Pain + Reflection = Progress. Reflection = start by assuming responsibility is 50% yours.
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 9 mins
Summary: When something goes wrong, start by assuming responsibility is 50:50 and then apportion appropriately. IMO almost never is something 0% your responsibility.
Pain + Reflection = Progress
Pain + No Reflection = More pain (sad)
Pain + Reflection = 1. See the original painful event as 'positive' as can learn from it (aka happy) + 2. Don't have pain the future so you have made the future better (aka happy)
So…
Pain + No Reflection = Sad
Pain + Reflection = 2x Happy
Common Pain Sources: (full details below)
Common pain source 1: misunderstanding
Common pain source 2: different context meaning someone thinks what another did doesn’t make sense but when full context is provided everything makes sense
Common pain source 3: misaligned expectations
Common pain source 4: doing something that should have been discussed before going ahead
Common pain source 5: lacking fair process
Common pain source 6: low quality work because someone needs to improve at a skill (the main one of which is ‘problem solving’)
IMO unacceptable reasons for pain
“You get exactly the behaviour you allow.” Not all behaviour is acceptable, one has to push back on certain areas.
Laziness - someone was lazy with a task
Not being a team player or a team leader
Not having good intent
Assuming that someone else didn’t have good intent
Jingle: IMO if you start off assuming that 0% of the responsibility is yours, then... your head is 100% stuck a place it shouldn’t be...
+++++++++++++++++++
Details
Pain = an opportunity to learn / grow. Don't have pain and no gain! If you are going to endure a period of pain then try and learn from it.
Ideally gain in all areas :).
Jingle: you can learn from building, you can learn from burning.
Good intentions don’t always lead to good outcomes
IMO it is not acceptable not to have good intentions. IMO it is not acceptable to assume that ‘just because you had good intentions’ then it’s 0% your responsibility for something not going well.
For pain to occur it’s almost always isn’t ‘0% your responsibility’.
Let’s assume there are two parties involved:
I believe it is best to start assuming responsibility is 50:50 and then move from there.
The next adjustment is 75:25
Then 90:10
Almost nothing is 100:0.
IMO if you start at 100:0 it is much harder to be impartial.
IMO one tends to favour oneself, so try to ‘lean’ against this bias.
“The core foundation of a good life is the closest possible understanding of reality.”
IMO it’s impossible to fully understand yourself and to fully understand how others see you.
An external model for y;all:
DA’s levels:
-L1: assumes it’s 0% their responsibility
L0: starts at 50:50 but then doesn’t do proper self reflection analysis
L1: starts at 50:50 and does impartial analysis of all parties
L2: ‘L1’ + looks forward to the ‘reflection’ as knows it is an opportunity to grow. Not just ‘zero defensiveness’, done well this is fun! The reflection investigation process is a ‘caring’ mutually positive sum interaction.
Pain reflection analysis hierarchy
Firstly, try to look for root causes, not proximate causes.
Secondly, build a full understanding of what happened.
“Before you prescribe, diagnose.”
If you don’t do this you only have partial information and thereby cannot even grasp the ‘problem space’, so your ‘solutions set’ is stuffed even before you get going.
How to reconstruct:
Step 1: reconstruct a complete timeline of what occurred
Step 2: reconstruct what each of the different parties saw in real time (ie likely not the full picture).
Thirdly: start investigating possible root pain causes
Fourthly:
Try to figure out where what happened is vs sufficiency (ie below sufficiency? What would have been sufficient?)
Define sufficiency sufficiently (ie where should things have been in a tangible fashion)
Put in a plan to have things be at sufficiency going forward (likely this is something for you AND others. Not just others)
Common pain sources
Common pain source 1: misunderstanding = you think we are talking about an apple, we think we are talking about an orange
I have come to believe that perfect communication is impossible. The best you can hope for is 90% common understanding.
A strategy to mitigate misunderstanding: asking the people involved to ‘rearticulate’ 1. the Job To Be Done and 2. the ‘next steps’.
“Understanding occurs at the ear, not the lips.”
I honestly find it incredible how different people can be here.
Systematically building ‘rearticulation checks’ into meetings is 1. Great for lowering misunderstandings but 2. Is a wonderful way to find where your communication isn’t resonating like you intend. You can then learn and hopefully improve your ability to communicate.
Common pain source 2: different context = you think someone did something wrong but once you see their context it all makes sense!
Different people have different prior knowledge/experience which affects how they perceive information
Considering it is likely you are communicating with someone who has a different background to you it is likely that something is missed along the way
IMO you can’t fully understand everyone’s context always… but you can not try to see this when you are doing a ‘pain reflection’. Not doing this means you don’t have a ‘strong understanding of reality’, but instead are operating off partial information.
