Improve Something Today (Page 9)

Ditching ‘assume good faith’ as a way to talk about respect

Time to fix problems at the source rather than tolerate awful behavior.

Looking back at some courses I taught in 2015, I noticed that I had been teaching the lean principle of respect for people using these 4 pillars:

Develop skills; give authority.
Assume good faith.
Create space to share ideas, problems, wisdom.
Show how today’s work fulfills the organization’s purpose.

It’s #2, ‘Assume good faith,’ that I’m no longer comfortable with.

Two things this misses

The idea that people are conditioned to behave in certain ways, and that there are causes underlying behavior. This is true for behaviors we need more of (e.g. thoughtful collaboration) as well as those we must extinguish (e.g. discrimination, cruelty).
The reflection that causes and conditions of individual behavior run impossibly deep. All of the hurt in the entire world is contained therein. We move through the same process of dependent origination. Most of that motion occurred across lifetimes, before everybody came to work or into being. What we can still do—today—is work our asses off to produce better conditions, with kindness.

My regret

I regret recommending that people ‘assume good faith’ as a way of enacting respect for people. Why? Because it assigns extra work to the person dealing with whatever trash someone else has handed them. It opens a door through which a bunch of sexist and otherwise awful shit enters. It tolerates behavior and hides problems that are intolerable.

A huge part of the project of lean is to fix problems at the source. The exhortation to ‘assume good faith’ sets us up to do precisely the opposite.

I am grateful for I could not care less about your positive intent, a short, illuminating article from Lauren Howard that clarified the situation.

And I’ll keep working at a better articulation of a principle I believe in, but have only clumsily expressed.

Continuous improvement

Optimization & other failures

“By what method?” ... “To what end?”

I joined a call where people spoke about “optimizing” this and that, and it gave me some time to reflect.

Optimization is ultimate jargon. It means less than nothing.

The idea of optimization—especially that of prescriptive optimization, where optimization is committed to or smuggled in instead of a strategy—is an absolute liability unless you can answer two questions:

First, Dr. Deming’s pure but irritating question, “By what method?”
Second, a generic concern for human flourishing, expressed as, “To what end?”

If you tell me you have 50 top-priority focus areas to optimize, and don’t say how you’ll do it (no method) and why you’ll do it (no purpose), we’re all just wasting time and effort.

“By what method?” is the easy question

Methods exist, many of them super well-tested. All of the bumps and squiggles ironed out. The best methods will replace or upgrade themselves as you apply them over time.

“To what end?” is the hard question

First, you have to actually have an answer. Then, everyone you share the answer with must agree—or at least reach a working, tentative consensus—on the content of that answer in order to fully engage or commit to the project of “optimization.”

Learning

Lee’s Law: a URL for every idea

“Every idea should have a URL, bonus points if one does not have to make the URL oneself.”

I’m a digital pack rat. So is my friend Lee. We studied human-computer interaction in grad school back in the day; the entire program was a warm, nutrient-rich incubator for nourishing little digital pack rats. Well, we were talking and uncovered a new rule.

I give you Lee’s Law:

“Every idea should have a URL, bonus points if one does not have to make the URL oneself.”

Here are three sites that satisfy Lee’s Law. Three different bodies of work from three distinct perspectives. What makes them awesome is this: they provide just enough information to make each idea useful. Find the page you need and use it yourself. Or share it with somebody. Try presenting directly from the page.

Bookmark these and come back to them at least once, and—congratulations—you're a digital pack rat too. One of us!

Liberating Structures: Facilitation approach and methods. Indispensable. If I could only keep 5 web sites this would be one of them.
18F Methods: Methods gallery for human-centered product or experience design. I've run entire projects straight out of this playbook.
Laws of UX: For those times when you remember what the thing is, but not what it's called.

June 22, 2025: Updated link to 18F Methods since the US Republican Party’s idiot kleptocracy shut down 18F; link now directs to the alternative 18F.org site.

Continuous improvement

Want water? Get a bucket. Want improvement? Get PDSA

Back to basics with the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle.

If you want water, you need a bucket.

If you want improvement, you need PDSA.

That’s Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA). Sometimes you’ll hear it called Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA). Same thing; the distinction is a story for another time.

Conceptually, PDSA seems simple. In practice, it’s super difficult, especially as groups increase in size and work gets complicated.

