Ed Batista

Technology is Soft

Given the topics I've discussed here over the last few years--leadership and management, personal and organizational development, and the effective use of technology--if you're reading this, it's a safe bet that you're someone with an interest in making change happen and that you see opportunities to help your organization or your community find better ways of doing things, particularly when technology is a factor.

So here's a mental model to help make the process of leading change easier: Technology is soft.

Let me make a brief detour in order to explain what I mean by that.  In the late 1970s Tom Peters, Bob Waterman, Richard Pascale and Anthony Athos developed a framework for analyzing organizations known as the "7s Model" which looks at different aspects of an organization and which I still find highly useful.  (The graphic at left is from BuildingBrands.)  The 7s Model is often interpreted as dividing organizations into "hard" and "soft" elements--the former category includes the three concepts in red at the top of the graphic:

• Strategy
Your high-level goals and how you plan to achieve them.

• Structure
An organization's "blueprints": how people and resources are allocated, how work and responsibilities are distributed.

• Systems
All the ropes, pulleys and gears, so to speak, that get things done in an organization.

These elements of the model are seen as "hard" because they're more easily reduced to tangible artifacts--plans and documents and infrastructure--but that designation also reflects a value judgment in our language.  "Hard" stuff can be complex and difficult, but it's also serious and important.  "Soft" stuff, in contrast, is ambiguous, unreliable, secondary.  (I hope it's apparent that I think this is bias needs to be challenged, and Tom Peters agrees.)

We've traditionally located technology among the "hard" elements of an organization, and that's what usually comes to mind when we think about "Information Technology."  We have IT plans, IT departments (or people whose responsibilities include IT), and, of course, IT systems.  Thinking about technology from this perspective may seem logical, but I believe the implications are profound, unhelpful and increasingly outdated.

Some aspects of technology will always be classic "IT": hardware, storage, connectivity.  But these are commodities.  You get the best price you can for them, and you don't expect them to add strategic value to the organization.

I believe the strategic aspects of technology that have the greatest potential to actually make a difference in an organization fit into on the other side of the 7s Model, the "soft" side:

• Staff
Not the org chart--that's part of the Structure--but the real, flesh-and-blood people, and all their strengths, weaknesses, hopes and aspirations.

• Style
Management style, or organizational culture: The tacit norms that govern how work gets done and how people interact.

• Skills
The full range of competencies possessed by an organization, including interpersonal skills, learning.

Thinking about technology as "soft," as an aspect of an organization's staff, style and skills, may seem counterintuitive, but increasingly this is where it truly resides (and it's where you'll have the greatest leverage when driving technology-related change.)

Let me illustrate this approach with an story from my work at Stanford's Graduate School of Business:  As a Leadership Coach at the Center for Leadership Development and Research, I'm a member of a team with many interdependent sub-teams that often collaborate virtually on long-term projects involving multiple sets of stakeholders.  When I started at the beginning of 2007, the tools available to support these collaborations were 1) email and 2) shared network drives.  These tools met our most basic needs, but they were hardly optimal, and we found ourselves frustrated with their limitations.

It was the perfect opportunity to introduce a wiki, and as the unofficial techie on our staff of executive coaches and organizational development consultants, I was in a position to make that change happen.  But in retrospect I can see that I focused on the "hard" elements of the 7s Model.  I developed a strategic IT plan that included a wiki, I explored in great detail how the wiki would be used and how it would fit into our existing organizational structure, and I spent a good bit of time exploring various wiki platforms to find the best system to meet our needs.

I was able to get it up and running, but adoption by my non-technical colleagues was hit-or-miss.  Some people loved it, but others found it confusing or didn't really understand how  it was an improvement over email.  I think part of the problem was the language I used to introduce it.  I'd say, "I have a new system that'll help us collaborate more effectively."   Well, when you say "new," people hear "change," and they realize that means "more work," at least in the short run.  And when you say "system," people  hear "IT," and they know that means, "someone else's responsibility."  So when you say "new system," what people really hear is "more work that shouldn't be my responsibility in the first place."   Not exactly an appealing message.

