The Keys to Step 2

The Keys to Step #2

Use Hopes to Break Through Limiting Expectations

Successful businesspeople and civic leaders create breakthrough opportunities because they don't limit themselves with preconceptions. One of the best ways to find relief for struggling people or organizations is to examine their expectations. Often, people's pain lies in some attachment to a fixed outcome. They feel stuck in a certain role or path. Conflicts within organizations or communities usually arise from clashes between differing sets of expectations.

Hopes will free participants from limiting preconceptions. Remember Ted, the business owner? His expectation that he should run the biggest division in the company resulted in an emotional nightmare and stifled growth. But once he divested himself of his preconception and tuned in to his hopes, he could expand his business and happily reach his goals.

Use Hopes to Unify Diverse Interests

In more than ten years of facilitating dozens of groups—including combative managers, litigants, and political opposites—I've yet to find a situation in which participants couldn't agree upon a shared set of hopes. A particularly difficult situation involved a spirited community group that battled in court for the right to hold a Mardi Gras parade. The city officials and local business owners worried that the event had become uncontrollable and posed a danger to participants and bystanders. "Someone's going to get killed," they feared. After the different sides spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on legal fees, the judge ruled that the group had a right to hold the parade. He directed the parties to work out a plan that fairly divided the responsibilities.

Although the court case granted the right to parade, it didn't determine how the different interests would work together. Both sides wondered how they could agree on a plan when the bitter lawsuit had left so much anger and distrust.

Following Step #2, both parties explored what was really important to each person involved and worked to understand why. Every person wrote down his or her hopes on sheets of paper. Then each participant found the person whom he or she knew least well and asked that person Step #2's important questions: "What is your hope?" and "Why is it important to you?" The room of forty people buzzed with conversation.

As divergent as their interests had been, all participants appreciated and supported the hopes they heard. The police discovered that the parade organizers shared their concern about safety. Similarly, both police and city officials acknowledged the importance to community members of a creative outlet. In less than an hour's time, all participants discovered that they shared common hopes. With this encouraging foundation, they worked together to develop an effective plan.

The targeted time spent discussing hopes within a business or organization generates much more value than the often-lengthy discussions of "mission" and "vision." Mission and vision statements represent a struggle to distill diversity into pithy phrases, which too often squeeze the life out of what people felt when they created them. On the other hand, hopes capture employees' and participants' deep yearnings and accommodate the multiple interests inherent in today's communities and workplaces.

Use Hopes to Uncover Solutions Where None Existed

Hopes are important in getting people to work together, but they play an even more powerful role in expanding and improving solutions. Each time you ask someone why a particular hope is important to him or her, you'll multiply the prospects for a successful outcome—often tenfold or more!

For example, Rosa, a college professor, desired a more diverse faculty and staff at the college where she taught. "I want the people who work here to be more representative of the overall student body," she said. Since few faculty and staff left their positions, however, opportunities to hire more diverse colleagues rarely occurred. Other faculty members heard Rosa's concerns, but felt there was little they could do about it because of the current hiring freeze and formal hiring practices. Making progress toward Rosa's goal seemed unlikely.

Rosa's first expression of her hope for a more diverse faculty and staff was at the surface level and had no practical solution. There was little that she could do, and, short of retiring early to make way for replacements, her colleagues couldn't do much to help, either. But when Rosa really considered why diversity was important to her, she went to a deeper level. She realized that she'd like the students to have role models for success in their own careers. She went still deeper and realized that she wanted students to know that, regardless of their circumstances, they could make it in the world. This deeper aspiration stimulated ideas for immediate solutions. Successful women business owners, professionals of different ethnicities, and various other types of resource people could visit the campus as guest lecturers and invite students to serve as interns with them. Service clubs and outside speakers could profile opportunities and mentor students. Curricula could incorporate case studies highlighting diverse racial and ethnic interests. Counselors, community members, and others could rally behind the objective.

