Chewing Cud at the Water Cooler

I woke up one morning thinking about cows and how they require time grazing in the pasture and chewing their cud to create milk. The process cows go through to produce milk is a great reminder of the need to see the whole process to understand how things work. If we don’t understand the connection between grazing, chewing cud, time, and producing milk, we might think we could increase milk production merely by hooking up cows 24/7 to the milking machines.

Unpacking the metaphor

I’m using the grazing and chewing cud activity here as a metaphor for the essential-but sometimes not recognized-connectivity between the process and outcomes of a work environment. Like the cows producing milk at the end of the day, organizations often focus only on an employee’s productivity, not on the conditions essential to feed this productivity.

Earlier this year I discussed how softness can feed an organization. It turned out to be one of my most popular topics to date!  Yet organizations don’t place much importance on softness. Similarly, they often don’t place actual value on how we spend time during the workday.  Like a cow grazing in the field, they disconnect certain activities from the results and impact of a person’s work.

Four important “soft” interactions

There are a handful of less tangible, “softer” interactions help an organization function better and generate stronger results:

1. Interacting with others builds trust in an organization. When we hang out at the water cooler or break room, we talk about personal and work topics. These exchanges help us get to know each other in deeper and multidimensional ways and strengthen feelings of trust. Over time, trust becomes thee organizational glue that allows for faster decision making and planning. If we trust each other, we are more open to hearing what another is saying, and we argue less because we are more curious to learn what they have to say.
2. Connecting with others builds resilience and understanding across the organization. We still have silos in many organizations, but this structural default is becoming more and more dysfunctional for organizations that need to do business as a seamless whole. When we  build connections and relationships beyond our specific job duties, these relationships help us see the organization as a whole. When we fail to connect across the organization,  separate silos reinforce barriers, reduce cooperation and create accidental adversarial relationships. Subsequently the organization accelerates the generation of waste – waste of time, energy, focus, and a dangerous distraction from contributing to the organization’s purpose.
3. Meaning and purpose are reinforced when we talk to each other about the nature of our work. Connecting our day-to-day work to a higher shared purpose gives us context, meaning, and motivation for our work. In my work I’ve found that meaning  and purpose is best nurtured via informal conversations and  relationships build across our organizations.
4. Organizational change and adaptation flow along relationship lines and are accelerated by trust.If our relationships are confined to “getting our individual tasks done”, these networks of relationships in organizations are not nurtured or strengthened. When a positional leader wants the organization to adapt, innovate, or change the way they are thinking or doing their work, it becomes a slog to lead change. Without a network of relationships and trust, there is no informal way for the organization to generate support and enthusiasm for what is needed. And it invites small pockets of employees to share why they don’t think what is being promoted is a good idea. This creates resistance and malicious compliance.

Reframing the idea of wasting time

We started with the image of “chewing cud at the water cooler”. Most organizations look at these informal gatherings as a waste of time because people aren’t at their desks getting their work done. Yet connectivity, trust, meaning, alignment to purpose and change all require good relationships between people in an organization. So, I leave you with one question.

How is your organization creating conditions for authentic, trusting, relationships to form and strengthen across your organization?