Episode #18: Say Why Now

Welcome change by adding exigence to your proposals.

Kairos, the Greek god for timeliness and opportunity.

Welcome back, readers!

I’ve missed you and hope your 2022 is starting off well. We have an exciting line up of posts curated for the second half of this newsletter—posts which will take us all the way up to the end of May, just before the sun starts to really shine and calls us all back to the beach.

Until then here’s a quick read to get you back in the habit of thinking about how the words you say can foster productive conflict in your life.

Imagine you want to get your colleagues (or family, or friends, or book clubbers) interested in taking a new direction, adopting a new custom, or in corporate speak, making a culture shift.

Anytime people are called to do something that alters the status quo there is likely to be some degree of conflict.

Somewhere in our minds, we are naturally change-avoidant. There is a calculation we do where if the work required to make a change, even if that change has potential long-term benefits, is greater than the effort to stick with the status quo and continue using the practices and systems already learned but may be at fault, it’s easier to stick with those systems than learn something new. Learning, as it turns out, is hard work, and most of us require a little extra motivation to turn off our auto-pilot because we’ve learned how to fly with the auto-pilot, even if it isn’t always perfect.

The burden on the change agent, the disruptor, the person making the proposal, is therefore quite heavy.

Typically, the change agent (you!) might reply upon the power of hierarchy: “I am in charge and this is the new way we are going!” or, with a little more effort, an informational approach might try to teach people the details motivating the proposal.

What’s often left out, and what others (like you!) often want to know from the change agent is why a change needs to happen now.

In comes our rhetorical word of the day: exigence. Rhetorically, exigence speaks to the (typically urgent) cause for discourse to begin. Without exigence, an audience will not see any urgency to adopt a new proposal. And without urgency, there is no motivation.

Stating the exigence for your audience tells your audience why your proposal should be accepted now. When paired with an answer to the question “so what” (stakes) you can have a powerful argument.

An example: a CFO says the company needs to switch to a new accounting software. It will require new protocols, new trainings, and a steep upfront cost to purchase and distribute the software. By stating the exigence for this proposal, that is, telling her listeners why the software needs to be adopted now, her argument would include language about how the software solves old problems that are nearing an irreversible bottleneck next quarter. It’s not just that the software solves an old problem, but that if implemented now, will not only solve the old problem but prevent a new one from occurring. If we wait a moment longer, the old problem will persist and, like a cell undergoing mitosis, will create yet another problem for the company to manage down the road.

In this example we see how exigence isn’t a naturally occurring and ever-present phenomenon. Exigence is something created by a speaker and deployed to an audience through rhetoric.

The next time you want to persuade something to do something new, consider attaching to your proposal your answer to a very important question: why now?

Taking the time to explain why now, or asking your colleague why now? might be one way to make your 2022 an exigent year for finding positive and productive outcomes in the conflicts you find at the workplace and beyond.