The Snack BOxD Monthly Digest - July 2022 Edition
This is the Snack BOxD, a highly digestible digest from me, Nenuca, CEO at Better Organizations by Design (BOxD). Every month I send a round-up of ideas and insights on how to create healthy, high performing organizations. If you like this kind of thing or found me by accident, get your snack on and subscribe.
On the menu this month: The power of Umwelt in organizations… The urgency of clarifying roles in a post-layoff climate… Making better decisions, faster… Using Swiss cheese to design for inclusion… How to bungle a flexible work plan… and more
On the concept of Umwelt and team diversity...
I'm reading Ed Yong's new work An Immense World– a gorgeously geeky book that celebrates the rich diversity of the natural world. While reading, I came across a metaphor that really drives home the value of team and organizational diversity.
Geek out with me for a moment, won’t you?
The book begins with a sampling of ~10 animals together in a dark room. They share the same physical space, but they each experience their environment in "wildly and wondrously different ways."
The bird can sense the magnetic pull of the Earth. The bumblebee can see the ultraviolet center of a flower. The human has better eyesight than any of the animals-- but she can't hear the ultrasonic mouse squeaking like the bat can, or smell the carbon dioxide like the mosquito does.
The term used to describe these sensory bubbles is Umwelt, literally, "self-centered world." An animal's unique perceptual world.
Each of us can only access a tiny fraction of reality's fullness. We can all be standing in the same physical space and have completely different Umwelten.
I admire the way Ed Yong approaches his subject as a curious observer– full of wonder and appreciation, but ultimately value-neutral when describing different animal senses. He gives us information about diverse experiences without plotting anything on a hierarchy. This kind of unbiased information gathering and sharing is a practice we take very seriously at BOxD.
Yong writes, "This is not a book of lists, in which we childishly rank animals according to the sharpness of their senses and value them only when their abilities surpass our own. This is a book not about superiority but about diversity."
I encourage BOxD clients to view organizational diversity through this kind of value-neutral lens. The goal is not to prioritize certain kinds of diversity over others. Rather, the more diversity you have, the richer your organizational Umwelt will be. More sensitive. Better able to anticipate challenges. Powerfully able to respond to opportunities in any given operating environment.
And don't forget... you can't even begin to harness the sensory power of your team’s lovely Umwelten without a healthy foundation of psychological safety.
What does Swiss cheese have to do with anything?
It wouldn’t be a proper Snack BOxD without a little cheese, would it?
"Swiss cheese" is an accident causation model developed by James Reason in the early '90s. The original purpose of the model was to prevent industrial accidents, and was later adapted for hospitals to prevent medical errors.
The idea is that in a complex system, problems are prevented by a series of redundant barriers designed to catch mistakes at multiple levels.
Bear with me. I know this sounds very high brow and your eyes are beginning to glaze and skim. Allow me to break it down--
Any systemic layer (cheese slice) that promotes healthy processes will have holes (flaws) of varying sizes. The size and volume of holes in each layer will play a role in indicating the likelihood of failure (mistakes).
To make this concept fun and accessible, we decided to play with it a little. The picture above is one interpretation of what a "Swiss cheese model" might look like when designing for inclusive, diverse, equitable organizations.
In our adapted model, human bias is the arrow that makes its way through all the layers. This is the thing we don’t want making it all the way through to the last layer. Redundant cheese slices and smaller holes are critical to producing more equitable outcomes.
We like the idea of designing for inclusion holistically. Because the thing about unconscious bias is... it's unconscious. Nobody wants to be biased. But you still have to plan for the inevitability that flawed judgment will worm its way past rosy intentions.
That’s why organizations that have multiple mechanisms to catch and eliminate human bias are leaps and bounds more successful in producing environments where everyone has the tools, access, and support to thrive.
And, it has to be said-- in layoff season, designing for inclusion prevents your leaders from hastily abandoning those commitments made to diversity, equity, and inclusion between 2020-2021.
