Forward momentum

by Kent Aitken

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A while back, Nick wrote a post about "Chekhov's Gun." It's short and you should read it, but if you'd like to just keep forging ahead, the central idea is the following consideration for novelists: 

"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

That is, if you've made it seem to everyone that something is important or that something is going to happen, you need to follow through.

Nick applies it to organizations, giving examples of innovation lab mandates, Blueprint 2020 goals, and employee/stakeholder engagement. And that last one is broad: promises to employees, strategic plans, and any communication that includes the phrase "stay tuned."

Different definitions of "the gun went off"

Here's an additional caution: we all have different definitions of what constitutes a satisfying gunshot. Returning to Chekhov's one-liner, if the main character takes a short break from the action to go hunting, it doesn't count. If you make a gun hanging on the wall a plot point... well, a primary character is going to have to take a bullet. Sorry.

Novelist Robert Jackson Bennett takes on the show Jessica Jones in this way, in a piece called Jessica Jones and the problem of forward momentum – or, Marvel needs a goddamn editor. As he sees it, things keep happening in the show. Conflict is introduced and resolved. Chekhov's guns are described, then fired. But his problem is that none of it truly matters, and the core state of the show never changes. In episode one, this is the concept:

Jessica Jones is a cynical, traumatized superhero being harassed and threatened by the incredibly powerful mind-controller Kilgrave, who can strike at her at any moment.

Bennett then walks through each episode and checks against that baseline after each, concluding that it doesn't budge.

In the professional world, we do this test as "The Five Whys": asking why something is the way it is, then asking "why?" about the answer, continuously. 

For example:

"Why is communication to Canadians important?" 

"To raise awareness." 

"Okay, why is awareness important?"

Etc.

Yesterday I heard this referred to as the "What do you do?/Bullshit, what do you do, really?" test.

How has the core state of things changed?

That's the main question Bennett has for storytelling, that he says Jessica Jones fails: how has the core state of things changed? It's easy to write content that seems like a conclusion, but it's often communicative fondant, all structure with a vague, unsatisfying flavour.

But we're definitely not fooling our readers and stakeholders.

What's different now, because of what we've done?

 

If nothing's different, what have we been doing?

Put differently: the gun went off. Did it matter?

Get Meta on Engagement

by Kent Aitken

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This is a Story as an Introduction, and it is as Long as the Rest of the Post

For a while I've held the opinion that public officials should be blogging or writing Op-Eds about decision rationale and key strategies. This is for several reasons: to get feedback with which to make decisions, to expose unforeseen adverse effects, but perhaps most importantly, to get past mere information availability and into actual transparency. Both public officials and citizens would be better off receiving information with both context and some level of thoughtful presentation.

Which I why I applaud initiatives like St. John's Councillor Dave Lane's blog. I can't speak for him as a city Councillor, but I'm a big fan of his recent 566-word post entitled Yes, I voted for a propane tank. Spoiler alert: it explains why he voted to allow a large propane tank to be built on the waterfront. Propane tanks aren't usually popular, but in context, his decision seems incredibly reasonable.

St. John's harbour. It's lovely, and you should go. Don't miss Raymond's, it's epic.

Get Meta

But that's all an aside. In his post from the day before that, Lane hit on a great lesson for stakeholder engagement. The city is launching a public engagement initiative, and they're starting with the question:

"How would you like the City of St. John's to engage?"

Surprisingly, an oft-overlooked idea in engagement activities, and great as either a starting point or a periodic gut-check: asking your stakeholders for input on your relationship with them. Don't just ask, "What do you want us to do?", but "How do you want us to ask you 'What do you want us to do?' "

It's simply a periodic testing of the assumptions on which your processes rest. And it's useful. Get meta. 

Photo by Aconcagua (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

What you can learn about dealing with stakeholders from a garage sale

It rained all the day of my neighbourhood garage sale, so we decided to hold over our sale a couple of weeks until this past Saturday. It was a beautiful day and my old man hauled a truckload of stuff from his place in the east end to my place in the west end and we divided up the driveway. It was one of the most enjoyable days I've had with my dad since we did Movember. We made a bit of money, had a few beers, shot the shit for almost the entire day and good times were had by all.

What didn't dawn on me at the time, but what I realise now, is how much you can learn about dealing with stakeholders from/by running a garage sale. Here's what I mean.

Photo by Chiot's Run

Don't be afraid to just give things away

There was a little girl who bought some books and then doubled back for a plush toy. She had a bit of trouble deciding which one she wanted but when she finally settled on the unicorn, I simply let her have it.

Sometimes you need to just be willing to give something away for nothing but karma in return; especially when that thing has no value to you, but has value to someone else. It's the gift economy, so when dealing with stakeholders ... 


Don't attach arbitrary value

Over the course of the day my dad and I lamented how cheap some people were; how they wanted a lot for almost nothing in return. But as the day went on I realized that haggling over the price of a $1 dollar item is senseless given that the item in question held no value for me until it held a value for someone else. Often I think when organizations engage with their stakeholders, they are reluctant to make concessions or accommodations because they feel as though they are losing out, when really the substance of these concessions held no value to the organization before they were asked for them.

Furthermore, we forget that the sum of any given exchange is often far greater than we originally anticipate, and when we engage with stakeholders we often limit our evaluations to the tangibles that exchange hands rather than how that exchange effects the relationship between parties. In a one-off exchange (such as at a garage sale) we are more likely to take a hard line stance than in an iterative relationship where what I do now has downstream consequences. I suppose that's another key point...


Turn a one-off into an real relationship

There was a woman who was interested in purchasing our double stroller. She had one infant and another on the way, only she didn't have any money on her. After a quick demo I gladly put the stroller (and a dozen or so board books she wanted) aside. She went, grabbed some cash and came back. While she got a steal of deal, and I got that stroller out of my garage, both of these facts pale in comparison to the smile I saw on her face as she walked down the street pushing the stroller that afternoon. She waved and I waved back happily.

I received no such satisfaction from any other of the patrons who came by the sale. The woman who bought our stroller isn't my best friend or my business partner, but you can be damn sure that I will wave and say hello every time I see her from now on, and I hope she will do the same.



Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect