David asks: What does “being on the same page” really mean? And how is it done?"
According to me being on the same page, means not just understanding, or agreement but something much deeper.
Something that has the words alignment and commitment with it.
It means coming to a shared decision about the course of action to take, and a common commitment to shape that reality.
It also means understanding not just the external visible symptoms, but also agreeing to the underlying causes.
And that is difficult, because it often means going out of our comfort zones, and looking at someone else's realities, and that is fraught with risk for the corporate drone.
And so, in organizations, when we should be striving for alignment, we settle for agreement.
When we should be driving towards commitment, we go with the comfort of command and control.
As one of the organizations keeps telling its employees in its learning initiatives, every action has a consequence. Often when you look at the consequence you can make a pretty good guess about the action.
Looking at the corporate world as an external consultant sometimes I am surprised that we achieve even so much. That actually fills me with hope. Imagine if we started building in commitment and alignment. What all we could achieve then !
Part of the problem in building alignment is that if the decision making process was flawed, the decision makers don't want to share the full truth with the underlings.
ReplyDeleteThe truth is always preferrable, in my book.