We all have some level of influence on the systems around us, but none of us have unilateral decision-making authority to change everything we want to. This tool helps us be more mindful and creative with frustrating situations we can’t just fix.
In this episode, Richard and Peter share their favorite tool for figuring out what to do in a frustrating situation where you don’t have the power to just fix it, including a few real examples.
Episode Links
Diana Larsen’s “Circles and Soup” post
Additional Learning Opportunity
Leading Organizational Transformation (CAL-E and CAL-O) – Aug 2023 (Virtual)
Episode Transcription
Peter Green
In our episode describing the six conditions of effective teams, we briefly shared a tool we use to think about how to make changes that seem kind of daunting to us. In this episode, we’ll explore that tool more fully. When we’re in a frustrating situation, it’s a simple but powerful tool for us to think about what we can do to get unstuck.
Richard Lawrence
We all have some level of influence on the systems around us, but none of us have unilateral decision-making authority to change everything we want to. This tool helps us be more mindful and creative with frustrating situations we can’t just fix. We frequently use it in team retrospectives to figure out what actions we might take. ScrumMasters, managers, coaches, executives and many others can benefit from using it to think about how to influence change. We’ll explain the model by sharing a pretty typical work scenario—one where you’re part of a large group, just one voice among many, and you’re frustrated with how the group operates in some way. Then, we’ll use two non-work situations to illustrate first, a situation where you may have a lot of power but don’t want to just use it because of the side effects of that, and then a situation where it feels like you have almost no power.
Peter
This tool is a great way to start thinking about how to influence change. And our goal is to help you with whatever challenges are most frustrating you right now. If you’re feeling stuck on something, whether that’s trying to take a more human-centric approach to your work, trying to make your product or business outcomes better, or if you’ve just got a more tactical, process-related question, let us know about it. Send us an email at mailbag@humanizingwork.com with a few details about the situation, and we’ll share how we might think through your challenge right here on the Humanizing Work Show.
Richard
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Ok, so this tool is called “Own-Influence-Respond.” It’s inspired by and iterates on a model we first learned from Diana Larsen, and we’ll link to in the show notes. The model is three concentric circles.
The inner circle represents things we own. We have authority to do something about things in this circle. It’s actions we can take on our own.
The next circle represents things we don’t own, but that we can influence.
The outer circle is called “Respond.” Sometimes we can’t even influence the situation we’re in. But this circle can still be really powerful, because it helps us be mindful about how we respond to the situation. We do have control over that. When we’re frustrated, we can respond by getting cynical, or we can respond by choosing to accept the things we cannot change and make the best of it anyway, or we can examine whether something we believe is in the “Respond” circle might actually shift into “Influence” if we could find the right approach.
Peter
That’s basically it. It’s a super simple tool. So let’s use some examples to show how powerful it can be.
The first one we’ll walk through is from my time as a ScrumMaster for the Adobe Audition team. Audition was an audio product and it was part of the Creative Suite, which was more than a dozen products that were bundled together with lots of cool connections between the products when customers bought the entire suite. Audition was and is a great product, but not nearly as well-known as the big players in the Creative Suite like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat. So, on our team, we didn’t have a super high level of political power to change how things were done. We were also the first product to adopt Scrum, which worked well for us, but then created a lot of tension in how we worked compared to the standard approach at the time for other products in the Creative Suite.
Richard
What are some examples of those tensions, Peter, that were particularly frustrating for you and the team?
Peter
Well, the first example that comes to mind is that the Creative Suite had a schedule mapped out long before the release and so we were releasing Creative Suite products, typically, about every 18 to 24 months. And, as a suite, there was a date about six months before we released the product that we called “feature complete.” Basically, we were developing features in the first two thirds of that time frame, now you were fixing bugs and you were figuring out integration into the installer, and the marketing teams had to, at that point, start figuring out how to market the features that were done; so that created some tension for us, because when we hit that feature complete date that first cycle where we adopted Scrum, we were ready to release. We didn’t have bugs to fix–we were ready. We had been integrating the whole time. We had been working with our folks to document the features the entire time, and so we weren’t really sure what we were supposed to do for the next six months.