So as we were about to begin a new academic year last Fall, I took a new approach.  I stopped worrying about the strategic IT plan--I didn't even update it.  I stopped thinking about how the wiki fit into our organizational structure.  And with the system already in place, I didn't have any technical work to do at all.

Instead, I starting thinking about the "soft" side of the organization.  I thought about my colleagues as individuals.  What were they like?  What were their needs?  How did they work?

I thought about our organizational culture.  Although Stanford has a certain culture, and the business school has yet another culture all its own, the Center where I work is a small, informal, entrepreneurial place where we can't do things by the book because it hasn't been written yet.

I thought about our collective skills--not just (or even primarily) technical skills, but our interpersonal skills.  How do we connect with each other?  How do we collaborate?

So rather than asking my colleagues to conform to a "hard" plan, I began asking how "soft" technology like a wiki could conform to them.  And rather than trying to "train" them on this new system, I began having a series of short conversations--sometimes just 5 minutes--about how they were working and what they were doing.  I took advantage of every small opportunity to help people think about the wiki as an integrated element in our organizational culture, and as an extension of their collaborative skills.

Today, just a few months later, we're the most intensive wiki users in the business school, and we're probably among the most intensive non-technical wiki users in the entire university.  I had to lay the "hard" groundwork to initiate the project, but my sustained focus on the strategic plan, the structure, and the system actually delayed our progress, and the wiki's ultimate success is directly related to its integration with the organization's "soft" side.

The 7th circle at the center of the 7s Model represents Shared Values, the commonly-held aspirations that give an organization a collective spirit, a sense of mission.  And if you value the effective use of technology, and you want your organization to adopt and embody that value, I encourage you to remember this the next time you're seeking to promote change: Technology is soft.

Photo by fotologic.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

7s Model graphic by BuildingBrands.

This post was adapted from remarks I made on May 12, 2008, to the second graduating class of ZeroDivide Fellows.  Congratulations and good luck to all the past and current Fellows, and thanks to ZeroDivide for having me.

Organizational Effectiveness

What makes organizations effective?  For that matter, what do we even mean by effectiveness?  I've been giving these questions some thought recently and the following graphs are the result.  (Here's the whole 9-slide PowerPoint file, 75 KB.)

I love the Peters/Waterman/McKinsey "7s" Model, but we can extend it in two directions.  First, looking within an organization, if we reduce the model further and boil it down to its most essential core elements, I think we're left with People (or Staff, in 7s-speak) and Culture (an amalgam of Style, Skills and Shared Values.)  Second, if we look beyond the organization--if we ask why it exists and whether its fulfilling its purpose--we begin to assess its Impact, which includes not only profitability and financial sustainability but also the value created for any stakeholders, from a business's employees to a nonprofit's clients.

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My focus on these three elements is also due to their tightly interrelated nature--they all affect the other two in fundamental ways.

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I think one of the least-understood dynamics is the relationship that exists between an organization's people and its culture.  Sometimes it's difficult to even know where to draw a boundary between the two: Where do I stop and where do my contributions to the culture around me begin?  This may be why so many organizations operate without a clear understanding of their culture.  (And to be clear, every organization has a culture: "When you've decided you don't have a culture, you've got one...")

But what's most important to recognize is the dialectical nature of this relationship.  An organization's founders create the initial culture, which then exerts its influence on them in turn.  Future colleagues are attracted to the pre-existing culture because in some way it meets their needs, and so they reinforce it.

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I've also focused on People and Culture because I see these elements as most closely connected to an organization's Impact.  This isn't to say that other elements don't matter--but ultimately people implement an organization's plans, and the culture in which they operate helps them or hinders them.  Talented people can overcome misguided strategies and suboptimal systems, but they can't outrun a dysfunctional culture (not for long, anyway.)

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And an organization's Impact--its ability to achieve its goals, fulfill its purpose and create value for stakeholders--directly affects its ability to attract and retain effective people and to build and sustain a high-performance culture.

