An Inclusive, Yet Efficient Approach to Change in Your Organizations: Talk Time, Go Time, Debrief Time

Have you ever had someone on your team that wouldn’t get on-board with an organizational decision - even when there was nothing you could do to change it? Or ever felt like a fraud gathering input from your team, when you knew a decision had already been made by your leader? Or had team members share valuable insights about a project one-off throughout the course of the work, and had trouble organizing it and remembering the feedback when it was time to plan for next year? Me too.

In the client systems where I work, these are very common challenges - especially for line supervisors, middle managers, and others whose titles signal more power than they sometimes feel to drive organizational change.

It is for these managers, and their teams, that I designed a simple three part framework to let people know where we are in a decision timeline and how they can engage with the decision at every stage. I call it Talk Time, Go Time, Debrief Time.

The Framework

Talk Time: This is the time before any decision is final when a manager invites feedback broadly from my team about the decision. They may ask about values/standards we should use to make the decision. They may ask what concerns exist, what folks would do differently, and a number of other questions to make it psychologically safe to speak up and disagree. Most importantly, they would signal where the feedback would go and how it would inform a decision. Some decisions from leaders come to a manager's desk pre-made, and for those, there is no talk-time and in this framework, I advise managers to be explicit about that. But for most decisions that impact a team meaningfully, managers should work to create the appropriate containers for “talk time” and to channel that feedback upward. There may be many cycles of talk-time for some decisions, depending on the decision-mode the org has selected.?

Important Note About "Talk Time": For some folks, talking through their dissent is an important step to get on board with change - it’s like releasing pressure in a valve, so they can move forward. With those folks, even when a decision is final, a bounded place to express concerns - even frustration and emotions - can be appropriate - as long as it doesn’t cross the line into personal attacks, slandering a person’s character, etc.?Do not gloss-over or try to control your team's strong emotions or challenging questions during Talk Time, they can be valuable contributions that help your team move forward or raise important feedback to share with your leaders.

Go Time: Once input has been provided and a decision is made, we are now in “Go Time.” Go Time still has room for feedback, but with a much narrower focus: what mitigations or supports do we need to move the work forward aligned to the decision?

Important Note: In rare cases, when there’s a major decision flaw that puts the project at risk, opens us up to organizational risk or causing harm to our stakeholders, etc. that feedback is welcome in Go Time as well, with the understanding that we may not be able to reverse course, but project leaders should do all in our power to shift tactics/approaches to prevent the risks identified.

In “Go Time,” all other feedback - things to do differently, preferences for the future, things we didn’t consider that make the work harder but not impossible, are all documented by individuals in preparation for a candid, rigorous Debrief Time, but don’t derail or slow the current project.?

Important Note #2: “Go Time” doesn’t mean all folks love every decision, and there’s no expectation of fake, hyper-positive “fall in line” behavior - that’s inauthentic and unfair. What can be expected is that people execute a decision to the best of their ability, and don’t actively sabotage the decision, slander the character of the deciders or their colleagues for supporting it/carrying it out, or continually derail meetings about implementation by bringing us back to their disagreement with the direction in the first place or a counter-proposal.

Debrief Time: At the close of a project, or at key milestones in a longer project, there’s debrief time - the chance to close the loop on insights, lessons learned, mistakes not to repeat again, groups to consult with, contingencies to plan for, and any other insights that would support the success of the project or the team members supporting the project in the future. This container should be appropriate to the size of the project and the scale of its success (or areas of harm, if they happened). Major goof - major debrief; major success - major debrief; small project with modest organizational impact - modest debrief (maybe one hour long meeting with key stakeholders, for example). Because power dynamics are real, facilitators of Debrief Time need to create multiple ways to provide feedback, and center the voices of those who might not otherwise feel comfortable speaking up - even if that means making space for written feedback or survey data, private chats to the facilitator, or small group to full group share-outs.?

Creating “Talk Time, Go Time, Debrief Time” as a standard in your organization means that people know what’s expected of them at each phase and can be called-in if they’re not adhering to the structure - for example, leaders that always skip Debrief Time or try to shorten Talk Time on every project. This framework also creates a way to onboard new leaders into the input-gathering and two-way feedback loop that managers need to succeed in other areas of their roles. Finally, for team members who aren't aware of the ways they're derailing meetings or work by continuing to revisit locked decisions, "Talk Time, Go Time, Debrief Time" provides a way to level-set on what's expected and when the best times are to share their insights.

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Quick Plug: I will be talking about this topic - and many others - in Breaker28's upcoming Manager SLAM sessions. Learn more about them and register here.