I'm a boss type guy and I absolutely do this intentionally but not because it's not really me setting policy as much as I'm focus group testing. I run it past peers or a few influential people who could be receptive. Get them to to think about it and give some feedback. When I bring it up to the group it's because it's been well-received and the other influencers are ready to back it. Similar to how this article explains it.
Yep exactly. If you go into a meeting and you haven't talked to at least a few of the people there about the topic beforehand, IME it's not going to be a productive meeting. I usually start with getting feedback from one or two subject matter experts, building consensus with them, and then slowly expand my circle of people I get feedback from, until we have "the big meeting". Having a "big meeting" with no pre-established context usually wastes everyone's time.
It’s easy to criticize, but the reality is that making decision with and motivating large groups of people involves tradeoffs that lead to theoretically suboptimal outcomes.
I feel like everyone savvy just does this because they understand the consequences of not doing it and the clueless people always just bitch about there being so much office politics. In my experience it's just the communication protocol that works.
It's not so much politics as it is the fact that no one likes surprises, particularly not your boss or your boss's boss. Almost every major people-problem I've had to sort out in the past year has been a result of someone not getting buy-in from their team or superiors before proclaiming a major change. Change is good, everyone wants you to make your awesome improvements, but you're not a cowboy. You have to engage the people who will be affected by this change, collect feedback, and address any concerns that are surfaced.
What about 1) false negatives (when they receive it poorly), 2) various consequences of priming, 3) false positives (where they receive it well and everyone in main group wrongly assumes they are alone in their doubts)?
You can totally run things in authoritarian manner, gathering consent in instrumental way and use outside sources (like sales) for validation. But downsides/side effects/intentional features not said out loud are well known and researched to the point where one has to intentionally choose to remain ignorant of them to sustain a different narrative.
I do lean on my own instincts. I won't just give up on an idea because someone doesn't like it. They need to convince me. I'm just open to being convinced. But I'm also just wrong sometimes anyway. It's not a science.
For me that is a huge part of it - a combination of focus grouping while I'm refining my thoughts as well as getting people used to the idea. That way, even when things are presented as options, I'm confident that they'll choose the option I want.
The other key aspect is that it's just far more efficient. My last few jobs have espoused being highly collaborative, but in practice what that means is that everyone winds up in the proverbial room. Chaos ensues, nothing ever gets decided.
