By Jordan Lee and Joe Slatter

[2021-12-03 5:27 p.m.] Jordan Lee

@Joe, thanks again for taking the time to meet today, I enjoyed it thoroughly!

I'm currently doing two things: one, looking for inspiration on how to create a collaborative piece (here's the first one) and two, reflecting on our conversation and how it fits into the larger picture of the book we decided on, Think Again by Adam Grant and the work Better Practice and RFN do.

Before we meet again, I'm thinking it would be a good idea for us both to think about the objective for the blog, what type of structure we think might work (interview style, conversational, essay format, etc.) and how transparent, or perhaps personal, we're wanting to get (i.e., you're a known contributor and educator on the website, I am unknown).

To echo your earlier sentiment, I'm also a fan of meta and I think this has turned into a really cool opportunity not just to talk about why Think Again is a useful resource (as originally intended), but to highlight unlearning, curiosity and open-minded collaboration in action. Exciting stuff!

Joe: I had met Jordan once before, I think, in a Zoom meeting. She had been described to me as young, smart, motivated, and accountable. When Kim Powell suggested Jordan help me write a blog/article, my initial reaction was skeptical. How was Jordan going to help me write?

I decided to trust Kim and met with Jordan. Her enthusiasm and open-mindedness struck me first. Not a bad start for a blog based on a book about the power of an open mind.

My daughter Emma, an educator living abroad, turned me onto Think Again. The author, Adam Grant, is an organizational psychologist, professor, and New York Times bestselling author many times over... a thought leader, to be sure. In the book, he encourages us to literally think again about our opinions, our interactions with others and how we approach the realities of our everyday. When we’re truly aware of what we don’t know – and not afraid of it – we can embrace new experiences and challenges with an open-minded, scientific curiosity. Pursuing truth rather than rightness, humble confidence rather than over-confidence. 

In many ways, it is a perfect complement to what we seek to do with Better Practice™ figure out what matters together, make better decisions faster and act together with grace and accountability.

After the initial meeting and Jordan’s helpful follow-up chat, we met one more time to discuss the objective of our blog, toss ideas around and decide how we wanted to approach it together.

[12/10/2021, 1:53 PM] Jordan Lee

 "Think Again, Together"

@Joe, here's a guide for our ensuing conversation as discussed

Blog: 1000-2000 words, improv style over teams

Objective: Demonstrate how Think Again is a resource which reiterates/reinforces how Better Practice and RFN approach their work with clients. ALSO demonstrate by doing – the blog is an example of unlearning, curiosity, open-minded, “maxi-minimum” collaboration in action.

Possible discussion topics:

1.      multi-generational workforces and,
2.      bringing someone new into the organization

• These topics give us both lots of room to position ourselves within the content and introduce anecdotes, personal reflections, etc.

• Joe: Leading edge of Gen X, almost a boomer, Jordan: millennial on cusp of Gen Z.

• This exercise ties back to what we learned in this book about better collaboration and how valuable and effective good collaboration can be, even when team members don't know each other well (or at all!). Ex. Joe and Jordan. 

Anchor points:

1.      Great forecasters love being wrong
2.      Psychological safety

Joe: Our meeting was on a Friday afternoon, and she sent the chat above shortly thereafter, capturing the essence of what we had concluded. We agreed she was going to take a shot at an introduction and have a draft no later than the following Monday. Barely over an hour later (check the time stamp) this lands in our Teams channel:

[12/10/2021, 3:04 PM] Jordan Lee

INTRODUCTION/EXPECTATIONS

Jordan: At RFN, one of my roles is to create and edit various forms of written content. Recently, I was tasked with writing a series of blogs meant to highlight valuable resources for our clients and fellow professional advisors. I am to interview advisors about a book or podcast they think is impactful and then write a blog about it for our readership. For my first installment, I decided I would interview the gregarious Joe Slatter, founder of the Better Practice methodology. The caveat? We’d never so much as had a conversation.

I’ve done enough similar kinds of writing that my approach to it is fairly programmatic. It’s made even easier when I get to interview someone else and have them supply most of the meat. So even though Joe and I had never spoken before, the framework that (I thought) would be dictating our conversation was a familiar, predictable comfort.

I did my best to prepare for our first ever conversation by listening to the audiobook version of the book he’d chosen to discuss, Think Again by Adam Grant. I did this, one, to create common ground and two, to demonstrate I was taking the assignment seriously (aka being a keener). At-a-glance, the book posits the ability to rethink and unlearn as more valuable and more enlightening than the accumulation of knowledge for its own sake.