So, that’s one clear example that stands out. The traditional cycle didn’t match what we were up to anymore.
Richard
Let’s talk about that one. So, the “not being able to build any features in the last six months,“ that was frustrating. You used the phrase, “we’re not allowed to build new features.” So that sounds like you were categorizing that in the “Respond” circle– we don’t have control over it.
Peter
I would start there. That was our first response. And I think this is often our first response when we’re part of a big group like that, or a large company policy. “Well, we’re not allowed to.” And really, the power of this model is challenging that assumption that we’re not allowed to do something.
Richard
How did you challenge it on that team?
Peter
The first thing we did was try to make it clear that we really could release that day. The Creative Suite would have allowed us to say “Audition is going to go out early,” six months early. Now, that would have made no sense from a business standpoint. But we really wanted to make it clear that this is possible on a big Creative Suite product. So, we visualized that, using a bug curve. Prior to Scrum and all the other products like Scrum, one of the ways that Adobe kept track of whether a product was ready to release, was something that they called “open bug count,” so, how many bugs are we aware of? We’ve logged them and there was this curve that went down over time from feature complete to ready to release and the rule, essentially was, that you need to be at zero bugs in order to release. Our open bug count, if we compared that to previous cycles for our own team or compared that to other products in the suite, was essentially bouncing off zero. So we started to visualize that this actually was possible, and then we went and started asking questions of other groups in the suite to say, “If (just if), we were to keep developing features for another three months, what impact might that have on the other things that depended on us, and that we depended on?” and we started advocating for that.
Richard
I like this as an example of the advice that we give all the time for the “Influence” circle, “If you can’t fix it, make it more visible.” Or even, it’s a way of moving from the “Respond” circle to the “Influence” circle. We’re saying “I can’t change it directly, but is there a way I can make it visible to somebody who could? Now I have, potentially, some influence over it.”
Peter
Right. So that was definitely a move into influence for us, and there were a couple of other ones that were kind of like that where we were showing that we really could do it; but I think the other important part here is that just strongly advocating without a recognition that we are a part of a broader system wouldn’t have been effective. Another big part of influence is understanding how the decision you want to make might influence other people, where you’re just not aware of how that would have a negative impact on them if you did it.
Richard
I like the way you describe that, of what would happen if we continued building features at a high quality for three more months, if you were asking that in a curious way, rather than making an argument about “We should do this, because look at how low our bug count is,” you might have discovered that there were downstream effects of that, like the marketing team can’t keep up unless they know what features are available, because they have a six month cycle for building out comprehensive marketing about this project, or something.
Peter
Yeah, there was marketing, there were pretty well-written user documents, and in those days, you had to actually burn all the installers on DVDs and then send those to plants to manufacture them and put them into a box, so there were a lot of things where it wasn’t just, like it is now, like just put an executable file on a website and download it. So there were a lot of downstream impacts.
Richard
What’s an example of something that stayed in the “Respond” circle for that team?
Peter
As we started to explore whether we could go early, or continue to develop features, or whatever the options were, what we found out is that there really was a hard stop about three months before the release, so there was nothing we could do about that, really. We just had to say, “Well, this is just part of being a product in a larger suite.” And so, we can just choose to be frustrated about that, or we can choose to say “Great, that’s the way it is, so how can we respond well to that?” And one of the ways we did that was to start to take a longer term view, to say “Maybe it’s not this release where we start to influence other teams at the company, but maybe we can start thinking about how to influence the next cycle.” That actually was a successful approach. As we started to share that we were ready to go, that we were not working long overtime hours trying to get this thing out of the door, that was influential to other teams at the company to say “Huh! That might be nice if we could do that as well,” So that influenced things, so it’s interesting that our response to that was to take a longer view and think about how we could influence over the long term. I think we always want our change to happen now, and taking a long term view is another way that we can respond more effectively to that.
