3 Commit to the Human Imperative
When $60 million is invested in your project, and those in the executive suite have given their personal endorsement, big things are expected. For this project team, there was no shortage of excitement and nerves: Their objective was to totally revolutionize the way the global company gathered, analyzed, and dispensed customer data. If successful, the numerous business units within the company would no longer need to invest in their own research or look to costly outside sources; everything would be done internally, saving the company millions of dollars in efficiency costs.
This was a “we cannot fail” priority project. To succeed, the company did what most organizations do: They created a dream team by putting the brightest minds and the best talent on the job. A clear and definitive charter was established to include alignment among stakeholders, and resources were committed.
Freeze the story! Do you recognize what was missing? (If you do, you already understand the first thing required to do big things.) Despite the ample research findings from brilliant people with impressive initials and titles after their names working at places like MIT1 that prove it’s not how smart the members of your team are that determines success, organizations keep throwing talented and intelligent people together thinking that somehow talented and intelligent teaming will occur. It’s painful to watch.
While we wish we had been called to equip this dream team with the DBT Framework as they were forming, instead, they enlisted our support after they found themselves stuck in a storming mode for far too long (and an unhealthy one, at that).2 Their delay is not that uncommon because this fact is easily missed: Teamwork doesn’t begin when people are in the right seats on the bus (to use a popular phrase uttered in many workplaces). Nor does it begin just because the same people get invited to a weekly meeting or report to the same boss. The practice of effective teaming begins with identifying, aligning, and equipping team members with the ability to model the thinking and actions essential to success for that unique team. That’s why committing to the human imperative is the first step in the Do Big Things Framework.
Defined, the human imperative is this: Team members identify and align to the specific thinking and the inherent behaviors necessary to deliver their business imperative. This is the act of bringing the best of humanity into the work you do. In other words, has your team answered this question: Who do we need to be as people—together—to succeed as a team?
Committing to the human imperative means the team incorporates into their business plan how they will be accountable for putting those behaviors into practice. Here’s a specific example of a team’s human imperative: “When, as a team, we are ‘all-in early’ by being committed to always giving our best—regardless of the situation—then we will succeed in operationalizing our strategy. We will take measurable steps each week to consistently develop our ability to be ‘all-in early.’” We’ll share more examples later in this chapter, including how to establish your team’s human imperative.
The well-resourced project dream team, however, didn’t invest a moment up front to determine its human imperative. Consequently, the organization had to wait 18 months to realize the impact to business they envisioned the team would accomplish in a much shorter time. Here’s why.
The seven people on the team came from rich and diverse backgrounds. Two of them, seriously-smart-and-purpose-driven millennials, were considered future stars in the organization. And the more seasoned team members had a track record of innovation that distinguished them even further than the framed and distinguished diplomas on their office walls.
Their intellectual superpowers, however, were negated by a certain kryptonite: the inability to work together effectively. Who could have predicted that one of the company’s most accomplished and technically respected employees transforms himself into a bully when he feels threatened by people who have as much talent as he does? And how could leadership have known that the most savvy project managers would be distracted by their own brilliance and would stray (and stray again) from the team charter?
This is a key point any team that aspires to do big things must grasp: No one can predict human behaviors until the team determines which human behaviors are a priority. Repeatedly we see teams assume that professionals will do the right thing. Yet, who decides the definition of right? And even if everyone has the same definition, assuming that everyone has the ability to model the right thing with each other when under pressure is fraught with risk. In many cases, the chances for success are only slightly higher than randomly pulling five people from a line at a bus stop and expecting them to form a top 40 rock band. Until your team’s human imperative has been defined and committed to, you can predict that the thinking and behaviors of your team will be unpredictable. Any behavior can and should be expected.
Because this dream team didn’t build the human imperative into their plan, they did impact the business—but not in the way the company planned:
• The project stalled, because the people on the team stalled in their efforts to work together. Specifically, certain members of the team were made to feel less important by being excluded from critical discussions, as well as regularly having their work criticized by those who had appointed themselves as judges.
• After months of frustration, the people on the team began doing what most humans do: protecting themselves by playing it safe, or worse, leaving the organization.
• Rumors spread across the company as the team became infamous. This resulted in increased resistance to the team’s objectives.