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OK, having mapped out the relationships that exist among these three elements, what do they actually look like?  How do we define People, Culture and Impact in effective organizations?

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Here's my definition of effectiveness as it pertains to People.  I emphasize connections with Culture and Impact; interpersonal skills and accountability; self-development and growth.

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Here's my definition of an effective Culture.  I emphasize distributed leadership, continuous learning, openness, and decentralization.  The final quote from Tom Peters deserves further explanation: The 7s Model is sometimes divided into "Hard" elements (Strategy, Structure and Systems) and "Soft" elements (Skills, Staff, Style and Shared Values).  Our business culture tends to value the former and dismiss the latter, and Peters thinks this is entirely ass-backwards.  The "hard" stuff, from strategic plans to complex financial structures, is actually pretty fuzzy and surprisingly easy to fake.  The "soft" stuff--relationships, leadership, interpersonal skills (in short, culture)--is actually pretty resilient and surprisingly difficult to get right.  Hard is soft, soft is hard.

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I don't believe there's a universal definition of Impact--organizations define value-creation in different ways, and they're answerable to different sets of stakeholders.  But I do believe that effective organizations share the characteristics listed above, which enable them to understand, measure and communicate their impact, and to use that information to drive decision-making (cf. Bob Sutton and Jeff Pfeffer's Hard Facts.)  At the same time, they reality-check regularly and don't let data dictate decisions.

Effective organizations also know when to give up and move on.  They take a pragmatic approach and never let sunk costs fuel persistence--instead, they've mastered the art of strategic quitting.

Finally, effective organizations have a vision of victory that they're driving toward.  What would it look like to win?  For some organizations (including many nonprofits), ultimate victory means putting themselves out of business because they've succeeded in fully and permanently meeting the need that they were created to fulfill.

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Again, if you're interested, here's the whole 9-slide PowerPoint file (75 KB).  As with the other models I post here, I consider this a work-in-progress that helps me make sense of the world, and I welcome any feedback to improve it or make it clearer.

Scott Ginsberg on Asking Questions

What kinds of questions do you usually ask people?  We're often drawn to yes/no questions--they're simple and direct.  But when simplicity and directness aren't our only goals, yes/no questions can be problematic.  They surface a minimum of new information because they don't invite the other person into a dialogue and they constrain the boundaries of the conversation.

When we do move beyond yes/no questions, we tend ask why? questions, such as "Why did you do that?" or "Why did you do it that way?"  But why? questions can be heard as "What the hell were you thinking?" and provoke defensiveness.

In the Leadership Coaching class I'm involved with at Stanford, we encourage our students to ask questions that are designed to get the other person actively involved.  Such questions can be challenging and even blunt, but they're also open-ended and compel the other person to reflect before answering.

Scott Ginsberg recently posted a list of 62 useful questions, along with a one-line explanation of why they work.  It's an incredible resource, and I encourage you to read the whole thing, but as I expect to refer back to it regularly, here are the 20 I found most valuable:

10. How are you creating…?
Proves that someone has a choice.

13. How could you have…?
Focused on past performance improvement.

14. How do you feel…?
Feelings are good.

16. How do you plan to…?
Future oriented, process oriented, action oriented.

17. How do you want…?
Visualizes ideal conditions.

18. How does this relate to…?
Keeps someone on point, uncovers connections between things.

19. How else could this be…?
Encourages open, option-oriented and leverage-based thinking.

23. How might you…?
All about potential and possibility.

27. How much time…?
Identifies patterns of energy investment.

28. How often do you…?
Gets an idea of someone’s frequency.

29. How well do you…?
Uncovers abilities.

30. How will you know when/if…?
Predicts outcomes of ideal situations.

31. If you could change…?
Visualizes improvement.

34. If you stopped…?
Cause-effect question.

37. Is anybody going to…?
Deciding if something even matters.

49. What are you doing that…?
Assesses present actions.

50. What are you willing to…?
Explores limits.

53. What can you do right now…?
Focuses on immediate action being taken.

57. What did you learn…?
Because people don’t care what you know; only what you learned.

60. What else can you…?
Because there’s always options.

Notice the structure of these questions.  They're almost all how? or what? questions, which encourage the other person to take a moment and look inside before answering.  They can certainly be challenging--"What can you do right now?" is hardly a softball--but they're also non-judgmental, which minimizes any defensiveness.  Perhaps most important, they're not leading--they don't suggest that there's a "right" answer--which encourages the other person to answer thoughtfully and honestly, rather than framing an answer to please you.  Many thanks to Scott for sharing his insights.

Photo by Erik Charlton.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Joel Peterson on Organizational Culture

Joel Peterson, Vice-Chair of JetBlue, investor and serial entrepreneur, spoke on organizational culture at the Conference on Entrepreneurship at Stanford's Graduate School of Business a few weeks ago:

When you think about topics to talk to entrepreneurs about, culture is one of the last ones you typically think about, because you're in the business of getting something started, it's chaotic [and] the last thing you're thinking about is culture-building.  It's just the most irrelevant topic...and I'm going to try to convince you that it's not as irrelevant as you think.  I was teaching a similar...course a few years back, and I...called on one of the entrepreneurs in the audience and asked him about culture, and he said, "We don't have any culture in our business..."  Well, you have a culture.  When you've decided you don't have a culture, you've got one...  The question is: Do you want to influence it or not?  Do you really want to have a hand in shaping it or not?  You are going to have it, either inadvertently or with some planning and some forethought.

I imagine few readers of this site need to be convinced about the importance of organizational culture, but it's still inspiring to hear a financial heavyweight like Peterson make the case.  (I took a class with Peterson as a student at the GSB, and I've written twice before about thought-provoking concepts that I took away from his lectures.)

Neuroscience, Coaching, Leadership and Learning

Inspired by the fascinating research being conducted by Matthew Lieberman, Naomi Eisenberger and other neuroscientists, some great neuroscience blogging by Stephanie West Allen, Jeffrey Schwartz and Roger Dooley, the work of Alvaro Fernandez and Co. at SharpBrains, and the prescient questions that Tom Wolfe has been asking for the past decade, I've become obsessed by the implications of neuroscience for the fields of executive coaching, leadership development and experiential learning.

I'm well aware of the limitations of current brain-imaging technology and of the excesses of "neuro-hype" (well-documented in Haaretz by Ofri Ilani and Yotam Feldman--thanks to Roger Dooley for the reference), and I've expressed concerns myself about the rejection of sound humanistic principles by neuroscience boosters--and yet I remain convinced that neuroscience holds tremendous promise for coaches, organizational development consultants and experiential educators.

I find Wolfe's work extremely compelling.  In the articles and talks I link to above (and presumably in the upcoming book on neuroscience to which he occasionally alludes), Wolfe asserts that Homo sapiens have in some ways freed ourselves from genetic determinism by means of language and, more precisely, speech.*  For at least the last 11,000 years (dating from the earliest evidence of agriculture), Wolfe claims, speech has allowed us to adapt to and overcome our environment far faster than our genes ever could.  From Wolfe's recent interview with Steve Heilig for the S.F. Chronicle:

Once you have speech, you don't have to wait for natural selection! If you want more strength, you build a stealth bomber; if you don't like bacteria, you invent penicillin; if you want to communicate faster, you invent the Internet. Once speech evolved, all of human life changed.

And perhaps the most important change is that we're no longer merely the expression of our genetic heritage; our speech-sodden brains are far more plastic and malleable than our hard-wired genes would ever allow us to be.  Advances in genetics in recent decades ultimately suggested that humans lacked free will--our fate was written in our genes.  But Wolfe sees things differently--more from his Chronicle interview:

I'm willing to say OK, we may have no free will, but speech creates so many variables that it doesn't really matter. No machines will ever truly fully figure the brain out, because the brain's performance is constantly altered or else constrained by this inanimate, rogue artifact you can't control, namely, speech. Laws you obey, scientific findings you assume to be correct, creeds you believe in, existing plans you go by, history as you understand it - these artifacts, once accepted, will affect your thoughts and behavior and use you more than you use them.  Culture is just too big a variable to explain away with genetics...

