreaming is often problematic. But Sanneh, like the rest of us, take our cues from what others say and write, which is standard operating procedure for human communication events. Conjecture is always fair game for conversation.
There’s a lot the author gets right in the article and there are a few places with loaded language and mashed-up history. For instance, the notion that the “church matured” (60) out of the notion of Hell as a physical place is too loose a summary to really work. Debates about interpretation rage today, from all quarters.
Sanneh’s focus on how a preacher became a questioner among a people who do not respond generously to larger questions makes for interesting reading. These are my people and I confess that I too have responded without generosity too many times. And yet these larger questions are exactly the conversational fuel that can help move forward this often awkward project called the church. Especially because the generations behind me are increasingly wed to questions rather than dogmatic answers.
Much of what Bell wrote resonates with me. In particular, I’m smitten by this notion that people can talk—even about very deeply held things—without demonizing or judging each other. The notion reminds me of those noble people who early in the history of the church were in conversation with the inveterate letter writer. They eagerly heard what he had to say then examined it on their own to decide whether it was true or not. I imagine them discussing with authoritative texts and possibly disagreeing, but maintaining their relationships.
Bell has done us a great service by voicing these questions, even though the penalties for him have been high.
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Image Credit: The New Yorker
Your Cubicle Neighbor’s Bold Reveal May Be Your Salvation
One Lesson from Office Space
In Office Space, as Peter Gibbons descended down the dark tunnel searching out meaning in his work, he maintained friendships with other like-minded/cynical employees, Michael Bolton (no, not that Michael Bolton) and Samir N. And then there was Lawrence who heard everything about Peter’s life through the thin walls of the apartment next door. Together these friends reveal more and more to each other as the film progresses.
I’ve been blessed with great work friendships over the years. I believe the shared experience of dealing with the despot in the corner office and the silly conundrums she or he introduces can have a binding influence on co-laborers. Plus, the work of finding or making meaning in work often happens at the collegial level: the expertise, instincts and humor with which we approach our work has a way of rubbing off on those around us and vice versa. These friendships can and have lasted for years through changed jobs and kids and sickness and all manner of life change.
Not long ago I wondered aloud what would happen if God showed up at work. To that list I might add the people around us with whom we connect. These people in our shared work experience are way more than companions in misery—they may be part of your job’s salvation. Part of that has to do with what we reveal of ourselves to each other. And maybe the hope is that we share the stuff that matters with these people with whom we spend our days.
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Image Credit: IMDB
Living On One—100 Pennies Per Person Per Day
How can I personally understand poverty and wealth?
There is a fetching honesty to Living On One, the film from four documentarians out of the Claremont Colleges. These economics and film majors—all graduates within the year—set out to ask what it might look like to live on a dollar a day. “Living on a dollar a day” is one of those generalized statistics used to illustrate how a staggering number of people on our planet (over 1.2 billion?) live with so little.
The four friends set up shop (that is, a squalid camp) for a summer in a rural village in Guatemala and proceeded to shed pounds and acquire bug bites and diseases as they submitted to the economic rigor of making a life on the equivalent of 100 pennies per person per day.
Watching these friends sort out what to eat and how to eat it and how to cook it (firewood was a major draw on their 100 pennies) was a lesson in itself—especially when they realized that 1200 calories per person per day would not sustain them. They stepped over some invisible line the moment they bought their first bit of lard to cook in their daily ration of beans and rice—simply to get enough calories to keep lethargy partly at bay. They grew radishes, lusted after fresh fruit and longed for a chicken to nurture and then eat. The stories of the people who came to their aid and with whom they formed friendships are without question the most touching part of the film. All in all it’s an entertaining and affecting first-person account of trying to sort out the demands of poverty and wealth.
The honesty came in letting go of any pretense of actually being poor. They knew—and we the audience knew—they were choosing a particular limit. For a limited time. Resources were a phone call away, of course. But the thought experiment of trying to come to grips with a hand-to-mouth existence was compelling and begat practical lessons. The result was a kind of pragmatic knowledge that a textbook can never supply. I applaud their courage.
