Why Are We Here?
Open Dialog About Your Purpose

It's amazing how many teams work together without agreement on what they're trying to accomplish. It's vital to get that agreement early, because from that point on, everyone's pulling in the same direction.

A large HMO has been deploying an entirely new eMail platform to its thousands of employees throughout the U.S. The technology team responsible for eMail, corporate directories, and all other collaborative tools was having difficulty with acceptance among users. In some hospitals, things went well; in others, the doctors resented having new eMail thrust on them when the existing tools seemed to work so well.

What they heard were the user's complaints: Too much eMail. They asked us to investigate, and we identified the deeper problem: The technologists were intent on delivering a new collaborative tool, and they were "smuggling it in" in the Trojan Horse of new eMail. But they hadn't let their users in on their plans and dreams. We suggested they needed to get clear about that grand plan, and clearly answer two questions, "Why Are We Here?" and "What's Our Purpose?"

Now, doctors and other staff can understand the value of collaboration and often embrace the benefits of the new technology. After all, medicine begins with a collaboration between patient and physician, and extends to scheduling clerks, and the technicians, and the emergency room, and virtually every other part of the medical establishment. There's a tremendous amount of information transfer from one professional to another as the patient proceeds through the system, and all that demands collaboration.

We facilitated the team of technologists in understanding that need for collaboration throughout the organization, and helped them find ways to explain what they were doing in just a few words...words that everyone else in the medical organization could appreciate. By listening to their users (i.e., the technologists' customers), they crafted a statement of their Purpose that conveyed the sense of benefit the doctors and staff could immediately recognize.

It's also a way to keep conflicts under control. Conflicts are inevitable in business; we all have different opinions and experiences. Now, instead of being frustrated and angry with those differences, people can ask each other, "Can you help me understand how that helps us achieve our Purpose?" And, sometimes, the person can. Then, by working through their difference they arrive at better solutions, because everyone agrees on the goal.


Success Strategies

Ask, Don't Tell

The manager of the technology team didn't just dream up a statement and tell people to use it. He was smart enough to gather the leadership team together and let them work it out themselves.

It's a case of "pay now or pay later." It might seem those five hours with a dozen people (and a facilitator) are too expensive. But, they'd tried the other way for more than a year, and they were experiencing significant resistance. Now, they've got ways to help each other—and their customers—achieve what they'd never dreamed possible. It's the magic of a whole group of people aiming toward a common view of the future, and taking their customers where they, the customers, wanted to go in the first place.

Respect Opinions

People work where they're respected. If they don't feel respected, they can be careless, avoid parts of the job they don't like, and undermine progress. Listening shows respect for people and their ideas (no matter how dumb they may sound while you're first listening, there's often a nugget buried in there).

Often, managers believe they know more, they should make decisions and issue orders to staff. Leaders, on the other hand, understand that when people feel respected, trust develops.  With trust, people can achieve amazing things, because they're leveraging all their collective abilities.

Great leaders have always been empathic listeners.  Cultivate that skill, and people will tell each other what a brilliant conversationalist you are! And, you learn more by listening than by talking.  The more senior the leader (e.g., CEOs of Fortune 500 firms) the more they engage in careful questioning and ardent listening.

Be Specific

Never wimp out for mealy-mouthed platitudes.  Stick to the process until you get to statements of purpose that have real "juice" in them, statements of which everyone can be proud.  When your team comes to consensus on words that get them excited, you've already won the battle of motivation.

There'll be a temptation to stop with something that's "good enough." There's no value in that; keep working at it, over the early days and weeks, until you arrive at something people are proud to repeat to one another.

The particular wording of the HMO's Purpose may not excite you, but they were enthusiastically repeated by the people who developed them—to each other, and to their coworkers elsewhere in the company. They now see how what they do is aligned with the primary work of healthcare delivery, how it helps them resolve the remaining misalignments, it makes them more productive, and they feel more productive, every day.  Don't settle for less.

This article was originally published in the newsletter, June, 2002
and is available to our subscribers on our website, http://www.net-working.com.