How to Build a Revolution (At Work): There Will Be Signs
- Shenandoah Chefalo
- 22 hours ago
- 3 min read
The lights buzzed. My note cards were shaking. The title on the board read: “What is the Nature of Conflict and Resolution?”
I was sixteen, newly abandoning my plan to be a marine biologist and being told to “get serious.” So I got serious about revolutions. I dove into the Bolsheviks and Malcolm X, annotated The Merchant of Venice, and stitched timelines together with tape. My “how-to” speech wasn’t about storming palaces; it was about changing the conditions that make conflict inevitable.
I didn’t have the words “trauma-informed” or “human-centered” yet. But even then, I had the signs—Safety, Clarity, and Capacity—and they still predict every culture revolution I help lead today.
There will be signs—two lenses
The kid who’d grow up to do this work (my signs):
Gut-level curiosity about why people protect themselves the way they do.
High tolerance for messy first drafts and hotter-than-expected rooms.
One-more-question before one-more-rule.
A weird joy in turning chaos into rhythm (hello, timelines).
The organization that needs a culture revolution (their signs):
Turnover with glowing exit interviews. (If it’s so great here, why are people leaving?)
Meetings as performance tests; the truth lives in side chats and DMs.
Policy pile-up: one incident → a 9-page rule → risk avoidance.
Heroic leaders with hollow calendars: 2:07 a.m. emails, zero time to think.
If you recognize either list, good. There will be signs before there is change.
From teenage podium to team rooms and board rooms
That photo—taken right after my conflict talk—captures the pivot. In four pages I roamed from The Merchant of Venice to Black soldiers in Vietnam, gangs, WWII, and the pull of religion on culture. Back then, I tried to outmaneuver conflict. Today, I treat conflict as information—usually a signal that Safety, Clarity, or Capacity is out of balance. The work isn’t to erase conflict; it’s to repair what conflict reveals.
The anatomy of a workplace revolution (with what to measure)
Safety before strategy.
People read the room before they hear the plan. Send safety signals: clear expectations, consistent follow-through, leaders who model repair.
Measure: % of meetings that start with norms; monthly psychological safety pulse (1–5).
Curiosity outruns control.
Control closes; curiosity opens. Lead with questions that preserve dignity and surface truth.
Measure: # of genuine questions captured before a major decision; % of decisions with documented input sought.
Repair is the competitive advantage.
High performers aren’t conflict-free; they’re repair-proficient.
Measure: average time-to-repair after harm (in days).
Rhythm over heroics.
Cadence beats adrenaline: 1:1s, decision windows, recovery time.
Measure: % of roles with protected focus blocks; PTO actually taken.
Metrics with a pulse.
Track belonging, psychological safety, and capacity alongside budget and deadlines.
Measure: belonging index; team capacity self-ratings.
A quick story about the sign we almost missed
A team kept missing deadlines. The PM fix failed. Then someone said, “I stopped sharing early drafts—I got roasted.” Not a capacity problem. A safety problem.
We ran two micro-moves: (1) a Rough-Draft Welcome rule (24 hours of clarifying questions only), (2) a Leader Repair script (“Name it. Own it. Next step.”).
Baseline: 38% of deliverables late. After 30 days: 92% on-time with the same headcount—new nervous system, not new people.
Five experiments you can run this week
✅ 10-Minute Safety Scan (Mondays).
Ask: “Where are Safety, Clarity, Capacity thin this week?” Capture 3 bullets.
Outcome: one preventative adjustment before work begins.
✅ Rough-Draft Welcome (one sprint).
Label first passes “RDW”; for 24 hours, only clarifying questions allowed.
Outcome: faster iteration; less perfection paralysis.
✅ Decision Clarity Card.
At the top of any project doc add: Who decides? By when? With what input? How will we close the loop?
Outcome: fewer slow, hot conflicts.
✅ Repair Script Reps (2/week).
Use: “I cut you off. That wasn’t okay. I’m sorry. Next time I’ll pause and ask; anything I missed?”
Outcome: trust rises; conflict cost drops.
✅ Capacity Swap (mid-week).
Leaders name one thing to de-scope and one teammate to empower.
Outcome: energy returns; growth distributed.
Sector spotlights (apply the experiments in your world)
For Schools: Use RDW on curriculum pilots; include student input on the Decision Clarity Card.
For Public Safety & Justice: Track time-to-repair after tense incidents as a top-line metric.
For Health & Human Services: Capacity Swap = move one case-admin task off clinicians weekly.
“Conflict is information. Repair is the intervention.”
Call to Action:
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