Often when I write about resistance, I struggle to find the right word for the change agent’s action, the action people are resisting when they resist. Would-be change agents offer advice, requests, demands, mandates, proposals, and lots of other… what? What is the category that encompasses all of these offers?

I haven’t yet found that single category. Last night, after several hours of late-night etymological research, I arrived at two categories: proposals and requests. People can resist change agents’ proposals, and they can resist change agents’ requests.

The common element of proposals and requests is that each offers a course of action that the listener may take. The main distinction between the two is the intended beneficiary of the course of action. The intent of a proposal is to benefit the listener. Though the proposer may also intend the proposal to benefit the proposer and others, the defining characteristic of a proposal (a sincere proposal, at least) is that it is offered for the benefit of the listener. The intent of a request is to benefit the requester. Though the requester may also intend the request to benefit the listener and others, the defining characteristic of a request is that it is issued for the benefit of the requester.

I’d love to find a useful, single word that encompasses both requests and proposals. If there is such a word, the key is in what’s common between requests and proposals: each offers a course of action that the listener may take. Is there a good, evocative word for that?

The word offer is a step in the right direction. Dictionary.com defines offer as “to present for acceptance or rejection; proffer.” This definition is more general than I’m looking for — it doesn’t evoke the key idea of a course of action. What’s the word for “offer a course of action?”

I’m starting to think that the right word is proposal, and that a request is a kind of proposal. If that’s right, then the distinction that I drew above isn’t quite right. I may need to drop intended to benefit the listener as an essential characteristic of a proposal. A proposal is a proposal as long as it presents a course of action for acceptance or rejection, regardless of whose interests the proposer intends to serve.

Alas, I’m now mired in The Definition Game. Regardless of what words we use, the nature of our offers is important to our success as change agents. Whose interests are we serving by offering the courses of action we offer? What forms can our offers take? In what sort of relationship would each form be appropriate? What does the form of our offers imply about our view of our relationships with our listeners?

But I still want a word. Is proposal the best word, or is there a better one?

Experiment: In what situations are requests appropriate? In what situations are proposals appropriate?

Experiment: What different kinds of proposals can you think of? What distinguishes each kind of proposal from the others? What would have to be true in a relationship in order for the listener deem each kind of proposal to be appropriate?

Experiment: What different kinds of requests can you think of? What distinguishes each kind of request from the others? What would have to be true in a relationship in order for the listener deem each kind of request to be appropriate?

A mailing list in which I participate is discussing empowerment. As usually happens in discussions of empowerment, several people claimed that it is impossible for one person to empower another, that all you can do is to disempower them, to prevent them from using the power they have.

I believe it is possible for one person to empower another. In my mind, to empower a person means to connect the person with a source of power.

What do I mean by power?
Power is the ability to create value. Yes, I know there are other kinds of power, such as the ability to destroy, whether intentionally or — as in the famous (and untrue) story of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow — inadvertently. But when we talk about empowerment, we are almost always talking about the power to do something positive.

Given those definitions, you can empower people by connecting them with sources of ability to create value.

For an example what I mean by empowerment, see this story about how I worked with Susan, the HR Director at a large company, to resolve resistance. I believe that I empowered Susan. I connected her with a source of power, with a source of ability to create value: her ability to listen with empathy. Now, Susan already had that ability, and plenty of it. But, for some reason, she had not been using her considerable ability. She had not yet recognized that listening with empathy could be a source of great power as she interacted with the “resisters.” I simply reminded her of the power that she already had. She knew what to do from there, and she succeeded spectacularly. My questions connected Susan to her own power. My questions empowered her.

Now, suppose that Susan, upon hearing my questions, had said, “Dale, that’s nuts,” and walked away. Would my questions still have been empowering? Is it empowering to offer a source of power, even if the person chooses not to use it? I don’t think so. That sets the bar too low. If Susan had chosen not to use her considerable empathy, or if she had listened with empathy, and yet had seen no valuable results, who’s to say that that “source of power” had any power in it at all? The true mark of empowerment is the value that people create with the sources of power they are offered.

