Magic Words 🪄
How small changes in language can have big impacts on outcomes
Some words are magic: they have the ability to change our view of the world and our behaviour.
When you ask a child to help with a chore, you might cop enough resistance that it wears you down, and find yourself reuniting the diaspora of toys without assistance once more. But use the magic words and ask, Can you be a helper?, and the noun taps into identity and willingness to help changes. In fact, it doubles1.
Or consider when you set a goal in work. When a goal is framed as a performance goal, it is often interpreted as a test of ability, driving people to avoid risks, to give-up faster in favour of rationalising when it gets too hard, and even to cheat more. But use the magic words and frame the exact same thing as a learning goal, and people take more risks, persist longer, and (with pleasing irony) performance improves2.
One more example, this time, it’s about a simple coffee mug. Take that mug and ask someone how much they would pay for it, and the answer might be about $2.87. But use the magic words, This is your mug, and ask people how much they would sell it for, and the answer might be about $7.123.
When words can be magic, it matters which words we use.
I am fascinated by magic words in the modern organisation, and even more fascinated by the magic words that are being whispered without ever being heard aloud - the words whispered by the conventional system of work.
Devil on my shoulder 😈
When I look at the conventional practices of the modern organisation - high-definition jobs, linear management, annual budgets, cascaded targets - I see a system of work whispering the same magic words over and over:
This is yours.
This is your job, your people, your budget, your targets.
The modern organisation is giving everyone a mug and saying, this is your mug. People look at their mug and exclaim, This is a beautiful, important mug! It’s worth at least $7.12! This should take pride of place in the cupboard, in front of all those other mugs that look like they’re worth only about two bucks.
The magic words, This is yours, create an ownership mindset which drives people to treat resources, knowledge, and people as theirs. It pushes people to optimise their space even at significant cost to others. It incentivises people to preserve reputation, taking credit for ‘my performance’ and criticising the performance of others. It leads people to see critique of ‘their space’ as a personal attack. It incentivises defence of ownership boundaries, wasting time arguing who can do what. It drives inefficient centralised decision making to maintain perceived control of owned space. And it creates loss aversion to reduction in remit, people, and budget.
What a heap of junk.
And you didn’t even have to say the magic words yourself - the practices in the conventional system of work have done all the talking for you.
A better subliminal 🧠
So just as magic words can change helping behaviour in children, commitment to goals, and the value of mugs, here are the magic words to attack all of this junk created by the ownership mindset in the modern organisation:
We are stewards of the mission4.
The mission defines the most important work to do, and we organise ourselves around that. We know our envelope of resources for the period, and we move them to what is most important right now. You don’t have people, we have a network that supports people. Those are not your targets, these are our targets.
A stewardship mindset creates a sense of care for resources, knowledge, and people. It incentivises people to make choices for the benefit of the whole system, because their own boundaries can and will change. It drives people to share data and insights, to think more long-term, and to take more considered risks. And what I believe is the most powerful benefit of all, it eliminates so much junk that makes it impossible for the modern organisation to sense and respond to reality: it shifts the organisation from forcing the most important work to fit in with the people, and instead enables people to organise around the most important work.
Small changes in practices 🤏
Just as conventional practices create an ownership mindset, better practices create a stewardship mindset. Here are some non-radical options that you can try tomorrow:
Mission-centric job descriptions: Instead of job descriptions listing 20 dot points of forever responsibilities, lead with the mission of the team, department, or organisation and position responsibilities as what is needed right now in pursuit of that mission, with a commitment to evolve through job fit conversations. Speaking of which…
Job fit conversations: A periodic (try quarterly) conversation about job responsibilities, an exploration of fit between needs of the mission and needs and capabilities of the individual. Re-code back into an evolved job description if helpful. When job responsibilities can and will change, it is natural to see ourselves as stewards for now, not owners forever.
Mission squad: Establish a group that can be deployed on work that is important to the mission but has emerged unexpectedly and does not fit elsewhere. Fill the team with a rotating group of people from all areas, have the CEO invite each person personally. Grow in number of squads and scope of work to go from working at the edge to working on the core.
Always try-listen-try 🧪
These better practices are things you can try tomorrow. They are not dependent on a moment of revelation in the boardroom. They are not dependent on an all-in shift like Scaled Agile. These are small upstream tweaks that have big, positive downstream effects.
Like it or not, your system of work is going to whisper some magic words to your people each and every day. It is doing so right now. You can accept the default, the convention, and let those words be This is yours. Or, you can introduce better practices, and change those words to be We are stewards of this mission. What happens downstream is not inevitable, it is a choice. Better, productive, joyous work is within your reach.
What we do
At Joyous Work, we help organisations of all sizes configure their system of work so people spend more time using their skills on meaningful things. The result: organisations gain greater productivity in pursuit of their goals, and people experience more joy because their effort truly matters.
Visit joyouswork.com or reach out to john@joyouswork.com.
Bryan, Master, & Walton, “Helping” Versus “Being a Helper”: Invoking the Self to Increase Helping in Young Children, Child Development, 2014, Vol.85 no.5
Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, 2006
Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem, Journal of Political Economy, 1990, vol.98 no.6
Mission can be at a team, department, or organisation level