An alignment issue
Let’s use an image to understand one of humanity’s main issues right now. Imagine the group you are part of is on a football field. Let’s call your team “team humanity”. Our opponent is a well-trained and highly organized team and we have never played football together. This sums up our situation.
As a result, team “humanity” tries different things. Some of us try to play solo, some of us try to define our own strategy without talking to our own teammates, and some of us try to understand how the opponent team is working. In a nutshell, our team is not aligned (or synchronized or on the same wavelength if you prefer to use another word) and because of this, the opponent team continues to score against us.
Maybe you have seen one of these Hollywood movies where two sports teams oppose each other. One of the two teams lags behind but then that team manages to come back and win. Can we do this? Do you think that is doable? Do you know your role in getting us back on track?
How do you realign a football team that is not coordinated?
I am using a simplistic image to help you to understand the problem i think we are having.
As an expert in team management, i will provide you with suggestions. I have worked with highly dysfunctional teams and i had to fix them with my tools. Because i did this for decades i identified a number of solutions that regularly come back. You are also welcome to reach out to me to discuss and contribute to this topic. You may even have more relevant ideas than i do. I’d love to hear them.
Before we move to the content i’d like to share with you a short video of what an aligned group of People can achieve. This barn weighs several tons and no one can move it alone yet dozens of folks can.
The problem
Have you ever started to work on a problem without fully understanding what is the problem in the first place? You try one solution. Then you try another solution. After you give the problem a few tries you actually pause and you start asking yourself, what is the problem? The experience is quite common for car repairmen. If you put them in front of a broken car, they will usually try one or two solutions based on their understanding of the problem (a creaking noise for instance), often without looking at the problem. But then, if their solution does not fix the problem, they will need to allocate time to correctly understand the problem to fix it and thus may tell you… Why don’t you book an appointment so that i can look at your car more in detail?
50% of the job of solving a problem is to clearly define the problem itself. If we do not spend time correctly understanding the problem then our approach towards identifying the solution will likely be random. Understanding the problem requires brain power but this will set you in the right direction from the get-go.
Ok. So what’s the problem?
You tell me. What do you think is the problem?
Hereunder is my view but please feel free to share your thoughts by contacting me.
The problem is that we are not aligned. This is the most simple way i have found to sum up our problem. It translates into family members not talking to each other anymore. It translates into People coming together in a village but not being able to do any action together. It translates into large groups of People in a country being unable to talk to each other. These problems have the same root cause: alignment.
There is a saying that goes like this: divide to conquer. The key point is how do you divide? You divide by misaligning. It is precisely what some Western governments are doing. They misalign the People. For instance, by introducing topics like LGBT or Black Lives Matter. People, your family, that used to be aligned, you guys used to be okay together are suddenly becoming misaligned. Did you ask yourself, how did this happen? How come we are misaligned?
There is a need to regain alignment and i am going to suggest tricks to do so. It will be for you to decide whether to try them or not. Just a note, i am using these tricks on a regular basis. They tend to work.
Increase alignment
The more aligned we are, the more impact we will have. Look at hyenas trying to take down a buffalo. They are much smaller animals than the buffalo, yet, because they are aligned on the actions they need to do they can manage to take it down. Look at the Amish folks in the above video. Maximum impact for their effort. These folks lift a barn over dozens of meters.
Alignment increases our chance of success.
How do i increase alignment?
1) Common interest
The fact that the People you connect with have the same interest as you do will increase alignment. It sounds trivial, right? Then why do People sometimes stay in groups with which they don’t have a common interest? Oh yeah, their friend asked them to join and they did not dare to say no. Sounds familiar?
Football players gather to practice football together and improve their football skills. The same way, you gather, join, and connect with other folks because you have a common interest. I often call it the “commonality”. It’s that thing in common that connects us.
You want to be clear about the “commonality”. If it is football, it’s pretty clear. But what about “autonomy” as the commonality? Is that clear to you? I would say it’s too vague. What autonomy do we want to increase in our group? Food autonomy. Alright, that’s more specific.
