You Don't Have to Do It Alone

How to Involve Others to Get Things Done

Richard H. Axelrod, Emily M. Axelrod, Julie Beedon, Robert W. Jacobs

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9781576752784
• eBook ISBN: 9781609944117
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

We all need to involve others to accomplish tasks and achieve our goals, but all too often involving others seems like more trouble than it's worth. You Don't Have to Do It Alone Alone is the Swiss Army Knife of involvement—a set of tools that can be used in any setting to get you the help you need. The authors lay out a simple, straightforward plan for involving others to get things done, detailing a practical five-step involvement process that begins with five key questions: What kind of involvement is needed?
How do I know who to include?
How do I invite people to become involved?
How do I keep people involved?
How do I finish the job? The answers to these questions serve as a guide to finding the right people and keeping them energized, enthusiastic, and committed until the work is completed. Real life examples from corporations, government, and nonprofits illustrate the process in action. You'll learn to involve others in a way that will actually make your work easier, resulting in less stress, better ideas, and more successful outcomes.

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Chapter 1

WHAT KIND OF INVOLVEMENT IS NEEDED?

Afew years ago, Jake was faced with a challenging project. A friend had given him his first puppy, a black Labrador retriever. His family already had dogs; his daughter and son each had one. But Theo (named after jazz great Thelonius Monk) was Jake’s first, and that made him responsible for everything from feeding and training the puppy to taking him outside in the middle of the night when nature called.

Theo proved to be an active little guy. His idea of fun included activities like chewing on someone’s sandal and polishing off a whole chicken left unguarded on a kitchen counter.

After a few days of this, Jake’s wife helped him get clear that more involvement was needed. “You have three choices, honey,” she patiently explained. “Theo can clean up his act, or you can find him another home.”

“What’s the third choice?” Jake wondered.

“You can find a new home. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal.”

Jake’s work was cut out for him. The kids already considered Theo part of the family—to say nothing about Jake’s growing attachment to the pup. But Theo needed to behave better if the Jacobs’ happy home was to remain intact.

Jake trying to get the job done alone was not the ticket. Different people with different kinds of involvement were needed. First came the instructor at an obedience class. Next came the kids. Someone had to partner with Theo on his homework when Jake was out of town on business.

Theo had to pitch in and do his fair share. He had to learn that sandals were for people’s feet, not dogs’ mouths, and that his food was in a bowl on the floor, not on a tray on the counter. Even Jake’s wife had to reluctantly get involved so the pupil received consistent rewards and corrections.

Jake was confident of success if everyone pulled together. And they did.

Today when Theo and Jake take walks around town, people comment on what a good dog he is. Most days Theo visits Jake’s office, where he’s become a company mascot. It’s even been more than a year since he ate the chicken that was left unattended in the kitchen one day!

By involving others, Jake achieved both of his goals: a four-legged friend for life and a reasonably contented wife.

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Is Doing It Alone Your Best Answer?

In Jake’s situation, it was clear he needed to involve others. But it’s not often such a clear-cut decision. Involving other people takes time. There’s an inherent “hassle factor” when you get more cooks in the kitchen. How will it impact the quality of the work you do? Are you going to have to make too many concessions to keep people satisfied that their voices are being heard? Is your invitation for others to get involved the first step down a slippery slope where every decision becomes a never-ending debate? Your track record of including others may have left a bad taste in your mouth.

Given these possible headaches, it’s important to decide whether it makes sense to involve others before getting clear on what kind of involvement you might need. We recommend you start with a tool we call the Return on Involvement Assessment Tool. It can help you decide from the get-go whether to involve other people in what you’re up to.

ROI is business shorthand for return on investment. It’s a standard way of assessing the potential value of a financial transaction. The ROI calculation answers the question, “Is this work worthwhile from a financial perspective?” Initiatives with higher returns on investment are allocated time, money, and other resources. Initiatives with lower ROIs get put on hold or are scrapped.

