Leadership & the Main Event
A Model for Facilitating Collaborative Processes
In this series of posts, I am focusing on the four steps in my model for facilitating collaborative processes. I’ve included my model as a reference, and in this post we’ll focus on the third step, IMPLEMENT.
A Review of A Model for Facilitating Collaborative Processes:
Deliberate
• Thoughtful input (advance notice)
• Inquiry driven (ask & listen)
• What(s), why(s) & how(s)
Decide
• Choose/"Bless"
• Define Success
• Create Plan
Implement
• Ideas to Action
• Time for Deliberation is Over (for now)
• Team Players vs. Team Members
Improve
• Finding Better
• Processes & Outcomes
• Remember, Apply, Forget
IMPLEMENT:
The first two steps, while important, are only the preliminaries to what I see as the “main event”, and that is the implementation of whatever alternatives are selected, and for which plans are created. As with the other steps there are three bullet points under this one, and they are:
- Ideas to action
- Time for deliberation is over (for now)
- Team players vs. team members
Ideas to action
If there is no shortage of “good ideas” in most organizations, why aren’t more organizations more innovative; why don’t more of those ideas translate into more success? The short answer is because few of them are ever implemented. Many of these ideas have great potential; they contain elements that could produce great results, but they never get off the ground.
One of the things I hope you’re noticing as we progress through the steps of this model is that facilitation is essential to successfully completing all of them. Nowhere is the need for facilitation greater than at this step, implementation.
In this step we’re translating the plans created in the previous step (see my previous blog posting) into action. People will be doing different things or doing things differently than before we decided to pursue the alternatives that we’re implementing. Do you think the new will wear off before we start seeing any real benefits? You can count on it, and when (not if) that happens, many of the people who you’re relying on to implement these alternatives may want to quit and go back to what they were doing before.
We’ve also seen that with any new process or variations on old processes, people will not be as proficient as they were with what they had been doing. They will make more mistakes, and since people are not fond of performing poorly, they may again be inclined to abandon new processes and return to the ones at which they were more proficient.
Translating ideas into action will often be a short-lived phenomenon unless people in leadership positions function effectively as facilitators of this important step in the process.
Time for deliberation is over (for now)
Looking at the model you’ll find that deliberation is the first step, and you may recall my encouraging you to seek broad participation in that step. The people whose efforts are required to implement alternative processes should be invited to participate in creating those alternatives. What you’ll find is that some of those people will accept your invitation and will participate actively. Others will show up but not participate, and others will decline your invitation.
Ironically, many of the people who don’t participate in deliberation when invited to do so will express interest in deliberating when informed of the decisions that have been made and plans that have been created by the people who did participate. When called on to participate in implementation, they suddenly develop interest in deliberation.
By expanding participation in the decision-making process you’ve offered people opportunities to participate in all phases of that process. Those who choose not to participate in steps one and two may not choose not to participate in step three, nor may they delay implementation by “reopening” deliberations. You will return to a form of deliberation in step four, but when you arrive at this step, Implement, that’s exactly what all participants are expected to do.
Team players and team members
Much has been written and said about the importance of being a “team player”. Without seeking to identify all possible characteristics of such people, I believe that our four-step model provides two places where team players reveal themselves. The first is step one, “Deliberate”. Team players are the people who will tell you what they think, not what they think you want to hear.
Likewise, step three, “Implement”, offers opportunities for you to identify your team players. They are the folks who may disagree with decisions that have been made but will still put good-faith efforts into implementing those decisions. Instead of withholding their efforts as a means of demonstrating their disagreement or putting half-hearted efforts into implementation, they roll up their sleeves and do their part in this step in the process.
Leadership & implementation
Winning organizations—ones that are “chronically successful—are led by people who are playing to win. Facilitating continuous process improvement is an example of that type of leadership. Instead of waiting until processes fail, these leaders aggressively pursue continuous improvements. That proactive approach reflects a more realistic perspective. Instead of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, their mantra might be: “If we haven’t found a better way, it’s only because we haven’t looked”.
Looking for and finding better ways are important to achieving & sustaining organizational success. Unless those better ways are implemented, their value will remain theoretical. And in the absence of effective leadership (facilitation), implementation will often be a short-lived process.
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