Common pain source 3: misaligned expectations = “happiness = reality - expectations”
“Everything works somewhere, nothing works everywhere.”
There are always expectations and IMO misaligned expectations = pain at some point, it’s just a matter of time.
I often think of there being ‘project specific expectations’ and ‘role specific expectations’.
‘Project specific expectations’ is hopefully covered in ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘different context’.
‘Role specific expectations’ - a couple continuums for you:
100% certainty ⇔ 100% possibility. Some roles have very high certainty (eg a teacher, doctor) so in a year from today one can have high confidence they will know what they are doing. Some roles have low certainty, meaning what you are doing could be totally different to today (eg some roles at a startup)
Low training ⇔ high training. Some roles will have high training (eg an accountant) but others low as what is being done hasn’t been done before and / or you strategically want to leave people to learn by themselves so they build their ability to ‘teach themselves’ (ie increase their ‘learned help yourself-ness’).
For example if you expect 80% certainty but the role only gives you 20% and relies on you to take responsibility over the direction of your work and this is something you feel uncomfortable about - this will quickly lead to unhappiness
20% certainty (reality) - 80% certainty (expectation) = - 40% happiness
Comment: each person is different, IMO there isn’t one right way to be. Someone needs to fit the expectations of a role else there will be unhappiness.
Common pain source 4: doing something that should have been discussed before going ahead
Some things should be discussed before changes are made. Not everything can be discussed before changes are made.
I typically think of ‘changes’ in terms of ‘small / medium / large’.
Large = needs to be discussed before the change
Medium = FYI only about change (eg through email)
Small = just do it. If the change ends up being a bad idea then say so to appropriate people can fix (ie no making even small changes to fix problems and not telling someone. However making small changes to improve things does not require FYI or discussion)
Comment
Typically, large isn’t the amount of ‘time’ involved in a change, but the amount of ‘new’.
The “amount of new” is proportional the amount of risk, as if it hasn’t been done before, we can’t know what will eventuate
What is a small / medium / large?
Well this depends. Basically different people should have different levels of responsibility.
Ideally over time larges go to mediums which go to smalls. Ie people can take on more and more responsibility.
As there is so much variability here this is something I’ve found you can only ‘feel’ out with each person and role over time. My practice is to try and classify the size of everything and then overask until you have calibrated with a person (ie say I think this is a medium, do you think it’s a medium?).
If you get the sizing of the decision wrong, the import thing is to reflect once this is known: pain + reflection = progress
Common pain source 5: lacking fair process
I love this HBR article on Fair Process. I also wrote about this in “The Decision Dichotomy: how making the right decision can get you a bad outcome”.
Summary:
Good decision * Fair process => Good outcome (people in the company are on board)
Good decision * Not fair process => Bad outcome (people in the company are NOT on board)
Bad decision * Fair process => Good outcome (people in the company are on board)
Bad decision * Not fair process => Bad outcome (people in the company are NOT on board)
Jingle: Fair Process > Decision Quality
Fair process levels: Fair process = 1. Who is involved + 2. How much processing time
1. Who is involved
Involved in the decision
A proposal has been put together (which you were not involved in), it is presented to you and you have a chance to put forward any thoughts
You are not involved in making the initial proposal AND do not have a chance to provide feedback to the proposal
2. How much processing time
Sometimes you should have time for people to think up things they want to include for the proposal.
Sometimes you should provide people time to just process after seeing a proposal so that they can see if there are any thoughts they want included.
Also please note that not everyone will agree on what fair process is. Try to be within the ‘reasonable range’. Not everyone can be part of every decision, doing this will mean the business can make as many decisions as only one person.
Common pain source 6: low quality work because someone needs to improve at a skill (the main one of which is ‘problem solving’)
What skill to improve? How would have this have given a different outcome?
Can you demonstrate what would have been a better solution explicitly so that the person can see tangibly where to upgrade?
The problem is not a low quality solution, it is a lack of skills. As IMO most things are problem solving so a typical area to improve ‘thinking systematically in models’.
Figuring out the right task to the right person can be hard
It is important to give tasks with the appropriate floor, if the task is urgent and has a high floor it needs to be given to someone with the right skillset
If a task has a low floor and is not urgent it can be given as a growth tasks
Sometimes the skills of the individual may not be clear to them or the person allocating work, occasionally this will be done wrong - it is important to reflect and figure out how to do this better in the future
IMO unacceptable reasons for pain
“You get exactly the behaviour you allow.” Not all behaviour is acceptable, one has to push back on certain areas.
Laziness - someone was lazy with a job
Not being a team player or a team leader
Not having good intent
Assuming that someone else didn’t have good intent
If you just take away one thing:
Comms are hard. Overinvest in comms.
Assume that you are part of every incident of pain you experience.
No one is perfect… not even yourself!
Everyone can grow… even yourself!