Using Both Eyes
A
Method as Easy as Breathing Helps Teams Find Out What
They Really Want
Ever finished crunching the numbers during a team
project only to have the uncanny sense that you
don’t have the answers? Lunell Haught knows how
that can feel, and states it succinctly: “It all
adds up, but it doesn’t make sense.”
Haught, a Spokane-based consultant with two
decades of experience in improving workplace
effectiveness, says, “I think we are pretty
sophisticated at doing quantitative measurements so that
we can be very specific about lots of things with teams
and achievements. What we’re not necessarily so
good at is making qualitative assessments.”
Haught draws the analogy of using binocular
vision: “The purpose of quantitative measurements
is to be able to generalize, and the purpose of
qualitative measurements is to be able to make things
specific to a group. So I can see this looking out of
both eyes. You want the quantitative, the quantifiable
aspects of success, but you also want to make sure
that’s giving you the qualities you want, the kind
of team you want.”
To do that, Haught developed a method that
enables teams to find out what they really want and
don’t want. “When they’re going through
transitions, this method allows them to have more
control. It allows for a quicker feedback system. And
it’s not difficult to do. I tend to like things you
can work on from the back of a pickup truck!” she
chuckles.
Drawing from the Past
Haught’s common sense theories about
workforce performance come from a varied background.
Before launching her organizational development
consulting practice in 1996, she spent six years as the
training manager for Spokane County in Washington, where
she developed and implemented training programs for 1,700
employees. In 1989 she managed the State of
Washington’s Centennial Summer Games, the largest
multi-sport event in the state’s history. She also
has experience in higher education, where she managed
human resources and student services for several
institutions. Haught earned her bachelor’s degree
in business administration from Lewis and Clark College,
a master’s degree in counseling from the United
States International University and her doctorate in
organizational change from Gonzaga University.
Her approach to applying qualitative measures
with teams or groups is to involve them in outlining four
aspects of an issue they are facing. First, they define
the positive aspects of one perspective and the negative
aspects of that perspective; then they look carefully at
the positive and negative aspects of the opposite
perspective.
An example makes this clear. Haught worked
with two groups of pathologists, physicians and
technicians who diagnose diseases. One group was
hospital-based, while the other operated independently in
its own laboratory. The two organizations had no problem
exploring the facts, especially the cost benefits, of a
potential merger.
“You can have all of the statistics in
the world about how many blood tests and urine tests you
do,” Haught notes. “But what these people
were concerned about, in addition to these statistical
measures of financial success was, ‘What’s it
going to be like?’” These issues were
specific to the two groups of people, and there was no
way a factual analysis could answer questions about the
environment of a merged organization.
A Meeting of the Minds
Haught brought the groups together to get to
know each other. They described their practices, their
normal working conditions and the challenges and
pleasures of the way they had been working together. Then
she broke them into four mixed groups to analyze the
impact of merging their two organizations into one.
Focusing on the positive aspects of merging, one group
identified that there would be more resources, better
patient care and more opportunities for professional
development. Looking at possible negatives, a second
group cited having to learn about new people—from
their names to their work habits—and a sizeable
logistical concern over the necessity of moving between
several hospital sites. A third group looked at the
positive aspects of not merging, noting in particular
that it would not require change; a factor that appeals
to our basic human nature. Negative aspects of not
merging, including staying the same when change was
needed and concerns that another company could take over
their operations, leaving them with no say in the
outcome, were identified by the fourth group.
All four groups shared these thoughts with
the entire group, giving each perspective a full hearing.
Subsequently, each factor was assigned a weighted
importance that helped everyone identify priorities. This
made for much easier decision making. The goal of a team
in a qualitative evaluation, Haught maintains, is to get
the whole picture from everyone’s
perspective.
“Knowing each other’s priorities
and that each concern was addressed in a comprehensive
tool helped each person understand their
colleagues,” she says. “It highlighted things
a steering committee should particularly attend to in
proceeding with the merger. The tool could be used
throughout the merger as a way of providing feedback to
all participants about how the process was moving
along.”
The Sand in Our Shoes
Haught sometimes conducts individual
interviews with team members prior to bringing the entire
group together. “Most of us don’t want to
talk about the things that bug us,” she notes.
“I find it’s not the mountain in front of us:
It’s always the sand in our shoes.” As she
talked with some of the pathologists, she heard things
like, “How come Joe always gets the easy
cases?” an observation an individual might not feel
comfortable making to the entire group. “I can work
that in as part of the qualitative assessment in terms of
fairness of work distribution,” says Haught.
“That’s the kind of stuff that’s going
to drive people crazy. We convince ourselves that
we’re really bigger than that, and it gets to
us.”
Her four-cornered process also acknowledges
the various dimensions of issues that teams must weigh.
She often calls these issues “dilemmas” and
poses their analysis in terms of “dilemma
management.” That process involves understanding
and addressing the two characteristics of a dilemma:
continuing, ongoing features and interrelated
poles.
Making it Work
“We have a cultural preference to solve
problems,” Haught notes. “It’s the
biggest muscle that we have, but not everything is a
problem to be solved.”
Typically, problem solving involves an issue
or a situation that can be resolved, a decision that
usually excludes other choices. On the other hand, when
teams are facing dilemmas, the best response might be
“a little of this and a little of that.”
Haught’s “dilemma model” acknowledges
those situations requiring a balance rather than an
answer.
She likens the process to breathing:
“You breathe in and think that your lack of breath
is a problem. So your solution is to breathe out. Which
will be fine until you don’t have breath again. So
do you breathe out again? No. You have this great
solution that doesn’t work. That’s what
working with people is. People say, ‘Are we going
to be a team or an individual?’ Well, you’ve
got to figure out how to go back and forth between those
two things. We need to look at all of the advantages and
disadvantages. This helps people think about what they
want to achieve and don’t want to achieve when they
think of their transitions.”
Going to the Mat
All of us resist change, even when we know it’s
inevitable. It’s easier to accept change when our
resistance is acknowledged and addressed. Haught believes
her process works because, “It validates
people’s experience and makes it OK to have great
feelings and awful feelings. It helps people know that
they not only have some control, but that someone
actually cares how this change is affecting them. If
it’s done well, they know somebody will actually do
something about the changes affecting them. It puts that
on the table and it takes the organization out of the
just-looking-at-the-numbers thing.”
Bringing qualitative factors to bear in team
situations has resulted in consulting success for Haught.
“I think it gives people great insight. If you say,
‘What do you want to achieve?’—five
times or five ways or whatever it is—you begin to
find out what is important. And you begin to make
transitions. People will actually tell you, ‘Well,
I don’t care about this and this and this. But this
one? I’m going to go to the mat over that.’
Those are frequently qualitative things.”
Haught has seen her process work. “I would really
like people to use the qualitative as well as the
quantitative view.” It’s as simple—and
obvious—as using both eyes.
March 2001 News for a
Change Homepage
Issue Highlight —
Someone To Watch Over Me
With A Little Bit
Of Luck
