Every Dog Needs A Job

And We’re All Dogs

When asked about my facilitation methods — why I favor visual frameworks and guided exercises over roundtable discussion* and traditional brainstorming** — I often explain it with a story I heard in dog-training school…

Fido watches the street from his throne on the couch by the picture window, bored out of his mind with nothing to do all day. Along comes the mail carrier.

“Bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark bark! Bark bark bark bark bark!”

And on and on and on, until the mail is delivered and “the enemy” walks off.

Fido thinks “Excellent! I made that bad human go away from our house! I’ve done my job! Good Fido! Good dog!”

And Fido’s right! That is his job, to bark at people who come anywhere near the house. After all, every dog needs a job (that’s what makes them dogs) so, since nobody’s told him otherwise, he created his own job description. His own agenda. From what he can see, he’s pretty good at it.

Same thing goes for people.

Given a vacuum (real or imagined) we’re as likely as Fido to pursue our own agenda, doggedly [ha!] applying our best efforts for the good of the team, apparently making good progress, but, in reality, getting nowhere fast.

It’s been my experience that the structure, frameworks and clear direction of a fully programmed meeting are an excellent means to guide teams in their thinking, keeping everyone aligned and driving toward shared, concrete, actionable goals instead of barking at imaginary enemies.

Woof!

Of course, this rationale doesn’t begin and end with meetings. Vision, purpose, mission, roles, goals, structure, expectations… if the Fidos in your company (and we’re all Fidos) are unclear about any of these, you can bet they’re earnestly pursuing some “worthy” initiatives that add little to your bottom line.

All the Scooby Snacks (aka company perks) in the world won’t fix that, but strategically executed “dog whispering” by senior management will.

* Not that there isn’t a place for roundtable discussion, especially when facilitated by a neutral third party.

** Traditional brainstorming, on the other hand, has been shown to offer little true value, according to this excellent article by Jonah Lehrer.

Originally published at www.dangerouskitchen.com on February 12, 2014.