My current work lives here: Oddball Empire - Rock on.
Remember that grumpy employee that just kept on complaining about the company? Or perhaps you can recall your team mate that was just indifferent to the host organization?
You don’t have to be all ecstatic about your company to do a good job – although it would help. But real negativity and indifference can be a source of project trouble.
For some reason an employee has this horror picture of the organization in his mind. The story that is told inside his head is not one of joy. It’s this negative narrative that causes the behavior.
This narrative can be changed. It’s a bit like the David Copperfield solution to problems: if you cannot move the mountain, just change the angle of the camera.
Think about The Travel Guide To [your organization].
In this exercise you are asked questions about your organization that explore your relationship with its culture. You talk about habits, rituals and anecdotes. The interaction with with these cultural elements help you shape a new narrative.
By creating something, in this case a Travel Guide and drawing maps, you externalize your relationship with the organizational culture. This allows you to explore the connection from a small distance, taking a step back from the sensitive topic.
Please remember! I am still working on exercises and worksheets. Disclaimer: some are concepts that have to be test driven. No guarantees here.
I didn’t make all this stuff up. I borrowed it and applied it to the context of projects.
It’s stuff from therapy. Sssst. I’m a Project Shrink, what else would you expect! (Disclaimer: I’m not a licensed family therapist or something similar. You already knew that. But. Just saying.)
To be precise, Narrative Therapy:
“This process of externalization allows people to consider their relationships with problems, thus the narrative motto: “The person is not the problem, the problem is the problem.” So-called strengths or positive attributes are also externalized, allowing people to engage in the construction and performance of preferred identities.”
Basically, if you help people to change their internal story, they can change their attitude. I said: “help”. Not “tell”. If you are explaining the values of your company, you are entirely missing the point. And oh, yes, there is so much more to it.
Within projects there are more typical problem areas. More mental stories that can cause trouble. Not only the relationship with the host organization. Think about relationships with the team, the project, individual stakeholders, your role and your working environment. Problems around expectations, trouble caused by friction between the project and the host organization.
You can apply this technique of revealing the narrative without dictating the story to all those areas. Yes. It’s the list of Shrinkonian exercises.
In 2008 I wrote about “being a Project Shrink”:
“With a project shrink I was thinking more along the lines of relationship therapy. Without having all details, you can improve a situation by means of having guided counseling. “How did you experience this situation?” “What is your relationship with your mother like?” It can provide a needed “snap-out-of-it” moment for a PM (or BA). Reflection is not something that comes natural to all of us. We discussed earlier that cause-and-effect chains are getting complex, so someone to help you order your thoughts on any situation can be beneficial.”
Well. This appears to me the structure to do it.
Great Bas, this is not a conventional post. I want to change the angle of my camera and try to get an employee into the new culture. Here we may consider the “elasticity” of the employee. Some employees are lenient; Toxic employees, as we discussed in our E-book on the Fish Pond” are inelastic to change and would only be happy to negatively affect other employees. Their negative and disguised actions grow faster than our attempts to remedy the situation. No matter to what angle we change the camera they (toxic employees) disguise in different forms.
Hey Ali, excellent question! Yes, there are limits to what you can do. This will not always work. If people are really intend to be the toxic there is not much you can do with exploring the relationship.
But I think (no numbers, just my experience) that these are rare. Most people just drift away on a certain feeling and need to reconnect. It is a bit like remembering why you fell in love with someone, after many years. Most of the time this will revive any relationship. But will not work in all cases.
I think it is interesting to explore how you can recognize the difference. Let’s see if we can find something on that.