In the Loop Is Not in the Room

Melanie Shires: My title hadn't changed. I was still responsible for leading marketing and developing my team, but my access to the conversations that shaped our work changed. I wasn't included in some of the meetings about marketing and branding and positioning, even when my marketing coordinator was. I was accountable for work I wasn't consistently being invited to help shape. Devon Morris: This is The Lagging Team. Falling behind is a position, not a verdict. Every week, we work to change that outcome. Listen to that last part again, accountability for work she wasn't invited to actually help shape. And notice what didn't happen. Nobody actually demoted her. Nobody took anything away. There was no meeting where somebody decided to cut the marketing director out of the marketing conversation. A calendar invite just stopped including her name. Her title didn't move. Her job description did not change. Her accountability didn't move one iota of an inch. Here's the part that really should stop you. Her coordinator was in the room, so it wasn't seniority, it wasn't bandwidth, it wasn't a need to know, it was nothing, it was an oversight that hardened. See somewhere this week, a new leader is doing everything the playbook actually says: 30-day listening tour, all hands meetings, weekly update emails, open door policies, saying, "Hey man, come have a conversation with me, and they can actually mean it. And the team is still a little wonky. They're still a little off. They're still guessing. They're still finding out things late. So the leader does more and more. Another update, right? A longer all hands meeting. A better deck, you know. These things happen. They're being fair here, because that's what a good leader working hard. That really sounds like the right thing to do. When a team seems to be out of the loop, the obvious thing is to give them more loop. But more loop means that circle just got bigger. But watch what every one of those moves has in common. They're all about delivery, getting the decision to the people faster, clearer, more often. Not one of those changes was in the room when the decision got made. See, this is The Lagging Team, and falling behind is a position, not a verdict. I'm Dr. Devon Morris, and this right here is a Sidebar. Tuesday, I sit down with somebody. Thursdays, I pluck one thing that they said from that particular episode and go all the way into it. Today, it's two words every organization uses like they're the same word: informed and included. See, before I sat with Melanie, I actually took her assessment. Four domains, right? I scored pretty well on this assessment, right? I read my own results out loud on Tuesday's episodes, which I'd half regret to some degree, except that one of them is the reason this section actually exists. My lowest one was energy stewardship, not decision making, not boundaries, where my energy actually goes, and whether I get anything back, and that is extremely important for an introvert like myself. I know you may not believe me. I always get that statement from people that, man, you're not really an introvert, and the fact is, I am at least according to several, several, several assessments that I've taken over the years, right? So this is not a one-time thing. But here's the deal. Here's why I'm telling you on this episode about the room that you're not in, the demand, the domain that I scored the lowest in. Is the one nobody volunteers. It's the one you don't bring up because naming it sounds like you're asking for less work. You know, say it flat, no number, then move. So here's my problem with the new leader that just needs to communicate more and more and more, I really do believe it's the wrong argument. I don't mean communication doesn't matter by by any sake. You know I'm not saying that. I mean more of it cannot just fix the problem. It's aimed at the wrong moment. Okay, every communication plan is built around a decision that already exists. By the time something is there to communicate, the moment's passed. It's done. The plan is about transmission. The injury happened one step earlier in a conversation with the team that wasn't the team wasn't actually in the room was the problem. You can transmit that decision beautifully, right? Early, warmly, with context and a question-and-answer period to make sure that people clarify and truly understand. And the team is still carrying something it had, you know, no hand in. Okay, so you get the thing that makes no sense on paper. A well-informed team is still behind. That's a problem. They know what's happening. They knew before most people, and they're still guessing, right? Because knowing the decision doesn't tell you the 12 small judgments, those different little calls that happen that implies or goes along with that particular decision, and those were things that happened in a room that they weren't in. You see where I'm going. This is why I'll keep you in the loop. Lands the way that it does is offered generously, and it's heard as demonstration, but it ends up being demotion ultimately. Both people really are right about this because "I'll keep you in a loop" just really means I wasn't kept in a loop already. I wasn't in the room for the decision and the context and the nuances associated with that. And the person that actually hurts the most is the one who's used to actually being in the room. See, Melanie's job didn't just get smaller; her job got the same size with less information actually attached to it because there was some rooms that she just wasn't in. So you heard me. I asked Melanie what her team was doing while all of this was happening above her. I want you to take a moment and really listen to the first thing that really comes out of her mouth. Melanie Shires: Well, it was my responsibility as the leader to make sure that my team didn't know everything that was going on above me. So I just