How to Solve Group Problems
Working as a group can be hard, but there are ways to make it easier.
Melissa has a common problem dealing with her colleagues and their calendars. Her office uses a calendar that gets shared over their network. Colleagues let her see the busy status on their calendars, but they block details so she doesn’t know where they are when she needs them for something important. She has a public and private calendar and wants to know how she can get her colleagues to do the same.
Melissa has just discovered one of the hidden truths about productivity: sometimes your own productivity depends on your office mates. Begging them to help doesn’t necessarily work. Going on team-building exercises and catching them on a “trust fall” doesn’t work; they trust you, but that doesn’t mean they want to help you. Even if you drop them, they don’t necessarily want to help. Of course, drop them hard enough and you can induce amnesia and convince them you’re their life-long pal. Then they’ll help. Only their memory has a way of coming back at the most inopportune times. Don’t ask how I know this.
How to Solve Group Problems
Your problem is that everyone has a calendar system that works best for them, but for the team to work well, it really requires everyone subordinate their personal style to a common tool. In effect, you want them to become part of the Borg, only in the real-life workplace, resistance isn’t futile. At least, not for them.
People aren’t nice. You’ll have to persuade them. You do that by raising the problems to the group and framing the problems as group problems. Then you let the group choose a solution. Feel free to propose your solution—everyone keep private and public calendars—as one possibility, but you’ll only get people to buy-in if they have a hand in designing or choosing the system you use.
Have the Group Solve the Problem
First, you need to get everyone all scared and worried about the problem.
Just remember: worried co-workers are willing co-workers, especially if they think you’ll come to the rescue. Call a group meeting and explain the problem. Very Important People are waiting in conference rooms for team members, and the team members are nowhere to be found—and because you can’t see the details on their calendars, you can’t find them. Or, your boss needs to meet with someone and there’s no way to know where they are. This, in turn, means the group misses important opportunities. It also has the potential to make the absent person look irresponsible. And you would never want one of your co-workers to look irresponsible.
How to Have the Group Solve the Problem
Put the problem in terms of how it harms the group, not just how inconvenient it is for you. I hate to break it to you, but even though they pretend to, they don’t really care about making your life better. All those holiday cards? They just give them so you won’t throw eggs at their cars. And while we’re facing harsh reality, there is no Easter Bunny, Santa Claus is just a brand name for an international conglomerate, and Mrs. Fields isn’t a little old lady, she’ s a stunningly beautiful crack businesswoman. Welcome to adulthood.
Next, ask the group to brainstorm solutions. Make a list of everyone’s suggestions, including your own. If you notice some people have stayed silent, ask whether they have anything to add. When people give input, they’ll feel ownership of the result. Finally, vote on the solution and try the solution the group chooses.
Put Limits on the New Change
People are scared of change. That’s why coin collectors in tollbooths wear gloves. If you’d seen where that change has been, you’d be scared, too. Some of your charming co-workers will oppose your plan simply because they’re scared of change but don’t want to admit it. So they’ll come up with all kinds of reasons why you shouldn’t even try the group solution.
You can defeat them all in one fell swoop by framing the new system explicitly as a time-limited experiment. Tell people you’d like to try the new system for three weeks and then review how it’s working. Then and there, schedule the date everyone will adopt the new system, and schedule the meeting to review the new system. Now, no one can raise objections based on the assumption that the new system won’t work, since you’re proposing an experiment, not a permanent change.
You may find out that you come up with different solutions that you’re currently thinking. That’s fine. You expect them to change to make your life convenient; this may give you a chance to try that on for size. But you’ll all win if you come up with a group goal to solve a group problem. Let everyone have a say in how you solve the problem, and explicitly schedule both the adoption and re-evaluation of the project when it’s done.
Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
RESOURCES:
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Constraints – Information about the Theory of constraints
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