Perhaps the people who claim that it is impossible for one person to empower another define empower differently than I do. According to the usage notes at dictionary.com, empower originally had a very restricted meaning: “to invest with authority, authorize.” That kind of empowerment connects people to sources of power that they previously were prevented from accessing. In other words, it simply reverses earlier disempowerment.

Empowerment seems to be a tricky subject. Conversations about empowerment (including this one?) often fizzle without creating much value for anyone. So most of the time, rather than talk about empowerment, I simply do what I can to connect people with sources of power. I especially enjoy interactions like the one with Susan, interactions in which I am able connect people with the abundant power that is already inside them.

Experiment: During the next week, make a list of every source of power that you use. This list is a source of power for you. In the future, when you become stuck, review the list, looking for sources of power that you may have forgotten were available.

Experiment: Review your sources of power. What kinds of sources are abundantly present in your list? What kinds are rare or missing from your list? How could you acquire those kinds of power?

Experiment: During the next week, notice every time that you connect another person to a source of power. What kinds of power do you typically offer? What kinds would you like to offer more often, if only people knew you had them to offer?

The Craft of Research
, by Booth, Colomb, and Williams, advises writers about how to write clear, effective research reports. The central part of the book describes how to support a claim (or assertion) with reasons and evidence. The authors also offer a way to evaluate whether a claim is worth reading about, and therefore worth writing about:

After its accuracy, readers will value most highly the significance of your claim, a quality they measure by the degree to which it asks them to change what they think. While you can’t precisely quantify it, you can gauge significance by this rough measure: If readers accept a claim, how many other beliefs must they change?

If you want your readers to change many beliefs, you will need to provide lots of compelling reasoning and evidence to support your claim. The greater the change you ask your readers to make, the more support you must provide to motivate that change.

I think that the same is true for proposals for change. The significance of a proposal is the degree to which it asks people to change their beliefs and behaviors. The more significant our proposal, the more strongly people will resist. The greater the change we ask people to make, the more support we must provide to motivate that change.

If we turn this around, we can understand resistance as information about the significance of our proposals. When people strongly resist a proposal, that’s a clue that we are asking them to change beliefs and behaviors that they value highly.

Note that the significance of our proposals is determined not by us, but by the people we are asking to change. To test this claim, consider The $2.10 Game from Jerry Weinberg’s
The Secrets of Consulting
:

I toss a coin. If it comes up heads, I give you $2.10. If it comes up tails, I give you nothing. Now, consider how much you would pay to play the game. [p 30]

I’ve played The $2.10 Game in many of my workshops. To make the game real, I tell people that I will play the game with one person for the fee they offer. I ask people to write their offer on a card and show it to me.

As Jerry predicted, some people will pay $1.05 or more to play the game. Some people offer less. Some will not risk even a penny to play. The difference gives me clues about the significance each person attaches to the game. But those clues are fuzzy. To understand the significance more clearly, I ask people how they decided how much money to offer.

One woman offered “$0.00″ to play. I asked her how she chose that amount. She said, “I have exactly 35 cents in my pocket, and the bus ride home costs 35 cents.”

Resistance tells you that there is something important for you to learn about the significance people attach to the change. The penny you thought you were asking people to risk may turn out to be bus fare home.

Experiment: For the next week, each time you make a proposal, ask people how they decided whether to accept or reject it.

Experiment: For the next week, each time someone makes a proposal, make a note of your reasons for accepting or rejecting it.

Once upon a time, I worked in the IT department of a large company, leading a cross-organizational process development team to define, promote, and support a standard software development process to be used by most IT projects. Like many organizations’ standard development processes, ours was large — it defined about 30 roles, 40 deliverables, and 50 activities organized into seven phases. In trying to make the process comprehensive, we had made it cumbersome.

