Let ‘em rant!

Rants can be used to find solutions when people are responding negatively to change (e.g., a restructuring) or lack of change (e.g., persistent inefficiencies). If you allow them to express “why I hate this,” you can move them into “what will we do about it?”. If you don’t give people a way out of their own negativity, brainstorming will deteriorate into BLAMEstorming.

I call the exercise a “controlled rant” – it plants the seeds of the solution in the rant; all you have to do is to harvest the ideas. The trick is to manage negativity.

Two examples

I used a controlled rant to start a sales/marketing strategy session with a product team that just been told new industry regulations would eliminate the way they sold the product. The sales people were really mad; they had worked hard to establish their method and had enjoyed consistently good commissions for 10 years. The marketing people didn’t have money on the line but were mad because they had to rebuild everything. From the rant we went on to invent completely new sales/marketing strategies.

In another case, I used a rant to start a meeting with a cross functional group that was frustrated by the inefficiencies of their company’s mandated product development process. They were exhausted and feeling trapped by the unrealistic deadlines set by management. From the rant we went on to identify a list of things within their power to change. This surprised them; they were quite accustomed to feeling powerless.

The controlled rant: how to do it

A rant exercise needs to be facilitated carefully by a neutral party (i.e., not management) who knows how to manage negativity. I recommend using someone from outside the company such as myself!

1. Hand out 3×5 post-it notes. Ask people to write what they really think of the topic (“Short-sighted!”) or describe its impact on them (“Too much work!”). Encourage honesty and ask people to refrain from using obscenity and naming names. Remind them to write large, legibly and with a black marker so their post-its can be read from a distance. (Show a sample!)
2. Let the group write for two minutes – no discussion with neighbours. Collect the post-its.
3. Stick the post-its to the wall. Invite everyone up to the wall; ask two volunteers to cluster similar comments.
4. When finished, let the group take in the result. (People feel validated when they see similar rants to their own. Tension is released; they relax or even laugh.)
5. Ask the group to prioritize the clusters according to the most urgent action required.

From here, you can go two ways to arrive at solutions. Choose the one that fits best with the nature of the topic.

FIRST OPTION

• Working with a flip chart, write down the root causes for each of the top 5 priorities. Flag the items within the control of the group. Trying to solve items outside their control will increase their frustration, not relieve it!
• Start to generate solutions for those items and follow up with next steps e.g. who/what/when.

ALTERNATE (better suited to “change” situations)

Repeat the exercise (steps 1-5) again except this time ask the group to express opportunities and other potential positive outcomes of the change. Once the new post-its are clustered, point to the “rant” results and then the “opportunity” results. Ask, “How do we get from there to here?” – now, constructive, creative discussion can begin.