Practices Put Principles into Action
Collective action that is — the kind that’s good for business
There’s a famous line by Malcolm Gladwell that says,
Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.
What Gladwell is missing is the part about the collective — aligning with those around you, being in sync, and in flow.
Practices create common rhythms that allow teams, communities, couples and families to be in regular ceremony together, connected by the drumbeat of shared values or principles.
At Chrysalis, our principles of Purpose Driven, Me to We, Agency and Ownership, Better Knowing, and Constantly Becoming is our drumbeat. These mindsets are based on the beliefs we have about the capabilities of each other, the best way to organize, how we serve each other, and how we will succeed together. Our Principles aren’t easy to point out or highlight, rather they are embedded throughout our work.
We would not hear the drumbeat of our principles without our seven everyday Practices that inform how we think, relate and act. Our practices give structure and guidance to help us manifest our principles. When we are committed to our principles, our practices are easier to implement. When we implement our practices, we make it easier to fulfill our principles.
Our core seven practices create the foundational relational systems within the Chrysalis ecosystem:
- Strategic Practice: A rhythm of zooming out of the day-to-day, sensing the environment, increasing connection to and participating in the bigger picture, and reflecting on how you are doing as a team.
- Tactical Practice: A rhythm of talking about and executing on day-to-day work, creating a regular opportunity for tensions to be resolved.
- Feedback Practice: A habit of encouraging helpful behaviours and discouraging unhelpful behaviours through shared observations.
- Conflict Resolution Practice: A practice to move through conflict even in the presence of difficult thoughts/emotions.
- Decision-Making Practice: A way to ensure we are making the best decisions and leveraging the collective intelligence we have.
- Tension Practice: A communication practice that enables collaboration even in the presence of disruptive thoughts and emotions.
- Beach Practice: A practice of creating time for individuals to find new roles when the roles they previously occupied have fulfilled their purpose, or they are no longer a fit for the role, or when roles have changed or are outgrown.
Strategic Practice
The overall approach taken to achieve a team’s mission is its strategy.
A Strategic Practice is the intentional time to reflect and provide input as a team on a project or company’s strategic direction, allowing all team members to benefit from having ownership over and clear “line of sight” on a team’s strategic direction. This is time taken to zoom out, be mindful of the bigger picture, and ask if we are working on the right things in order to create stronger plans, especially when the work isn’t centralized or exclusive.
Strategy meetings help us answer, “Are we doing the right things?”, while tactical meetings or operational meetings help us answer, “Are we doing things right?”. Strategy meetings give us time to analyze data and make decisions about course-corrections and adjustments to a plan.
At Chrysalis, a team defines its strategy at a Strategic Planning Meeting, at least annually (often facilitated by a trained coach), but reviews and updates it in a Strategic Monthly Check-In to process tensions, review progress, tweak as necessary, and keep the strategic plan alive and forefront. This approach combines the stability and direction of an overall plan with the flexibility and responsiveness of frequent reviews — with internal and external inputs from tensions (explained below) felt by team members, which may come from reviewing a one-page-strategic-plan (or “OPSP” as we say) and/or from an execution status.
Tactical Practice
Tactics define how we are going to fulfill our Purpose and Mission within our Values and Principles. They are the day-to-day actions and decisions undertaken to achieve specific ends.
Tactical practices are meetings, whether a 1–1 “huddle” or a team meeting with an intentional, regular cadence — a part of a team’s rhythms; otherwise practiced asynchronously through discussion over Slack or email. At Chrysalis, tactical meetings are conducted by Home Teams (permanent teams) or Gig Teams (temporary teams) in order to discuss the work and projects. During these meetings, there is a predictable, repeatable system and process (decided by the team) for reviewing shared priorities, new information, relevant data, and progress on work. The meeting format encourages distributed participation and everyone’s perspective, both in identifying tensions and in determining solutions.
Note: An effective Tactical Practice is NOT group work on a task. Tactical practices are for identifying valuable next steps, even if there are other valid alternatives. This practice holds a bias towards taking action, even over examining all possible options.
Feedback Practice
Feedback is a critical part of a system — it encourages behaviours that are helpful and discourages behaviours that are unhelpful. As much as we try to observe, measure, plan and anticipate the effect we’re having, even better data comes to us from the feedback of others.
Within the Chrysalis ecosystem we strive for a Culture of Feedback where each person has ongoing access to the information they need to stay aligned with the purpose of their role, team and company. A culture of feedback relies on individuals having the skills, support, and psychological safety (for interpersonal risk taking) to share their perspectives.
Our suggestion for giving feedback
Get the Micro-Yes: Asking a question that is short, but important, to prepare the person to receive feedback and create a moment of buy-in. For example:
- “Do you have five minutes to talk about how that last conversation went?”
- “I have some ideas for how we might improve things. Can I share them with you?”
Share the Data Point: Objectively and specifically name what you saw or heard without using blur words. A blur word is something that can mean different things to different people. Rather, specify exactly what you want the other person to increase or diminish. For example:
- “You said you’d get that email to me by 11:00, but it doesn’t look like I’ve received it yet.”
Show Impact: Name exactly how that data point impacted you. Give a sense of purpose, meaning and logic between the Data Point and the Impact. For example:
- “Because I didn’t get the message, I was blocked on my work and couldn’t move forward.”
End on a Question: Wrapping the feedback message with a question creates a space for joint problem-solving, rather than a monologue. For example:
- “How do you see it?”
- “This is what I’m thinking we should do, but what are your thoughts on it?”
BONUS: Great feedback givers can not only deliver messages well, but also ask for feedback regularly.
Conflict Resolution Practice
A trusted and predictable Conflict Resolution Practice provides confidence that conflict will be healthy and will make us better. We are much better at creating effective, beneficial results when we have a structure to acknowledge and appropriately synthesize the emotional aspects of conflict.
