Chapter 12

Priming the Pump

Alicia had logged more than twenty years at Consolidated, having started there right out of college. She rose to a leadership role, as she saw it, by using a triple-threat combination of determination, sacrifice, and working harder than everyone else. Coworkers viewed her as a formidable, competent leader and knew that if you presented to Alicia anything even in the hemisphere of “touchy-feely,” you were going down. Fast. Tough to please, she expected results first and foremost.

Kate had heard these impressions, too. She had experience working with similar personalities, so as she geared herself up for the conversation she focused on her main talking points, taking notes to keep herself on track. Any casual slips about group harmony could be disastrous.

Here are the objectives she considered:

• Gauge the level of comfort for innovation
• Gauge commitment to improvements—felt need for change
• Assure client we are on the same page and have heard her concerns
• Confirm direction—“How might we build alliances in the marketplace?” Does this make sense to her?

Then, to be sure she had the information needed to meet these objectives, Kate spelled those out as well:

• What does innovation mean to Alicia?
• For Alicia, where is the need for innovation coming from?
• What might be the reaction of her fellow leaders to a new and different approach?
• How has Consolidated explored alliances in the marketplace? What has been the interest thus far in this potential area for growth?

Kate started to think a little more deeply about what she might say that would lay the groundwork for the team's success. She added a couple more questions:

• If Alicia is interested in exploring areas for growth, what might be the biggest barriers for her in getting the ideas accepted at Consolidated?
• Given my firm's latest track record with Consolidated, what might be the barriers to getting our ideas accepted there?

The preparation helped move the focus of Kate's energy from her team to back to her client. She needed to nail this one. She needed to come across as confident but listening well at the same time. The team had been invigorated over the last week by the progress made toward providing something innovative for their client. She didn't want their work to go unnoticed or unappreciated. But all these thoughts were about her and her team's needs—not her client’s. She tried to consciously put those thoughts aside.

“Ultimately, this isn't about me,” she coached herself out loud. “It's not even about my team and how hard they have worked. It's about the client—what does she need and how can we be helpful?” She dialed the phone number.

Alicia's assistant answered the phone and asked her to hold, allowing a wave of orchestral music to fill up the dead space on the line. “What if she doesn't take my call?” Kate thought with apprehension. “Should I ask everyone to wait till I hear from her?” Fortunately, she recognized the music as the Prozac rendition of “Dude Looks Like a Lady,” which made her smile and relax a little before Alicia's voice came on the line.

“Kate, so good to hear from you so soon. What can I do for you?” She got right down to business.

“Hi, Alicia, I just wanted to touch base with you, as my team has been working pretty swiftly at providing something special, something that's going to add some real value to you and Consolidated. In fact, we have been examining a lot of new perspectives and have some new ideas of ways to approach things.”

“Great.” Alicia sounded as though she wasn't convinced by a long shot—but was willing to play along for now. On the other end of the line, Kate tried not to imagine herself as a mouse dangling from a cat's claws. “How can I help?” said Alicia.

“I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions, just to be sure we are on the right track.”

“Of course, go ahead.”

Looking at her list of questions, Kate led with her second one, “We have heard loud and clear that you wanted and expected more innovative ideas from us and that has been entirely the direction we've been taking. We'd like to provide some breakthrough thinking that really hits the mark. The last time we spoke you were pretty clear that the same old reports you might expect from a firm like ours weren't going to cut it. We have been up for this challenge, that's for sure, but my team does have some concerns. For instance, can you tell me a little about how receptive your colleagues might be to some real ‘out-of-the-box’ ideas?”

The smile on Alicia's face sang through the phone. “I would say, frankly, that it will be a challenge for them. As you know, the latest economic news has not been good. We are feeling the strain like everyone else and what I am seeing is a tendency to hold on to the tried and true. In fact, your last report just reinforced that kind of thinking. But what I would like is some new data and some new courses of action that might turn that feeling of desperation, that feeling of just holding your head above water, into one where people feel strong enough to swim.” She paused for a moment, considering what she had just expressed. “Yes. The need to do something is there but the desire to move from cautiousness and preservation to something more . . . I don't know the right word . . . exciting? Exploratory? Future based! Yes, that's it, more future-based thinking. But I'm not sure they are ready for that. There's a lot of fear, to be quite honest.”

“I understand. What we have been putting together is very much oriented in that direction—future based—and we'll be providing some recommended steps on how to make that future a reality. One of the general categories that we've been thinking about is how Consolidated uses its marketplace. How open do you think people might be to exploring how Consolidated might build alliances in the market?”

Alicia thought for a moment. “I'm not sure we're there yet. I agree it's an interesting avenue to pursue and we might end up finding some great ways to leverage competitors and influence our immediate revenue stream . . .” Her voice trailed off. Perhaps hearing these words in own voice made her reconsider the idea because then Alicia said, “You know, I might be able to socialize that idea before you present it. That might help open some ears.”

Kate could not believe her luck. Her client was either flexible and strategic by nature or desperate enough to try anything. Either way, she liked what she was hearing. Alicia was willing to start talking about her team's initial direction, which she hoped would create a supportive environment for their report to land in.

