The Social Side of Improvement

While organisational purpose, leadership directives, customer feedback and development processes model guide improvement efforts in business and technology, the truth is that willingness to improve is driven primarily by social and behavioral factors within teams. Even the most meticulous goals, inspired leadership, and incentive structures fall flat without the initiative of people who develop, design and maintain systems. Understanding social dynamics is key.

Cultivating Constructive Exchanges

Improvement starts with recognition of social blockers* and unhelpful or deleterious assumptions – things which teams and individuals may find uncomfortable to confront. Where people feel uncertain about transparency, or fear judgment, they tend to hide issues instead of raising them. Leaders may choose to actively cultivate environments geared towards constructive exchanges, allowing for open dialogue around issues. This helps normalise the process of identification and resolution of deficiencies.

Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation

While extrinsic rewards like bonuses or promotions may temporarily boost improvement efforts, intrinsic joy and satisfaction derived from enhancing systems sustains team momentum better long-term. By tapping into natural human needs for growth, learning and overcoming challenges, organisations can activate self-perpetuating cycles of improvement. Especially in CKW (Collaborative Knowledge Work) this intrinsic drive always outweighs extrinsic rewards.

Team Cohesion and Alignment

Teams that agree on why improvements matter and how to make them happen can work together better to upgrade the way the work works. When a team shares beliefs about the value of making progress, they can encourage each other to take helpful steps through dialogue, teamwork, and motivation. Without this same vision and coordination as a team, people can lose steam and direction, which slows progress.

No policies handed down by an organisation can force improvement to happen without support within the team itself – people’s drive to learn and tackle problems as a group keeps development going over time. Smart teams focus first on creating a common purpose and satisfaction from incremental gains among the team members. This activates social forces within the team that enable ongoing improvements to happen more easily.

In essence, having people work positively together as a team, united by common goals and motivations, is what sustains long-term progress above all. Savvy teams build pride in small wins, and in camaraderie focused on solving challenges that come up. This gives the team itself an inner drive to keep improving.

The Role of Nonviolence

Teams working together day after day to refine and upgrade systems will inevitably encounter disagreements, debates over technical design tradeoffs and even interpersonal conflicts. Without mindful effort, discussions around imperfections can turn counterproductive if they degrade into blame games, aggressive posturing or dismissiveness. Leaders therefore need to proactively encourage nonviolent communication norms.

Attending to Folks’ Needs

For nonviolence to truly take root, teams may choose to move beyond civil language, to proactively attending to the psychological, emotional and practical needs of team members. This involves empathy, active listening, validating concerns without judgment, and extending support to help resolve issues causing distress. By being attentive caregivers, teams allow themselves to feel safer, exposing vulnerabilities including skill limitations and interpersonal issues that may be blocking progress.

Empathetic Language

By teaching team members to frame problems objectively, avoid finger-pointing around issues and discuss potential improvements with empathy, compassion and non-judgment, conversations become solution-focused. This prevents people from becoming defensive when their work is critiqued and keeps debate civil, allowing cooperative analysis of flaws.

Mediation Over Escalation

When conflicts around system deficiencies do emerge within teams, leaders should mediate issues through open dialogue between parties rather than let tensions escalate. Allowing people to air their perspectives fully and feel heard diffuses situations where egos can clash during ongoing refinement efforts. If deficiencies are structural, collective responsibility should be emphasized over singling out individuals to avoid disincentivizing transparency around limitations.

Nonviolence In Action

Ultimately, by normalizing nonviolent communication, dialogue and conflict mediation practices within teams, leaders can ensure that the necessary discussions around flaws and areas of improvement do not themselves disturb the social fabric underlying cooperative work. This sustains healthy relationships between members which are foundational for iterative development.

*Social Blockers

“Social blockers” refer to interpersonal or group dynamics that inhibit progress, innovation, and improvement in teams and organisations. Some examples of social blockers include:

1. Groupthink – Where there is pressure on members to conform to a dominant narrative and not challenge assumptions. This smothers dissenting perspectives that may reveal flaws or areas to improve.
2. Blame Culture – When failure or deficiencies consistently get attributed to individuals’ mistakes rather than addressing systematic gaps. This makes people defensive about problems rather than openly discussing solutions.
3. Office Politics – Power struggles, protection of turf, and ego issues can distract focus away from constructive progress. Backbiting, sabotage, nepotism etc. form rifts that block alignment.
4. Poor Leadership – Leaders who don’t welcome critical feedback or consumer insights, provide inadequate resources/training, resist change, or don’t mediate conflicts actively perpetuate barriers to improving the social dynamic.
5. Complacency & Myopia – Organisations can get habituated to certain ways of operating, becoming complacent. Lack of outside perspective also breeds collective myopia to needs for positive change.
6. Toxic Communicational Norms – Uncivil dialogue, aggressive confrontation styles, disrespect, and microaggressions during discussions on progress inhibits constructive exchanges in teams – somthing vital for improvement.
7. Violence & Intimidation – In toxic organisational cultures, literal or symbolic threats of violence, intimidation, and aggression are sadly used to suppress dissent and critical feedback that reveals improvement areas. By creating an atmosphere of fear, obligation, guilt and shame,, such coercive tactics block openness.

Essentially any interpersonal and group dynamic that suppresses objective problem-solving, transparency around limitations, innovation through fresh perspectives, and constructive dialogue hampers the will and ability to improve – be it products, services or workflows. Managing these “social blockers” is key.

Further Reading

Rosenberg, M. B. (2015). Nonviolent communication: A language of life (3rd ed.). PuddleDancer Press.