Emotions were high on and around this team, and not the type conducive to a team with its whole heart in it. Despite the fact that everyone wanted to succeed (these are really good people with good intentions), they were flatlining. Regardless of knowing what needed to be done, they didn’t know how to think and act as a team to succeed.
The good news: Until the customer (or your sponsoring executive) tells you it’s too late, every team in this situation can resuscitate itself, and get its whole heart back in it. Once equipped with the DBT Framework, this dream team had its awareness piqued.
Somewhat surprisingly, it was the team bully who went first. He made a decision to show up differently. “I’ve made some mistakes as well,” he told the team. “I haven’t been the teammate I know I can be. For whatever reasons, I’ve got the need to control too much.”
This was the spark the team needed. Almost instantly, the youngest member on the team spoke up and said, “No worries, man. We’ve got your back. We’ll figure this out.” There was some nervous laughter, which naturally turned to a comfortable chatter. Then, a discussion blossomed that was full of confidence.
If they were to do the big thing in front of them, they declared that they had to “have each other’s back.” It was their way of communicating that they were as committed to each other’s success as they were their own.
Predictably, by committing to this human imperative they established an ownership for their own behavioral norms. Immediately, the behaviors on the team began to change. Because they saw and experienced each other differently, teammates began to do something they hadn’t before: trust each other, and themselves. As they moved deeper into the Do Big Things Framework, their human skills advanced. Project updates were increasingly transparent. Emails were replied to quicker. Questions were asked and received in spaces once filled with demands. Combined with their technical prowess, this meant it wasn’t long before the organization began seeing the outcomes they envisioned long before.
Has your team committed to the human imperative by defining and aligning to the specific thinking and actions necessary to deliver your big business imperative? Like this team, the moment you make this commitment, you put your organization on a schedule to realize your team’s epic impact sooner.
Respect Is Not Enough
Here’s a big question: Do your teammates care enough about achieving success to care about each other?
We’ve done the work of equipping teams to do big things long enough to know that, with few exceptions, for teams to achieve their full potential teammates must care about one another. Should you be on a team where this isn’t the case, there’s no need to fret. You don’t have to convince your teammates they have to start elevating their humanity. (That can be a tough sell.) You simply need to begin a specific discussion.
• First, ask the big questions that began this section.
• Then, state and ask: We’ve emphasized the need to respect each other. Is respect enough to enable us to achieve the big objective we have in front of us?
Be prepared: It’s likely some will initially answer “yes.” Then, without trying to convince anyone, invite them to explore the difference between respect and caring. It might sound like this:
If we respect each other, it means:
• We listen to what others say, though we may not do anything with what we hear.
• We acknowledge others have unique skills and different ideas, but do little to develop them further.
• We may respect each other so much that we fear each other, and disengage to protect ourselves.
If we care about each other, it means:
• We listen to what others have to say, and seek to incorporate their insights and needs into our efforts moving forward.
• We regard the skills and ideas of others, and find ways to leverage their strengths to accomplish our shared objective.
• We trust one another, and have the confidence to engage with each other further.
The truth is, respect alone is not enough to do big things. It is merely a first step to being an effective team. To do meaningful work together requires that team members be meaningful in their interactions with one another. And besides, even if you could succeed without caring for your teammates, would the work fulfill you?
Because human beings are wired to want to be a part of a community, and do good deeds, these outlined discussions build critical awareness, which immediately impacts behaviors and the expectations team members have for themselves and one another.
Frankly, teams have also used these discussions to discover who they no longer want to have on the team, as well. That’s because caring is hard work that not everyone is up for. Caring requires that all of us listen more, accept where people are at in their thinking instead of criticizing them, and defend them even when they’re not in the room with us. This also means including them even though they may look different and we may not agree with them. Not everyone has the inner intelligence, or the heart, to do these things.
The excuses we hear often, albeit disguised in other words, is, “I don’t have time for this touchy-feely stuff and to engage with people this way.” In the mad dash of today’s world, it may be easy to rationalize such thoughts. Yet, should we find ourselves thinking this, it says a lot about us, doesn’t it?
