Lately I’ve been working with two distinct types of groups. On the one hand, activist and recovery groups that insist on consensual decision, with only facilitation, no leadership. On the other hand, driven, focused, and competitive small groups of business-minded people, that demand or even COMPETE for leadership, and have little patience for dilly dallying on an issue to see how everyone feels about it. And you know what I’ve noticed? The same thing that keeps one group together, could tear the other to pieces almost instantly. It’s what I call the “When I Say Dog” phenomena. I named it after a scene in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart 
The way it works in my world is like this: in a recovery group, when someone says “God”, a large portion of the group nods in agreement, because if you’re working the twelve steps, some kind of “god thing” is probably playing a large role in your continued success with staying sober. Fortunately, people rarely ask what “your God” looks and acts like, because I’m pretty sure many groups would explode in a contentious debate about religious differences. On the other hand, many of the business people I work with would DEMAND to know what god you’re talking about, because if the topic came up at all, they’d want to know why it’s germane to the conversation, and if indeed it was, just which religious or atheist team you were on so they could arm for conflict, to ensure that their god or non-god won.
So next time someone says “dog”, ask them “what kind of dog?” The clip below demonstrates the idea pretty well.
