Blog Entry

One of Blue Oxen’s most important ideas is something we call, “The Squirm Test.” To provide some context for what it is and why it’s useful, I’d like to share a great story written by Paul Culmsee. In 2006, he had been hired to help a mid-sized company install a major SharePoint installation. He explains:

This organisation came from a place of pretty low maturity around their document, knowledge and information management practices. As I have subsequently come to understand and recognise, many organisations coming from this place have a tendency to try to boil the ocean, via a phenomena that I previously termed the “panacea effect“.

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But that wasn’t the problem area - that was actually the *tame* part of the SharePoint project. This project started to unwind pretty quickly for other reasons. Under pressure and eager to produce, the Microsoft enamoured sponsor pushed hard. Each stakeholder had *radically* different world views of what we were doing, and pinning down scope and requirements was an exercise in futility, project time estimates were crashed by more than half because they were more than the sponsors original naive estimate that went to the board of directors. The thoroughly frustrated project manager said to me one day “I don’t know what I am delivering anymore”.

Around this time I decided to have a chat with some of the major stakeholders because I was really worried about this project to the point that I was thinking of resigning. It seemed that the various stakeholders never actually spoke to each other, instead using the project manager as a kind of proxy. I thought that maybe a few one-on-one, more casual meetings might break a few deadlocks and frustrations.

So, sitting in a coffee place with one particular stakeholder, I was asked the question that was the catalyst for where I am today.

“Paul, can you tell me the difference between SharePoint and Skype?”

(When I told the audience this at the Best Practice conference, I was met with disbelieving laughter. I can tell you that at the time I didn’t laugh - I was so taken aback by the question I just about choked on my double-shot latte!).

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[W]e all know SharePoint is technically complex, but the “SharePoint vs Skype” conversation for me was a watershed moment. If I were the PM, how could I have seen this coming and mitigated it early? How could we have gotten into the implementation phase for someone to ask such a question? He sat in all the meetings with everyone else and he saw the famous SharePoint pie chart like everyone else. What was wrong with our processes? Did we need to use a best-practice methodology? Did I need to learn to train people better?

The problem, as Paul explains, was that the team lacked Shared Understanding. Furthermore, gaining Shared Understanding is hard. I highly recommend all six parts of Paul’s essay, where he discusses his exploration into different processes before settling on Dialogue Mapping.

Most organizations never make it nearly as far as Paul did. Sometimes, it’s because they simply don’t know what to do. Other times, it’s because they’re either not aware of this lack of Shared Understanding, or because they don’t want to believe it.

The Squirm Test

The Squirm Test is a simple tool for measuring Shared Understanding. Take a team of people working on a project together. Have them sit in a circle and on their hands.

Ask someone to stand up and briefly explain what the team is working on, what are the challenges, and what’s the plan moving forward. No one is allowed to say anything unless they are standing. Once that person is finished talking, have the next person stand and go through the same exercise. Repeat until everyone has had a chance to speak.

The more people squirmed while others were talking, the less Shared Understanding you have.

You can apply The Squirm Test in less controlled circumstances. In fact, people do it all the time. Next time you’re in a meeting, be mindful of the group. Nine times out of ten, you’ll notice constant squirming, vacant stares accompanied by vigorous nodding, and other signs that you do not have Shared Understanding.

I mentally go through this exercise all the time when I work with groups, and it helps me understand what tools I should use moving forward. Many of my most satisfied clients have been people who thought they needed to boil the ocean, when what they really needed was Shared Understanding. The Squirm Test lets you know what your organization needs, and it provides a way of knowing whether you’ve gotten there.

Categories: Stories