I love it!”
It's worth repeating: Closed‐ended responses are hard to interpret. To remedy this, along with the closed‐ended questions most or all surveys now have at least a few open‐ended questions asking for more context and explanation. In an effort to unpack various high and low marks in their surveys, leaders look to these open‐ended responses for context. Modern survey platforms even help disseminate these open‐ended comments by sending pages and pages of open‐ended thoughts to managers and leaders in the areas of business related to the feedback. Facing this firehose of feedback, much of it directly contradictory, what do we do? Count responses. Theme them by frequency. Put them in word clouds to see which ideas are most…Common. The more frequent, the bigger they are in the cloud and the more influence the idea has.
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.”
When Costa saw the trending thoughts in the conversation with approximately 800 people, it was clear that curriculum instruction wasn't what they were looking for. “I could feel the intensity of everyone's personal concerns for health and safety—their inability to imagine how we could safely bring people back to school without a guaranteed vaccine or therapy.”
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.
CHAPTER 2 Why Do We Need to Scale Conversations?
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
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.
The year I write this book, 2020, has been a whirlwind of crisis. In a matter of months, the world has suffered more than a million deaths attributed to the Coronavirus. Economies are extremely uncertain. Racial tensions are increasing. Futures of all sorts are unknown. If there is one thing we can agree on globally, it's that we are experiencing crises.
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 the areas of racism and discrimination. Trillions of dollars have been allocated in relief from the global pandemic. Businesses around the world have embraced remote communication and pivoted to survive, and sometimes even flourish, in this new world where people are more remotely connected than ever before.
Crisis, even more than necessity, is the true mother of invention.
And crisis contains an interesting element. One we need to focus on and leverage if we are going to succeed as a species on this planet.
A crisis arrives and causes pain. A solution is created and we experience joy. But something bad occurs with that solution and we're back in the pit of crisis. Then we react again and things seem to be fixed and happy. But then another, unrelated, crisis occurs. Damn. So, we make a big change and the change is good. But the change also causes a different kind of crisis and we need to regroup, adjust, and relaunch. This process is best visualized as hills and valleys:
Crisis after crisis is one way to perceive our organizations, our society, and ultimately our lives. And if we left it there, it paints a pretty dismal picture. Crises after crises occur until a final crisis occurs and it's all over. But there's more. And there is hope. Crisis, like all things in the universe that have a position different from the norm, contains potential energy. That potential is growth and connection. I'll explain both.
GROWTH
First let's talk about growth. The good news about crisis is that, in retrospect, it is easy to look back at your life and realize that the crises you faced and came through successfully were necessary for your own invention and reinvention. Each challenge created a chance for learning and for opening your heart and mind. Taking that opportunity is what got you through and gave you perspective and increased your resilience. So, rather than simply waves of good and bad that ultimately end bad, instead these peaks and valleys are the materials that allow you to learn and grow. With the right focus on personal development, crisis can ultimately look like this:
Growth is important for us humans, and as leaders, and while I don't want to minimize the negative
