The scenario is common. You have a discussion with a colleague, friend, or spouse. You agree on something, then go to tell a boss or another friend - and before you realize what’s happening, they’re hearing a different story than the one you thought you agreed on.
There’s usually no backstabbing, or malice going on - you just didn’t actually agree on anything below the surface. You had shallow alignment.
But We Said We Were Aligned!
Sure - in a lot of these conversations agreements have been met, and alignment has been agreed - but that doesn’t matter if you haven’t dug deep enough. Alignment comes from discussion and debate, it comes from stress testing and validation, and it comes from bringing good ideas together.
An example may work well here…
The Problem
Here’s a common conundrum in the world of Two Pizza Teams that doesn’t get talked about enough - what kind of pizza should we order?
The autocratic method would be to order one cheese and one pepperoni, and call it good. Sometimes the autocratic method works fine - and for pizza, autocracy is probably the best method, but I need an example, and this one will work.
Imagine your two pizza sized team sitting in a room with a lot of work to do - but with the immediate task of determining what kind of pizza to order. What do you do?
Framing
The First Minute by Chris Fenning is a fantastic book all about framing. Rather than start a long conversation about pizza, restuarants, toppings, hunger, non-related topics, and whatever other rambling could lead to the discussion, Fenning has a formula for effective brevity that immediately gets to the point.
Framing = Context + Intent + Key Message
…and briefly defines those as
Context: This is the topic you want to talk about. Of all the topics in the world, this is the one you will talk about now.
Intent: What you want the audience to do with the information you are about to share.
Key message: The most important part of the overall message you are about to deliver (the headline)
So in our case, it may look like this
Context: We’re having a working meeting, and need to order pizza.
Intent: We want the order to be fair to the diversive set of tastes we may have on our team.
Key Message: We have just five minutes to get the order in.
It’s not pefect1, but it’s quick, to the point, and gets everyone on the same page with the goal for the next five minutes.
Discuss and Debate
We want to involve the team in the discussion - but we also want to facilitate the discussion (and we’ve given ourselves a time limit). There are probably a dozen ways to effectively kick off this conversation, but I’ve found that starting with a decision (even if it’s wrong) is a pretty effective approach (Pitimpalli talks about this approach in Read This Before Our Next Meeting).
Let’s get one Pepperoni, and one Veggie pizza
This suggestion - in a different context, could just as well be, “Let’s use Github Actions for all of our CI going forward” - it’s going to engage the folks who agree and the folks who do not agree from the beginning.
Let’s say our team is me (Alan), Betty, Carol, Dan, Eddie, Fred, and Gwen.
Betty: I’d prefer a cheese Pizza
Dan: I’m good with that
Eddie: If we get a Veggie, can we get it without onions
Gwen: Yeah - maybe just a pizza with peppers or olives would be good
At this point, we have engagement, but not from everyone. We never get true aligment on decision making when we don’t get everyone involved. As a facilitator, we need to draw people into the conversation from time to time.
Alan: Betty and Fred - we haven’t heard from you, do you have any thoughts?
Fred: Honestly, I’ll eat anything
Betty: I’d like cheese pizza
At this point, we have input, but we’re a minute in, and nowhere near alignment. We know what people would prefer, but we need a bit more info.
Build, Clarify, and Align
Now we want to take time to peel out the ambiguity from the original conversation and ask clarifying questions. Where we can, we want to combine ideas and get to alignment.
At this point, the conversation may go like this:
Alan: Betty - when you said that you’d prefer a cheese pizza, did you mean prever over Pepperoni, or Veggie?
Betty: oh - over Veggie. I was suggesting one Pepperoni, and one Cheese
Alan: Eddie - you said “If we get a Veggie…” would one Pepperoni and one Cheese work for you?
Eddie: Sure
Gwen: I’m ok with that too.
Alan: So, to clarify, are we saying that one Pepperoni and one Cheese will work?
Everyone sort of nods
It’s important to note that I could be wrong, so again, we need to bring people into the conversation.
Alan: Gwen - are you ok with that - you suggested peppers and olives
Gwen: I’m ok with cheese or pepperoni, but I love olives.
Fred: I love olives too!
Alan: Great - I propose one pepperoni pizza, and one with half cheese, half olives.
Validate
We’re three minutes in, and we’re almost done - we just need to make sure we’ve made the right choice (and deepen our alignment on the choice). At this point, I just want to make sure everyone gets something to eat and that nobody goes hungry.
Alan: Any reasons this plan won’t work?
Eddie: Do we have enough people who want pepperoni?
Alan: Good question - who will eat the pepperoni pizza?
Eddie and Dan both half-raise their hands
Alan: Great call out, Eddie. Let’s back up. Is there anyone who would be mad if we did NOT have pepperoni
Everyone’s head shakes
Alan: Let me make a new proposition. Let’s order one Cheese, and one Olive pizza. How does that feel.
Heads nod, confetti falls from the ceiling, and we make our order with a minute to spare.
Back to the Real World
Even though this discussion could happen in less than five minutes, it may seem like overkill for ordering pizza. Whatever, it’s just pizza. The problem is that we often treat too many work decisions the same way. When we want to make decisions - or have the team present an idea, we often don’t do the due dilligence to try to ensure that everyone is on the same page. We settle for shallow agreements because it’s easy - and then we wonder why that thing we thought we agreed on last week isn’t happening. It’s easy to dig just a little and ensure we’re actually aligned - but it’s easier to look for a head nod and call it good.
Dig Deeper, Do Better.
Also would love to hear your stories of failures, mistakes, and unexpected outcomes due to shallow agreement and shallow alignment.
-A 1:4
If Chris reads this (and he does read my posts from time to time), he will likely come up with better framing for this problem - his book walks through so many good examples and scenarios for framing that I consider it a must read for anyone who wants to build clear communication at work.
Enjoyed reading this Alan. I think the question at the end on discussing the failure modes of a decision was a good insight for me.
What would be your thoughts on how to drive alignment if the team is very introverted and when a leader brings up a question, no one speaks and there is awkward silence for a minute?