do you expect this to be life-changing?
One of the most useful books I’ve come back to over and over again since Damion recommended it to me in ~2016 is Peter Block’s Community: The Structure of Belonging.
The gold in this book is the appendix. Block compiles prompts and questions there that clarify beliefs and assign responsibility. An assumption beneath these questions is that we are all here partaking in this shared endeavor because we are choosing to be here. We are doing this work because we choose this work.
A favorite question of mine in Block’s list is:
On a scale of 1-7, with 1 being a waste of time and 7 being life-changing, how meaningful do you plan for this experience to be?
I like bringing this question to a team at the outset of a project or near the formative moment of the team itself. As Block recommends, I also bring it with an explicitly stated lack of judgment of the ratings - some folks assume, especially because I can be a rah-rah kind of leader, that this question is a veiled attempt to get everyone to say they expect their experience to be life-changing. I don’t expect that or even want it.
I like to follow up with a second question:
“What do you commit to doing so that your experience is at least as good as what you just planned?”
This is useful in the early moment as an exercise in creator thinking instead of consumer thinking. It prompts ownership of an unknown future.
I’ve found the question has legs, too. You can return to this exercise at midway points and when you’re doing a retrospective. You can prompt your teammates to update their ratings and renew or revise their commitments.
Answering both questions can seal off escape hatches we all maintain and hide, sometimes even from ourselves. When things go south, when others do annoying things, when bad luck strikes, we scuttle through our private escape hatch. It’s not our fault. We didn’t think it was going to work anyway. We’re not dopey fools; we’re shrewd assessors of risk.
Instead of these defensive moves, protecting our eggshell egos, we can build and re-build. Block’s question is a remarkably gentle way to spark some pretty rugged ownership. It can get people building instead of defending as they reckon with the real scale and requirements of their ambition.
-Eric