continued to focus on what I could focus on. Devon Morris: That's a good leader describing the most natural move there is. Hold on to that because we're coming back to it because there's some cost here, and we want to understand those costs. So, all right, here's the part that I actually want to give you, and it's informed versus included, informed and included. I'm now. I want to say versus, right? Because I think that they're ands. We use them like that one word, and they describe two really different positions, right? Informed really means the decision actually reaches you. You got told either early, late, it was good. You was told in a bad kind of way. The decision is the finished thing that you are downstream of. Is the problem included? Is you actually upstream? You were there while it was still soft. You was there while it was still happening. Your objection could have changed the entire shape of the thing, and maybe not. But it could have, it could have had a small impact in some kind of way. Two really different positions, right? And almost every tool we we built for actual people is all about keeping people in the loop and can only put you in that first one that we talked about. Just being informed. See, when I think about this and I kind of put that researcher hat on, a decision isn't one event. It's a room, then an announcement. We measure the announcement because the announcement is the part that leaves a trace of something, a sniff of something. It's an email, a deck, a meeting on the calendar. Right? The room actually leaves no trace whatsoever. It doesn't have that smell to it. There's no artifact that records who could have changed the actual outcome and what going to and what's going to be told after that room dispersed. See, here's the deal. So inclusion is structurally invisible, and information is structurally auditable. Okay, we manage the thing that we can actually see. Okay, which means a leader can do a genuinely excellent job at the visible half, and never once be asked about the other one whatsoever. And here's the uncomfortable part, right? Being overruled is not the same as being excluded. There's absolutely logical reasons on why we have to go in a particular direction, or why somebody's idea on a table is just not the right idea at the time, right? But here's the deal: if somebody brought you in while it was still, you know, being discussed, while still being put together, while it was still soft, took your objection seriously, and went the other way anyway. You were included in that. You were included because it's absolutely reasonable. Even if it's not reasonable, they may just have the authority to be able to make that call and move forward. And here's the uncomfortable part: being overruled is not the same as being excluded. It just isn't. If somebody brought you in a room while still soft, why things could still be changed, and your objection was actually heard, seriously heard, right? And then they still went in the direction they decided to go in. You actually were included. See, that's a good leader doing a hard thing. This episode is not about them whatsoever. Okay, I want to be precise about that because the lazy version of this is the argument that I didn't get my way. No, it's not about you getting your way. Remember, diversity of thought is what we want when we got to deal with complex adaptive systems, complex decisions, lots of moving parts. See, Melanie coaches people through exactly this, and she says the same sentence to all of them. Melanie Shires: You should not have to prove to anyone that you belong in the room, you do belong in the room. Period. And if other people are making you feel as though you don't belong there, then maybe that's the wrong room for you to be in. That doesn't mean you don't belong there. Devon Morris: She says it twice in the episode about 25 minutes apart from each other, so I hear it like it's a bell, and both times without me prompting her or asking her. So there's a second pair here that I want you to acknowledge and understand, and it's the reason why it's so hard. Title and standing, okay. Your title is what the organizational chart says about you. Your standing is whose room you are actually in, whose judgment is wanted while a thing is actually being decided. Those two move independent of each other, and only one of them is written down, y'all. Only one of them. So when standing drops and title holds, no system in the company records that anything actually happened. HR sees no change. I mean, you're making the same amount of money, so payroll didn't see any change. The organizational chart is actually identical. Your objectives are identical. The accountability is identical, which means that you can raise it as much as you want to. It's because what you're describing is something with no evidence attached to it, so it becomes hard to see a trace of it, to get a hint of it, right? I'm not in those meetings anymore, but heck, it'd be interesting. I'm not in the meeting anymore, but what happens when you was never included in the meeting? You don't even know that the meeting has actually happened. See, it cuts the other way for new leaders, right? Who it's not about being cruel. They walk into a configuration nobody explained to them either, and nothing told them that the marketing director used to be in the branding conversation because nobody wrote it down, right? They built a room of those who seemed relevant when it kicked off those meetings. See, that's the whole thing. Standing is inherited by accident and lost by accident, and the only person who noticed it in real time, is the person that is happening to? That's it. Last pair, and this one is gonna sting for many of you that is doing a really good job, shielded and spared. Right? Go back to the video that you seen earlier. It was my responsibility to make sure my team didn't know everything that was going on, but above