This traditional definition of ROI doesn’t deal with the additional question, “Does it make sense to involve others in this work?” To answer that question, effective involvers supplement the traditional return on investment analysis with a return on involvement analysis. This second type of ROI focuses on whether an involvement-based approach makes sense for what you need to get done. A high return on involvement means you’ll see a big payoff in quality, commitment, and productivity from engaging others. A lower return on involvement means you may do the work better alone or with only a few others.

You can see the Return on Involvement Assessment Tool in Figure 1.1.

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FIGURE 1.1

THE RETURN ON INVOLVEMENT ASSESSMENT TOOL

Your Own Capability

• Could you complete the work on your own? Would tackling it alone compromise the quality of your work?

How Others Would Feel About Joining You

• Are others likely to see the work as a good investment of their time and energy? Will they be excited to join this effort? Would they feel left out or even resentful if you did not include them?

How Others Could Add Value to Your Efforts

• What benefits could result from involving others in this work?

What It Will Take to Involve Others

• How difficult will it be to get others involved in this work? How much time and energy will be needed to keep them involved?

Overall Assessment

• How would the benefits from involving others compare to the costs needed to involve them?
• Based on your answers to these questions, does it make sense to involve others?

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An engineering manager we know road-tested the Return on Involvement Assessment Tool. He used it in approaching a project to reduce the cycle time it took to make revisions to engineering drawings. Let’s follow his line of thinking through his answers to the tool’s questions in Figure 1.2.

FIGURE 1.2

THE RETURN ON INVOLVEMENT ASSESSMENT TOOL EXAMPLE

Reducing the Cycle Time to Make Revisions to Engineering Drawings

Your Own Capability

• Could you complete the work on your own? Would tackling it alone compromise the quality of your work?
• Engineering Manager Response: I could complete this project on my own with confidence because I have intimate knowledge of where breakdowns occur and how to fix them.

How Others Would Feel About Joining You

• Are others likely to see the work as a good investment of their time and energy? Will they be excited to join this effort? Would they feel left out or even resentful if you did not include them?
• Engineering Manager Response: This is a high priority project for the entire engineering organization and for our internal customers, the production organization. A lot of people have a big stake in getting these revisions done faster and would like to help make it happen.

How Others Could Add Value to Your Efforts

• What benefits could result from involving others in this work?
• Engineering Manager Response: I could get this project done on my own, but it would be better to involve others. Together we would probably find more ways to get these revisions done faster. From past experience, I’m sure it will be easier to get these changes implemented if I let more people get involved.

What It Will Take to Involve Others

• How difficult will it be to get others involved in this work? How much time and energy will be needed to keep them involved?
• Engineering Manager Response: Since this is such a critical project, I don’t think I will have much trouble getting other people signed up to work on it. I think if we thought it through on the front end, we could develop a plan that would make it pretty easy to keep them involved to see the job through.

Overall Assessment

• How would the benefits from involving others compare to the costs needed to involve them?
• Engineering Manager Response: By involving people from the very beginning, I won’t have to spend time convincing them of solutions that I developed. I will also have the benefit of their ideas and as a result the solution will be better.
• Based on your answers to these questions, does it make sense to involve others?
• Engineering Manager Response: Absolutely.

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Now it’s your turn. Think of some project or initiative where you might be wondering about whether it makes sense to involve others. Then use the Return on Involvement Assessment Tool to get clearer about whether you should involve others or not.

What Kind of Involvement Do You Need?

If you have decided it makes sense to involve others, you now need to determine the kind of involvement that will be best for your particular situation.

Whether you’re acting as a manager at work or welcoming a new puppy into your home, it’s important not to be tempted to skip this question. Early on you may feel pulled toward immediate action. Maybe you’ve got a big assignment that’s due soon. Pausing to get clear before you start working may seem like a waste of valuable time. Or maybe you’re thinking that this question is overkill for you: “What we’re doing is simple. Heck, we could be done in the time it’ll take to determine the kind of involvement I need.”

