Entering the Zone of Uncomfortable Debate (ZOUD)

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It sounds like it should be a spaceship name from an Iain Banks novel and indeed, for many groups, entering the ZOUD is about as unlikely and fantastic.  It is, as the name suggests, a very uncomfortable place to be and there really are no exceptions to this.  No-one finds the ZOUD comfortable. However, just as some people find leaping out of a plane with a small sheet of fabric strapped to them exhilarating while others find it simply terrifying, some people can cope better with the ZOUD than others and these people are much more likely to be successful group leaders.

cartoon elephantThe concept of the elephant in the room has become common parlance in recent years.  The ZOUD is where the elephant is named out loud by (and this is the really important bit) every single member of the group.  As a group leader you can raise difficult issues as much as you like but if your team doesn’t join in and share their own thoughts and feelings you are really no nearer reaching a consensus decision than if you simply present your plan of action as a fait accompli.

How do you know when your group are in the ZOUD?

  • everyone will look and act uncomfortable.  You will see fidgeting, screwed up faces, shaking hands, inappropriate humour and possibly even passive aggressive behavior.  We have evolved to take open conflict within the tribe very seriously and avoid it if we possibly can.
  • everyone will talk about feelings. 10/10 elephants are emotional issues and make people feel strongly even when they have trouble articulating why.  A decision that makes your team scared, angry or frustrated is not going to be fully supported by them even if they can’t pull together an entirely rational argument for why it makes them feel that way and it’s no good pretending otherwise.
  • the discussion will flow very differently. The pace will speed up and slow down erratically, there will be long pauses and changes in volume.  The pattern of your regular BAU meetings will be broken.

Unless it is somewhere that you and your team go on a regular basis (as some highly successful boards and project teams do) a facilitator is key to finding your way across the ZOUD and out to a viable and sustainable decision point.  Constant reassurance is required to get the whole team in there with you and you can’t reassure people while disagreeing with them; especially if you’re the boss.

 Why put yourself and your team through all that?

I was asked (with a smile) a few weeks ago if I thought that discomfort was character building.  My answer is, “sometimes”.  As a facilitator, I am the first to suggest that a group closes down a topic and moves on when it is clear that there is consensus on the outcome.  But if I’m working with a group tackling a complex problem I will work hard to prevent them closing down the debate just because they are finding it too uncomfortable.  Some incredibly innovative and unexpected solutions lurk in the ZOUD and I am determined to help you to find them.

Proving that Change Management is Worthwhile

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Change Management is all about using structure and intent to get people engaged and onboard with the changes we need to make.  It’s aim is to get individuals to do things differently and it takes a lot of effort and resource.  There is a growing body of evidence that shows that projects that lack Change Management risk getting entrenched in the realm of RE – re-work, re-training, re-design etc.  So how can we prove that Change Management really helps us to achieve our goals?

We need to ensure that we establish metrics we can actually measure.  This may seem self evident but I have seen many Change initiatives fail to get the resources they need to be successful because these metrics have been defined in too woolly a way.  E.g. “People feel better about working here”. Usually it’s proposed that this type of metric is evaluated through surveys. But why bother?  Many people would feel great about working here if they were guaranteed good money jobs for life without stress.  That is simply not an adequate goal for a change initiative.

If we’re delivering an infrastructure project setting goals might be more straightforward. Gathering hard data on productivity, efficiency, cost of new processes etc should be an integral part of your project’s benefits realisation process.  As an integral part of the project, Change Management should share the credit/risk for the achievement of these targets.

However, if you want to separate out the effect specifically delivered by Change Management you need to set some separate goals.  Research by the internationally recognised Change Management Learning Centre (PROSCI) suggests that the three areas that really correlate with successful delivery are:

  1. speed of adoption – how quickly individuals adopt the future state behaviours.
  2. ultimate utilisation – how many individuals make the change to future state behaviours.
  3. proficiency – how well individuals adopt future state behaviours.

The first two are obviously measurable but the third may require a bit of digging to root out the implicit assumptions of the leadership and project team.  Given that the goal of most projects is to enable something to be done more efficiently the chances are that efficiency measures can meet this requirement too.

Ultimately, it is important that we measure the benefits of using a structured and intentional Change Management process because it is only through doing this that we will get the resources we need to do the job properly and avoid the entering the costly and tedious world of RE.

 

Recruiting fakers

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I went along to the final Queenstown Chamber of Commerce ladies morning tea of the year yesterday and was highly entertained by the speaker – Kaye Parker, currently CEO of the Wakatipu Trails Trust.  She is a contagiously enthusiastic speaker and gives the impression of a huge range of stories to tell.  Her presentation was very entertaining and thought provoking, beginning as it did with a slide saying “Fake it till you make it”.

In her humorous, self deprecating style, Kaye told us about a few of the times when she’d done this herself and managed to successfully take on roles that she wasn’t qualified for.  Her tales made me reflect, not for the first time, that much of the experience and expertise demanded by recruiters is simply unnecessary while the qualities that make a star employee are often overlooked.

Of course, if you are looking for someone to use dangerous machinery without supervision or build you a house that won’t leak, it is important that they have some experience in this.  But many so called areas of expertise like “working within the travel industry” or “communicating with senior managers” are simply things that people can adapt to if they have a willingness to learn and the initiative to find out the answers for themselves.  After all, most of us have had to undertake a wide range of work activities that we’ve never been specifically trained for.  For some of us, that’s what makes a role interesting and motivating.

By listing yards of specific experience when advertising a job, recruiters are likely to get candidates who:

  • prefer to stick to what they know rather than try anything new,
  • will find it hard to pass their expertise on to others, and
  • are simply looking to increase their reward for the same work.

So next time you draw up an advert or a job description, think about the personal qualities you need rather than the experience required.  You’ll find a much more interesting pile of CVs on your desk if you do and they won’t have to fake anything.