Why Are We Ordering Together?

Six people are trying to order a pizza.

This should not be difficult.

Everyone wants traditional crust. Everyone wants extra cheese. We're off to a good start.

And then someone says pepperoni. Someone else hates pepperoni. Someone wants mushrooms. Someone doesn't eat meat. And someone suggests pineapple, at which point the group has larger problems.

Forty-five minutes later, everyone is hangry and no pizza has been ordered.

The problem isn't the toppings. The problem is that everyone is trying to make sure the shared pizza looks exactly like the pizza they would have ordered for themselves.

When "mine" has to become "ours"

We do this around leadership tables all the time.

Finance looks at the budget. Communications thinks about the audience. Operations sees the implementation challenges. A member sees the impact on their community.

And they're supposed to.

The goal isn't to get people to stop caring about their interests. Representing those interests is part of why they're at the table. But the trouble starts when bringing our interests to the table turns into needing to make sure they prevail.

Or when we decide that if something doesn't directly affect our interests, it isn't really our concern. That's when "What matters to us?" quietly becomes "What's in this for me?"

If that's the standard, it gets awfully hard to order the pizza.

Not everything we do together has to be about you

It sounds obvious.

Of course every decision isn't going to benefit every department equally. Every association priority isn't going to affect every member. Every board member isn't going to care equally about every program.

But watch what happens when resources get tight or people are asked to put their energy behind something that doesn't directly benefit them.

We start guarding our slices.

If 14 out of 20 members are affected by an issue, why should the other six care? If another department gets the new position, what does mine get? If this isn't a problem in my community, why should I spend my time on it?

Those aren't inherently unreasonable questions. Not every individual priority should become a collective priority simply because someone cares deeply about it.

But something doesn't have to matter equally to every person before it can matter to the group. I don't have to be the one who needs the vegetarian option to understand why it belongs in our order.

That's part of what makes an "us" different from a collection of "me"s.

Thinking about the whole doesn't make you want the pineapple

This is where leaders can fall back on telling people to "think about the organization as a whole."

Okay.

That doesn't make you want the pineapple any more.

The leadership challenge isn't to convince people that their own interests no longer matter. It's helping them understand what their responsibility becomes when they take a seat at the table.

Your job is to bring your perspective. Your responsibility is to help make the collective decision.

So bring the financial implications. Bring what you're hearing from customers or members. Bring the realities facing your department or community. Then stay at the table when everyone else brings theirs.

And at some point, help the conversation shift from What does this mean for me? to Given everything we've heard, what makes sense for us?

You can't build an "us" merely by telling people to act like one. Leaders have to create the conditions that make thinking collectively possible.

Sometimes that starts simply by changing the questions we ask.

"That doesn't affect my department.” Okay. But does it matter to us?

"This is what my team needs.” Help us understand why. Then help us weigh it against everything else we need to accomplish.

And pay attention to what the organization rewards. If the people who guard their corner most fiercely are the ones who get what they want, everyone else learns pretty quickly to do the same.

And then the pizza arrives

Eventually, the group makes a decision.

Maybe it isn't what you would have chosen. Maybe your argument didn't carry the day. Maybe there is, regrettably, pineapple involved.

You don't have to suddenly like it.

But if we've considered the different perspectives and made a legitimate collective decision, there's a point when the question changes again.

It isn't What did I want us to do?

It's What have we decided to do?

And being part of an "us" means taking some ownership of that answer.

That doesn't mean pretending you never disagreed or withholding legitimate concerns. But there's a difference between saying, "This wasn't my first choice, but it's where we landed," and spending the rest of dinner making snide comments about the pineapple you're picking off your slice.

Organizations do the latter all the time. We make the decision in the room, then walk out and distance ourselves from it.

"Well, I didn't vote for it."

"I told them I didn't think this would work."

Technically, the group made a decision. But we never really created an "us."

Maybe that's the harder work of building one.

Bring what matters to you. Make room for what matters to other people. Figure out what matters enough to become ours. And when it does, be willing to put some of your own energy behind it – even when it isn't particularly about you.

Being part of something bigger doesn't require giving up the things that matter to us. But it probably does require loosening our grip on the idea that everything we do together has to look exactly like the pizza we would have ordered for ourselves.

Otherwise, we're just not sure why we bothered ordering together.