Tiny Leadership Story #33
Jason runs operations for an insurance company with offices in forty cities. Last winter he did what strong operators do: he saw a broken process, huddled with his best people, and built the fix. The new claims playbook they created took them thirteen weeks, was thorough, tested, and objectively better than what it replaced.
He announced the playbook in March. By June, three offices were using it. The others had found reasons not to, and stalled.
"They’re actively resisting transformation," he told me.
"How many authors does the playbook have?" I asked.
"Three of us built it."
"And how many people have to work with this as a guide?"
He did the math and said four hundred.
Most people are better editors than authors. Few of us can start from a blank page, yet nearly all of us can improve a written one. A critic and an editor see the same flaws in a written piece, but their reactions are different. Hand people a finished work and their judgment has nowhere to go but resistance. Hand them work still open to change and the same judgment becomes a focused and thoughtful edit. Their fingerprints go on the page, and become associated with the final product.
Socializing an idea is a vital practice, but timing is everything. It works when an idea is still open to shaping. Without socialization, a finished plan relies too heavily on explanation and justification.
Jason decided to take the playbook out of circulation, and treat it as unfinished. He gave the five loudest skeptics across the forty offices a section that had been drafted the way headquarters would draft it, and wrong in the ways their field offices would know. He asked them to fix it.
The revision cost him a month. The playbook changed by maybe ten percent. The local exception to the rule was added. The step that never worked got cut. But what changed entirely was who it belonged to. By fall, the playbook was part of the rhythm of the company. Resistance had evaporated, and was replaced by ownership.
When people weigh in, they buy in.
The Question
Whose fingerprints, besides your own, are on the plan you need others to embrace?
"People support what they create." — Margaret Wheatley
Shall we begin?
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