So what's the connection with my fields of executive coaching, leadership development and experiential education?  If genetic determinism would have us believe that "Leaders are born, not made," then Wolfe's theories on the power of speech and the meaning of culture suggest just the opposite.  We have "natural," genetically-defined tendencies that support or undermine our ability to lead and to be effective interpersonally, but those natural abilities don't define our actions in those spheres.  We can learn, we can adapt and we can improve.  Some leaders may be born with a genetic head start, but all truly effective leaders are made, not born.

And just as Lieberman, et al's research on the impact of talking about feelings provides a scientific explanation for a practice that I've used in my own work countless times, Wolfe's theories and the neuroscience on which they're based suggest that many of the practices we employ in coaching, leadership development and experiential education are effective because they're consistent with--and take advantage of--the way our brains function.  (And at the same time, neuroscience also has the potential to tell us which practices and techniques are ineffective and need to be updated or scrapped.)

As noted above, I'm mindful of the limits of neuroscience, and I'd hate to see the genetic determinism of recent years replaced by a "neuro-determinism" that simply substituted brain scans for gene maps.  But we're clearly at a point where humanistic professionals--executive coaches, OD consultants, experiential educators--need to incorporate neuroscience into their practices.

* Wolfe actually suggests that we rename ourselves Homo loquax--"Talkative man"--a proposal that may have been inspired by Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, in which Miller called us Homo loquax nonnumquam sapiens--"Talkative, and sometimes wise, man."

How Am I Doing? aka T-Group Feedback

Have you ever had a performance review conducted simultaneously by 13 people?  It may sound terrifying, but I actually consider it one of the perks of my job.  As a Leadership Coach at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, once or twice a year I serve as a co-facilitator for teams of MBA students enrolled in Interpersonal Dynamics.  The class, casually known as "Touchy Feely," uses the T-group methodology developed by Kurt Lewin and the National Training Laboratory to help participants understand how they function in group settings, how they're perceived by others, and how they might modify their behavior to be more effective interpersonally.

The role of facilitator in a T-group is an unusual and challenging one--it's highly differentiated at the outset, because the experience is so unusual for the students and they look to the facilitators for guidance.  But the success of the group is dependent on the facilitators' ability to lead not through positional power or directive authority, but rather by modeling effective interpersonal behavior.  We have to "walk our talk" and do what we ask every group member to do: identify and share learning goals, express ourselves fully, and develop and grow in the process.  Of course, this isn't to say that the facilitators have mastered any of these practices--we've just had more experience with them in T-groups--and the most important modeling we do is making mistakes and repairing relationships.

But as this process plays out over the course of the group and the facilitators participate fully as (undifferentiated) members, we retain a special responsibility for maintaining a sense of safety and a supportive learning environment in the group.  This involves a delicate balancing-act between the ability to express myself candidly and spontaneously and a keen awareness of how my self-expression is affecting others in the group and the group as a whole.

It's hard but highly rewarding work, and one of the greatest values I derive from it is the sense that my own self-development can help others.  In fact, to be an effective facilitator I have to be committed to that process of self-development--I have to have some skin in the game--in order to be of service to the group.  So I find myself eager to hear what the group has to say in our "final feedback" exercise, which comprises the class's last T-group session.  Each person receives roughly 90 seconds of feedback from the other 13 people in the group, and that feedback is typically framed as (something like) "What I've appreciated about you..." and "What I wish for you..." or "What I hope you'll continue to work on..."

From a facilitator's perspective, it's a 20-minute performance review (conducted simultaneously by 13 people!), and even when it's hard to hear, I inevitably learn a ton.  We record the feedback so the recipient can listen to it later--when I was a student 10 years ago we used these; today, thankfully, we use these--and here's what I learned about myself this Quarter...