After our virtual meeting, I immediately called my husband and delighted in telling him that it went in an unexpected direction. I then told a co-worker, with a lot of enthusiasm, how much fun I’d had watching Joe work through his thoughts on a book I was also excited about. At just past lunch time, it was clear that it had been the highlight of my Friday.

Joe did the unexpected: he proposed we write this blog together, in the spirit of meaningful collaboration. Very effectively, he triggered a curiosity in me that turned the blog writing process from routine (and safe) to invigorating (and uncomfortable). Normally, I procrastinate on writing until the pressure is such that I have no choice but to act (sadly, some of my best inspiration comes from desperation!). But this was different. I got to thinking immediately about how to tackle this unfamiliar project. A collaborative blog? What might that look like? How might that work?

The assignment shifted from the predictable to the unpredictable and the only answer I could think of was to do some research. Being out of my element made me realize, gleefully, that I was approaching the task at hand a little like a scientist: curious and open-minded, like Grant suggested in his book. Less focused on doing it the “right way” and more curious about the way itself.

[2021-12-11 8:51 a.m.] Joe Slatter

I love it. How close was that to a "single take"?

[2021-12-11 9:36 a.m.] Jordan Lee

I wrote a 100-word reflection on our meeting right after we first spoke and didn’t really change much adding it into the intro yesterday. So, the entire thing is more like two single takes combined into one.

 [2021-12-11 9:42 a.m.] Joe Slatter

That's pretty amazing.

[2021-12-11 9:42 a.m.] Joe Slatter

For a keener, in particular!

[2021-12-11 9:44 a.m.] Jordan Lee

Definitely not my usual style, so thank you!

[2021-12-11 9:47 a.m.] Joe Slatter

It reads as if it was easy to write.

[2021-12-11 9:51 a.m.] Jordan Lee

Truthfully, it was easy! Which is also not the norm. Usually, I really stew on things to make sure I’ve said it all exactly right. I don’t get to do much “creative” writing at work, so I think the excitement of being encouraged to try something new or figure it out as we go along made me feel like I had to get my thoughts out ASAP.

[2021-12-11 9:55 a.m.] Joe Slatter

You compared and contrasted "routine (and safe)" with "invigorating (and uncomfortable)". How do you reconcile that with what Grant discusses in the book in terms of psychological safety? It doesn't seem like the discomfort made you feel unsafe at all.

[2021-12-11 10:19 a.m.] Jordan Lee

Hmm, good question. Personally, I know feeling psychologically safe (especially as a new member of RFN) is a precursor for doing good work. As a serial perfectionist, it gives me the room to make mistakes without fear of judgement… a fear that really keeps me in check and makes me rethink things before saying them or writing them.

I think I felt a certain level of psychological safety going into our conversation because 1. I was asked to do a job I knew I was capable of and comfortable with doing and 2. I intentionally decided to interview you first because I’d seen you speak a bit in your Decision Dynamics videos about fool’s license and sub-Rosa. I wasn’t so worried about showing up and conducting the perfect interview, I was just interested to hear your take (although having read most of the book also helped me feel prepared).

I think the unexpected outcome of our conversation was only uncomfortable for as long as I held onto the notion of what the outcome was SUPPOSED to be. I wasn’t uncomfortable once I realized how cool it COULD be if I let those notions go. Leaning into the unexpected effectively required me to feel psychologically safe though, and I think you’re good at facilitating that feeling. So, it wasn’t such a big deal to just try something different.

 [2021-12-13 4:39 p.m.] Jordan Lee

@Joe, I’ve been thinking about the power dynamics, specifically, the imbalance of knowledge/experience that is sometimes very evident in multigenerational collaborative settings. Without elaborating any further, I’m curious about what successful multigenerational collaboration means to you. Considering our age difference, how have our interactions so far challenged or reaffirmed those beliefs?

Jordan: True to form, I wrote and rewrote my above question to Joe about five times before I finally got it out to him. Despite feeling like we had established a level of psychological safety, I felt it needed to be asked but I wasn’t sure how best to frame it. Was it too direct? Did introducing the idea of power dynamics seem too aggressive or negative?

At first, I thought it highlighted an insecurity about being young and “green” but quickly realized that in the context of our discussion about multigenerational workforces, this is a valid question. It reflects a particular aspect of my experience as a young millennial in the workforce and hints at past situations where my knowledge and experience were not valued by senior team members. It was an invitation for Joe to “walk-the-walk," so to speak. To weigh in and reinforce the psychological safety I had already communicated I needed to do this kind of out-of-the-box work with him, effectively.

