The Overlap is a newsletter somewhere between product development and organizational development. It comes out every Wednesday. We’re going to experiment with Thursdays.
On April 8th, I read Are you a baby? A litmus test. I found out about it during a garden3D biweekly retro. Our retros tend to be human, but this was was particularly human. My colleague Simone shared it in the Zoom chat, and others shared that they loved the essay.
Haley, the author, goes to a dinner party and a post-punk show. Which inspired her to create a 2x2 (obviously).
She reflected on how not going to a dinner party alone and staying on the dance floor were both avoidant.
Here’s her elaborating on her 2x2:
For me, refusing to go to the dinner party alone would have been avoidant and selfish. But on the dance floor, the more avoidant choice was actually the more agreeable one: to stay with the group and not make a fuss. And so I populated the graph like this:
The options on the left side of the graph—the avoidant ones—are infantilizing. I baby myself by assuming I can’t go in alone; I baby my friends by assuming they can’t handle me asserting needs in opposition to theirs. The options on the right, meanwhile, allow all of us to be adults, like this:
I think we can apply this 2x2 to how we behave at work.
Should I be in this meeting?
Let’s say it’s Thursday. 3pm. You need time to finish your work. You’ve made dinner plans with friends tonight and you really don’t want to work late again.
However, you have a team meeting 4-5pm.
This 4pm team meeting is standing between you getting your work done and making it to your friend’s dinner. It’s informative, but you know you can catch up on updates later.
Here’s the 2x2 of the decisions you can make:
The avoidant-selfish decision: you miss the meeting without letting your coworkers know. You get your work done and go to your friend’s dinner.
The avoidant-agreeable decision: you go to the meeting and resent it. You go to your friend’s dinner, but your brain can’t stop thinking about the work you have to do. You work until 4am to finish the project.
The active-selfish decision: you let your coworkers know that you need to miss the meeting to finish your work. While you feel like you’re disappointing your team, your team doesn’t mind. You finish your work and make it to your friend’s dinner!
The active-agreeable decision: you ask your project manager to extend the deadline of your project to Tuesday. Your project manager says sure. Nice! You go to the meeting — and are told you are the most excited person in the Zoom. Hell yeah. You carry your jovial energy to your friend’s dinner and feel good about having more time to finish the project.
Anyway. This 2x2 won’t give you a straightforward answer in every situation. Which is kind of the point. It gives you a way to understand your needs, and then prompts you to consciously choose to prioritize your needs or the group’s. You decide your destiny, rather than passively receive “circumstances” that eventually become the story you tell yourself of why you’re always stressed out at work.
Stating your needs benefits the collective
“Prioritize the group’s needs over yours. You’re selfish if you don’t.” I grew up internalizing this. But when I worked in a self-managing company, I learned that in this context (and in most situations in life) it's selfless to communicate what you need.
If you’re a facilitator, and you want to help your group practice self-management, you should ask “did you get what you needed?” after a team member brings an agenda item to the group. I learned this in my first job. I still use this tactic when I facilitate meetings. By asking “did you get what you needed”, I understand if others are getting what they need, and help others have the space to know their needs and communicate them.
What I’ve found in my attempts to quiet the guesswork is that it’s actually—obviously—much easier to state my needs and expect others to do the same. In fact, it frees up a humiliating amount of time and energy. I’m still learning how to do this. (Haley Nahman in Are you a baby?)
My working theory is that stating your needs benefits the collective more than always guessing what the collective needs.
How can the collective evolve to meet what its people need if the people aren’t asking for what they need?
If a collective of people aren’t stating their needs, how is this not a traditional hierarchy where one person assumes what people need?
How much easier would it be for everyone if everyone was committed to stating their needs and expecting others to do the same?
You might feel selfish to communicate your needs with your coworkers. Or boss. Especially if you’re like me, where you grew up thinking that you should always prioritize the group’s needs. But if you and your coworkers share the expectation that it’s on the individual to state their needs, the collective will naturally evolve to meet its members' needs. And this expectation isn’t at the expense of the organization’s vision or strategy. The org’s ways of working help us uphold the strategy, so we trust that the organization will prioritize its needs as individuals state theirs.
This is where traditional career advice like “always frame your request in the context of what the company wants” can fall short. When your manager asks you why you want a raise, and you say “getting a raise will help me advance the company’s goals in an even more impactful way”, you perpetuate the idea that you don’t have needs, other’s don’t have needs, and that companies are comprised of machines rather than humans. Blunt, I know!
Of course, it’s good to know how what you want aligns with what the company wants. But if I was your manager and I heard that, I’d love to know what core needs of yours aren’t being met. Are you not feeling recognized? Do you feel like your need for fairness isn’t being met because you heard that someone else in the same role is making more than you? Is your need for significance not being met because you believe your work deserves a higher salary?
📖 Further Reading 📖
BICEPS — six core needs all humans have. Props to Tia at Affirma for introducing this to garden3D!
📖 Further Reading 📖
Being selfish is, in lots of instances, selfless. State your needs! It benefits the collective.
I also want to note that it’s easier for people with certain backgrounds and privileges to state their needs. I don’t have a perfect solution to this. I think your team should create awareness around this to start. What about our backgrounds, identities, and privileges, are making it less than safe to state what we need? How can we advocate for each other here? I want to grow more here.
Am I being avoidant?
To my product managers, leaders, org designers, and consultants:
What can you use from this framework in your work?
Where does it fall short? What can be improved?
And to everyone else (including product managers, leaders, org designers, and consultants!):
When at work do you tend to be avoidant?
Where can you be a little more proactive?
In what instances should you prioritize your needs more?
In what instances should you prioritize the group’s needs more?
What I’m Reading
Product Management in Practice second edition, by Matt Lemay. Honored that Matt asked me for some feedback and noodling on prior drafts. And stoked for Matt in putting in work and getting a second edition out there.
Lazy Facilitation by Daniel Stillman. Lessons from Daniel’s origami teacher on teaching others.
Rejecting Specialization by Tom Critchlow.
What good narrative strategy looks like by Vicky Gu.
Hyperstructures by Jacob. Thanks Hugh for sharing this with me.
“We are in a time of new suns” by adrienne maree brown and The On Being Project. This was the most compelling (and relieving) thing I listened to in the past two weeks. adrienne is a masterful writer and systems thinker.
See you in two weeks,
–tim