Fine Is Not a Status

Katrina L. Coker: We were in a retrospective of like, look, we keep giving you all this feedback. You keep asking us the same questions. You have the information box. Are you looking at the information box? Right. We don't even know. And they literally said, "Well, at least we're all in this together. Devon Morris: This is the Lagging Team. Falling behind is a position, not a verdict. Every week, we work to change that outcome. At least we're all in this together. See, somebody on a team said that out loud in a meeting and meant it as good news. Here's what I want you to sit with: If you ran that team, your survey that quarter probably came back fine. Your one-on-ones came back fine. Your stand-ups came back fine, and every one of those fines was true, and none of them told you anything whatsoever. See, somewhere this week a leader is looking at an engagement score, and it's fine: threes and fours, maybe a couple fives, right? Nothing alarming, nothing red. The conversation in a room is a reasonable one. Nobody's actually complaining. Retention's okay, and the team gets along. People are showing up every day. They really are. Be careful here because that's a completely reasonable read, and you've actually made it. When nobody is raising their hand. The obvious move is to assume that there is nothing going on that's a problem. Watch what that read has in common with every other one. It treats silence as the answer. No complaint means no problem. Nobody ever turns it around and asks, "What is that silence made of?" This is the Lagging Team. See, falling behind is a position, not a verdict. I am Doctor Devon Morris, and this right here is a sidebar. See, on Tuesday, I sit down with somebody, and on Thursday, I take one thing that they said and go all the way into it. Today is one word every team says on this planet, and nobody actually checks. Fine. If there is something I've seen consistently across teams has always been the word "fine, I've seen that word in good times. I've seen that word in bad times. On a survey, it looks exactly the same. It's a very efficient answer, but it could actually be true. So here's the problem with "The scores are fine, so the team is fine. It's the wrong argument to have, right? It doesn't get you anywhere. I don't mean the score is lying because it may not be lying. I mean, they're answering a different question than the one you think you really asked. When you ask a team any problems, you're not measuring the problem. You're measuring what feels safe to them at that particular time, in that particular room. See, Katrina, When she's with her teams, she's with them for a living. That's what she does. She says the first thing she hears every single time is the same thing: "We're fine. Everything's fine. There's no problems. And here's the part that should stop you. Katrina says it's usually true that they get along. Check that the people like each other. That's another check, right? Working together isn't really the problem here, the problem is that nobody's asking the hard questions. You heard that said, right? Fine isn't a lie. It's what's left when nobody asks anything specific enough to get a real answer. So the team is fine. The survey is fine. The one-on-ones are fine. The team is behind, though. Quietly behind, because the job changed and nobody said it out loud. Talked about that, and the fine is the sound the team makes while that is actually happening. See, Katrina has a simple test for this, and I want you to notice it's not about the team at all. It's really about the question. Katrina L. Coker: If you say, "Do you have any problems? Most people will say, "No, I have any problems. But when you start saying, "Hey, how is the team communication? How are the dynamics? Are there any? What are the blockers for you, right? What are the pain points you're having? Devon Morris: See, same team, same day, different question, different answer. Hold on to that because it means the fine was never about them. All right, here's the part I actually want to give you. We treat two sentences like they mean the same thing, and they actually don't. Nothing wrong, and something's wrong. Nothing wrong, and something's wrong. See, nothing wrong is the absence of a complaint. It's quiet. You can get it from a team that's thriving, but you can also get it from a team that gave up three months ago. Something's right is evidence. It's a person telling you specifically what's working and why. The meeting that's worth their time, the product that they love, and the things that they're willing to fight to actually keep. Two really different sentences, and almost every instrument that you can utilize. I'll just say survey. That built the check on the team. It's only hears one thing. It just hears the answer. See, let me put my researcher hat on for just a moment. A score isn't a reading on how people feel. It's a reading of what a person believes is safe and worth saying to whomever's going to read it, those can be the same thing. Often they aren't. So a four out of five has two possible authors. One is a person who is genuinely good. They are genuinely good. The other is the person that decided the four was the easiest way to not start a conversation. The number can't tell you which one that particular person wrote. Only a better question can do that for you, and here's the uncomfortable part, right? The team that stopped believing anything will change usually gives you the cleanest scores you'll ever, ever, ever, ever, ever see. See, because disengagement is quiet, and quiet looks fine. See, Katrina was looking at exactly this kind of score on one of her teams, and here's what she told the leaders. Katrina L. Coker: And what I had to give feedback on is, I'm like, they're giving threes or fours, but it's because they're all in it together. It's not because they're actually happy. I said so. Those are the hidden things that y'all need to be aware of. They might even be giving fives, but it's because we're like, well, I'm not fired. I still have a job. I'm still getting paid. Devon Morris: A five that means I haven't been fired, man. That's the same as a five. That means I love this work I'm doing. Your dashboard puts them in the same column, in the same place, and as it rolls up, it looks to the same to every single person that it rolls up to. Second pair, and it's the one that actually fools good leaders together and well. See, look, go back to the cold open that we had. At least we're all in this together, man. That's not satisfaction. That's solidarity, right? It's what people say when each other, every person on the team, kind of having a harder time, and they decided to just kind of lock arms and go through it together, side by side, and solidarity is truly a an amazing strength, right? It's why teams don't always fall apart. See, Katrina's