Preface

The question is not "whether to involve or not to involve." The question is how to do it well.

People work with others to get things done from the time they get up in the morning until the time they go to bed. They get kids off to school, help neighbors clear their driveways, build roads, make dinner, sit on village boards, and lead Girl Scout meetings.

But what do we mean by involvement? Our definition is simple. It is working with others to get things done. When involvement goes well, people work together to make something happen. They contribute their time, their energy, their money, their brains, and their brawn. When the work is complete, they experience the satisfaction that can only come from working with others to achieve a common goal. When involvement goes badly, tasks don't get done. People end up feeling as if they were the only ones who cared about the outcome. They feel that their time and talents were wasted, their voices not heard, and their contribution ignored.

Ineffective involvement wastes time and requires more work than if you do it yourself, all of which leads to not getting work done. Effective involvement can accelerate progress, prevent conflicts, provide creative ideas, and generate support.

We wrote this book for people for whom time is of the essence; people who want others involved in a straightforward, no-nonsense way; people who can't afford to backtrack because things weren't done well in the first place.

Our goal in writing this book is to take the mystery out of effective involvement. When involvement goes well, it almost seems magical. But effective involvement is not magic. Effective involvement depends on the questions you ask and how you answer them. By the time you have completed this book, you will have learned an effective way of involving others.

This book's lessons apply to any kind of involvement. You might need to get things done at home when planning a family vacation or moving to a new house. Or you may be trying to gather support for a community initiative such as the local blood drive, a garage sale, or combating drunk driving. You may be tackling projects at work such as preparing for an important presentation, working with customers and suppliers to reduce cycle time, or figuring out how your crew will meet the daily production schedule. This book's lessons apply whenever and wherever you involve others.

In writing this book, we aimed to practice what we preach. Any one of us could have written this book alone. But we knew that writing it together would make the book decidedly better. Why is that? Because our involvement experiences are so varied. We have coached swimming teams, served in the military, worked in ice cream factories, lived around the world, consulted to local dentist offices, schools, governments, and major corporations. This rich tapestry of experiences brought depth and creativity to You Don't Have to Do It Alone. Here are some of the life experiences that shaped our thinking.

Dick Axelrod's early experiences working on the line in his father's model airplane factory taught him that no matter where you work in the organization, people have ideas about how to make it better. As an army officer in Korea, he learned that rank gives you authority to force people to do things, but when people are included in the plans, they not only do things willingly, they improve the plan. His work with self-directed work teams at General Foods taught him how productive people can be when they are allowed to manage their own work. He received an MBA from the University of Chicago, where he learned how to manage within a traditional hierarchical organization. Nevertheless, he has spent the bulk of his career creating egalitarian work systems.

Emily Axelrod brings Southern wit and spirit to her work with organizations and family businesses. She coached swimming at the University of Illinois where she learned that even in individual sports such as swimming, involvement matters. She has two master's degrees, one in education from the University of North Carolina and one in social work from Loyola University. Her work in education taught her how family involvement is key to a child's success in school. As a family therapist, working with families in crisis, she learned the importance of including the whole family in resolving issues, not just the "identified patient." Emily currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Illinois Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers where she works with others to address social policy for the State of Illinois.

With a father in the Royal Navy, Julie Beedon was raised in various locations around the United Kingdom and in Singapore, where she learned about living and working in different cultures. She ultimately earned degrees in mathematics and social science through the UK's Open University. Julie combines the precision of a mathematician and the insight of an anthropologist in her work. Her extensive knowledge of the public sector taught her how involvement works in highly political, complex, bureaucratic systems. She has a multitude of experiences in involvement within voluntary organizations and currently runs the Youth Group for a United Benefice in the Lichfield Diocese of the Anglican Church. People participate in voluntary organizations because they want to, not because they have to. From these experiences Julie learned the importance of the invitation.

