Enabling Others
We must make business more human.
It started with definitions and questions. It seemed vast at the beginning and only increased in breadth as time went on.
“How do you enable others?” was the call for this Kitchen Table with Rick Wolfe and Jim Carfrae. And the cast of those seated at the virtual table was international in scope, diverse in expertise and successful in business, yet all struggled with the same paradox.
To paraphrase Einstein, 98% of arriving at a solution is how you frame the problem.
What does “enable” mean? It seems to mean different things to different people.
To one participant, a former supply chain pharma executive, it means ‘to help people grow and change their goals.’ To another Kitchen Tabler, it means to ‘build social capital so that when you leave you have a market.’ To another, it means to ‘build the trust of others, to be there, to provide psychological space.’
One participant who is about to launch a digital news medium aimed at BIPOC listeners said that for him enabling others is to give them agency and be more equitable. A Chicago consultant, who works with over 80 business leaders, saw bigger things. On a management level, there is a need to pull the team along because people are fundamentally out for themselves.
There was some discussion about alignment, especially from two reverse logistics software specialists in the southeastern U.S. – ensuring that everyone on the team saw the higher purpose and was committed to achieving it. If any one person did not, perhaps they should be shown the door.
The discussion consolidated around change – how do you make change, fast or slow? Most people are risk averse. Each of us is comfortable performing certain tasks; we have literally carved a neural pathway to perform these learned processes. So how do we kick ourselves out of our own brain ruts? Heard the expression, ‘I want to challenge myself to get out of my comfort zone’? That’s where the hard work begins.
The Chicago consultant said that he is focussed on helping his clients identify that they have a problem. It’s when they realize that they have a problem – what the pain point is – that they know why they must change.
However, as one participant joining from Paris said, “To make me swallow, I have to swallow.” It is up to the person to make the change – to allow themselves to be enabled.
An owner of several independent maritime pharmacies said that one thing was driving him crazy. He wanted to institute one small but very significant change – something that would help patients and improve the bottom line. But it seemed insurmountable even though he had all the data to back it up. In fact, he had 20 years of data, all saying the same thing. It was about medication adherence. 50% of patients no longer took their long-term medications after six months – no longer filling their prescriptions and reducing their health outcomes.
“Don’t people get that this is nuts?” he went on. “What don’t they see? It’s simple. Patients need to take their meds and pharmacies benefit from long term, steady business.” He just couldn’t understand how this money could be left on the table, and how, even in the conformist, regulated world of pharmacists, there would be such reticence to help 50% of their patients continue with their meds after 6 months.
“People feel like they are widgets,” said the BIPOC digital media head. He cited one of his favourite books by Mark Schaefer, Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins, in which Shaeffer points out that data is useful, sometimes, but it gets us nowhere. Human beings want to be treated, well, like human beings. Not points on a chart or a trend or an algorithm.
Now the conversation took a very un-business-like tone. People started to speak about empathy, how human skills and EQ mean more. How to enable ourselves, we need more than self-care, we need community care. And this needed structure, daily reminders. Small tasks that took us somewhere new, that achieved momentum.
Our Chicagoan coined the memorable phrase, “Pain gives us a start; pleasure keep us going. We need to find the best in someone.”
How realistic is this in today’s business context? How rare is it that you can point to a leader in any realm who finds ‘the best in everyone’?
At CGC Educational Communications, we work at the intersection of business and education. We see ‘enabling others’ through the lens of learning and storytelling.
There is much education can teach business, for education must be human-driven, not data-driven. There must be a series of strategies to provide differentiated learning to every learner. That is a human value.
In our work with Dr. Michael Fullan, author of 43 books mostly centred on organizational change, including Change Forces, we learned the power of two contrasting forces – pressure and support. This is core to enabling people. There must be a reason to act, however slight, and there must be ‘support’ to put action into practice.
These actions need to be significant, but readily doable within a prescribed period. Tasks, not onerous, not negatively critical, but achievable and rewarding.
But one participant objected, “I’m all in favour of incremental change, but sometimes you don’t have time. You have a crisis. An urgent problem. Like you may not make it. Then you need real change right now.”
