You are Unique, Just Like Everyone Else

Summary: Every human life is unique. Leaders help individuals discover their own unique truth in the organizational principles.

Melissa's homily

I married Melissa D. in 1999. Before and after that time she has provided her teams, her family, and even her spouse with a huge number of useful insights. Perhaps my favorite is a line paraphrased from Margaret Mead that Melissa repeats often: "You are unique, just like everyone else."

Like all great Zen Koans, "You are unique, just like everyone else" has multiple, changeable meanings in multiple contexts for multiple people.

For me as a new manager, "You are unique" was a constant reminder that the people I was hoping to guide/lead/mentor were much, much, MORE than slightly different versions of me.

That was an important distinction because tech managers, especially new tech managers, desperately want to simplify the massively complex job of managing n-number of UNIQUE individuals. We want to come up with "one size fits all" rules in the name of fairness, but in pursuit of simplicity.

When I forgot the lessons of "you are unique" I made life worse for the people who worked for me and the company I worked for. When I remembered it, I made life slightly better.

Not only do new managers feel a need to simplify, new managers, especially this new manager, assume(d) that everyone who succeeded in this business did so as the manager had. If we assume that the manager had taken the optimal route to her/his position, then everyone who aspired to her/his level of success would want to take the same route. Simple! Just tell everyone how the manager did it and we would all work as one single uni-mind!

Ummm... No.

Well, what if we made sure the principles we followed to arrive at our lofty perch were made explicit to everyone. Would we get a homogenous approach then? Would we be able to ignore any uniqueness then?

Nope.

Change agents and Transformation leaders often run into this problem. We've presented the same logical arguments to thousands of people. We've provided metrics that prove the change will work. We've spoken to dozens of individuals. We've created beautiful, persuasive, and actionable handouts. Why are only 10% of the company reacting as we need them to react?

Answer: Every single person brings a UNIQUE lifetime of context to those arguments, metrics, discussions, and handouts. Expecting even the best presentation/materials/discussion to override a lifetime of context is unrealistic at best.

How can a leadership team lead thousands of unique individuals?

Ok then, what are we supposed to do?

First, if your organization literally needs every single person to agree on the correct action for every single circumstance, you should limit your organizational size to one or change the organization to thrive when individuals respond uniquely to circumstances.

Encourage every UNIQUE individual in your organization to find the truth of each principle/method for themselves. This isn't easy. It happens one-on-one. It can only happen when every level of management participates. But if it does happen, we foster an organization where every unique individual feels empowered to apply their own, unique, talents, skills, and context to make the company better. We become much more than a single-minded entity with lots of hands. We become many unique people trying to create and grow a unique company that cares about every one of us. We become unique, just like everyone else.

So, what do you think? How do you turn the uniqueness we all bring into a strength for a shared cause or organization?