Work Crafting Via Negotiated Change

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I add to my list of resources as we COF (deal with our Crisis Online Formats of work, teaching, learning with little or no preparation) in response to #COVID19. Experts are helping by holding free webinars (try a Google search of ‘COVID free webinar’), writing howtos, and the like -- thank you all! Here I will try and do my part by offering some thoughts focused on a personal, bottom-up approach to crafting your work by negotiating with your colleagues. In this time of change, we have more latitude (and more need) to craft our work.

If you work for an organization, I hope leadership acted on advice as Cali Williams Yost offered in HBR a few days ago: What’s Your Company’s Emergency Remote Work Plan? That said, it is likely that the plan isn’t perfect, or it just might not be perfect for you. If you work for yourself, you may be great at remote work in normal situations, but you may need to support your clients’ preferences now—time to do some work crafting via negotiated change. 

A tweet from Scott Berkun gives us some context:

Click on image for full @Berkun thread

Click on image for full @Berkun thread

Yes, Yes, Yes… and….

Perhaps even sooner than a week, start thinking about how your new way of working is going. You may want to do some 5T Thinking™. Start with your Target(s), Talent(s - your skills and those of the people you work with), Technology, Techniques, and keep it all in context with the Times we’re working in (tragic and uncertain). Write them down. Maybe start a spreadsheet, putting these issues in the rows. If the spreadsheet approach isn’t appealing, no worries, grab a coffee and think about negotiating around the different aspects of your work — it will still work.

Stop-Look-Listen

WorkCraftingNegotiation.png

  • As soon as you can, start with the questions in Scott’s tweet: what’s helpful, what’s frustrating, how can we improve. (If you want to dig deeper, try doing a personal After Action Review and or think about how you might eventually add some automation to the process). Add more to your spreadsheet. 

  • Talk to those you’re working with about the questions… add more to your spreadsheet, or just refill your coffee.

  • Now start working across the columns -- put a few stakeholders or stakeholder groups into the columns (e.g., your team, your team lead, main client)

  • Look at your rows again and add a few rows below each for different possible outcomes (e.g., if one row is document sharing, the rows below could be Box, Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, email…) If “Working core hours” is a row, the rows below could be none, 10-2, 9-5, etc.

  • Now think about how much the different stakeholders value those specific outcomes. Now you’re ready to Think in 5T -- and negotiate to craft your work.

Mix - Negotiate

Take what you’ve learned and consider how you might change the mix across those 5Ts to make your work, and the work of others, better. You’re crafting your work, but you can think of it as a negotiation. You are unlikely to be entirely in control of the situation (is that the understatement of the week?) Think about your stakeholders, the different issues on the table (the rows), and how the various people involved may gain or lose if things are changed. You can guestimate by scoring the different issue/stakeholder cells on a -10 to +10 scale: -10 someone will die, -8 that person really hates it, 0 don’t care, +6 pretty good, +10 like winning the lottery (so very rare), etc.

Keep in mind that the best outcome will likely come from not what any of you started thinking was the best solution; it will probably come from the ideas you shared together. For an excellent negotiation resource, see Getting (More) of What You Want by Margaret Neale and Tom Lys.

The rows and columns help you understand why some stakeholders may resist an adjustment you’re suggesting. They may also help you negotiate tradeoffs (e.g., I’ll move to Google Docs, but then we all promise that we won’t send emails with attached documents -- static attachments being a sure-fire way to kill collaboration).

Feedback Loop - Sharing

Whatever you craft, it still won’t be perfect, or the “times” will change, and you’ll need to regroup. Just keep in mind that you can craft your work by negotiating. You may want to set up a collaboration space to share ideas, then once a week, open the floor for adjustments. Maybe take a team coffee break and read Jane E. Dutton and Amy Wrzesniewski’s article: What Job Crafting Looks Like for more ideas.

Be well. Let me know in the comments below if I can be of help.