Things I've Done Well:

• I have a strong communication style: clear, concise, and powerful.
• I readily share my learning goals.
• I model behavior effectively, rather than directing or criticizing others' behavior.
• Even when I draw on past experience, I don't come across as condescending.
• Even when I'm an active group leader, I come across as subtle and helpful, rather than overbearing.
• People experience me as candid, genuine and honest.
• I inspire confidence and trust.
• I stand my ground in disagreements, which others respect.
• I maintain a balance between strength and vulnerability.
• I identify and express a wide range of feelings, including difficult feedback.
• I'm seen as thoughtful.  (But this has a downside--see below.)
• I share my intentions and feelings, which helps others understand my position and increases my effectiveness as a communicator.
• I'm seen as willing to take risks, which furthers learning and helps build trust.
• I'm seen as trying to improve myself and working actively on issues like everyone else.
• I can express caring and encouragement.  (But not always--see below.)
• I can identify and express a complex mix of feelings, even when they conflict.
• I model supportive confrontation.
• I help create a sense of safety in the group.
• By expressing compassion, empathy, vulnerability, I make it safe and comfortable for others to do the same.
• My eye contact and facial expressions help to convey both my feelings and a sense of genuineness and authenticity.
• People understand that I have good intentions, even when I'm pushing them.
• I'm seen as perceptive; I pick up on subtle feelings and ask people to explore them further.
• I'm able to identify and share a wide range feelings at all times--not only when I have strong feelings--which helps people understand me better.
• I'm seen as being genuinely concerned for others' feelings and their learning.
• I don't hesitate to check in with someone if I'm concerned that something might be wrong.
• I'm willing to push and challenge people.
• I'm seen as being good at understanding and expressing my emotions, and modeling this behavior helps others do the same.
• The strong language and sharp tone that some people experience as harsh (noted below) was effective and had a helpful impact with others.
• I'm willing to push and challenge people, but I also provide safety and support for those who need it.

I have to say that it feels great to read that, and given that many of these comments speak directly to my current learning goals, I feel that I made substantial progress this Quarter in my efforts to be more  effective interpersonally.  But there's still plenty of room for improvement...

Things I Need to Keep Working On:

• I can sound harsh at times, which undermines my effectiveness as a communicator.
• I could give more positive feedback.
• I expressed more emotion when I was pushed by others, and I might not have done that on my own.
• My voice gets soft when I'm expressing strong emotions (both positive and negative), and this can create confusion or diminish my impact.
• I continued to be a more active facilitator after a point when the group was capable of facilitating itself.
• I could be more lighthearted; I tend to be very serious at first, which can make it harder to build relationships.
• I could have shown more emotion and taken more risks sooner in the group.
• I can be perceived as figuring people out by labeling them or "putting them in boxes," and even when those labels are positive this can have a binding effect on the other person.
• Because I was influential in the group, my actions created unspoken norms; this helped to establish a sense of safety, but when certain norms became binding, my reluctance to engage in a discussion about them hurt the group.  ("People do model themselves on your behavior, even when it's not in their best interests.")
• I can be seen as too influential, which may undermine my ability to establish productive relationships.
• I can express many sides of an issue and many feelings, but this can also create confusion; at times it would be more effective to express only my most important or leading feeling.
• I can appear physically intimidating, tough, or cold (because of my look, gaze, dress, or posture) and this hides my warm and tender side.
• My comments can be too thoughtful; I can be too particular with my words and seem too controlled.
• I was initially seen as not spontaneous, which made it harder to trust me; becoming more spontaneous over time was essential in establishing trust.
• My comments initially seemed formulaic, although this changed after I showed more emotion, which also helped to establish trust.
• Stepping out of my authority role sooner would allow me to establish deeper connections with people.

I'm particularly struck by the theme that runs through the last few comments--I can definitely stand to ease up, let go, and just be myself sooner in groups, which would involve being both more spontaneous and more emotional.