The fact of the matter is, everyone’s brain is wired for, and already executing, what cynics claim is “the touchy-feely stuff.” As one simple example, every five seconds the prefrontal cortex within each of our brains is scanning our surroundings assessing if others are a threat to us. Our history with others, their body language, and the look on their face, among other things, are all being considered to determine one thing: Can I trust this person? Teams that do big things maximize their time by caring about trusting one another.
This is one of the primary reasons why so many teams can only achieve small things. The members of these teams come together and postpone their care for others on the team—until they have proof that their teammates care about them. But the prefrontal cortex isn’t resting. You can see the no-win situation: With everyone sitting around waiting for people to care about them before they emotionally invest in others, no one’s brain gets the signal that others can be fully trusted. So, no one trusts each other, and the team waits to be a team.
No team can do big things by being passive with the human qualities we all know are essential for success. You can dramatically speed the development of the trust your team needs by going first: Be the one who cares even more. To be certain, caring doesn’t mean you’re lowering expectations of their performance. And it certainly doesn’t mean you withhold essential, constructive criticism. In fact, caring means the opposite. You care so much about your teammate that you have to tell them the truth. Now, however, you’re telling the truth in a way that can be far better received by teammates.
It’s important to note that caring for a teammate doesn’t mean you have to be friends with them. For example, a teammate may have a personality style, political bent, or other quality that doesn’t resonate with you. No matter. Caring means you still believe each teammate has worth as a person, and therefore, it’s valuable to protect and amplify their value.
In this way, the human imperative is a moral imperative. As teammates care about one another more, the resulting behaviors transform the team. That’s because of what we call the amplifier effect. One act, in this case, caring about a teammate, automatically and reflexively models multiple other values in high degrees of distinction. In other words, the behavior basics on the list in Chapter 1, such as trust, collaboration, and transparency, all occur at higher rates when people care.
Our work with teams reveals a unique and important phenomenon as it relates to the effect of caring within a team. When a team lacks the commitment to a human imperative, the business imperative becomes just one more thing to do on a long list of objectives. Chronic fatigue sets in. Teammates operate with glazed eyes. Interactions among team members become transactional and diminished in meaning. Distractions of high drama replace the team’s high potential as the team descends to flatlining.
Conversely, by committing to the human imperative, teams experience increased confidence. And with it, they see their business objectives differently. They become more energized. They take more smart risks and think more innovatively. They begin to believe they will succeed.
How does your team feel about the big thing that must get done? The answer is largely influenced by how team members think and feel about one another.
What It Means to Make an Epic Impact
When team members change the way they look at each other, they change the way they see their business objectives. This changes how they feel about those objectives.3 And that increases the likelihood the team will deliver an epic impact on the business. We saw the power of this truth while supporting a team in the baby care industry. Their site once held the premier reputation in the global company. They were known as the best; others benchmarked against them. But over the past couple of years, their results had fallen. The pressure was on to regain lost glory.
During a strategy discussion concerning objectives, it was clear among the team of managers that they knew what had to be done. It wasn’t until one of them had the emotional courage to stand up and share her truth that the team identified what was necessary to succeed.
“We’ve lost sight of who we really are,” the manager said. “As a child growing up, I always knew I wanted to work here. My parents did, and so did I. It wasn’t as much what they did but how my parents felt about this place that attracted me. It was special. They were special. I knew there was no other place for me.
“Now, when I talk to my daughter, she tells me she’s not sure she wants to work here—and it’s not because of the type of work but who she sees her mom becoming.” The manager was quiet for a moment. “That doesn’t work for me. It shouldn’t work for any of us.”
She told her colleagues, “I remember who we were. I remember how we believed we could do anything. And we did. The reason we were number one was because our hearts were in it.” Then she looked at the team and said, “We’re not going to do it the way we’ve been doing it anymore. We’re going back to being people with hearts first. That’s what will deliver our objective. And that’s what will make my daughter rethink where she wants to work someday.”
In 30 seconds, a team that was flatlining had the pulse of passion. Their business imperative hadn’t changed, but how they saw and felt about that objective did. Now, a more noble cause had been identified. They reestablished a human narrative by identifying the human imperative—in this case, being people with hearts. They could now see what needed to be done from an elevated perspective. This team took the first and critical step in the DBT Framework by identifying the human imperative necessary to deliver their big thing. Just months after that strategic team meeting, the numbers at that site began to shift. The organization got its pulse back.