point is that it also is exactly what makes the scores look fine. People rate the team, the people next to them, and they rate them high, because the team is good. So the warmth is real. The problem is real. At the same time, the problem is the warmth hides the problem. A team that gets along is not the same as a team that's okay. Cohesion tells you that the people are fine with each other. It tells you nothing about whether they're fine with the actual work. This is the trap that leaders who care about culture immediately fall into. Right? You build a team that gets along. Ah, that feels good, great. You read it, and the team is doing really, really well. Last pair, and it explains why fine gets worse over time instead of better. Asked versus heard. See, you heard a few things being said. You keep asking the same questions. Are you looking at the information box? See, the team wasn't refusing to give feedback. They'd given the feedback over and over and over again, and nothing ever came back to them. Every time you ask, and nothing changes, you teach people that asking is actually a ritual. And why would they waste time going through the same ritual again and again and again and again, so they stop asking, answering for real, for real. They really do, not out of anger, really out of efficiency. Why spend effort on that dang old retrospective information box that nobody's really gonna open up? And even if they do open it up, you don't know that they opened up because they never said anything back to you. But here's the deal: the leader side of it, the way Katrina describes it, she brings the team's feedback up the chain and hears that's old news. Old news to you. Still new news to them. See, fine is often what a team says after it's been asked too many times the same thing over and over and over again, and they've heard nothing back or very little amounts of stuff. All right, so three things I need you to kind of roll into right for Monday. None of them should cost you any money. Should need any permission, right? Number one, retire the any problems question. It's a question that guarantees fine. Stop asking it. It doesn't get you the data that you need. Replace it with Katrina's three specific ones, right? Around what communication, process, and the work, right? When you think about communication, what's going well with the people, who's a blocker for you, purpose or not, those kind of things, right? When you think about process, which meeting is worth your time, which one is not, the actual work. Do you know what you're building? Do you like what you're building? Heck, are they using it in the building? See, specific questions get specific answers. That's the entire trick. Two. Read those fours like they're twos. I mean, not literally, right? I'm really just telling you to be curious. That's really it. Treat every fine as a score that is unconfirmed until a person tells you why. That's all I'm saying. Add one question: whether you collect a number, what would make that number a higher number? So, if you had a four, then the question is, what would make that four a five? A person who genuinely answers that easy, they're probably one of the people that's thriving. A person who's surviving, they kind of go quiet. They kind of go quiet. Either way, you know what's behind that four that you actually got. Number three, close the actual loop on something and say it out loud. Look, pick one thing that the team has told you from the retro, from the survey, from the box, from somewhere. They say, "Hey, you told me this, and here's what I did. That, that's what you want to do. You want to say, "You told me this, and here's what I did, even if it is. You told me this, and here's why we can't do it, and here's the specifics around it, and here's who decided that. Even transparency at a level where it is we just can't do that is better than nothing. It's better than silence, right? See, Katrina's order matters here because she takes the feedback to leaders first, so nobody's surprised. Then goes back to the team with what can actually happen. No promises you can't keep here. So close a loop, y'all. It's gonna help you trust me with that team and establish what you need to establish with them. Now, here's what would make me feel like I got egg on my face, because I want you to just go and check this for yourself instead of just believing what I'm saying to you. Ask yourself what questions you can ask that are specific. Remember those three things we talked about earlier, right? So find a specific and good question to ask. Understand this meeting is worth it because is what I would be looking for forward to hearing back from a team member. I like the product because that, because that you're saying there gives them reasons to speak about it. Those are more specific types of questions. Then the team that's fine, really, really fine. This episode isn't for you. It's not for those teams. Believe them. They gave you some clean findings. If it's specific and what you get is bad, now you got something that you can truly work on, and spend your time actually dealing with. If it's still vague, though, it's fine. No complaints, even to a specific question, you got an answer already. You need to sit with that because it means they don't believe the answer will go anywhere. So you need to close the loop. Not asking again, that's not going to help. Not repeatedly asking. See, the point isn't fine is a lie. I'm not saying that at all, because the team could be really amazing. The point is that you never once checked what it was made of, and it cost you one better question to find out. That's it. Then here's the deal. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to come tell me specifics of what happened. You know, was it about fine or you get something specific? Put it in the comments, right? Wherever you're listening at, find me on LinkedIn. I want to hear from you, man. Let me know what the question was that you actually utilized, right? Yeah, I may want to use it right because what you need to understand is falling behind is a position, not a verdict, and a lot of teams are sitting in that position right now quietly while every report that's being turned in about them says fine. Fine isn't a status, y'all. It's the sound a team makes when nobody asks them anything that they really could answer. So before you trust the score, ask a question it can't answer for you. If the only answer you can get is fine, you may not have a healthy team. You have a quiet one, and you don't know why. Go find out why. All right. If you want to talk about what this looks like for your team, go to thelaggingteam.com/start. That is thelaggingteam.com/start. That's the sidebar. Now you know what to listen for. Thank you for joining us. Where every Tuesday and Thursday we work toward bridging the gap for teams that are behind.