These are common feelings. But if you’re serious about being an effective involver, it’s important to rethink these assumptions. Rather than plunging headfirst into your work, take a “Go slow to go fast” approach. When you invest the time to get clear about the kind of involvement you need, you make it easier for people to join you. You’ll be able to easily explain the type of help you need and why you need them to pitch in. People are drawn to clarity. Answer this question well and people will want to work with you.

It may be easiest for you to do this up-front thinking alone, or you may want to ask for help from a few others. Either way, your most important objective is to be able to explain clearly and succinctly the kind of involvement you need and why you’ve decided on this type.

Consider who, if anyone, can help you get clear. If you want to assemble a core group and haven’t yet, do so now. There’s no rule about how many people is the right number. Invite enough people to ensure that your initial thinking is solid, but not so many that you get bogged down before you even get started. Don’t choose folks with whom you tend to always agree. Reach out to a critical friend. If you pay attention to the big picture, recruit someone who focuses on details. If you’re the logical type, find someone who picks up on other people’s emotions.

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Why Determines How

When you get clear on the reasons you need to involve others in your work, you’ll become clear on the kind of involvement you’ll need to get the job done.

Here are four basic reasons for reaching out to engage others:

• You need others’ specific expertise or “Know-How Involvement”— there are skills and knowledge required that you don’t have.
• You need others’ help with basic to do’s or “Arms and Legs Involvement”—the job is too big for you to get done on your own.
• You need others’ buy-in or “Care and Commitment Involvement”— without their long-term commitment you’ll never be successful.
• You need others to become more capable in the future or “Teaching and Learning Involvement”—this enables others to take on more responsibilities and frees you to make other contributions.

These different kinds of involvement are not mutually exclusive. In most cases, you’ll need to tap into more than one type of involvement to be successful. Let’s take a look at the story of Jake and his new puppy that opened this chapter.

Jake needed the Know-How Involvement of the obedience class instructor to tame Theo’s rambunctious behavior. He needed the Arms and Legs Involvement of his kids to pitch in with Theo’s training when he was out of town. His wife’s Care and Commitment Involvement was a critical success factor, because if she didn’t buy in to the whole idea of another dog, Theo would never have made it in the front door. And during those hours spent in the yard calling out “Heel, Theo, heel!” Jake needed Teaching and Learning Involvement from the pup so that he didn’t face the prospect of losing his voice every time he walked the dog.

Our engineer focused on a different combination of types of involvement in reducing the cycle time it took to make revisions to engineering drawings. He believed he had the knowledge and experience to complete the redesign work on his own, but doing so could have left others confused about why he was making certain changes. They could have objected to his plans. This told him he needed to reach out and create some Care and Commitment Involvement.

By completing his return on involvement analysis, he realized that without involving others, he could also be missing an opportunity to come up with the best solution to his problem. Though he thought he knew enough to solve the problem on his own, it was clear to him that others had experiences and perspectives he did not. So there was also a component of Know-How Involvement he needed to consider as he went about his work.

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Let’s take a closer look at each of these four kinds of involvement and how you’ll know which is your best bet in different situations.

Know-How Involvement. You use Know-How Involvement to tap into skills, knowledge, or experience that is needed to move your work forward but that you don’t possess. Telltale signs that this is the kind of involvement you need include situations where you:

• Realize you lack formal schooling for the work at hand. This is the case, for example, when you could benefit from having a finance expert on a project team at work, a marketing expert for a new program at your local school, or an engineer to help assess the renovations needed at your church.
• Are clear about your current circumstances and where you want to be in the future, but don’t see a roadmap for getting from “here” to “there.” Architects, interior designers, and general contractors can all help you bring the image of your dream home into focus and lay out the steps to follow in building it. A manager m...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: What Kind of Involvement is Needed?
• Chapter 2: How do I Know Whom to Include?
• Chapter 3: How do I Invite People to Become Involved?
• Chapter 4: How do I Keep People Involved?
• Chapter 5: How do I Finish the Job?
• Chapter 6: Meetings: The Involvement Edge
• Chapter 7: Where to Start
• Appendix A: The Involvement Checklist
• Appendix B: For Further Learning
• Other Books by the Authors
• Training by the Authors
• Index
• About the Authors