Lessons for your team from Dad Jokes
Dad jokes can't fail.
It may be that dad jokes have stumbled on an ingenious design feature. Photo from https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/
Occasionally, they are actually funny and they work. Maybe the timing was perfect or it was just the right mix of insight and silliness. Every now and then, a dad joke will land just right.
More often, they aren't funny - and they work for that reason. The listeners (victims?) roll their eyes and if it's the kids they'll give a classic response of "Daaaaaaaddd!!! That was terrible." The father usually chuckles. He was trying to get a response and the eye roll is a completely acceptable response.
Whichever scenario, the joke hasn't failed. Basically, there are two independent positive outcomes that can arise. It's a great way to design experiments in our teams.
It may be that dad jokes have stumbled on an ingenious design feature that we could apply in our teams.
Often what maintains our teams' inertia is a combination of our desire to be right before we set course or our determination to make our chosen path correct. For all of the talk about "safe to fail" environments, most people don't feel like that is their experience in teams.
A "dad joke"* of approach shifts our thinking from a binary positive/negative focus on outcome to a more nuanced need to be responsive to the system as it is (not as we wish for it to be) and less attached to a predetermined outcome. Our world doesn't offer us the luxury of certainty and so a way to foster this approach is an advantage for teams.
Of course, there are plenty of times when these are not the right experiments to run. I'd rather not have my plane pilot testing new techniques while I'm on board). In most teams, there is more scope for these little experiments than we typically believe.
Here is a series of questions that could facilitate a useful conversation and shift in your teams:
What is one thing that your team might benefit from starting or stopping?
If it goes to plan, what benefits could you expect?
What are some alternative positive outcomes?