What If We Don't Need to Know HOW?
I've been personally exploring this concept a lot lately. In developing the Think Big, DO BIGGER experience. In designing meaningful partnerships over at SPLICE Software. And even as part of Platform Calgary's bi-annual YYC Tech Slopitch Challenge.
All of these initiatives are partnerships. And I think a lot of times in partnership, we think we have to have all the HOW figured out. And while that might sound helpful, it also creates a limitation; something we'd been talking about only days earlier on Collective Contribution TV:
What happens when we stop trying to prescribe everyone's contribution...and trust people to make the contribution the collective needs?
A really great example arose at the slopitch tournament...because we didn't have our regular pitcher. And pitcher is NOT a role I am willing to contribute. So, I asked another team member, who doesn't normally pitch, and he took up the charge.
And most of us had never played together before...so, I made a batting line-up based on the arrival times of the team members (which most coaches would consider NOT strategic 🤣).
We won our first game 10-1. The second game 15-0. And even though we started the third game down 4-0, we came back to win 6-4. And even after losing our final round robin game, we came back to beat the same team in the final.
None of that happened because I—or even we—had figured out exactly HOW we were going to win. I think we won because we believed we could figure it out together. And that distinction, to me anyway, seems significant.
Why We Focus on The HOW
I think we've all been programmed to believe that in order for something to be achieved, we have to know how, and then execute.
But what if that's backwards?
I mean, I've seen LOADS of project plans that seemed really strategic at the time, not deliver on their goals at all.
Evidence would say that knowing the how absolutely doesn't guaratee a result.
So why do we keep using that same methodology?
Perhaps because it allows us to believe that we can control a bunch of uncontrollable things.
You see, the human brain doesn't like uncertainty. But Reality is full of it.
And if we continue to practice IGNORING Reality for the security of our own assumptions, we're probably going to keep running on the treadmill of HOW.
And when we do that, we pre-assign everyone's contribution, without even looking for (or creating space for) what they're most powerful contribution might be 💞
How much possibility might we accidentally be designing out of the system?
From Knowing HOW...
In the latest episode of Collective Contribution TV, we explored the question: What's the difference between making the contribution someone requests from us and making our most powerful contribution?
And while those things aren't necessarily opposites, very rarely, especially in the world of work, is the thing I'm asked to do exactly the thing I am uniquely equipped to do.
Requested contribution ALWAYS lives in the pre-configured. We write job descriptions on what we think we need people to DO, and don't look at all how a new person, even in an existing role, CAN add to the team.
We program it.
And in doing so, we minimize it.
Because with each new human, there's new possibility for the team to function completely differently. But if we don't live into that possibility—in hiring, in designing project teams, etc—we are creating the conditions for people doing the minimum viable.
And then their practice becomes doing the minimun viable.
And then we get upset when they get really good at it.
All of this is happening by design. Most of it subconsciously. And all it takes to turn it around is a new intention.
An intention to explore how those in the room can contribute to our larger goals.
An intention to understand how, by bringing different people together, we can see things that we couldn't before.
...to Exploring HOW
This is quickly becoming one of my favourite principles of Collective Contribution:
I see something. WE see more.
Because even if we've been trying to control the contributions of the team, every indiovidual human walks into a collective with a different view of the field. Different experiences. Different strengths. Different information. Different relationships. Different instincts. Different things they notice (when allowed).
Put people together doesn't just create MORE perspectives.
It creates a new System of Perception.
Rooted in the belief that the collective is capable of finding a HOW that no individual member could have designed beforehand.
But there is a critical component that makes that work. It came up multiple times in the CCTV conversation:
TRUST
We have to trust that our team's contributions can create Our How. And equally, we have to trust that I—especially as the leader—don't have to be the only one generating HOW.
Holding a Collective HOW
What if leadership doesn't always need to hold the HOW? What if leadership just need to hold enough of the conditions that allow the collective to discover it?
Conditions related to the shared goals. The boundaries. The basic mechanics.
The walls of the swimming pool let's say (cheers to Sebastian Keilich for sharing this analogy).
And the reason those walls exist is to hold water.
The things we can't predict.
The moments when someone notices something no one else voiced.
The moments when someone's response wasn't what we thought it might be.
The moments where a contribution we didn't know we needed arises.
The moments where one person's contribution makes someone else's contribution more powerful.
And even though those things aren't predictable, I would guess most people reading the list might think, "yup, I'd love to have more of those".
This idea showed up repeatedly in the CCTV conversation.
A dancer supporting their partner's moves while doing their own.
A musician in an ensemble being the best at playing their instrument in harmony.
A great teammate creating the conditions for another player to look good.
In each of these examples, the players are paying attention to what the whole system needs. And sometimes their most powerful contribution is making space for somebody else's.
Which brings us back to...TRUST.
Trust Before Proof
I think this is the uncomfortable part for a lot of leaders, as we often talk about trust as something people have to earn.
Show me you can do what I've asked you to do, and then I'll give you something bigger. Do that enough times, and I'll trust you.
But there's a big flaw in that loop.
If I only trust you to make the contributions I already know to request, how will I ever discover the contributions you could make that I don't know exist? The contributions that would, more likely, lead to more trust, faster?
Collective Contribution requires a leap; a belief that I don't have to understand everything you are going to contribute in order to believe that your contribution matters 💖
Instead of investing in HOW, we're investing in something else...something more powerful.
We're investing in Collective Inputs that drive what we're actually trying to achieve.
Replacing HOW with Collective Inputs
If we flip the equation, and start looking at HOW as an output instead of an input, we create more space for people's most powerful contributions.
And through those contributions, HOW emerges.
Not because one person knew the answer; especially in advance. But because the collective became capable of discovering one.
Maybe that's why yesterday's win feels bigger to me than winning a slopitch tournament. It was another micro-experiment in something I'm seeing more and more evidence of...
When the collective is allowed to create the HOW, they find one.
That permissions happens when we create collectives where people understand what we're moving toward, know that their contribution matters, care about what happens to the people around them, and have enough trust to act on what they see.
Because when THOSE kinds of conditions exist, we don't have to understand the HOW before we begin. We just have to show up and trust we can find it ✨