Richard
Let’s talk about the “Own” circle. There are probably some obvious things that any team owns. Because nobody outside of the team cares what you’re doing with them. What are some examples of things on that team that weren’t obviously in control of the team, when somebody might have said, “No, we’re not allowed to do that,” but you discovered that you do actually have ownership over them?
Peter
I think a good example of that is that as we started adopting Scrum, at the end of every Sprint, we could get feedback from our actual customers, but the program where you could actually show features to customers early, our kind of pre-release or beta program, was not set up to do that until, again, the last kind of six months of the release. So when we first adopted Scrum, we went and talked to legal and there was a team that helped manage those user forums and how everything worked– we went and talked to them– and said “Is it possible for us to get our pre-release started (I think) maybe after about three sprints?” We actually were using our pre-release program to release the build at the end of a Sprint that we downloaded at the Sprint review and to start getting really early feedback. So that’s an example of an “Own.”
The other one is related to the previous scenario, where, when we hit that three month “We really have to stop now,” point, we had to decide what to do in those three months. So we decided to just start the next release and continue developing features for the release that was coming after that one. So those were a couple of things that were clearly in the “Own” category. So that’s a work example.
But we mentioned previously that this is useful pretty much any time we’re frustrated. A scenario that many of us often get frustrated with as parents, is things like how we interact with our kids, and house rules and things like that. And, Richard, you mentioned an example of this to me yesterday. Do you want to share a little bit about a frustration that you were experiencing at home?
Richard
Yeah. I have three sons who are in their late teens or early twenties at this point, and they are all currently living with us as they finish up college or, one’s about to get married– that sort of thing. I have started doing a lot more projects around the house recently. Our house has gotten to a certain age, and wanting to accomplish some things here, and I’ve discovered that many of my tools have gone missing. And when I ask my sons about it, nobody knows where they are, “No, I didn’t use it last,” and so I’m spending a lot of time looking for tools.
Pete
Oh my gosh, can I just say, “Yes. This is a common tension in our house as well.”
Richard
So, that’s the problem. This feels like one where I have a lot of power potentially And my knee-jerk reaction was to say “This is in the ‘Own’ circle. Nobody touches my tools anymore. I’m buying new ones, and painting them a certain color, and you can’t touch them anymore.” I haven’t done that. Maybe you can coach me through how to use this tool to think more effectively in this situation, where I do have a lot of power. I don’t feel powerless, but there are risks to using that.
Peter
Yeah. Why didn’t you just say “Ultimatum. Don’t touch my tools or else”?
Richard
I actually enjoy collaborating with my sons on projects, I enjoy having them help me out with things, and I enjoy seeing them doing a lot of their own creative projects, sometimes using my tools. I also like borrowing their tools from time to time. My youngest, especially, has a nice collection of tools. He’s an engineering student and likes building stuff and occasionally he has a thing I need; and so I recognized,”Well I might be able to protect my tools to a greater extent, but it probably wouldn’t be good, for even effectiveness around tools, let alone consequences to the relationship, for me to say “I don’t want to share with you on this.”
Peter
Alright, so you’re mindfully choosing not to take unilateral action in the “Own” circle. What are some things that you’re considering in the “Influence” circle instead?
Richard
In the “Influence” circle, one of the things that I’ve done even in the last week, is my youngest has been complaining about how messy the garage and the tool organization is, and so I’ve let him take the lead in reorganizing the garage and my tools, and helping me come up with a system to keep track of them all and not lose them: so I’m kind of giving him some ownership in the tools being well organized and returned to their spaces, and I think he cares even more than I do about things being organized, giving us a common purpose around the tools being in the right place more often. I’m also going to have to spend some money on tool boxes now that I’ve done that, to make him happy
Peter
The fun part. What’s something that you are intentionally leaving in the “Respond” circle?