Simply asking "Why?" allowed Rosa to punch through the surface issue and tap into her underlying hope. Dozens of opportunities and ways in which others could support her objective resulted. The process of exploring Rosa's original hope was like digging a well: It was necessary that she plumb for each underlying hope until she reached the deep aquifer of interests and resources that others could share and act upon. (See Figure 7.)

Figure 7: Plumbing the depths of Rosa's hopes.

Use Hopes to Avoid the "Devil in the Details"

Hopes help participants in decision-making groups realize that they share common objectives and can avoid needless frustration. Without expressing their hopes, many group members waste time bickering with one another about small issues because they haven't discovered their shared direction. People fight for control of the steering wheel because they don't trust where others might take them if they relinquished it. Clarifying participants' underlying hopes and where they are headed in the big picture saves time in figuring out how to get there.

Unfortunately, businesses, government agencies, and community groups often plunge right into the details of an issue, even when they know that they'll be troublesome. They feel resigned to frustration and proceed to trudge through the pain. They also resist exploring their hopes. "We've got real work to do," they say. "There's no time to explore or share our hopes." Sadly, they deny themselves a proven path to great decision making and the successful solutions that result.

Betty, the mayor of a medium-size city, and the members of the city council are a good example. "The devil is in the details," Betty intoned as she started the city council's discussion of a controversial issue. As mayor, she wanted to be a strong leader who faces issues head-on and resolves them. She thought it was a sign of leadership—the right stuff of management—to wade into the details of key projects the city needed to prioritize.

It didn't take more than a few minutes, however, for the participants to start bickering over those details. After two hours of flexing their mental muscles with one another, the council remained embroiled in the details. There was much heat but little light, and goodwill diminished as participants argued their views. Resolution of the issue seemed remote.

Betty was right. The details were devilish. However, Betty had underestimated their power.

Betty and her fellow council members needn't have wallowed fruitlessly in the details of their civic project. Had they plumbed their hopes—asking What do we want to accomplish? Why is it important to our community? What are alternative ways to get there?—they would have been on the path to resolution.

Once they learned to put Step #2 into play, Betty and the city council had much more success. A particularly sticky issue concerned juvenile delinquency and violence. Mark, an action-oriented city council member, thought he had the solution. He arrived at a city council meeting with a fixed agenda in mind: He wanted the city to build a new park. He touted it as a critical project to reduce juvenile delinquency and urged expedited action. To bolster his case, Mark proposed an available site and presented letters of support for the park from teachers and parents concerned about the juvenile delinquency threat.

However, Martha, another council member and an ardent environmentalist committed to preserving open space, immediately condemned the plan. She didn't want precious open space at the edge of the city developed into a park that might stimulate more growth.

Chuck, the self-declared fiscal watchdog on the council, objected to the drain on city funds to build and maintain the park. He demanded to know just where the money would come from. He decried the park initiative as another unproven and fiscally irresponsible program.

Mark's plan triggered Martha's and Chuck's fears and it looked like the meeting would get mired down in divisive debate. Mark was reeling from the opposition to his idea. He felt angry and dejected that his idea didn't get a fair hearing.

Before the situation could get worse, Betty asked Mark about his hopes for the project—what he hoped to accomplish and why that was important to him. Mark explained his desire to reduce juvenile delinquency by providing more activities for local youth. This hope went deeper than the details that had pushed Martha's and Chuck's hot buttons. With the situation calmer and the intent more clear, the council members agreed on their underlying objective. Thus, they had a place to start.

The council members discussed ways to realize their shared hope, and new options emerged. For example, they proposed asking the local school district to open school gymnasiums after hours for recreational activities. This option satisfied Mark's objective for immediate action, and, as a bonus, they could put it into action more quickly than developing a new park. The option also satisfied Martha's desire to protect open space. And Chuck appreciated that it involved no new capital expenditures and only limited incremental operating expenses for supervision and extended janitorial services. Everyone agreed that if the program didn't work, the city could terminate it without a long-term commitment.