Robert "Jake" Jacobs first learned about involvement on the basketball courts of northwest Ohio. He realized early on that the best teams involved each player so that they could all make their unique contributions. In the product packaging room at an ice cream novelty manufacturing plant at the age of eighteen, he learned how mindless life can be when you are uninvolved. A stint at tending bar was a great teacher about involving others. The camaraderie of the staff and patrons in creating a great shared experience proved to be a key to the bar's success. After earning a master's degree in organization development, Jake has devoted his life to helping organizations create their future faster. His basic working theory: Wouldn't it be better to be living in your preferred future, now?

We are all pioneers in the field of large group interventions (LGIs), an involvement process that takes participation to the max. In LGIs, hundreds, sometimes even thousands of people create strategic plans, redesign organizations, and shift cultures. Julie Beedon is seen as the leading LGI authority in the UK, while Jake Jacobs and Dick and Emily Axelrod are internationally recognized experts in LGI. Jake helped to develop an LGI called Real Time Strategic Change, and Dick and Emily Axelrod are creators of The Conference Model®.

In writing this book, we have taken many of our insights from working with large groups and applied them to involving people in groups big and small. The steps we outline in this book work with a group of five or five thousand.

This book has been in development in one form or another for over three years. One of its earlier incarnations had us meeting with a group of over thirty colleagues to create a field book. None of us who were there will ever forget that day. It was September 11, 2001. Even though we did not write the field guide we started out to write, the book you have in your hands today has its roots in these earlier experiences.

Our writing process went like this. First we interviewed effective involvers we knew to find out the questions they had about involving others. These became the key questions we built the book around. Then we set about answering these questions. We would then brainstorm our answers. Then one of us would take responsibility for writing the chapter, supported by a "writing buddy." After the chapter was drafted, we would all read and comment on it. We then shared the draft with our "advisory group" and incorporated their comments into the final manuscript.

There were times when each of us thought that it would be simpler to write this book alone. Involving so many people demanded a lot of time and effort. But in the end, it was worth it. The support we received from everyone made our writing easier. We ended up being more creative than we could have been on our own. And involving others made our points clearer.

We want to thank the following people who worked with us to create this book and whose thoughtfulness and insights brought our manuscript to life.

Steve Piersanti, our publisher, colleague, and friend, saw the germ of an idea and nurtured it from its very inception until its final product.

"Magical" Mark Levy was our writing coach. Most people would throw up their hands in horror when presented with the idea of coaching four authors. Mark rolled up his sleeves and approached the project with glee. Mark made writing fun as he made us all better writers.

We had other teachers along the way. Richard Ogle taught us about reader-writer dialogues and Laura Bonnazoli taught us how to avoid "kitchen drawer paragraphs."

Our advisory group, made up of effective involvers from industry, government, and the not-for-profit sectors, was with us from almost the very beginning. They helped us to formulate the five questions that are at the core of this book and determine the content of the chapters, and they read many versions of the manuscripts. Thanks to Jan Mears, Amanda Fleming, Helen MacKay, Keith Smith, and Sharon Schacter. Your insightful feedback was always useful.

There were others who read the final manuscript and whose comments were very important in transforming our original manuscript into the book it is today. Thanks to Charles Dorris, Scott Gassman, Linda Klatt, Sue Talbot, Leif Ulstrup, Nancy Voss, Rosemarie Barbeau, Gary Hochman, and Nancy Aronson. You read our manuscript with a critical eye and in doing so made it better.

To the folks who were with us in Chelsea, Michigan, on September 11, 2001, we will always know who we were with on that fateful day: Francine Alexander, Nancy Aronson, Beverly Arsht, Rosi Barbeau, Laura Bonazzoli, Paul Cox, Leslie DePol, Becky DeStefano, June Gunter, Karin Hedenstrom, Kay L. Hubbard, Barry Johnson, Susan Law, Sam Magill, Linda McFadden, Richard Ogle, Julian Simcox, Steve Treacy, and Nancy Voss. A special thank you goes to Anne Brooks, who makes things happen, even when they seem impossible.

Finally, a big thanks to our families for putting up with our craziness during the writing process.

Richard H. Axelrod, Emily M. Axelrod, Julie Beedon, Robert W. Jacobs