Some years ago, I was asked to help a major charity develop their new volunteering strategy.
I say “new”, but despite being one of the sector’s biggest volunteer organisations, it had never had any kind of strategy for volunteering, so perhaps “inaugural” would be a better description.
To kick it off, I was asked to host a session with the top team to share with them the plan and process we’d be going through.
But I pushed back, explaining that instead, I wanted to use it as a working session to clarify their aims, after which I’d come back with a better plan to achieve them.
In my head it sounded perfectly logical. Get clear on the aims before you design the process. But in reality, it was a car-crash.
Because, as we went around the room, each of the executives listed out what they thought the strategy needed to deliver… or contain… or consider… or resolve. Every response was different, each unconnected with any of the others, some in direct contradiction.
As we neared the end of the session, and I hopelessly summarised back this hotchpotch list of competing demands, the general tone of the room could best be summed up as, “Well, you did ask!”
After a short lie down, I set up 1-to-1 calls with each attendee over the following week, to try and work out why my so elegant opening to the project had come so spectacularly unstuck.
What I discovered was this: having read the agenda and seen we would be discussing the aims for the new strategy, each executive had spoken with whomever in their division worked with volunteers, and had essentially compiled a list of demands.
Of course they did. I still can’t believe I was so naïve as to think they wouldn’t.
Two weeks later we had the follow-up session, originally billed as my “big reveal” of the strategy process.
With the whole project, and possibly my own future prospects on the line, I rolled the dice and opened with “I’m going to ask you the exact same question as I did last time, but first, I want to ask you this: from what perspective should we be answering this question?”
I think I gave them four or five options, something like personal opinion, departmental needs, current year budget, our strategic goals, or our beneficiaries’ needs.
It was a fascinating discussion, not just from my perspective, but for everyone else there – complex, nuanced, thoughtful, reflective.
It took a while for everyone to align, but once they had, it took no time at all for them to arrive at unanimous agreement on the aims for the volunteering strategy itself.
As with many patterns, once you notice it, you start to see it everywhere. So, it’s probably unsurprising that since that day, I’ve seen similar dynamics in lots of other places.
I’ve seen IT representatives on working groups who think they’re there to safeguard the systems roadmap from a bunch of random requests. I’ve seen finance folks in those same settings who think their sole purpose is to protect the budget from overspend.
It doesn’t stop there.
So many of the conversations that I have with CEOs who are struggling with their boards boil down to the fact that half the trustees are defending one particular subgroup or service area or special interest or personal hobbyhorse.
And the thing is, most of them believe that’s what they’re legitimately there to do.
In their minds they were brought in to provide a particular perspective: their expertise in investment, or safeguarding, or diversity and inclusion, or lived experience, whatever it happens to be.
And all of that’s great. The issue comes when that’s their only perspective, and “if my perspective clashes with someone else’s, hey, it’s not my problem to solve”.
Except it is. Because it’s certainly not the CEOs problem to solve. It’s not really even the Chair’s responsibility to solve. It’s the collective responsibility of each and every trustee in the room.
Whether as a working group, a trustee board, or indeed as a sector, we have to recognise that there are other perspectives than our own. But more that that, we have to accept the responsibility, ourselves, for reconciling them.
We will never speak with one voice as long as we’re arguing among ourselves, or worse, “agreeing to disagree”.
So, the next time you find yourself at an impasse, try the question: “from what perspective should we be coming at this?”
You might be surprised by the quality of conversation that follows.