Are you interested in achieving big business success while being on a team that doesn’t have a pulse? For most of us, the thought of giving our all, but not enjoying the process, is a buzzkill. Rapidly, the world is seeing a growing employee base that will not tolerate such a scenario. And why not? It makes little sense to commit serious time (our life) to activities that don’t develop us or drive our own fulfillment.
Therefore, making an epic impact as a team includes a critical component that is balanced with delivering big numbers for the business. (Do any of us need to hear more stories about people delivering blockbuster results, becoming rich and famous, and filling their shelves with trophies and awards—only to feel deficient, destitute, or lost? Likely, not. We all know we have a greater purpose.)
Epic, in this case, means looking at a photo of the team you were on that did big things for the organization and smiling again as you look at the faces of those standing next to you. Yes, the team did something none other had achieved—and you’re rightfully proud of that. The richness of the relationships, however, means more to you than the year-end bonus that you spent long ago. The team delivered on a significant objective because the hearts and minds of the team were mobilized. Because of those who stood next to you, your life was enriched.
This is what it means to make an epic impact: The team delivers big for the business and for people.
What the Human Imperative Sounds Like
Diffused or fragmented energy accomplishes little; big things are only accomplished when the team can discern their objective and then direct all their power toward accomplishing it.
“We have to change from being a software company to a business solutions company,” a president told us in our initial discussion with him.
“So, that’s your one big thing, your business imperative,” we responded. Then we asked, “In order to accomplish that outcome, describe the thinking and actions you must see from your leadership team to accomplish your business transformation.”
Without pausing, he said the following, by emphasizing every word: “We. Must. Own. The. Plan.” The line was quiet. A stake had been driven into the ground. A nonnegotiable was established. “Every person on the team must fully make the plan theirs so that when things get crazy—and they will get crazy,” he said adding a laugh, “then we will all know where we must go together and why.”
Determining and committing to your human imperative is not a prescriptive exercise. Organizations typically mandate business imperatives to their teams, but they break a human code followed by achievers when they mandate that employees think or act certain ways. This is one reason why identifying the human imperative can be transformative for a team. It’s not HQ telling your team how they should act. The imperative is uniquely yours: It’s how the team members see themselves doing something significant. The human imperative is how they see themselves being significant.
While the human imperative may often include the labels known as the corporate values (trust, collaboration, communication, as an example), often it captures the essence of those values while transcending them in specificity. The human imperative is what jolts the heart and activates the inner strength a team needs to see themselves through their Grand Canyon. By delivering on the human imperative, the team now says, “I believe. I can see it. We can. We will.”
Figure 3.1 shows several examples of how we’ve seen teams line up their human imperative to drive their business imperative.
We function in a cause-and-effect world. The human imperative drives the business imperative. These narratives changed the trajectory of the business these teams were responsible for delivering. These statements are not platitudes or rallying cries. Instead and importantly, they provide the disciplined focus the team members will need as they move through the other steps in the DBT Framework.
Importantly, the president and his team responsible for moving the business from a software to a solutions company didn’t forfeit trust, alignment, collaboration, or other values. In fact, they made those values come to life.
Figure 3.1 Sample Human Imperative Choices
“Look,” he said. “We’ve got really good people here. They care a lot about success. In their natural state, they’re trusting and collaborative and everything else they need to be. We just need to make sure they don’t do what’s normal when we get under pressure.” This means they must be equipped to do what they naturally want to do: play bigger.
“The ticket,” the president finished, “is to ensure they own the plan. Then, the rest will come.”
How to Determine the Team’s Human Imperative
Imagine this: Your team has just finished watching a webcast of the division president announcing and defining the big thing the company must do to be successful. As you turn off the computer, you turn to the team. Several team members sit with wide eyes. Others are rolling their eyes. Some are lost in their smartphones, shaking their heads.
What do you do? How do you prepare the team? We can tell you what has minimum impact: spending hours creating fancy slides and graphics, then giving rehearsed presentations and speeches, stating “We’re going to . . . !” and “Then you will . . . !” followed by “Success will be ours!” (Cue inspirational music.)
