#407 – May 19, 2025

Cultivating Conflict Resilience …

Hello, fellow strategists!  In this issue we look at conflict resilience and listening, catalytic questions, why employees quit, and policy for digital security, along with other insights, tools and frameworks to help you achieve success with your strategies.

 

Quick Takes

Cultivate Conflict Resilience Through Listening

A recent webinar on conflict resilience by Bob Bordone reminded us how better listening can be a powerful management tool. First, he identifies five typical internal challenges — what we do while “listening”. As leaders, we need to minimize:

• Judging (“Doing it your way is a bad idea, and anyway, your facts are all wrong.”)
• Defending (“But this wasn’t my fault!”)
• Arguing (“That isn’t the point, noodlehead. The important point is …”)
• Advising (“Obviously, what you need to do is apologize and ask her to forgive you…”)
• Daydreaming (“Uh oh! Do we have enough meat loaf for the in-laws?”)

He also offers some tips on more effective ways to assert your own views:

• Listen first and speak to their interests before expressing your own.
• Share specific data, thinking, reasoning and conclusions (and invite additional data/reasoning).
• Avoid globalizing phrases (like “you never…” or “you always…”).
• Speak from your own perspective (“I am feeling really upset”, not “you are upsetting me”).

Be Alert to Why Employees Quit

Attrition is a persistent, costly problem — and who isn’t worried about losing valued staff?

In an HBR article on Why Employees Quit, Ethan Bernstein, Michael B. Horn and Bob Moesta identify four forces that compel employees to switch jobs.

• Some have a quest to get out. People may feel stuck in a dead-end job, in a role that’s a bad fit, be in over their heads, face a toxic workplace culture, or are being managed in a way that wears them down.
• Others simply want more control over their work environment, perhaps seeking more autonomy, predictability or flexibility in when and where they work. Boredom or work-life balance may be issues.
• Some leave for better role alignment, in a job matching what they have to offer or wish to contribute. They seek another job where their skills and experience are more fully appreciated and respected.
• Some are just taking the next step in their career, typically after reaching a professional milestone (such as completing a major project or assignment, attaining an educational goal, or seeking growth in a new role with challenges).

The authors note that one of the most fundamental problems to be addressed involves the job description. “It usually consists of a hodgepodge of skills, qualifications, and platitudes about work style and culture… as to be meaningless.”

They recommend promoting the job’s experiences, not features, and use a house-listing analogy to illustrate:

“Like most job descriptions, real estate postings tend to focus on features, such as open kitchens, home offices, and finished basements. But those things matter only in the context of day-to-day experience: How will people use them when they cook, when they work at home, and when they entertain? That’s what the real estate agent helps them envision during a walk-through. You can take a similar approach when giving a private, informal ‘tour’ of the job you’re trying to fill.”

Find Creative Solutions with Catalytic Questions

In A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, Adam Morgan and Mark Barden set out how to master a mindset that crushes constraints. They identify three important barriers to inspiration:

• Mindset: Do we believe a new solution is actually possible?
• Motivation: How much do we really want to make it happen?
• Method: Do we know how to start?

They recommend asking “catalytic” questions, a specific type of ambitious question designed to challenge assumptions and provoke a fundamentally different way of thinking about a problem, especially when faced with a significant constraint. For example:

• Constraint: We have no additional budget to expand communications next year.
• Ambition: We need to double the impact of our current marketing program.
• Catalytic Question: “How can we double our communications impact over the next year without spending any more money on marketing?”

Their technique connects ambition to constraint, typically linking a high ambition (what we want to achieve) directly with a significant constraint (what’s making it hard).

A catalytic question should challenge your assumptions, push you beyond standard answers or obvious solutions, propel action and shift perspectives. It reframes a problem from “We can’t because…” to “How could we possibly…”

 

8020Info’s Tip Sheet:

Policy Essentials for Navigating the Digital Frontier

As the digital landscape evolves, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping how non-profits and public sector organizations operate. Technologies offer powerful tools but also introduce complex risks. And in our work with clients this month, many were focused on how to counter such risks and plug vulnerabilities.

Robust policies are no longer optional — they’re essential. Clear, actionable frameworks are needed to help protect sensitive data, uphold ethical standards, and maintain stakeholder trust. To begin, consider these areas when developing your approach:

Data Protection and Privacy

• Define what constitutes sensitive data (e.g., client information, employee data, donor records).
• Establish secure protocols for data collection, storage, access, and disposal, aligned with privacy laws like PIPEDA.
• Use encryption for data in storage and in transit.

Staff and Volunteer Training

• Provide regular cybersecurity training for all personnel (including volunteers and board members).
• Cover common threats such as phishing, malware, weak passwords and social engineering tactics.
• Set clear procedures for reporting security incidents.

Access Control and Device Security

• Enforce strong password policies and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• Define roles and responsibilities for data access, ensuring individuals have access only to the information necessary for their roles.
• Develop guidelines for the secure use of organizational and personal devices, including software updates and patch management.

Incident Response Planning

• Develop a documented response plan covering breach identification, containment, recovery, and review.
• Assign clear roles within the incident response team.

Vendor and Third-Party Risk Management

• Evaluate the security practices of third-party vendors and cloud providers that handle your data.
• Ensure contracts include robust data protection and security clauses.

For Your Reading List:  Digital Mindmasters

Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behaviour explores the power of data and algorithms to influence human behaviour. Author Sandra Matz, a computational social scientist at Columbia Business School, discusses the impact of psychological targeting, from its use in marketing to its potential for improving mental health and financial decisions. It’s a good choice for individuals seeking ways to navigate today’s complex digital landscape.

Closing Thought:  Wiser Decisions

“Your decisions will become wiser when you consider these three words: ‘… and then what?’ for each choice.”

— Kevin Kelly, former Wired editor, writing on The Technium.