Chapter 5

HOW DO I FINISH THE JOB?

At the end of a movie, most people get up and leave while the final credits roll. It’s different, of course, if you worked on the movie or know someone who did; if your spouse or best friend was “Third Assistant Gaffer,” “Foley Artist,” or “Best Boy,” you’ll stay an extra five minutes for the fun of seeing their name scroll by. When you do, you’ll be amazed by the long list of people who get mentioned by name. It takes the combined efforts of thousands of people to make a Hollywood production take shape.

In general, the arts do endings wonderfully well. In the theatre, the actors take a bow as the audience applauds. On opening night or at the end of a long run, the cast throws a celebratory party. At a concert, the musicians perform an encore as a way of giving the audience a little something extra—a special thank you for an appreciative crowd.

There is more to endings than final credits, standing ovations, and parties. We need to let people know the work is completed. We want to leave them ready to join us again. We have lessons we can share that will help us and them do a better job in the future.

If you question the need for a definitive ending, think about the times you were involved in something that just seemed to fizzle out. You may have been unsure whether you were still involved. You may have kept dates free in your diary only to find out later that the work was all over. When our efforts end with a whimper, we feel somehow cheated, as though the whole thing was less than worthwhile. It could easily make us cynical about future work.

One reason that endings matter is that they are opportunities to bring everyone and everything together. They matter because they make things complete. In the midst of any work, things get messy. You may lose track of who is doing what; you may lose sight of how far you have come. At the end, you can stand back from the work and look at it as a whole, reviewing what you’ve accomplished and how you worked together.

Finally, as with movie credits, the ending of your project expresses the appreciation of the organization or community for everyone who invested their time and energy. It’s a significant reward in itself just to have your part publicly acknowledged and celebrated.

In answering the question, “How do I finish the job?” we focus on three things:

• Making sure the job is completed
• Preparing for future work
• Inspiring people to get involved again

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Making Sure the Job Is Completed

A final meeting of those involved can help ensure that the job is completed. People can draw together the loose ends, making certain that any handover is clear and that the work is all done. This work can be done face-to-face or virtually. We’ve conducted some very successful endings using telephone conferences and web-based or e-mail discussions.

Final get-togethers can have the quality of a rite of passage. We all know those important events in our lives when we transit from one stage to another: a marriage, a funeral, a baptism, a bar mitzvah, a graduation. At the ending of involvement, we need to let go and move on. This often requires a ritual.

Ritual can express how we feel and help us to change. It can be highly symbolic or very simple. We might recognize simple ending rituals such as clocking or signing out at the end of a workday. (We probably all remember Fred Flintstone’s dramatic daily ending ritual, punctuated with the cry of “Yabadabadoo!”) Most people have been to a TGIF party to ritualize the end of a workweek at least once. Actions like this help us deal with the ambiguities of endings. We are both relieved and grieved to see things end.

The art of a final gathering is to combine a review of the work with the symbolism of ritual. Share stories and look for connections and patterns. Look at the events in chronological order, considering similarities and differences in people’s experience of the events. Identify what was done well. Discuss what still needs to be done. Hand over outstanding and emerging work to new people. Honor people for the contribution they have made.

People need to be welcomed for a final time. It’s often a poignant moment. Set the scene creatively as you did for the first gathering, creating an environment where people can be honest, nondefensive, and celebratory about the work they have done together.

Start off with simple reflections; for example, you might ask people to describe the high points and low points of the project or the funniest moment. People connect with each other quickly as they share their experiences. One ritual you can use here is to ask people to bring something that symbolizes being involved in this work.

The blueprint for meetings throughout the work makes space to look at how things are. In this closing, look backward at the ways things have been and around you at the way they are now as a result of your work. To build up a common picture, share stories in detail and make connections among them. You’ll find that almost everyone in the room will learn new things about the work and what happened as it unfolded. This can be a powerful experience, especially when the team had become a community with strong mutual attachments.

