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Shared understanding and commitment
Any organization can tell its employees what to do, but if they don’t agree they probably won’t (1). Or at least not with the responsiveness, efficiency and productivity desired (2).
The story was originally published over at the Shapeshifters’ Dojo
In her article The Giving of Orders (3) Mary Parker Follett argues that in order to work effectively together people need to agree on the situation they are in and the opportunities they want to go after.
“Our job is not how to get people to obey orders, but how to devise methods by which we can best discover the order [together].” — Mary Parker Follet (3)
But how do we deliver on Follet’s promise? And which approach can a team use to discover an order together?
Discovering the ‘order’ together + connection to OKRs
In this Mural we’ve put together a set of exercises for any leader to collaborate with their team to find, align and agree on their shared objectives.
As a bonus we also added an exercise at the bottom connecting the shared understanding and objectives to the OKR goal-setting framework.
Visit and make a personal copy of the Mural template here:
The connection between a shared understanding and OKRs
Follet’s article is credited with influencing the Management by Objectives process popularized in the 1950s by Peter Drucker in his book The Practice of Management (4).
Which again is the predecessor of a more recent popular goal-setting framework Objectives and Key Results having been developed inside Intel by Andrew Grove in the 1970s (5).
OKRs were adopted by Google in 1999 and has since become popular amongst many technology companies and more recently across other industries.
But where OKRs seemingly have become overly focused on setting goals, often by leadership without the inclusion of the expertise and the workers. Follet’s argument was the opposite: that the most important part of setting shared objectives is the process of getting to them.
My own experience suggests the same: the process of getting to the goals is an invaluable activity where the team can work together to better understand each other and learn what they have in common. The OKRs are a highly effective framework at forcing these discussions and helping the team become a team — if the process is done right.
Which is what we’ve tried to inspire in the attached Mural:
Give it a try and share your questions or feedback :)
Sources:
(1). Stanley McChrystal argues that if people think soldiers do whatever they are told they are not very familiar with the military, Team of teams, https://www.blinkist.com/en/books/team-of-teams-en
(2). Yannis Varoufakis shares his mom’s comment regarding her own work and employer: they are paying for her time, but not her my commitment, energy and enthusiasm, Technofeudalism, https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781529926095
(3). Mary Parker Follett, The Giving of Orders, https://180360720.no/_resources/mary_parker_follett_the_giving_of_orders.pdf
(4).Management by objectives, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_by_objectives
(5). Objectives and key results, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectives_and_key_results