Even when there is extreme pressure in short timelines, there still needs to be clearly defined steps on the journey.
At CGC, we focus first on ‘validation’. Everyone brings something to the table.
This is why the concept of ‘alignment’ can be so problematic. To be innovative, we need contrasting, diverse opinions, and viewpoints at the table. We need people who are ‘enabled’ to say “no, that’s not how I see it.” We need to see problems through a compound eye.
With diversity, equity and inclusion now being so fundamental, business should look at education, where this has been a long-standing goal, not always attained, but certainly sought after.
Validation is the first step to enabling others. Respecting others for what they know is a way to demonstrate that they are valued, that they matter. “People are used to not being heard,” said one participant. How can you enable people who are invisible?
“Respect yourself and they will respect you,” said a participant who has spent two years working with large family-owned businesses in China. “I have come in as someone outside the businesses, outside the family, and they look at me suspiciously as an interloper, but I have to talk to them, especially the sons or daughters who come in with the Ivy League degrees and no experience.”
Most people cannot diagnose themselves. They cannot see their ‘pain points’ – this is an MBA myth - and often it is only through building a relationship, through talking about random things, building trust, and starting with one tiny improvement, that we can be led to underlying problems. It is not a linear process. It is messy, as messy as human beings are.
Human emotions cut through the walls we build between us. In our storytelling sessions, when we declare that all decisions are emotional, it is revelation. We think we are so rational. In fact, we only rationalise our emotions. Data should be distrusted at the best of times. Reading our gut reaction is a better source of intelligence.
This is the reason that our pharmacies’ owner was not getting any traction with his one big and totally correct statistic. Data is an easily manipulated tool. It can be analysed to reinforce foregone conclusions, so it is often mistrusted, as we see with the anti-science bias gripping the western world.
Data does not motivate; it does not matter how right it is. But stories do.
If he could get each of his pharmacists to tell a story about only one patient who had stopped taking their meds after 6 months – how that caused a series of cascading events – they would have greater impetus to change their practices or to at least reach out to their patients, to check up: “Where have you been in the last month? Are you ok?” Start with one tiny change and see how it goes. Identify it, do it and then reflect.
We tend to do things if other humans are on the other end of the act, if we are accountable to them, fearing we could let them down. We do it for them, yes, but really, we are doing for ourselves. It feels good to see someone else shine; you can bask in the glow and feel good about yourself.
Every person needs this sense of higher purpose – in their professional and personal life. Higher purpose is what brings people together, overcoming differences, and helps form teams where diverse skills and opinions are valued. ‘Because we need every creative thought and tangential viewpoint we’ve got to solve this.’ Sometimes, we have to draw the room with the paper upside down.
One single action can lead to changes in protocol and in organizations. If we tell a story to a colleague, and then hear that story back, we learn about ourselves in a whole new way. Telling each other stories is how humans have always learned.
How is it that we must remind ourselves that businesses are human? Should we bemoan the obvious and simply admit that we have lost our way somewhere along the road and correct course?
Enabling has recently received a bad rap. It is used in a derogatory way to describe helping someone get away with a corrupt or even criminal act.
Finding our way back to our definitions, enable is defined as “give someone the authority or means to do something; make operational; activate.”
When we think about it, ‘enabling others’ is all we do every day. We work with other people to accomplish tasks; we help each other in the process. Or at least we should – facilitate.
It is such a massive topic simply due to it being so fundamental. Yet it is also a massive challenge, not easily accomplished. It can sometimes be like herding cats. But it is best when every human can feel validated and contributing; no herding required.
Having an opportunity for interaction in a Kitchen Table is enabling. There is a sense of community wellness when 10 or 12 people exchange their ideas, who they are and what they have learned. And yes, where they tell their stories.
Perhaps, we need regular kitchen tables in our business environment, more places to be ourselves and challenge each other. Moments to laugh and confide. Without judgement. Maybe this would put the human back into business and make people the focus of our work. Our thanks to Rick and Jim, for providing us with 90 minutes where we, for a few moments, could be at our most human.