The Living On One bus stopped in Minneapolis a couple days ago. They played the film and took questions at the Bell Museum on the U of M campus, before a robust group of students and others. As they filmmakers took the stage I could see they were once again healthy people but also deeply affected by their experiment.
Their parting shot to the audience was to “Do something. Anything.” This final word was also an intrinsically honest call to action. The four friends had partnered with different micro-finance and poverty-fighting organizations, so they could and did recommend places to give cash toward the problem. But the big take-away was the struggle to personally understand this immense inequality.
That is a challenge that will stick with me.
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Rudy’s Crisis of Character
Does your crisis need introspection or extrospection?
Rudy (not his real name) (his real name was Samuel) was pastor of a small church in rural Wisconsin. A lot of people looked up to Rudy. It’s easy to imagine the pressure to be an example in such a community. Some/much of that pressure was self-inflicted.
Rudy’s son had a drug problem. When the problem came to light—in a very public way—Rudy blamed himself. He took a break from his pastoring job and pulled his trailer out into the woods where he was going to pray and read the Bible and think about where he had gone wrong and generally plead with God. He was in good company on this—lots of people in the Bible pursued these pleading communication events when crises hit. A few days alone, or alone with God, may answer the “What next?” and “Where did I go wrong” questions.
I’ve thought about Rudy’s instinct over the years. I grew up in a tradition where sorting things out on your own was expected. “Whatever you need to do to straighten up and fly right, well, get on with it” was the general sense of how things ought to progress. That was Rudy’s primary methodology.
Yesterday I had a delightful chat with a local philosopher. We got on the subject of what happens when we encounter the Other. What is our responsibility for the people with whom we come in contact and when does that responsibility kick-in? How can we be mutually for the people in our lives—and maybe for the people on the fringes of our lives? It turns out that one way is through our conversation. Even the casual conversations—just in passing—can have a deeply cathartic effect at times when people say what is really going on. I cannot help but wonder if Rudy’s instinct might have benefitted from time alone followed by a long walk with two or three childhood friends to help him sort the flotsam from the jetsam. Followed by weeks of conversation with his wife, Carol (not her real name) (her real name was Gertie). Followed by lots and lots more honest talk—especially with his son.
Because when we speak with each other—sometimes we say (and hear) the things God would say to us.
Speaking of Rudy (not his real name) (his real name was Ebenezer). Everything turned out ok: Rudy eventually left his pastor job and he became an exemplary truck driver and was chock full of wisdom for the people on his route. And the son’s drug problem grew until it stopped abruptly when teen angst gave way to career and age and the need to pay attention to life.
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Image credit: Roland Topor via 2headedsnake
On Coasting
Good for biking. Not good for marriage. Not good for collaboration.
I like to ride my bicycle and downhill is my favorite route. Coasting is the best part of biking. But biking is one of the few places where coasting is best.
We’ve spent the last five or six years coasting in a church. From the very beginning, we looked for places and situations where we could use our gifts and talents, where we could put our shoulder to the work and help the vision move forward. But in the end we just couldn’t break into the right spot where usefulness meets need meets a bigger-picture purpose. Now as we look for a people with whom we can fully engage, I realize I was coasting far longer than I ever meant to.
Except for biking, coasting is not a good place to exist. Just passively taking things in and waiting for stuff to happen is no way to attend any job, any relationship, any organization. Coasting in a marriage smells like doom. Coasting in life is no plan at all.
There are hopeful signs: last time we looked for a church, we just wanted to escape the groupthink of evangelical Republicanism. We achieved that. In the meantime we did a lot of good sorting out of this notion of church, how it is an awkward marriage of human structure and something completely Other. Something Other with far bigger plans than policing morality (though we do need help with this) or weekly showcasing a few people’s talents or developing sentimental religious feelings.
The hopeful thing I’m starting to observe is that people of faith are exhibiting behavior that makes me think a relationship with God looks like good work and fair treatment of others in the workplace. The hopeful thing is seeing people with a generous devotion to God that looks like pleasure with other people. This hopeful thing looks a pursuit of chesed rather than amassing more stuff or more fame or attention.
I’ve met people like this recently. People who are not coasting. That makes me hopeful.
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Image credit: Benjamin Phillips via 2headedsnake
conversation is an engine 