At Chrysalis, the following process is suggested to resolve conflict, learn lessons, and grow together.
Prepare for a productive debate
Wait for emotions to subside — Do not try to resolve conflict when you are activated/angry.
Seek to Understand — Take time to examine the following: What is the real issue for you? Why are you activated in the situation? Why is it important to you?
Baseline with positive intention — It is safe to assume that no one woke up with malice intent for another person. Instead, the conflict is a result of differing perspectives, expectations, passions or stories. Recognize that the unique perspective of the other person isn’t wrong or bad and neither is yours. Everyone is out to do the best they can with what they know. Lead by giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Set your mindset for successful outcomes — Check the perspective you are bringing to the conversation by asking yourself the following questions:
· What do I really want?
· What do I want from them?
· What do I want for the relationship?
· How would I behave if I really wanted these results?
· Mindset and attitude check— are you trying to solve the problem for the greater purpose?
Protect the teams
While conflict will pass, sharing a story can have a lasting, damaging and toxic effect. The conflict between two people is a private matter. Individuals involved in conflict resolution partake in the utmost care and discretion to keep negativity contained within the individuals involved in the conflict.
Engage in a connected conversation
In the individual’s first attempt to resolve the conflict themselves, follow the process to begin a conversation:
- Schedule a conversation — set a time in a private place to have the conversation.
- Share the observed behavior or language that is the source of the conflict (note — do not judge or evaluate the behavior, only share what you have observed).
- Share how the observed behavior or language affects your experience because of what you need.
- Make a request as to what future behavior or language would better support your experience.
- The other person will respond clearly to the request with a yes, no or counter proposal.
Bring in a mediator/coach
If a connected conversation does not result in an agreeable solution, the individuals could nominate someone they both trust to act as a mediator. The mediator/coach/advisor supports the individuals but does not impose a solution.
Form a panel
If mediation fails to resolve the issue, the individuals bring in a panel of coworkers versed in the topic. The panel helps to shape the agreement; they do not impose a solution or a decision.
Seek a senior advisor
If a panel is unable to bring about a resolution, a senior advisor (e.g. a board member) can attempt to support. Again, the conflict is treated as a private matter and not discussed outside those involved.
Decision-Making Practice
“The speed we make decisions” is a consistent, important factor in any organization’s health and performance. A Decision-Making Practice distributes ownership and autonomy wherever it makes sense and helps us include the right stakeholders and contributors in the direction ahead.
In an environment of self-managing teams, it’s important that we help each other to make decisions and that we strive to make better decisions together. We believe we can leverage collective intelligence by utilizing information from multiple sources and crowd sourcing the best solutions with the most commitment to success.
At Chrysalis we have two core decision-making practices: TASQ and an Integrated Decision-Making Practice which we write about in this blog post.
Tension Practice
A Tension is a felt gap between what is present now and what is possible in the future. It’s how we express that we are sensing that something is “off” or “needs to be said”. It’s how we create space for new ideas, how we get insight into what’s working and what’s not, and it’s how we turn a frustration or source of energy into an object to be explored.
Through a Tension Practice, we are provided an opportunity to engage a colleague or team in a broader discussion about challenges or opportunities and the options to address them.
Identifying and addressing tensions help break down complex work into understandable, addressable next steps. The Tension Practice removes some of the traditional challenge — or judgement — that may come up when we bring up something new.
The process for resolving a tension
- A team member identifies a tension — an opportunity or problem that’s worth consideration by the team (that “niggly feeling”);
- They provide context for the tension;
- They either, a) share their proposed solution and ask for feedback, or b) ask for the team’s input on options for addressing the tension;
- The tension is resolved when the team member confirms they have a next step that gives them confidence that they are working towards a satisfactory solution.
The Beach Practice
In order to achieve our goals, we need to help our people find roles that are the best fit. Given how fast our environment changes and how fast people change, it’s reasonable to expect that at times, individuals will find themselves in a role that no longer fits, is no longer needed, or that they are no longer able to fulfill. When this happens, the individual is considered to be on the “Beach”. Their time on the beach is limited and is meant to be spent finding a new core role that aligns with personal goals, and where the individual is able to contribute at a high level.
Once a decision has been made for an employee to go to the beach, our People & Culture department will:
- Advocate for the individual
- Work with Team Leads to seek opportunities
- Work with the individual to develop a plan
(Team Leads and oftentimes on-staff Chrysalis Coaches also play a significant role in this process.)
Although it might feel uncomfortable, it’s a natural part of a company’s evolution to have individuals move from role to role. We believe in supporting people to move out of roles that they can’t be successful in and we are motivated to redeploy individuals to roles they can contribute to in more meaningful ways.
In the event that a role cannot be found, we are devoted to supporting the individual to find a role in another company to the best of our ability.
Our seven practices are unique to us in the specific way we practice them, yet they are inspired by many experts in the field of organizational psychology — Frederic Laloux, Aaron Dignan and others.
For us, our principles are a guide to support embedding a more human way of working into our environment. They support a deep commitment to human nature and the ability of autonomous individuals to work together without artificial or authoritative hierarchy.
At Chrysalis, we hope our people spend less energy hiding from their weaknesses and more time intentionally developing beyond these limitations, creating an environment where people want to stay, are better able to express concerns and needs, and have increased ownership of their work.
Evolution is not a switch that’s turned and suddenly we’ve unlearned six decades of wearing professional masks and repressing human nature. Instead, it requires us to consciously practice, review and improve our beliefs, habits, and routines. With our suggested practices we can intentionally evolve the way we work and communicate so we get to enjoy the benefits that come from working at a company where we can confidently and successfully provide meaningful value while experiencing our own personal development.
