The reason why your value prop is full of “and”, your product is full of features, and your strategy is full of verticals and use cases (and exceptions to both), is that we are biased towards additive solutions.
We think that adding is better than subtracting when we look for solutions.
Of course, it is not.
But convincing others will always need a lot of work.
Is the workplace the best place to discuss societal and political issues? No.
Should societal and political discussions be banned from the workplace? Also, no.
The problem with a ban is that it rarely hits where it aims. You might want to curb animated discussions on your internal tools and you end up making your people feel less comfortable expressing themselves.
We do live in challenging times. Most issues are polarized. Most fail to see the greys. Most feel the only possibility is to be fully in or fully out. And if your people want to talk about a delicate issue, your role as a leader is not to direct the conversation towards the appropriate forums, but rather to sit down with them and provide a safe forum for the discussion to happen.
Even if that means a loss in productivity.
I talk about this a lot, and for as much as it is a difficult practice, it is one I am committed to.
You can have an impact today. You can give others what you want others to give you. You can show a different way. You don’t have to fall into despair if the world around you is not the way you’d like it to be. You can be present, here and now, learn, grow, and take others with you along the way.
[…] people who are preoccupied with success ask the wrong question. They ask, “What is the secret of success?” when they should be asking, “What prevents me from learning here and now?” To be overly preoccupied with the future is to be inattentive toward the present where learning and growth takes place. To walk around asking, “Am I a success or a failure?” is a silly question in the sense that the closest you can come to an answer is to say that everyone is both a success and a failure.
One way to renew an obsessive preoccupation with success is to alter the idea that the present is a means and the future is an end. The problem with this way of thinking is that, when the future comes, then it too becomes just another present that is yet another means to yet another future.
Karl Weick, How Projects Lose Meaning: The Dynamics of Renewal
P.S.: thanks to Ed Batista for this fantastic article about the topic.
Imagine you meet with some peers. The purpose of the meeting is to decide on changes that will impact many. You keep the meeting secret, and secret are also the follow up conversations that aim at defining the details. You go about it for a while, and then you and your peers go public with a big reveal. Now that the change is public, you go back minding your own business, expecting that everyone else will adapt and adjust accordingly.
I wonder how it would end.
I also wonder how common this situation is in organisations all over the world.
Your effort to promote change is failing because you want change imposed rather than concerted.
Change is difficult enough when it is us starting it. If we are asked to change for a cause that is not ours, that becomes a whole lot more challenging.
Consider two things.
Those asking for you to change should be less than those supporting you for who you are. When this is not the case, you might have to reconsider your circle, because the unbalance is probably taking a lot of your focus and energy.
Those asking for you to change might either be giving you a kick in the right direction or pulling you in their own direction. While we sometimes need the former, as we might be unable to see the change we need, we very rarely will benefit from the latter.
You've got this 