"Franken-roles" and the urgency to clarify roles in a post-layoff climate
Maybe you’ve recently restructured.
Maybe you have a batch of newcomers on the team.
Or maybe? You’ve had to make the tough decision to reduce your workforce in light of economic conditions.
In any of the above scenarios, clarifying roles is a crucial way to prevent burnout and keep your people motivated.
And in the wake of layoffs, aligning on role expectations is one of the quickest ways to manage morale. Your people were probably feeling underwater already, teetering on the edge of burnout in an increasingly ambiguous operating environment.
Now more than ever, people need assurance that they’re not going to take on more work without supported boundaries and clear priorities. Here’s how to avoid the dreaded “Franken-role” syndrome that comes after consolidation:
Set realistic expectations up front. Let people know you don’t expect them to do more with less forever.
Get clear on immediate priorities, and gather input from your team to help you with the full picture.
Adjust roles to meet priorities. Clarify roles together to maximize buy-in from everyone.
Set a date to reevaluate roles no later than 3 months from today.
Need help structuring this team conversation? Start with our role clarification exercise for teams. Rinse and repeat every quarter as needed.
Making better decisions, faster
You’ve heard about those Zoom calls where the CEO announces a mass layoff at an all-staff meeting, right?
It’s easy to waggle a finger, but we’re not going to pile on– we get it, they’re bad.
Rather than doing the usual “boooo, people-first” virtue-signaling, we’d rather talk about why these cringey mass video calls happen-- and what you can actually do to avoid it.
Typically when the decision to make layoffs happens, it happens REALLY FAST in reaction to shifting market conditions— AKA we don’t have the money we thought we’d have by now.
Which means you’re quickly about to burn through a lot of your people’s goodwill.
So how can you make better decisions to mitigate the backlash and maintain trust? Well, thankfully you can just copy and paste Brian Chesky’s famously gold-standard message to employees in 2020 when they had to cut 25% of their workforce.
Just kidding.
So how do you plan for big, unpopular, public decisions like this? Who do you need to ask for input? How will you communicate it? What do you want to say?
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach (sorry, you’ll get tired of hearing me say that), but you can plan for how you’ll approach these critical, relationship-testing moments with our team decision making template.
What We're Reading...
So You've Decided To Bungle Your Company's Flexible Work Plan
Anne Helen Peterson does a masterful job of summarizing the most common pitfalls (“Bungle Themes”) of companies struggling to address flexible work needs in a post-Covid world: The Ghost Office, Toxic Inconsistency, The Half Ass, and No One Knows What The Office Is For. No-nonsense, humorous takes on an evergreen workplace issue? Yes, please.
Good Morning, I Love You: A Guided Journal for Calm, Clarity, and Joy
It’s a rough time. Maybe you got laid off last month. Maybe you did the laying off. Maybe you had so many difficult conversations it made you want to numb every emotion and hide under a rock. Maybe none of that happened, but it’s still pretty hard to be a person in the world anyway. The good news? It’s never too late to rewire your magnificent, plastic brain. In this book, clinical psychologist Shauna Shapiro takes the reader through the science of self-compassion, providing a practical guide to pave new neurological pathways to create sustainable, positive transformation. Favorite quote: “What you practice grows stronger.”
The BOxD team is growing, and we're seeking exceptional folks in the following areas to help us create healthy organizations:
Program Managers
Marketing Coordinator
Consultants in:
-Marketing and Communications
-Org Design
-Talent Management
If you have someone in mind (or even if you’re just curious to learn more) reach out to talent@boxd.us. I can’t wait to hear from you.
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Sources...
1. Yong, Ed (2022). An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal A Hidden World Around Us
2. Kull, Kalevi (2010). "Umwelt". In Cobley, Paul (ed.). The Routledge Companion to Semiotics.
3. Reason, J. (2000). Human error: models and management. Bmj, 320(7237), 768-770.