Attractive solutions like this one arise when groups start with their hopes and later examine the options and develop the details. The more deeply a group plumbs its hopes, the greater the array of options it uncovers. For example, if the council members had continued to discuss why more activities to reduce juvenile delinquency were important, they might have highlighted the desire for the city's youth to develop a solid set of values and a shared sense of community. Then dozens of additional options, such as asking service clubs and social service agencies for their ideas and resources, could be employed to fulfill that hope.

Use your hopes to take the agony out of the details. By first exploring and confirming the hopes you share, participants in your group will be motivated to work together and to more easily resolve the issues you face.

Use Hopes to Improve and Sustain Results

An industrial facility with decades of conflict between its operations and maintenance departments found new strength when employees articulated their hopes. These rivals had bickered with one another like two old enemies trapped in endless strife. "Those guys in maintenance don't fix our equipment properly," complained an operations supervisor. "The equipment wouldn't break down so often," countered a maintenance worker, "if the operators followed procedures."

But when these warring camps met and explored their hopes, the participants discovered they shared similar aspirations, which included the following:

• To become a team [their emphasis]

• To work together to accomplish goals

• To have everyone [their emphasis] feel good about the work they do

• To be the benchmark plant, setting the standards for others to follow

They charted these and another twelve hopes and identified ways to realize them together. At the start, they figured that they were only about halfway toward fulfillment of their hopes. Six months later, both groups surveyed their members to assess their progress. "We've achieved over 70 percent of our long-term hopes," the maintenance manager reported. "With continued efforts together," the operations manager added, "our combined team is confident that we can realize over 90 percent of our shared hopes." They had overcome their seemingly intractable differences and found a new path to better results.

Connect with Your Deepest Hopes

In a culture often driven by fear and greed, connecting with our deepest hopes can be difficult. In fact, it may take you several responses to Step #2's important questions for you to discover your underlying hopes. Take your time. It's a worthwhile investment. If you have difficulties, these suggestions can help.

Look for the Flip Side of Your Greatest Fear

As you think about your hopes, plunge into the depths of your worst nightmare. What troubles you most? Left with our fears, catastrophe can loom before us. For example, you might worry that your customers won't be able to afford your products and you won't have the revenues to meet your expenses.

Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.

—Sir Walter Scott

The way out of the quagmire is to look at the flip side of your fear to find your hope. For example, if you fear losing customers, your hope will be to offer distinctive solutions to their problems. Then, instead of worrying about the economic downturn, think about new opportunities to serve customers' needs. Shift your mindset from thinking of your product or service as a cost to becoming a source of new revenue for your customers.

Appreciate What You Have

There's a meditative exercise that asks you to carefully observe and then slowly eat a single raisin. It's amazing what tastes and textures you discover while doing this, instead of simply regarding the raisin as an insignificant and overly familiar dried-up grape, if you even think of it at all. When I eat my lunch with this kind of contemplative spirit, I'm satisfied with half the amount of food (which is good for my waistline!). My appetite is not fixed. I can influence it by appreciating what I have before me.

When you appreciate what you have, you also gain perspective on what you really need to do next, rather than what you feel driven to do. In a business situation, you don't chase after miscellaneous opportunities; you focus your attention on what fits with your business and will yield distinctive value to others. You thereby accomplish your goals more effectively and efficiently.

If you have less than you want in your business or community organization, take some time to appreciate what you already have. For example, the quickest way to get more customers is to appreciate the ones you have. Invite them to a dinner or a reception together. Let them know how important they are to you. Encourage them to share their stories with one another. They will help you find more customers.

Choose Hope, Not Fear

Several years ago, a fledgling rural church faced a huge budget shortfall, with projected revenues 20 percent below its basic expenses. Members of the church could have easily said, "This is a crisis. We have to find ways to retrench." Instead, the treasurer presented the issue to the church's board by saying, "We have an invitation to find creative ministries that excite people, make a meaningful difference in their lives, and also attract new resources."

The group went on to start an abundance shop (its distinctive version of a traditional thrift store), sell fresh Christmas trees, and offer programs and materials to help people deal with difficult issues of fear, anger, and rejection. As a result, the church balanced its budget with some to spare and attracted a significant number of new members.