Scaling Conversations. Dave MacLeod

Scaling Conversations - Dave MacLeod


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is that, in a small group, this phenomenon of surfacing important ideas, instead of counting the frequent ones, is just so obvious.

      Picture any meeting or group discussion you've had with six or seven people. As you try to solve a problem, everyone shares ideas as others react. Eventually, someone shares a thought that many people resonate with and that becomes an important thought that guides the actions you all take together. This is an extremely common and standard way of people working together. It's a conversation.

      Mistaking frequent thoughts for important thoughts is how most organizations inform decisions affecting many people. The annual survey run through HR is now a staple of almost every organization in almost every sector. These surveys are supplemented by special issue surveys/polls/pulses on topics such as Diversity and Inclusion, Culture and Professional Development. Some organizations even “pulse” weekly to measure everyone. During this now familiar process, a quantitative survey of questionable scientific value is sent to a few hundred or a few thousand people and the results are, let's be honest, hard to interpret. And for good reason.

      I recall speaking with one leader who had the opportunity to talk with an employee who had anonymously provided an extremely low mark on their internal NPS survey. The question was phrased something like this: On a scale of one (low) to ten (high) how likely are you to recommend our organization to a friend or colleague as a great place to work? The employee gave an extremely low rating. Fortunately, they spoke up as the results were discussed by the team. “I gave that a one because all of my colleagues already work here and none of my friends work in our industry.” They had interpreted the question as asking whether their friends would be suitable employees, not as a measure of their happiness.

      In another, very similar scenario, a parent came forward after participating in a school district survey, which had asked a similar question: On a scale of one (low) to ten (high) how likely are you to recommend our school district to your friends and family? They had also given a rating of one. Their explanation: All of my local friends already attend this school district and my family lives out of town.

      Ah.

       “But how do you feel about our school district?”

       “Me? I love it!”

      If those people were all in the same room, you would instinctively know better than to count the number of times something was said. You would be far more interested in how things resonated with people, how they learned and changed their thinking after being exposed to the thinking of one another. You'd be interested in what emerges in a conversation as the most important ideas, which people agree on, and you would take note of the areas where people don't agree.

      In early spring 2020, education leaders in the city of New Britain, Connecticut, were conducting a review of their curriculum, just as the COVID‐19 pandemic was gaining momentum. Jonathan Costa, Assistant Executive Director of EdAdvance, a Regional Educational Service Center, wanted to scale a conversation and get the district faculty's thoughts and feedback on their return to school in the fall so his team could better respond to their needs.

      “I was thinking we were going to get some instructional guidance,” Costa shared with our ThoughtExchange team. However, as he quickly discovered, “If you don't feel safe, you're not going to be thinking about building a good lesson plan.”

      The surprising results from that online conversation gained the attention of Dr. Miguel Cardona, Commissioner of Education for the State of Connecticut. He chose to further scale the conversation about safety and the return to school amidst the pandemic to include the voices of teachers and parents across the state. Over a weekend more than 40,000 people joined a conversation where thoughts were considered by one another more than a million times. Ultimately, the Connecticut Governor, Ned Lamont, utilized the voice of tens of thousands to inform critical decisions that literally affected the lives (and, sadly, deaths) of many Connecticut residents. Schools were closed for the remainder of the year.

      So, if your organization still counts responses from open‐ended surveys, analyzes text, and mistakes frequency for importance, or if you start a conversation expecting it to be about one thing and find it ends up being about something completely different, your organization has something to learn from the lonely and powerful margarita.

      Why do you need to scale conversations? I don't exactly know. Only you do. I know why I need to scale conversations. Everyone has their own problems, which they are trying to solve to achieve their own goals and aspirations; and, importantly, their own set of stakeholders, who expect to exercise their right to have their voice heard and who are affected by the decisions you make. You likely have employees, customers or community members affected by the decisions you make. Maybe you have all three. And, while I don't know why you personally need to scale conversations, I can help you discover why.

      The key to understanding the “Why” is thinking in terms of capital. Capital is defined as the assets you have available for your purposes. Often narrowly defined as money, it's important to understand other forms of capital that are equally, if not more, important than the mighty dollar. To get at these, let's consider a term that in 2020 was used an unprecedented number of times, even more than the term unprecedented…. That word is crisis.

      Crisis simply means a time of intense difficulty. All our communities, businesses, and personal lives contain crises. The real question about crisis is not if one will happen, but rather when one will happen next, and how soon will the one after it follow on its heels.

      We humans are resilient, however, and the good news is that you have survived 100% of your worst days so far. Not only survived, in many cases you've grown, learned, adapted, and even thrived. Crisis inspires change, and often for the better. As a result of the global unification around the issue of ensuring Black Lives Matter, billions of dollars (an estimated $7 billion at the time of writing) have been pledged by corporations to attempt to make irreversible and sustainable change in


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