A bank had conducted several reengineering projects simultaneously. When nearly all the projects were completed, they gathered the participants to identify what worked well and what they could do differently in the future. What made the meeting particularly rich was the fact that different reengineering approaches had been used in different projects. When the participants reviewed the projects, they not only brought closure to the work, they were able to learn from each other so that future projects could go more smoothly.

Key events can be acknowledged by all and ritually honored for their value. Look beneath the facts. List the key events and facts, and then unpack them. Try to make sense of why things happened that way. What assumptions did you make, and how did these affect people? What kinds of unintended things happened? Use this as an opportunity to talk with other people to see if they had the same experience as you.

Discuss what still needs to be done. Not everything ends. Often the work just moves to a new phase with new people. The work could be ongoing and you may involve different people all the time. Yet for those who are leaving, this is a form of ending. There is a sense of “handing over the baton” to a new team. Give advice to those who will be involved in doing it. Allow those who have been involved to let go and hand over to someone else.

Sometimes there is no clear ending. The work just fizzles out. Maybe no one told us it has ended. Or maybe people stopped being involved without telling us. An example of something fizzling out is a couples group that met for twenty years. They raised their children together and met for rituals and holidays. After twenty years, when the children had left home, people dropped out. Finally they called the group together to ask what people wanted. They found that the group had outlived its usefulness and ended for most. They made sure the work was completed and moved on to other things.

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Even the simplest of shared work can have its ritual final gathering. There may only be two of you. You might only talk on the phone the day after you are done. That conversation can include the space to deal with the difficulties of working together, the value of both contributions, and any lessons for involving each other in the future. It can be well worth developing your own ritual for doing this. Include things you like to reflect on and talk about those things that will help you to be better at involving others next time.

Preparing for Future Work

When we finish a job, we would like to leave people better prepared to be involved and involve others in the future, whether it is similar work or something completely different. It can take time and energy to do this. At the end of the work, it might seem easy to think we don’t need to invest any more in reviewing what we did. In fact, we might want to avoid going over the difficulties.

Next time we come to do something, we may wish we had captured the lessons and noted ideas for the future. And by then it might be too late. People will have moved on, forgotten a lot of what happened. Lessons will be lost forever.

Building in time at the end for reflection and learning can be invaluable. It can help you with answers to the questions in this book about effectively involving people. It can help you improve your individual ability to contribute. Collective reflection can help a whole team learn how to work together better and improve their products and services.

Reflection and learning needs a deliberate decision to take a step back and look at the connections and patterns in what we have done. When we reflect, we slow down our thinking and consider what we did and why. We notice what assumptions we made about other people. We consider how we reacted to what they did.

People can do this individually. It can be part of the final gathering. It can be written up as a report.

The U.S. Army has developed a disciplined method for doing this; they call it the After Action Review (AAR). After any combat mission or exercise, all the observers and participants gather to share and compare their versions of what happened and identify potential operational improvements.

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To start preparing for future work, think about your own effective involvement. If you were the leader, take the time now to look back on the entire process. Think about the people you invited to join you; the way people responded to your invitation; the commitment generated during the planning work; the way involvement grew and developed as the work was done.

Learn something about yourself. Think back to your experience of the project. When were you energized and excited? What was happening at those times? What created the climate for you to feel that way? The answers to these questions can tell you a lot about what you value, how you like to work, and the kind of environment that makes you productive and satisfied.

Here are some of the questions we find useful when reflecting on our work:

• What did we plan for? How did what happened differ from our plans?
• Did we achieve our goals? What else did we achieve that we didn’t anticipate?
• Why do we think things developed the way they did?
• What do we remember as the key events?
• What assumptions did we make about ourselves and about other people? How did those assumptions prove to be accurate or inaccurate?
• What have we learned as a result of this project?

You can organize your answers to these questions by using the Reflection Tool in Figure 5.1.