Project teams complained that the process got in the way, and slowed the projects down. Every few months, one process development team member or another would bring those complaints to our monthly meetings. The first four times this happened, we tried to address the complaints by reviewing the standard process to determine which activities we could remove. Whenever someone recommended an activity that we could remove, someone else immediately explained why we could not safely remove it. We never removed a single activity.

The fifth time someone raised the project teams’ complaints, I decided to try a new approach, an experiment: Rather than starting with our comprehensive process and whittling it down to size, why not work in the other direction?

So I offered a proposal. “I propose that we adopt The Null Process, a brand new process that I’ve invented. The Null Process has no deliverables, no activities, no phases, and no roles. It isn’t possible to define a less burdensome process. The Null Process completely resolves the project teams’ complaints.”

“Now…” I said, “What would keep us from adopting The Null Process? What’s missing? What do we absolutely need that The Null Process lacks?”

My experiment flopped. After a few minutes of silence, someone said, “We absolutely need everything that’s in our standard process. The Null Process lacks all of it.” The rest of the team quickly agreed.

I wasn’t able to make The Null Process work that day. Still, I’m fond of it, and hold out hope that I can use it in the future. The idea of starting from The Null Process and adding only what’s necessary is, I think, a fine one. But I failed to establish a context for the conversation about what’s missing. Next time, before asking “what’s missing,” I’ll ask the team to do some stakeholder analysis. Who are we intending to serve with this process? What needs do we intend to serve for those people? Then we can evaluate how well The Null Process serves those stakeholders, and add only those process elements that are necessary to serve their needs.

Consider replacing each of your processes with The Null Process. I offer it to you royalty free! Adopt a more complex process only if you can identify stakeholders and needs that The Null Process does not satisfy.

Experiment: Establish clear goals for each of your processes. Ask Who will this process serve? and What needs will this process serve for those people?

Experiment: Justify each element of your processes — each role, each activity, each deliverable — by asking Who does this element serve? and What needs does this element serve for those people?

Last Wednesday I was in a book store at the airport in Minneapolis, looking for something to read. I saw Dan Brown’s Deception Point on the shelf. I’d recently read his earlier book Angels & Demons, and was still feeling annoyed at an underhanded writing trick that Brown had used repeatedly. But I’d had fun reading Angels & Demons despite the overused writing trick, and despite the number of times Brown’s characters (all described as brilliant) did boneheaded things. “Well,” I thought, “maybe Brown learned how to create suspense without trickery.” No such luck. The underhanded writing trick showed up on the second page of the prologue. Here’s an example of the trick from later in the book (at this point in the story, Corky, Rachel, and Tolland are on a ship, being chased by a helicopter full of bad guys):

At the far end of the decking below, a small powerboat was moored. Corky ran toward it.

Rachel stared. Outrun a helicopter in a motorboat?

“It has a radio,” Tolland said. “And if we can get far enough away from the helicopter’s jamming…”

Rachel did not hear another word he said. She had just spied something that made her blood run cold. “Too late,” she croaked, extending a trembling finger. We’re finished…

Here’s my problem. If we know what Rachel is thinking throughout this scene, how come we don’t know what she sees that makes her blood run cold? What point of view is the author using here? There’s a common fictional viewpoint called third-person-limited, in which the author makes us privy to the thoughts and feelings of one character in a scene. Brown uses third-person-limited point of view most of the time. But at the most crucial points, he swindles us by switching momentarily to some other point of view, in which we are privy to the character’s private response to seeing or hearing something, but we aren’t privy to what they are responding to!

I chose the snippet above not because it is the most egregious example, but because it was short enough to quote without lots of context. In both Deception Point and Angels & Demons, this point-of-view switch seems to be Brown’s key trick for creating suspense. I guess we’re supposed to think, “Gosh, I wonder what Rachel just saw! It must be horrifying! Better keep reading!”

I think this point-of-view switch is underhanded, a swindle. We’re told everything that the character knows except the crucial information. Maybe there’s a name for this kind of point-of-view. I call it third-person-underhanded.