Good salespeople have a saying, “People don’t like to be sold. They like to buy.” With a twist, the same wisdom holds true when enlisting team members in any effort. Persuading people what they should do with their hands while failing to activate their hearts and minds means there’s little hope that the “We’ve got this!” conviction necessary to do big things will be created. What must occur is for the team to develop shared psychological and emotional ownership of the objective. (Special emphasis on the word shared.)
When your team commits to a unique human imperative that they identify, the team is reinforcing a reason to believe they will succeed. Here’s how effective teams do this, and so can you.
After you turn off the computer, facilitate a discussion with the team using questions from three specific categories. These questions are proven to work when people are sitting in the same room with each other—or on opposite sides of an ocean. And they’re effective when some team members represent each generation. The questions work because they tap into something that matters to us all.
1. Thinking of the human imperative:
• How do we want to operate as a team that can do big things?
• What behaviors as a team do we want to represent us to the rest of the organization?
• What one word will be said by others about how we are operating as a team as we go about achieving this big thing?
• What does it look like to partner seamlessly with other teams, across boundaries or cultures?
2. Feeling and experiencing the human imperative:
• What has been your experience on teams that function with tremendous confidence even though the job in front of you is huge?
• How would you describe the experience when we are in sync as a team and optimizing our collective talent?
• What’s the greatest intrinsic reward for us when we function with excellence?
• What does it feel like when you know the team you’re on is winning? Succeeding?
3. Doing and delivering the human imperative:
• What specifically does the teamwork necessary to do our big thing look like in action?
• How will we know we’re functioning in a way that will strongly impact the business?
• How must we function now so that we’re even stronger as a team when we finish this?
Let’s acknowledge that these questions aren’t normal in most work-places, despite the preponderance of research that says they’re critical to elevating the consciousness for anyone to do big things. Given this, it may be best for you to position authentically why you’re asking the team these questions. (Additionally, you could simply buy them this book and let us support your voice.)
After the team has answered these and other questions you’re inspired to ask, narrow their answers to a common theme. What sort of thinking or action rises to the top of the team’s awareness as a narrative? The answer is the team’s human imperative. (Tip: Resist the temptation to overthink this by coming up with the perfect words or phrase. It’s important to remember that it’s far less important what words are contained in your defined human imperative—and far more important how the team feels and experiences the identified words.)
The team is going to feel really good at this point because they’re finally getting a chance to articulate the story they want to tell by being real about what it’s going to take to get the big job done. They are, however, only halfway in this exercise.
Committing to the human imperative is far more than talking about the thinking and behaviors required for success. What’s equally important: equipping team members to operationalize the action they identified. That’s precisely what steps 2 through 7 of the DBT Framework accomplish and where we’re going in Chapter 4.
When the Big Things of Two Different Teams Collide
Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, famously told all of us, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”9 Once the team knows the big thing it must do and is aligned on the human imperative, Covey’s catchy quote is a good reminder: The main thing is to keep the human imperative the human imperative.
At no other time is this more important than when two different teams with different objectives must work together. The collision can be explosive and destructive. For example, consider these scenarios:
• A team from R&D, whose big thing is to create new products, collides with a team from manufacturing whose big thing is to eliminate costs. The R&D folks must succeed in changing what is manufactured while those making the products want to simplify and make processes predictable. Who wins?
• A team from corporate finance with an initiative to standardize accounting procedures collides with various regional teams who have identified autonomy and empowerment as their priority. Finance wants to scale procedures so the company can grow more efficiently; the regions want to be nimble and respond to customer needs on the spot. Who wins?
• A sales team insists they could sell more if they had stronger marketing materials they could review with the client during their sales calls so the product sells itself. This belief collides with a team from marketing that says the obvious solution is for salespeople to develop the skill of understanding what the prospect really needs before they share anything about the product. Who wins?
If any two teams aren’t equipped with a common language or shared human imperative, no one will win. In addition to the business suffering, the collision results in almost certain flatlining for both teams. From a third-party perspective, this we-must-win-and-they-must-lose approach seems ludicrous. Aren’t they on the same team if they’re in the same organization?
They are, but it’s not the company name or logo that determines the main thing. Rather, it’s personal motivations that drive every person involved. This is when human behavior (beautiful or ugly) becomes nearly predictable.
