Conversations Trump Mandates

In my experience, conversations trump mandates. Yes, it takes more time to socialize problem statements upfront and subjects your ideas to (sometimes harsh) scrutiny, but in the end, you end up with better solutions and the champions that will make them happen.

While many conversations are often and necessarily free-flowing and organic in nature, there are others that because of the stakes at hand it makes sense to structure them to ensure the authenticity and substantiveness of the effort.

Several years ago I was asked to talk to future provosts about their roles in advancing an institution's priorities while honoring the tenets of shared governance. To do so, I focused on the role of a provost as a discussant. Understanding that the role of discussant is one we all play in one way or another regardless of where we sit in an institution's org chart.

In structuring the presentation with examples of real campus conversations I had been a part of, I presented the graph below as a rough visualization of how I viewed the lifecycle of a successful conversation. Of course, in real life, the process is less linear and there are many feedback loops, but the core of the lifecycle is nevertheless well-represented by the graph.

The elements of the lifecycle are fairly self-explanatory. Faced with a critical issue that would benefit from a structured campus conversation (e.g., course redesign, advising practices, assigned-time policies), the discussant (and their team) must first clearly define the scope of the conversation, who should be involved, and how much time you have for the conversation to yield results and what some milestones along the way should be.

The next step is to research the topic at hand to the point where you can clearly articulate the context in which the conversation will unfold, anticipate the conflict that may arise, and acknowledge the complications with any proposed solution.

Armed with this information, the discussant must then think through (ideate) how best to frame the conversation and what visualizations (actionable data) could best help drive the importance of the conversation home.

At this point, the discussant must choose among the many rhetorical options and perspectives identified through the ideation process and (ideally) present them to a trusted set of advisors (listen and revise) to identify opportunities for strengthening the message so as to preempt conversation stoppers. This, of course, is particularly important when facilitating time-sensitive conversations.

To help address potential conversation stoppers, the discussant may want or need to assemble a set of tools, documents, and reports (implement) that can help their advisors (and eventually, stakeholders more broadly) explore the design space on their own and come up with their own informed perspectives on the issues at hand.

Once this process is complete, the discussant can evaluate the resonance and actionability of the proposed framing, visualization, and supporting materials related to the proposed campus conversation and make any final adjustments before launching it.

In future posts, I will describe how this lifecycle helped drive some real-life campus conversations. In the meantime, I will say that the amount of time required to go from the define to the launch elements in the lifecycle can be as quick as 2 weeks to as long as 3 months — depending on the nature of the conversation to be had. Sometimes its hard to invest this amount of time on a particular issue and one is tempted to just start the conversation. But quality of execution requires discipline - especially when the stakes are high. The time, talent, and energy of your stakeholders is valuable and they deserve clarity, substantiveness, and structure in the conversations we seek to engage them in.