[2021-12-16 10:17 a.m.] Joe Slatter

One of the great advantages of solving problems collaboratively is the power of diverse perspectives and diverse thinking. Successful multi-generational collaboration is where we can have a meaningful conversation that makes good use our differences.

What we're doing here is, in my mind, pure knowledge work. We don't need a team of "workers" to take on some easily explainable set of tasks that will culminate in the final product. I came into this struggling to understand how you were going to write something that I would put my name on. There isn't some capacity problem where I don't have time to write myself. As a result, I really had no idea what to expect.

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy and fun this has been. I found your introduction moving. You shared a perspective I would have never imagined. It opened my eyes to seeing some things differently and has spawned entire conversations with others. Thank you for that!

Jordan: I agree with Joe, recognizing the power of diverse perspectives is key to successful multigenerational collaboration; one that may necessarily involve an element of discomfort to be successful.

Grant talks about the Dunning-Kruger effect – the idea that we tend to be over-confident in situations where we likely lack competence. According to him, when we’re certain we know something, we’re at our most dangerous because we have no reason to look for gaps and flaws in our knowledge. No reason to unlearn or rethink.

Successful collaboration between people from different generations and lived experiences looks like letting go of our individual idea of what works so we can make room for what’s possibly better because we’re doing it together.

He advocates for what he calls confident humility, or “... having faith in our capabilities while also understanding that we may not have the right solution or even be addressing the right problem. That gives us enough doubt to re-examine our old knowledge and enough confidence to pursue new insights.” [page 47]

Joe: This is designed into the way RFN Advisory Group approaches discovery with clients at the start of our value acceleration program. We work with the client to assemble a group who represents the best “footprint” of the organization in the smallest number of people possible (usually 6-12). We call it a “maxi-min” group. By footprint, we mean cross section of functions, levels, and personality (cheerleader, influencer, skeptic, etc.). Generations often play an important part of that mix, particularly with family businesses.

We ask the group to tell stories about what they’ve experienced together, paying particular attention to reactions to what’s said. We facilitate a cadence of conversation that includes everyone in the room. Our job is to draw out the different perspectives and help the group see something they experienced themselves, differently. This provides extraordinarily valuable insights into many of the dimensions that drive performance and value in a business. It is common for business owners to comment on how valuable they found the conversations and how much they didn’t know they didn’t know.

When you’re playing a long game, the truth – the cold, hard (or not) reality, as best as you can discern – is enough – there is no value in making things look better (or worse) than they “actually” are. Grant talks about how great forecasters love being wrong (in the short-term) because they want to be right (in the long-term). This applies directly to how we work with clients and with each other within our own team.

Decision Dynamics is the first 90-day sprint in the value acceleration program. Powered by Better Practice, this sprint introduces clients to a set of guiding principles that encourage self-leadership, creativity and open, effective collaboration across functions, levels, and personalities. The truth is enough is one of the guiding principles of Better Practice because it encourages us to identify challenges and opportunities early, accelerating progress towards happiness and success. We help our clients think again, together.

Jordan: To say this blog is unconventional might be an understatement. The introduction is smack dab in the middle of the text and all our “behind the curtain” working notes and raw conversation are very much on display for readers to see. Can we still call this piece of pure knowledge work, as Joe put it, a blog?

Who knows… and who cares? We believe the purpose it serves is greater than the convention it was originally bound by. Guided by Better Practice, and in the spirit of Think Again, our goal was to demonstrate how this real life “maxi-min” duo, who began as strangers, could successfully become a team built on mutual trust, fun and shared purpose.

[2022-1-18 3:50 p.m.] Joe Slatter

I moved our bios to the end. I think it is even more interesting starting cold with the chat.

[2022-1-18 4:31 p.m.] Joe Slatter

Julia just read it. She loves it.

Now she wants to read the book.

This is cool.

 

About the Authors:

Jordan Lee is a 27-year-old millennial with seven years of experience in technical writing and (historical) research. Before joining Ready for Next at the end of 2021, she provided operations and marketing support in the financial industry. Jordan’s interests include reading, ongoing learning and unlearning about topics related to diversity and inclusion and watching horror movies.

Joe Slatter is a 50-something-year-old genXer with 30 years of experience spanning information systems, process, organization, and behavior design and development. He has lived in six countries and worked extensively with global, cross-functional, and highly distributed teams. Joe orders his three most important roles as: 1. Parent 2. Teacher 3. Barista.