A Crisis of Meaning: Case Study

I wonder if you’ve ever found yourself in this place?

You have the facts assembled before you. All the data has been mined and analyzed and options laid out. Perhaps the next steps have even been logically mapped. Yet, you feel stuck, immobile, unable or unwilling to act. Rationally, yes, it makes sense, you understand, but something holds you back. There is no forward pull, no motivating action. The last thing you need is more information shoved at you. There’s something missing and it is not a lack of facts that prevents you from “getting it.”

Or perhaps you’ve experienced the flip side. As a leader—whether a manager, parent, preacher, teacher, doctor or therapist—you cannot motivate someone to act.  Nothing works. You’ve explained the situation repeatedly. Laid out the dire consequences if they fail to act. The facts are clear. You are more than certain they understand. But nothing happens. Or if it does, all you get is minimal compliance.

I’ve been in this situation as both the influencer and as the target being influenced. Neither feels good.

The frequency of both situations stem from the assumption that generating successful, committed action is a matter of having the right facts. Armed with rationally constructed arguments and a detailed enough action plan we can produce the kind of committed behavior we desire from ourselves and others. If there is resistance, just throw in additional facts or repeat the old ones more emphatically. Push others and ourselves harder. Use more willpower and reason.

I want to offer another scenario. This occurred several years ago, but I remember it like yesterday. A client I had been coaching, the president of a West Coast newspaper, called me in to work with him on strategic planning.

The paper had an illustrious past, studded with a treasure trove of literary accomplishments including a bookcase of Pulitzers. It had long been recognized as a standard-setter in the news industry. The editorial staff was fiercely independent and everyone at the paper understood its mission—to be the paper the entire state could depend on.

It had long been a family enterprise, but a media holding giant had recently swallowed up the paper. They left the management structure in place, but set more ambitious financial objectives. The key to meeting the parent company’s ad revenue goals was obvious. Shift resources from covering the rural areas of the state and focus more on the local metropolitan area where most of the state’s businesses and population were located.

That’s where things stood when Frank hired me to facilitate a planning retreat for his executive team. Before I arrived, he had warned me that lately the acquisition had taken an emotional toll and he was anxious for the team to rally around a new set of goals and leave the past behind.

We began the meeting with a clear agreement on what we needed to accomplish over the next two days to satisfy the parent company. The team members had done their homework, analyzing budgets, assessing market trends, anticipating their fixed and variable expenses, and recommending initiatives their departments could take to reach the stated objectives. They were ready to discuss the “how” of their business.

These were a talented, committed group of people. They were hard-nosed managers, realists everyone, who knew that change was at hand. But the first morning, it was like working with a bunch of third-graders. Arguments broke out. They debated angrily over whether there should be the regular all-employee party next year. They agreed to cut operating expenses and forgo salary increases, but fought tooth-and-nail over whether the company car allowance and education reimbursement should be continued. When they weren’t quibbling there were long ponderous silences.

Everyone was frustrated, especially Frank. This was not the way his team operated. Something else was up.

I looked around at the faces in the room and was struck by the expression on the V.P. of Operations face. Bob was a crusty, no-nonsense man who had been running, repairing and overseeing presses all his life.  Even as an executive, he still proudly displayed ink under his fingernails. Yet when I looked at him, I was struck by how sad he seemed, as if he were about to cry.

When I asked him if there was something he wanted to say he shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he mumbled, dropping his eyes. “Just thinking to myself. Doesn’t have anything to do with the subject at hand.”

Everyone could tell that Bob was fighting back his emotions and no one spoke, giving him room to get it out. There followed a long silence.

Agitated now, Bob finally spoke. “I mean, it’s just…who the hell are we trying to be, anyway? Until lately I knew why I came to work everyday and this isn’t it. When I get the paper out, off the presses and on the trucks, I feel a sense of urgency.  I know that somebody is waiting. In my mind’s eye there is a farmer having his coffee in a little cafe some little town two hundred miles away. In my mind I know exactly what he looks like, the sound of his voice. He’s waiting for our paper. It’s his connection. It brings the world to him. It’s a part of his life.  It’s more than a collection of automobile ads and grocery coupons.  He depends on our paper.”

Everyone was nodding in vigorous agreement. The tension that had been palpable all day dissipated. Bob was speaking the truth for the entire group. He had verbalized what had been going on, unspoken, for the entire team.

The previous story of  “Why” had been externally altered and the president had been trying his best to force his team to move on into the new story demanded by corporate, to be a more narrowly focused metro paper.

Everyone could see that’s where the future lay, logically; but emotionally, the team was resisting. Before they could find motivation in a new story, they would have to deal with the loss of the old. They would have to deal with “the man in the café.”

And they did. They talked for a couple of hours about things these managers at any other time would have called touchy-feely. They shared stories about what brought them to the paper originally, significant events and turning points they had shared, crises they had weathered as a team. They shared their anger and disappointment at the way the sale of the paper had gone down. They confronted Frank about the way he had left them out of the loop and now expected them to be good soldiers follow orders from on high. Frank revealed his own struggles about what it meant to work for somebody else now.

As they transitioned through a host of emotions, it was evident that this group of people cared for each other deeply. Their identity as a unit was an intricate web of individual and team stories linked to a common purpose. The external objectives may have changed, but emotionally, the old paper was still very much alive in them. It is what held them together and gave them individual and group purpose

By acknowledging the truth in the room, Bob had given everyone the opportunity in the team to remember their story together, to share their disappointment and regrets about the passing of an era, as well as their appreciations for one another. They did this naturally, without any facilitation on my part. They were in their own way, saying goodbye to a dear old friend. By the time they were done, they were not only intellectually prepared to shape a new future, they were ready emotionally as well.

After spending that day with the group, I began to see my own work in a new light. Most of the problems my clients were focused on were not the problems all, but symptoms of a deeper crisis.

They asked for “How’s” but the answers often lay in the “Why’s.” I found that personality conflicts, ineffective teams, inter-departmental rivalry, organization-wide resistance to change often can be set right by addressing the crisis in narrative. No matter how many “How’s” they threw at the problem, these businesses, churches, colleges, and community groups with faulty stories, would continue to face the same limitations, until they got to the bottom of the story.