The day I bought Angels & Demons, I also bought the audio version of The Da Vinci Code. I’m cringing at the thought of listening to it, even though it’s enormously popular. Maybe Brown has learned other ways to create suspense.

Last week at Consultants’ Camp, several friends reminded me that I have a reputation for asking good questions. One of my friends, James Bach, asked me, “How do you do that? How do you decide what questions to ask?”

Good question!

I didn’t know how to answer James’s question. I’m still thinking about it. And as I think about it, I’m starting to answer a related question: What makes a good question good? Here are some of my thoughts.

I don’t immediately know how to answer the question. When James asked how I decide what questions to ask, my first thought was, “Huh. How do I decide what questions to ask?” I have a hunch that I had a blank look on my face (one of the telltale signs of a good question).

The question asks me to think about things I haven’t thought about before. Though lots of people have told me that I ask good questions, I’ve never explored what makes a good question good. The moment James asked his question, it seemed like such an obviously good idea. How is it that I’ve never thought about that?

It’s okay that I don’t know how to answer the question. It’s easy ask embarrassing questions that point out people’s ignorance. I didn’t feel threatened or embarrassed by James’s question. Why not? Maybe I simply wasn’t embarrassed by my “ignorance” about how I ask my questions. Or maybe there was something about the way James phrased the question that made it non-threatening. Or maybe I’ve learned, in my long friendship with James, that he cares about me. Maybe all of those things. I’m often able to ask very challenging questions in a way that leaves people feeling safe. I’m not sure how I do that, but I think it’s important. I’ll want to explore that further.

I want to answer the question. If I knew what makes my questions so good, I might be able to ask even better ones, or to ask good questions more often. Or maybe I could learn additional ways to get the same good results that I now get only through questions.

The question gives hope. Though I didn’t know how to answer James’s question, I knew immediately that if I think about it, I’ll learn some very useful stuff. The question gave me hope that I didn’t know I needed.

The question shows compassion and respect. James asked his question because he wanted to learn how to do something that I do well. I suspect that every good question shows compassion and respect.

I still don’t know how I decide to ask the good questions I ask, but I’ll bet it starts with me feeling compassion and respect, and wanting to offer hope.

Experiment: For the next week, notice questions that you and others ask. Which questions did you think of as good questions? As great questions? Which questions seemed less than good? What is it about the great questions that makes them great? What makes a poor question poor?

The SEPG Conference in Boston in 1995 had a bookstore. One of the books I browsed offered an idea about risk — something like, “Risk comes from commitment.”

I don’t remember anything else about the book, but that idea stayed with me. Before that moment, most of what I’d read about risk focused on uncertainty as the defining quality that characterizes risk. That quote helped me to see that uncertainty, all by itself, isn’t enough to constitute risk. A possible event is a risk event only if it jeopardizes a commitment. For example, suppose I am working on a project, and I am wildly uncertain about when I will finish. Does my uncertainty constitute risk? Only if I have committed to finishing by a certain time. If I haven’t made any commitments about when I will finish, my uncertainty is not a risk. It’s just uncertainty.

I’ve used this relationship between risk and commitment to help projects in a number of ways: to identify risks, and to identify commitments that have not been made explicit.

Experiment: Use commitments to identify risks. Write down every commitment your project has made. For each commitment, ask, “What could happen that would jeopardize this commitment?” Your answers tell you your most important project risks.

Experiment: Use risks to identify commitments. Brainstorm a list of project risks. For each risk, ask, “What would happen if this risk occurred?” and “What outcome would this risk jeopardize?” The answers identify outcomes that someone thinks are important either to achieve or to prevent. Explicitly negotiate whether to commit to those outcomes. Then communicate your decisions to the affected project stakeholders.

PS. I don’t remember the name of the book from which I got the quote about risk and commitment. If you know the source of the quote, please let me know. I think that the quote is from the introduction or an early chapter, and that the author (or authors) worked at IBM.