Frequently Questioned Answers

Many web sites feature a Frequently Asked Questions section, giving answers to visitor's most common questions. We think it's appropriate here, since we do not have a cookbook set of responses to your unique dilemmas, to offer instead a set of Frequently Questioned Answers.

What are Frequently Questioned Answers? These are the rules, beliefs, and imperatives, often insisted upon by all participants, that hold individuals, teams, and organizations unable to work well together. Working well together means developing strategies for questioning these answers.

It all starts innocently enough. To help make progress, the organization, the individual or group, or both, insist upon a strategy that actually prevents progress. Enforcing this strategy seals the effect, "We have to, we want to, and we can't!" Many project "problems" are simply the resonance of individuals, groups, and their organizations tangled in these terrible binds. Searching for the cause can and does occupy much effort. Identifying causes rarely resolves anything except someone's need for a story to explain the situation.

Successful individuals, groups, and their organizations are often better at questioning their answers than answering their questions. Questioning the imperative can "cause" the "problem" behaviors to disappear.

Working Poorly

There are five classic tangles, each of which sometimes contributes to working poorly together.

Working Well Together

True North project guidance strategies can help you identify the answers that need questioning in your project. We can help you formulate the questions that can render these binds toothless. We can also show your team members how to develop the skills to identify their own answers, formulate their own questions, and create the conditions that will allow them to work well together.

Learn about our Brief Consulting interventions.
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