me, every decent leader has done that for their team to some degree. It's a part of the job, man, and it comes from the right place. But look at what the team actually receives. They get the consequences, new priorities, shifted deadlines, a project that quietly dies out, right? With the cause removed, plucked away, the effects gone. Actually, no explanation whatsoever. They were shielded. They were not spared. Nothing was actually absorbed. It landing on landed on them anyway whatsoever. It just arrived without reasons attached to it, which impacts motivation, because it impacts your purpose. Okay, and here's the cost that nobody puts on an invoice: a team with effects and no causes. They look confused. It just puts holes in that purpose, right? Not from the team itself. That whole thing that's putting holes in them is coming from above. It reads as the team can't prioritize, they can't commit, they can't really keep up. These become performance conversations about the team, and then about the leader. So shielding converts a structural problem into a performance problem and hands a bill to their leader, to that team, the fix isn't saying to yourself, Let's dump all the chaos on them, right? It's really much narrower than that. Give them the cause without the drama. Tell them, give them the why. Here's what changed above us, and here's what it means for our work here, and here's what I actually don't know, and whatever that is, right? So, three things, three things for Monday. None of them cost you any money. None of you actually need permission for. Number one, name the last decision that changed your team's work. Then name who was in the room. Write down the names, the real names, the actual names. Don't don't say Bubba, right? Anything like that. Don't write down their functions. Just all the appropriate people that was in that was in there, right? You're not looking for villains. This is not a time where we're trying to blame, you're looking for whether you can reconstruct what happened. If you can't name that room, that's a finding itself, a decision your team is executing, and nobody can say any of you all were there. May want to work through that. Number two, move one person, just one, from informed to included. Pick one meeting, one quality meeting, one person who currently gets the summary. Right, bring them in while it's still happening, not just as an observer, as someone whose objection can actually change the outcome. Right? Don't just be putting people in meetings for the heck of it. Right? If their objection can't change anything, you've invited them to just watch, and they'll know. One meeting, one person-that's a move that you can make. Number three. Say the cause out loud just once. Pick one thing you've been shielding your team from and give them the why without the drama. Three sentences, right? What changed above us? What it means for our work, and what I don't know yet-not the politics, not the extra things that were said in the room, just really the cause, the effects that are already living and existing and have the reasons attached to them. You do that; it's going to be a good move because this is where that shielded slash spared move actually happens, and it's free to do. And you could talk to him out afterwards, see how they felt. Right now, here's the deal. Always talk to this because I need to. Here's what would make me wrong, but I'd rather for you to check me on this, right? Not for you to actually take my word for it, right? Don't you know? Do just move one person. That's it. Find the last decision that changed your team's work, and find the room, and come back to those three simple questions. You were in it. You helped shape it, and you'd forgotten because being included is invisible when you have it. It's a clean finding. This episode is not about you whatsoever. Don't torture yourself, right? You were brought in early and overruled, man. That happens. Get over it. We don't all win in every thought that we came up with, and it's about the collective making the best decisions. Somebody told you before it was announced, right? You heard the objection. You decided the other way, man. That's inclusion all day, every day. If you're getting that, then you know what I want to say to you. This episode is not for you. You found out when the team found out. Found out like you find out when they found out, and there were some things that you weren't. You were just there. You just wasn't there. I'd be concerned about that. The point isn't that every decision needs everybody in a room. We we don't want that. That takes up a lot of time, and and I've seen us swing in that direction, and I've never found it to be useful whatsoever. The point is that you really you have never once checked which decisions your team is accountable for, and which rooms it was in, and that check cost you 20 minutes. So just do it. All right. So here's the deal: falling behind is a position, not a verdict. You hear me say it again and again and again. And some teams are sitting in the right position right now, fully informed, perfectly looped in, and carrying work they had no hand in shaping. Being in the loop isn't the same as being in the room; it just isn't. One is about what reaches you? The other is about whether you were there while it could still been shaped or the direction changed. So before you send the team another update, go find out which rooms that they've been in? If the answer is none of them, and you don't have a team that's actually behind, you have a team that's downstream, and that is a different problem with a different fix. Okay, if you want to actually talk about what this looks like on your team, I want you to go to thelaggingteam.com/start. That is thelaggingteam.com/start. That is the Sidebar. Now you know where to look. Thank you for joining us. Where every Tuesday and Thursday we work toward bridging the gap for teams that are behind.