Richard
I think I’ve accepted that there’s going to be some amount of the things just not getting put back right away, or properly, and I recognize that that’s a thing I do sometimes. I can look around my office right now and see a few tools that I haven’t put away. And so I think I have accepted that we’re not going to be perfect at this. And some part of my working in this space is going to be occasionally having to go look for a tool and talk with people and that’s just the nature of the thing.
Peter
I think there are a lot of similarities here to a CEO or a founder who does have a lot of authority, who could make a lot of unilateral decisions, but using this model they could think through what are the potential downsides of “I’m just going to put that in the ‘Own’ category and I’m just going to set the rule versus acknowledging that there are probably better ways to influence and some things that I just need to accept kind of ‘getting to responsibility,’” to use the Christopher Avery term. “This is how I’m going to respond when things don’t go well.”
Richard
This is really common in a company that is growing out of the early start-up stage where the founder’s hands are in everything, to a larger company where you want to have a capable team that owns things so you don’t have to do everything; and ideally, you want them to do a lot of things their own way, so it’s better than what you could do by yourself, and that often requires deliberately not putting things into the “Own” circle.
Pete
Let’s shift to the complete other end of the spectrum, where you have almost no power. I know that you studied political science and you have some background in that, and I’m curious if any political examples come to mind for you, because I think this is an area where almost all of us feel almost completely powerless to change a frustrating situation.
Richard
It’s a really nice day in Denver right now and it’s getting really hot in my office because I had to close my windows before recording this. My street was originally supposed to be a nice, quiet residential street and then a few years ago, the neighboring city, about six blocks to the south, connected a major street to the end of my street at the border, so it kind of jogs over a block and connects to my street and now my street is the major connector between a major street in Denver and a major street in Aurora and we get a lot more traffic and faster traffic and I’m right on the corner with a two-way stop where people are honking at each other all the time for not stopping or for stopping when they shouldn’t. And so I get a lot of street noise and had to close my window before this recording to cut down on the street noise even though it’s a really nice 70 degree (fahrenheit) day out there. So that’s an example where I feel really powerless.
Peter
But you have ownership of closing your window. Not the most satisfying–
Richard
Accepting a hotter office to have a good recording–
Peter
Yeah. And it’s not something where you can just own it. I imagine you can’t just go block off the streets without severe consequences. You can’t just– “I’m just gonna put speed bumps down…” Those are not things that you own. So how are you thinking about what you can influence, and how you respond?
Richard
A couple of neighbors with younger children are more fired up about this even than I am and they have started making connections to government leaders and the traffic department in both cities and arranging meetings and things like that, and so, keeping up on that a little bit and it’s really somebody else on my street doing the influence kind of work, and sometimes that happens where you can support somebody else’s work and kind of together have influence that you might not have on your own.
Peter
I think there’s an important pattern there, which is that being a supporter, kind of being a follower instead of a leader, saying “Somebody else is already doing this, and I could try to take the lead on it, but it’s probably more useful for me to be a great supporter of other people trying to influence things,” is a pattern that’s true when the authority is pretty low. Find the people who are doing things you believe in and think might be influential, and be a great supporter for them in whatever way you can.
Richard
And collectively, we can have more influence, and I don’t have to agree with every detail about how they are doing it. There may be some recommendations that they are pushing that are not the things I would recommend, but I would rather have more influence together, that’s not perfect, than to go my own way and try to have influence by myself that’s different in some way.
Peter
Great. So, those are just a few examples of how we use this model, Own, Influence, Respond. We would love to hear from you if you’re going to put this to use. Where you get struck.
Where do you struggle to figure out how to respond effectively? What are some ways that you’re influencing more effectively? Let us know in the comments on YouTube or shoot us an email at mailbag@humanizingwork.com
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