The Last 10%
As mentioned below, I have been leading our team at Bayside through the 5 Dysfunctions of a team and have been very happy with the response of our team. You can read some personal stories here on Danny Macphail’s blog. He’s one of our worship pastors who wrote a great post about 5 Tips to Engaging in Healthy Conflict.
This week I was reminded of a very key phrase that helps us get to the heart of an issue. For example, I had a meeting with a co worker one day and had much to cover. There were schedules to look at, things to get approval on, budgets to look over and most of all a conflict I needed to resolve. The conflict was about something he said in a meeting that derailed the momentum we had going and I needed some clarity on the whole incident. In the grand scheme of things, the conflict was only 10% of all we needed to cover but as busy as we both were that day we talked about everything except the conflict. It felt next to impossible to find the right way to segway into it at that moment so I didn’t address it. It festered for a week or so before we finally resolved it.
So how do you get to the last 10%?
The last 10% is that talk you need to have about something that has been weighing on your mind. The common language helps a team or organization makes the talks smoother to get into. To say “hey, I got to talk to you about the last 10%” or “here’s one of those last 10% things” or whatever is whole lot faster than, well, the alternative. Being able to use that phrase also gives the person you’re talking to a little heads up too. If I know someone wants to talk to me about the last 10% and I am expected to walk into a meeting, I will defer that conversation to a later time when I can devote my full attention to it.
Is there a conversation you need to have with someone that deals with the last 10%?