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FIGURE 5.1

THE REFLECTION TOOL

Have everybody reflect on the same questions. As you and your team members consider these questions, you will build up a collection of fascinating stories about the meaning of the project. Although the stories will have many similarities, they will have differences as well. No two people will remember the events of the project in exactly the same way. That’s fine, of course.

One thing we can be sure of. Everyone will have experienced things differently. They will have made different assumptions and reacted to different things. Sharing these at the end of working together can be very powerful. As we publicly share these assumptions and beliefs we learn a lot about ourselves. We also create a common understanding of what makes things work and what gets in the way. We create the opportunity to be better at involving others in the future.

You may want to capture your lessons in a final report, with credits to all involved. The next time your organization launches a project, the leaders will want to study your report and build on the insights it offers.

Don’t be too hard on anyone (including yourself) when developing a final report. If you’re a perfectionist, you play an important role in your group: You set high standards and push people to achieve them. But be a realist, too. Expect some glitches in any work, and don’t beat people up too much about them.

Avoid blame. Someone once said to Julie after she was involved with something that went badly, “You are not to blame, but you are responsible for your own contribution.” It sounded a little crazy at the time—but it makes sense. Take an honest look at what happened, including any mistakes you made, and without “blaming” yourself or anyone else, try to see what you did to contribute to those mistakes.

Be nondefensive in making your plans for the future. Avoid apologizing, justifying, or defending yourself. Stand by what you’ve done and be positive about what you will and will not do in the future.

Remember, even tragedies have an ending. Whatever happened in your project, you need to create closure for yourself and the other people involved. When disappointments fester, the opportunity for learning is lost and you become more likely to repeat your mistakes.

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Inspiring People to Get Involved Again

Endings and beginnings are significant transitions. You started your work with a powerful and inspiring invitation. It is equally important to end with something memorable. In the middle of the work, things may have been frazzled. When we are under pressure, we say things and act in ways we later regret. Any bad feelings may leave us not wanting to ever get involved again. An inspiring ending can give us the opportunity to recover some of this.

The art is in bringing closure to the work in a way that celebrates our efforts and achievements. We are not talking about hokey celebrations that embarrass people. Every type of work has its own acceptable ways of celebrating at the end. We have already seen how the movies do it.

You can use the goals you developed at the start of the work as the basis for celebration. You may want to give out Oscar-style awards for achievement of some of the important goals. The awards may be serious or comic. One group gave out awards in the form of weird or surprising presents. The award for “Most Humility” took the form of a hula hoop. When the presenter awkwardly tried to spin the hoop on his hips, the group exploded in laughter.

The last few moments of the final gathering should be memorable. People will say their goodbyes and perhaps make a final gesture of celebration for their achievements. Choose a gesture that fits the mood and style of your team. We’ve seen groups spontaneously join in a circle and sing. We’ve seen others bring in percussion instruments (drums, bells, maracas) for everyone to play. Other teams drop balloons, toast themselves with beer or wine, or distribute party favors.

After one weeklong workshop involving fifty people from five organizations—a week full of highs and lows—we gathered around the meeting table for one last time. Each participant took a piece of paper, wrote his or her name at the top of it, and passed the paper to the right. The papers traveled around the circle, each person adding a note of appreciation about the person whose name appeared at the top. In a few minutes, everyone at the table received a wonderful list of inspiring acknowledgments of their contribution to the group.

Chapter Checklist

To finish your job of effective involvement:

• Leave people knowing the job is completed. This frees them to get started on other work and does not keep them coming when there’s little value.
• Draw together the loose ends; ensure that any handover is complete and that the work is all done.
• Leave people better prepared to be involved and involve others in the future.
• Take time out to reflect and conduct after-action reviews. This investment is what supports individual and organizational learning and helps us to be better at involving others in the future.
• Leave people wanting more. They should want to be involved again the next time you or someone else comes knocking.
• Have an inspiring celebration, acknowledge people’s contributions, and say thank you.