How do we want to progress our interests? How do we want to increase our food autonomy? We want to increase our food autonomy by learning to grow vegetables. Great, that is even more specific. The next time you meet someone and talk about your group you could then mention that your group helps People to increase their food autonomy by learning how to grow vegetables. You would not say "Our group grows autonomy, do you want to join this group?”. The clearer you are about the commonality the more you will attract People who are aligned with this interest. The more you will filter out folks that are not aligned with this interest.
Lack of clarity around what is the common interest in the group is very common. Most People assume other folks will understand them. Wrong assumption. Most People do not understand what you are talking about even when it is sometimes in plain simple English. When People listen to you they have their own filters meaning that they analyze what you say in their own way and you have near zero idea of what they have understood. Unless you ask them to explain to you what they think your group is about, you do not know what they understood from your message. Most of us assume People understand what we say. It’s a wrong assumption.
2) Problem understanding
In the current context, it’s not uncommon to see People gathering around problems. High prices, health issues, and general discontentment with public policies are a few problems gathering People.
If the group you are part of gathers People around a problem (or its associated solutions) it is important to make sure folks are aligned on the problem itself.
That may sound trivial but it’s not. Many folks gather because of general discontentment. Some People, politicians, are even experts at regrouping folks who are unhappy or highly emotional about what’s going on. The commonality here is that these folks are unhappy. If you were to go to a protest and ask 10 people what the problem is (why are you protesting?) you would likely end up with 5 to 10 different answers. Why does it matter? We care about this because too often there is no alignment on the problem. If there is no alignment on the problem, there can not be alignment on a solution. if there is no alignment on the solution there can not be alignment on actions to be taken.
If you gather People around a problem, please try to describe clearly what the problem is. It will help you greatly to identify solutions. It will help you greatly with creating a group where People are effective at solving the problem(s). Let me take the time to explain to you why.
Have you ever tried to work on a problem that you do not really understand? Imagine you are at school, in a math lesson, you read a math problem and i tell you… Please start working on the math problem, please start to write something. Well, if you haven’t understood the math problem, can you start? Impossible, right? This is the same for folks in life. They need to understand the problem to be able to work on the solution. Understanding the problem means looking at it and being able to describe it in a clear manner. Example: the price of fresh food at the supermarket keeps increasing. That is a clear description of the problem. You and your team may even want to dig a bit further into why the price of fresh food in the supermarket keeps increasing.
It often happens that when People can’t align on the problem they cannot align on the solution. At this point i am not even talking about aligning on the root cause of the problem, i am simply talking about aligning on the problem. If you can manage to align the team on the problem, you have already achieved a lot with the team.
3) Alignment on what the folks in the group want to do
People usually gather as they have a common interest. If your group gathers around a problem it is possible that you guys are searching for solutions. After aligning on the problem (paragraph 2 above) it matters to align on the solution. Only seek alignment on the solution after you guys have aligned on the problem. If you think about simply aligning on the solution to save time, you will be surprised about what happens down the line: misalignment as the team isn’t fundamentally aligned.
A group may agree on a problem but does it agree on the solution? Does it agree on the actions to be taken to tackle the problem?
Alignment on the solution is important as it’s the action part. Here is how you can align on the solution (remember, only after you have aligned on the problem):
Express clearly the problem. If needed, write it somewhere People can see it. You want the problem to be formulated in a few sentences maximum. Test the description of the problem on People in the group or outside the group by reading the problem to them and asking them what they understand from it. It may sound stupid but you will be surprised by what you hear. As you listen to what People are saying, you will get feedback on what they understood from the problem.
Example of description of a problem: “Here is the problem we have identified: the price of fresh food at the supermarket keeps increasing”
Ask the People in the group:
Whether they want to address this problem or not.
Tell them to imagine the problem is solved. What does the outcome look like?
What do you think we could do to resolve this problem?
Doing the above should help you to create alignment inside the group you are part of or the group you decide to create. If you need to talk feel free to reach out.
What’s wrong with my group?
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