Competing Commitments & Thought Partnerships - 2nd blog entry

Competing Commitment

1. I am unsatisfied with the inefficient HVAC system and lighting in our building.
   I am committed to the importance of improving the energy efficiency of the building.
2. After our face to face meeting with the local engineering firm, I wrote a summary e-mail to the relevant stakeholders before last week, but I have been out of town this week.  I have not called our maintenance manager or maintenance technician. Likewise, I have not called the engineering firm to follow up yet either.  I have seen some e-mail communications go back and forth, but have not responded or been engaged.  I am assuming that nothing will get done through phone and e-mail so I want to wait to sit down with the maintenance folks and speak face to face. I feel it’d be more effective in person so perhaps I am using that as an excuse for my inaction.
   I still think my time frame works even if I delay the meeting.  I think 5 minutes of face time is more effective than a 30 minute phone conversation, and I’ll do my best to extract value out of the in person meeting.  I just need to be careful and not allow this to become a recurring excuse for inaction.  I am back in town this week so I know I’ll get this moving along again on Monday!
3. I think others may assume that this project is not important.  Their time is limited and they’d rather spend their time doing something else instead of bothering with this project.  They know it’ll be time consuming so why deal with it now when you can kick the can down the road?
   My role will be to make it easy for the stakeholders and gatekeepers to get their job done.  The easier and simpler I can make the change for them, the more likely they are to follow through.
4. Prove the assumptions otherwise.  It takes time and repetition, but constantly breaking people’s assumptions will change their assumptions.  If someone thinks a task is hard, but I can consistently show them that it’s easy, then I can change their mindsets.

Thought Partnership

1. I read my fair share of self-help and “how to talk to people” books and they always emphasize sincerely asking the right questions to people.  The Thought Partnership exercise was a great opportunity to strengthen personal relationships within our pod.  It also helped generate ideas and action items for each person’s project.
2. The maintenance manager who would do most of our approvals would be a great person to engage with a Thought Partnership.  We’d be leading him with our questions into the direction of energy efficiency, but the ideas generated will all be his, and he’d be more likely to follow through.  He’s also very experienced so anything to get him to start speaking and coming up with ideas would be beneficial.
3. A common trend during the active listening was to get you to look at things from another person’s perspective.  This really helped generate ideas and strategies when we put ourselves in other people’s shoes.  We’d also ask each other for deadlines.  So when are you going to call this person?  What’s your meeting?  What’s your next step?  When we commit to something, we’re much more likely to follow through.