Trust the Process

It’s an issue I see in many facilitators. It’s one that I struggle with myself. Perhaps it’s because our empathetic nature and desire to help; perhaps it’s that we are too impatient and want to start improving things right away. Maybe it’s something else, I don’t know. I’m not a psychologist.

The issue is jumping the gun; which can take several forms:

1. Too quick to define a problem.
2. Too quickly determining a root cause before having enough data
3. The facilitator coming up with a solution before the team does

I’ve always felt pretty solid in working with teams on the first two. For me it was the third one: coming up with a solution before the team did. When I first began facilitating, I was really bad.

Starting an event, I would often research the issue, department, environment, etc. Trying to get a sense of the issue and the people I’d be working with. This would include reviewing documents and metrics of the team. This would then lead to reading case studies of events similar in nature. Often, I would research the organization and even the team if possible. Trying to do everything to get myself up to speed on the issues at hand, the jargon they used, and to understand the environment.

This is a good practice when you are facilitating an enterprise wide HR event one day, and a widget manufacturing process the next. Having fundamental knowledge of the industry, and the problem, helps a facilitator win over a team.

But, for me, that research information would fester inside of me, and I would start to get ideas. and formulate opinions about the issues and problems. Then, as the event started, I got more insight, I would start to think of solutions; sometimes before the event started.

What made it bad is that I would often give my opinions to the team. Well, I thought of it as giving, but when a facilitator does it, the team often sees it as dictating. This robs the team of their empowerment. They take the idea thinking this is how improvement events work. And the really bad thing about this is that the ideas were never as good as what the team would have.

I was fortunate, in that I had a mentor that helped me. While involved in series of events (See The Wisconsin Blitz) at a National Guard unit, I was working closely with a Colonel who was a friend, and mentor.

The event I was facilitating had wrapped up for the day and I was cleaning up and jotting notes. When I realized I’d done it again. The team was taking a long time to come to a solution that I knew should be implemented. As they continued to storm through the root causes, I began to interject…an observation here…a suggestion there…Ultimately I led them to the solution I thought should be the one they should do.

As was reviewing the day and coming to the realization of what I’d done, the Colonel stopped by to check in. We sat with some coffee talking about what was going on and soon I was confessing that I think I was leading teams…instead of facilitating them. He surprised me by admitting he’d done the same thing in the past. And he then gave me the best facilitating advice I’d ever gotten:

Trust the Process.

It was simple, direct, and so true.

The Air Force was using the 8-Step problem solving format (aka the A3 Method). It worked…proven time and again. And so the Colonel said, just to believe it will work…and it will.

I hemmed and hawed a bit…trying to say I did do the process…but he stopped me.

“Doing the process is different than believing in the process.” He stated.

He went on to tell me that he felt nervous every time he started an event, with a nagging voice in the back of his head constantly asking:

• Will the team participate and engage?
• Will they recognize the real problem?
• Will the team come up with practical solutions?

But he learned to trust the process; to work the steps, and the team will come through.?I heard what he was saying, but I had a hard time believing it would work every time.

“What happens when it doesn’t work?” I asked. He looked at my like a parent having to repeat “Do not touch a hot stove” to a toddler.

“Trust the process,” he repeated, “it always works.”

There was an immediate opportunity to put it to the test…I was starting a new process improvement event the next week, only 4 days away. And so I tried it.

I’d already done the background research, and I already had some ideas. But I painfully held them in check as the event got underway. I did not guide or goad the team. I just took them threw the process. When they got to the root cause analysis I had to bite my tongue. To me, it was so obvious…the problem was right there in front of them? Why didn’t they see it? But I let them be. I watched them struggle.

And then it happened.

The team began bringing up issues I wasn’t aware of (which, in hindsight, makes sense…after all, I don’t work the process).?As they discussed and analyzed the issues, they began uncovering root causes I would never have imagined. This was getting to be interesting.

As we moved from analysis to developing countermeasures, they continued to surprise me. Proposals to improve came flying from the team. They ranged from simple to complex. Some were spot on, some were way off the mark, and almost every one of them were something I had not imagined and would have never thought of in a million years. And best of all, I wasn’t doing anything other than the occasional reality check. Slight reminders to keep them focused on the problem at hand (the excited team began having a bit of scope creep…trying to solve world hunger).

And so the event progressed. I was less stressed, the team came out with better results, and I learned a valuable lesson…Trust the Process.

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