When confronted with something new, Kate understood, people have a tendency to either attack it, run from it, or remain perfectly still. Fight or flight or freeze: the response that we have wired into our ancient brains, along with every other animal in the world. It served us well against saber-toothed tigers but can be very limiting in our daily modern lives. After all, we're confronted with newness constantly—in our e-mail in-boxes alone there's enough new information each morning to give a caveman a stroke. Alicia's willingness to prepare her colleagues for their report would certainly help circumvent the fight-flight-freeze tendency, but would that be enough? Kate followed up with a new question.

“You mentioned the difficulty in the economy and how it's been affecting Consolidated. I'm wondering what is being done to manage the stress that has to be there. Stress can get in the way of accepting new ideas, reinforcing that tendency you mentioned to go back to the tried and true. Novelty is not often welcome when people are under stress.”

“I'm not sure stress is something we can control,” Alicia said, wondering where this was going. “Times are tough, so stress is going to be there. What do you have in mind?”

“Nothing in particular, yet. Just a nagging thought that unless people can get through the stress enough to move from, what did you call it? Preservation? Toward wanting to actively make things different, our work at creating something innovative might not make a difference. Besides socializing our general direction, which will help us tremendously by the way, what else can be done to move people toward wanting to change?”

“You mean to get them out of their cave?”

“Yes, I guess so. What can be done to help your people be ready to take a risk on something new?”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Alicia pondered the question for a moment and then, not coming up with an answer herself, she decided to challenge the firm she had hired: “What do you recommend?”

Kate was prepared. “The same thing that I had to do to get my own team working differently—first, emphasize the need for a change in thinking: instead of running from the cause of the stress, run toward it. It's about creating a sense of urgency that will get the change moving forward. Allow people to experience the reality of the situation for themselves and to recognize that they are ultimately responsible for either getting through it or not. They need to understand the consequences of both.”

“Consequences of both? What do you mean? Isn't the consequence of getting through it obvious? I mean getting though it means you've succeeded.”

“It may seem that way. But there are costs involved with success that people on the team need to be sensitive to, such as the fact that they will have to work hard to get through it. They may need to think differently than they are used to. They may need to recognize and eliminate old ways of thinking. They may need to give up things that they had previously held dear.”

“I see. So how did you get your team to recognize the need to think differently?”

“I gave them your feedback full throttle!” They both laughed a little at that, glad they could do so and move on from that point. “I let them feel the dissatisfaction on the part of their client. They needed to feel ownership of that dissatisfaction, so I also got them thinking about how they work together. They needed to realize that they each played a role in the process that led them to a pretty average outcome. Also, I'm a believer that it isn't change that people resist, it's the discomfort that comes along with doing things differently that they resist. So once I created the case for change, that sense of urgency, I began to put in place a process that would guide and support them through change.”

Alicia stopped her. “Yeah. I'm not sure how willing my team will be to look at themselves like that.”

Realizing that asking her client to be self-reflective was not in the scope of her project, Kate decided to back off from this direction. Her client did not have the same language around the universal creative process to sort through their style differences, so this line of thinking wasn't going to be helpful. Carefully, she tried to redirect her explanation in a way that would be useful to Alicia for getting her team ready to accept new ideas.

“Well, I also helped them have a discussion about new ways of looking at their work. Just talking about what novelty was and the positive potentials that innovation can provide seemed to help them be more comfortable with it. In fact, their energy changed from being frustrated to kind of excited. Now we're down a new path, doing some serious work that, if received well, may just get Consolidated to the next level.”

“So you're saying that engaging my colleagues in a discussion about potential paths might loosen them up a bit?” Alicia asked, considering already how she might begin this conversation.

“Yes. That conversation along with the one related to the costs of staying the same can really make a difference.”

“I'll see what I can do.” Alicia sounded like she was at least entertaining the idea. “I can hardly wait to hear what you are coming up with. I hope it makes all this worthwhile,” she added.

“I think the work we're doing will prove its worth to you. You have confirmed the general direction we've taken. Now we have a lot more work to do refining and developing the recommendations before our work is done.” Kate paused a moment before pressing on the need for Alicia to take some action with her team. Alicia's commitment to ready her peers was too important to leave it unspecific. “So what are your thoughts about how to have that conversation with your peers?”

“You mean when I tell them that the situation we are finding ourselves in is our own fault?” she asked somewhat sarcastically, then quickly swept her own frustrations under the rug. “No, I know what you mean. I need to be sure they feel the need to do something differently as much as I feel it. I think I know how to do that. We have a monthly leadership meeting next week. I'll put it on the agenda as ‘potential strategic directions.’ That'll at least get their attention.”

As the conversation drew to a close, Alicia was feeling excited to hear the new ideas and began pressing subtly. It took all of Kate's self-control not to give too much of the solutions the team had generated. She wanted to keep Alicia excited and focused on her own job—instilling the need for newness rather than getting into the particulars of the team's plan. They both hung up the phone charged up about new possibilities.

Satisfied that the team was making progress in the right direction, Kate returned to the conference room. On the door, she found a handwritten note to the maintenance group for the building that read, “Please do not clean this room.” She entered slowly, wondering what she would find. The room was deserted but the walls of the room were covered with the creative output of the group. She checked the wall clock and realized that it was almost 7:00 PM. Rather than going any deeper into the work of the team by herself, Kate decided it was time to go home. She was sure the team would want to walk her through their work in the morning. Time to rest up, she thought. Tomorrow was going to be a long day—one of many.