Here’s what we all know doesn’t work in these situations: one team mandating to other teams their main thing. Knowing that such acts quickly create an oil-and-water outcome, what can two teams do in this classic cross-functional situation?
Leaning on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, consider the Hierarchy of Team Purpose (see Figure 3.2).10 Numerous times we’ve equipped cross-functional teams with the hierarchy and encouraged them to take a few minutes at the beginning of their work to transform the pending collision into a partnership. By transparently discussing and assessing what it is everyone is attempting to accomplish, and their motives for doing so, the team can better identify—together—their shared one big thing and the human imperative necessary to achieve it.
As you reflect on the hierarchy of team purpose, here are some questions proven to elevate thinking and actions among any team:
• At what level as a team are we operating on the hierarchy? (Encourage participants to share their rationale.)
• What is your experience as you (attempt to) collaborate with others?
• What’s the correlation between our assessment of where we’re at on the hierarchy and the results we’re delivering?
• Where do we want to be on the hierarchy? And why?
• What sort of thinking and actions will be necessary to get us where we need to be on the hierarchy? (Note: The answer to this question can be considered your human imperative.)
• What’s our plan to put those behaviors into action?
Figure 3.2 Six Elements Form the Hierarchy of Team Purpose
A former director at a health care company told us after he was lured away by a competing company that he wished he’d had the Hierarchy of Team Purpose to ignite important discussions at his previous company. “I originally chose to work at that company because of what it does and the difference it makes in the world,” he told us. “But the way business was done didn’t allow me to fully contribute or maximize my skills. That made my decision to leave easy.”
Committing to the human imperative and doing big things better frees people to optimize their strengths. Team members are elevated beyond personal motives, and the entire team gains a nearly unstoppable power, in no small part because their top talent stays on the team.
When We Are Exponentially More Effective
We speculate that Powell’s team exploring the Grand Canyon had an unspoken human imperative. And it wasn’t “every man for himself.” After all, the team had nobody and nothing else but themselves and each other to rely on to succeed (survive!). They knew when they started that they needed each person acting with the crew’s best interest.
Powell’s team didn’t deliver entirely on their human imperative, and that brought striking outcomes. Nearly halfway through the epic journey, at a point where the terrain momentarily leveled out and the men knew there was a nearby settlement, a crew member made it his imperative to quit. He walked away and lived out his life in Salt Lake City, Utah. The merits of his decision can be debated: At that point the expedition was already running low on supplies, so one fewer team member relieved some stress. Quitting, however, is quitting. This meant one fewer person to support the team in achieving its objective.
Stark in contrast is what happened to the three men who chose to leave the team just days before the expedition succeeded in navigating the length of the Grand Canyon. They were battered and nearly broken. Nourishment had been reduced to cakes made of moldy flour, and there was precious little of that left. At this point, they found themselves facing their most severe test yet: what has become known as Separation Rapids. It was a stretch of crashing, churning water unlike any they’d seen previously. Certain members of Powell’s crew were convinced that to proceed meant certain death.
What happened here is debated. Powell tells a story of three men choosing to leave the party because of fear. The departing members took advantage of a rare opening in the canyon wall, scrambled up the side, and away from the Grand Canyon.11,12
But others who have written the team’s history, including Robert Stanton (who led a third expedition through the Grand Canyon and disliked Powell), relate a different account. After interviewing members of Powell’s team, Stanton wrote in his book, Colorado River Controversies, that it was dissension among the team that provoked the men to abandon their team. Particularly, of note, Stanton reports that it was conflict between the expedition’s leader and these three that caused the break.13
Regardless of the cause, there is no debating the outcome: The three men were never heard from again. It’s presumed they were killed by Indians or rogue settlers in the area. In a bitter twist of fate, the remaining six members of Powell’s crew rowed ahead, survived the rapids, and safely exited the Grand Canyon two days later.
Many variables play into the decisions people make, and history holds many secrets. The fate of Powell’s team, including death and achievement, demonstrates the importance of the first step in the DBT Framework. Committing to a human imperative is an act of promising to demonstrate a belief that any of us are stronger when we work well together. United, we are exponentially more effective at doing extraordinary things.