Cultivating and Spending Influence
CORRECT: "One of the directions in which you are going is wrong. You should do it this way instead. Here, let me make some suggestions."
INCORRECT: "Because this is being scheduled stupidly, I quit/I'm not coming/I'm mad at you etc."
Implicit in number two is the assumption the person you're talking to is married to the idea.
I'm not sure how often or how loudly I need to repeat my call for participation. I think most people have heard and internalized it. I am running an open process, and there are dozens of you with more wisdom about my job than I have. Outside of the area of flyers, program book, and website (which are no longer under my authority) I'm not one of those concom leaders who have a strong vision and the stubborn will to pursue it. In fact, I think the current schedule, with some gleaming exceptions, looks entirely too much like me, and I would like it to look less like me. As head of programming, I would prefer my job to be to get out of the way of volunteers, document their decisions, and referee.
Despite the degree to which I shamelessly toady to extremely useful unpleasant people, I am nevertheless pleased when they resign. In the past several months I have been rid of a few collaborators whose first response to any dissatisfaction had tended to be reflexive hysteria. A wise policy is "Advise first, ridicule second, threaten last." Here is the process by which to preserve and carefully spend social capital to influence a flattened-pyramid friendship-based volunteer organization such as an ad-hocracy:
Escalation one: Express dissatisfaction and say what you prefer. Before escalating further, wait and see if there's a serious chance of them really taking you in an inadvisable direction. They might just be floating a trial balloon.
Escalation two: If it's really so important you can't just let it go, lobby everybody who has the authority to change it, and strongly attempt to convince them. It's really amazing if this doesn't do the trick. People are pretty reasonable.
Escalation three, which blows your entire wad of carefully-cultivated social capital: Threaten to withdraw because it's just that important.
You need to realize that this is threatening to declare enmity with the entire group. If you go through with it (or just threaten it enough), they will have that much less reason to do what you want. Do not drop a resignation H-bomb the minute somebody makes a tentative suggestion with a question mark at the end.
Comments
overthesun on Oct. 23, 2006 3:17 PM
A+, 100%, totaly agree.
It seems like a certain subset of fandom lives on hysteria-alert. . . And last night Rachel pointed out to me why:
In Fandom, and Rennies, and likely other high-energy, large-social capital, fringe groups, there are a abnormaly large number of people suffering from "Histrionic Personality Disorder" (or perhaps borderline cases of said) ( http://mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=545&cn=8 )
After reading up on it, it makes sense that fandom would be laced with this personality. . . And, perhaps, we should consider a focus group to re-engineer our processes to balance out for the negatives of this personality issue. . . As we obviously already rely on it's potential powers.
Anonymous on Oct. 23, 2006 4:15 PM
There is also likely an abnormally high number of people suffering from "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" (or perhaps borderline cases of said)
http://mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=8158&cn=8
and distinguishing between the two is likely beyond most of our abilities as lay(wo)men.
overthesun on Oct. 23, 2006 4:21 PM
True enough also. I think, personally, that this sort of thing is what makes fandom people so interesting, and fandom so much fun. . .But we all need to be alert for the possible dounsides of our fun, and aberant, friends (or selves! :P )
zifferent on Oct. 23, 2006 5:22 PM
Sure you can tell the difference.
Fen generally trend towards the dramatic and geeks are more heavily associated with narcissism.
...or is that just the stereotype?
phecda on Oct. 23, 2006 3:36 PM
Just for the record, and as your conchair, you have my complete and total support for the job that you're doing. We are so far ahead of the curve of where we have been in previous years. I am suitably impressed. :-)
And if you don't ruffle some feathers on occaision, you're not doing your job.
blue-duck on Oct. 23, 2006 4:17 PM
Well-put and excellent advice for any number of situations in which a group of people have to collaborate to create something they all want to see happen.
I may print this out, make paper airplanes of it and throw them at people's noses who need to see it every now and then. Of course, that may be too subtle. :P
phecda on Oct. 23, 2006 4:52 PM
Now for you, I would have expected it etched on a throwing star... ;-)
blue-duck on Oct. 23, 2006 5:05 PM
Y'know, that's a good idea. I may have to custom order a bunch of different ones. I will be the clue-shuriken ninja... I still like the paper airplanes idea, but the metal projectiles will be for warning 2. Warning 3 involves the clue-katana and is grounds for (heh) termination. :D
elizilla on Oct. 23, 2006 4:54 PM
Then there are the people who stick at escalation two FOREVER, long after it should be clear that they are not going to get their way. You just wish they'd get to escalation three and put everyone out of their misery.
rachelann1977 on Oct. 23, 2006 5:07 PM
reiterating what overthesun said. Seriously, go read the description of that disorder, histrionic in particular, and if you can't name at least three people in fandom who fit that description, I'd be shocked.
netmouse on Oct. 23, 2006 6:33 PM
Though one must note that a statement that starts with "we decided to" is very rarely "a tentative suggestion with a question mark at the end."
matt-arnold on Oct. 23, 2006 6:41 PM
That's regrettably true, even though they are the same thing in the case of what I do for Penguicon. As I said above, I'm not sure how many times I have to say it before it is heard and internalized. It's possible that the only way we can inculcate a culture in which hearers always understand every direction we have started along (i.e. a decision we have made) is open to discussion, is by laboriously prefacing every statement about our directions with a proviso to that effect. I just hope my language will not become any more burdened with a constant repetitious footnotes than it already is.
netmouse on Oct. 23, 2006 7:04 PM
yes, it is unfortunate, since contortions and loboriously scribed "footnotes" are both less fun and inviting and less effective than they inclusion of an indefinite sense "might, try, etc." or the explicit solicitation of opinions (not in the general demand form of "please give us feedback whenever you have it", nor in the complanitory, as here "why do people get melodramatic and withdraw from a process instead of first expressing that they wish we would change how we have said we are doing things?", but simply by the following of statements with questions like "what do you think of that?"
users on Oct. 24, 2006 2:05 AM
"es, it is unfortunate, since contortions and loboriously scribed "footnotes" are both less fun and inviting and less effective than they inclusion of an indefinite sense "might, try, etc.""
I dunno, I think those contortions, as seen above, were very fun and inviting... :) I like big words well employed... but I'm a sick dude.
treebones on Oct. 23, 2006 9:55 PM
Sounds like you're having a, well, interesting year, but *very* good post. (:
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