PDSA is easy

This is the whole thing:

Zero: Begin with sensemaking and understanding the problem.
One: Plan a small, reversible change to test things out.
Two: Do what’s in the plan.
Three: Study—how did it go? What did we learn anything?
Four: Act on what we learned—standardizing on good ideas, spreading what works based on the evidence and narratives we produced above.
Infinity: Begin again.

PDSA is hard

We act without planning. We plan but then don’t do any god damn thing. We plan but do something different from the plan. We plan and will not deviate from plan even when the world changes. We overlearn. We underlearn. We do just fine, but flub the reflection and decision-making. We find awesome ideas but can’t find energy for transformation. Systems revert to mean, people fall back on old ways of doing things. We skip a step. Someone laments, “we already tried that and it didn’t work!” or “we’re already running behind!” We get distracted. We are managed by crisis and punished for experimentation.

PDSA is hard because you have to do 4 steps, in order, at scale, with attention, in community.

Have bucket, carry water

Take good care of that bucket.

Run PDSA and you can improve. Take good care of that PDSA system.

I am reminded of Chiyono’s lament on a cold night 900 years ago:

With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together,
and then the bottom fell out.
Where water does not collect,
the moon does not dwell.

October 7, 2024: Edited for length.

Learning

Make your next presentation a spiral, not a line

Cycling through your main point helps your audience. Here’s how.

Find your main point: one thing you want people to remember. Begin the presentation by making your main point as quickly and plainly as you can.

Then, state the main point again. Elaborate on it this time, with a little more context. Give the two most relevant examples you can.

Next, revisit the main point. Explain how it is applicable or meaningful to your audience, based on the elaboration you just did and your understanding of their situation. This is where you can get ultra specific and pile on the details. Nerd out. This works because you’ve built little gathering places into your presentation. When people get distracted or you do a shitty job explaining something, some of your audience’s attention will wander. That’s OK. Each reiteration of your main point is an opportunity for people to get back on board. It is a starting point everyone will be familiar with—since it’s your main point.

Finally, revisit the main point. Remind everyone what the main point is, and what it means for them.

Conclude with a quote or a story that emphasizes the main point.

Having a hard time organizing a talk? Plan it backwards.

Think of how it will end: the capacities, agreement, and energy your audience will have. That’s your ending.
Strip away some detail, and slot that before the ending.
Strip all but the main idea, and that’s your opening.

Facilitation

“What did you notice?” → End your meetings with this short, powerful question

A sign reading “Area Closed for Plant and Wildlife Protection”. — Photo by Brian Kerr.

The simplest technique I know.

“What did you notice?”

Asking this question is an incredible way to close out a meeting or gathering.

Here’s how it’s done

Pose the question: “What did you notice?”
Invite everyone to share an answer, or pass.
Indicate that you'll answer first and point out who’s next.
Give your answer. (I tend to say something like, “I noticed how everyone contributed in their own way and appreciated learning from each of you.”)
Go around the room. Listen. Offer the kindest attention and warmest eye contact you can muster. If someone needs help, ask, “What did you notice?” or the more advanced form, “What’s one thing you noticed?”
When everyone has had a chance to speak, you’re done.
Close with your thanks.

So, what do people say?

Sometimes people share simple things: appreciations and gratitude. For one another. For time together. For kindness or collaboration that has occurred. People might say they noticed conflict, especially if they can point to a moment where it was identified or resolved.

Then a transition happens. This is the magic trick.

It happens in a group of 5 or a group of 50. I don’t know why, but it does. I’ve done this a hundred times in dozens of different groups and each time I worry it won’t happen. It always does. The transition is:

About halfway through, responses shift away from sensory observations and towards the retrospective. Reflection, decision, statements of purpose.

The question hasn’t changed—“What did you notice?”—but the room has.

Maybe some perspective-taking happens. Or someone reinforces shared purpose, especially where there has been disagreement.

By the end, the answers to “What did you notice?” tend toward summary and action. What's next. What's the opportunity. Noticing consensus or its lack.

The group has started with “what” and moved on to “so what” and then “now what.” All with a single question and the lightest structure.

If you want a little more

There are facilitation methods for doing this with a little more scaffolding.

For example, the Institute of Cultural Affairs’ Focused Conversation method is a facilitated discussion that leads a group through stages from Objective to Reflective to Interpretive to Decisional (ORID). Focused Conversations are lovely too, and I use them often.

A simpler version is the “What/So What/Now What” Liberating Structure.

Simpler still is the “what did you notice?” question.

Try it sometime. It’s so simple, it’s magic.

May 15, 2024: edited for length.

Improve Something Today

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