THE LEAFLET
January 30 2025
a <10 min activity to reset culture, the frictionless sea, simplify the politics
A <10 MINUTE ACTIVITY TO RESET YOUR CULTURE OF FEEDBACK
This activity is called plus delta (+/^). Each person gets 1 min with each other person on the team. In this minute, you share one thing your partner is doing well / should continue (the “plus”) and you suggest one thing the person should change or try (the “delta”). The other person nods and takes notes. Then you switch roles, from giver to receiver of feedback. The facilitator keeps strict time, calling for the role switch at the 30-second mark and then calling for a partner switch at the 1-min mark.
It’s kind of like speed dating, but for feedback delivery. 30 seconds evaporate fast and folks will want to cut their nervousness with rambling prefaces to their feedback. Model what it looks like for them - no rambling preface, no hand-wringing apology, right to the feedback.
Inevitably, everyone starts this activity feeling nervous and under-prepared. As it unfolds, there’s a huge release of energy. Usually, by the end, everyone is giddy (we survived! It wasn’t even that bad! In fact, I have a list of things I just got acknowledged for doing well!).
The giddy finish is the key moment. Your debrief in this moment sets the new norm of the culture.
You ask: “Was there anything anyone said today that they could’ve said earlier? Why didn’t you?”
Usually, they answer: “Yes, of course we could have said this earlier, we just didn’t have the time.”
You say: “Fine, but (a) this was 1 min, and (b) had you given this feedback 3 weeks ago, we’d all have 3 more weeks of higher-quality work behind us. So I’d love for time to not be a reason we don’t do this. And I’m confident you can find 1 minute to share a plus-delta with your teammates if you commit to doing so (and put it on your calendar). In fact, I expect it.”
-ben
Read the rest here.
O, THE FRICTIONLESS SEA!
Two people want the organization to do different things because they both have a sense, sometimes a deeply felt sense, that their preferred thing is attuned to “how people operate” or “how things (can only) go around here.” This attitude makes the opposing viewpoint feel silly or graceless or ignorant - hasn’t this person ever worked with people before? Can’t they see the smooth path ahead in my version and the trainwreck that awaits their own?
Those assumptions about “what people will (tend to) do in this scenario” are often Polaroids of What Happened at The Last Place I Worked or In The Sector I’m Most Familiar With.
It’s easy to cling to past experience when ambiguity looms. Back of hand to forehead, eyes to the horizon, I believe that without this go-to move - the one that worked out more or less in that other place I was before - I am in a sea of frictionless alternatives, each impossible to grasp.
To escape this overwrought defense of my own experience and ungenerous skepticism of others’ experiences, I find it helpful to do two things:
Figure out where your and others’ ideas are coming from - which past experience, which sector, which company? Make the assessment of the idea more of a historical (“when was this tried and what happened and why?) than a philosophical exercise (“what is the nature of the human mind? And of truth?”)
Refer to a short list of constraints and guides (this may take a little research). This can make the universe of options feel tractable instead of infinite. I think that list could include:
the law pertaining to this thing you want to do (it might actually be illegal! Especially if you employ someone in Holland or the state of California.)
What the top performers in your sector do (looking at examples with the same set of constraints)
What the top performers in other sectors do (looking at examples with a different set of constraints)
What someone designing this system / thing would do if they started from first principles (imagining examples with few, if any, constraints)
What social science research says, if anything, about your idea or your context (sometimes there actually is data on the question that is helpfully unbeholden to your bias and memory.)
-eric
Read the rest here.
SIMPLIFY THE POLITICS
One good reason to join a group of others instead of going solo is that you can get more done on a team. The same input gets bigger, better output when you make that input alongside others who shape and amplify your efforts.
When those others are people, there are inevitable power dynamics and politics. People seek safety (practical and psychological) and remain alert to threats to their status. Reasonably, absent clear alternatives, they second guess and curry favor. This is inefficient at the least. It can also devolve badly - to the point that the politics overwhelm the work and people do each other intentional harm.
A massive gift a leader can make to her people is simplifying these politics. This takes integrity, clarity, consistency. It’s one thing our refrains about mission and values and reveal and remark are designed for - tell people how to get ahead, help them do those things, advance them as they do. The route to your praise and to promotions is clear and easy to understand. The skillful guileless newbie has as good a shot at getting ahead as anyone.
-eric
Read the rest here.
COMPELLING QUOTES
Novelist Iris Murdoch on expectation and evolution:
Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself, and then comes to resemble the pictures.
Writer Hanif Abdurraqib on stunting in There’s Always This Year:
I love the stunt, for how it opens the gates to dreaming, and I love anything that pushes against the door of reality and offers an elsewhere. I don’t need the elsewhere to be better, I just need it to be somewhere else.
Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins on selves selving in “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”:
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
Keep going, keep growing,
Ben & Eric