Another key theme is the idea that being too influential has unintended negative consequences, from keeping others at a distance to locking a group into unproductive norms.  My reluctance to discuss norms stems from a belief that cognitive meta-discussions about "How we should act" are ultimately less effective than simply acting in ways that are consistent with your desired aims, but I do recognize that making some room for different ways of processing these changes would serve me better.

I'm left feeling proud of what I've accomplished, chastened by how much I have yet to do, eager to keep learning and growing, and (most of all) grateful for the efforts of all my colleagues--students, co-facilitators and faculty.

Photo by Mobilski.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Howard Gardner on Influence

As I continue to think further about influence and power, Howard Gardner's Changing Minds offers an extremely helpful conceptual framework, one that I see as a counterpart to Cialdini's "Weapons of Influence".  From Gardner's 2006 edition:

[W]hat...factors might cause an individual to shift his or her perspective[?]... I have identified seven factors--sometimes I'll call them levers--that could be at work in these and all cases of a change of mind...

Reason

A rational approach involves identifying of relevant factors, weighing each in turn, and making an overall assessment.  Reason can involve sheer logic, the use of analogies, or the creation of taxonomies.

Research

Complementing the use of argument is the collection of relevant data... But research need not be formal; it need only entail the identification of relevant cases and a judgment about whether they warrant a change of mind.

Resonance

Reason and research appeal to the cognitive aspects of the human mind; resonance denotes the affective component.  A view, idea or perspective resonates to the extent that it feels right to an individual, seems to fit the current situation, and convinces the person that further considerations are superfluous.

Representational Redescriptions (Redescriptions, for Short)

A change of mind becomes convincing to the extent that it lends itself to representation in a number of different forms, with these forms reinforcing each other... Particularly when it comes to matters of instruction...the potential for expressing the desired lesson in many compatible formats is crucial.

Resources and Rewards

[T]he provision of resources is an instance of positive reinforcement... Individuals are being rewarded for one course of behavior and thought rather than another.  Ultimately, however, unless the new course of thought is concordant with other criteria...it is unlikely to last beyond the provision of resources.

Real World Events

Sometimes an event occurs in the broader society that affects many individuals, not just those who are contemplating a mind change.  Examples are wars, hurricanes, terrorist attaches, economic depressions--or, on a more positive side, eras of peace and prosperity...

Resistances

[W]e develop strong view and perspectives that are resistant to change... [A] mind change is most likely to come about when the first six factors operate in consort and the resistances are relatively weak.

Taken together, Gardner's "seven levers" and Cialdini's "six weapons" form a reasonably comprehensive conceptual model of influence--the central "layer" in my Influence Pyramid.  If these models are our starting point for understanding not just how influence works but also how we as individuals can be more influential, we can then move "down" the pyramid to consider 1) our self-awareness and our impact on others and 2) our internal beliefs about power, or "up" the pyramid to 3) translate these strategic concepts into tactical tools and 4) test them empirically.

Note that by focusing on Cialdini and Gardner, I don't mean to imply that their conceptual models are the only ones worth studying, but they're the most compelling ones I've encountered to date.  (And to Gardner's comments on redescriptions above, they also both translate well into different formats--in that regard, they're even more...influential.)

T-Groups, Balance and Boundaries

If "work-life balance" is an illusion, what's the practical alternative? My former colleague Michael Gilbert recently explored this issue in a two-part series that I found compelling.  From Part One:

Although I am firmly allied with the mission and spirit of all the professionals and organizations who use the term "work-life balance" as something to strive for, I've come to the conclusion that it's fundamentally flawed, a dangerous trap, an all-around bad idea...

The fact is that work is a part of life, not in opposition to it. The fact is that what we all seek is joyful work-life integration, not some sort of painful detente. The fact is that work-life balance is the sad refuge of those who have decided that work is not worth saving.

I agree--but the response Michael received required further clarification in Part Two:

In regard to this exploration of "work-life balance," what's clear in our discussion is that we have been using the word "balance" when what we really seem to mean is "boundaries." Boundaries keep things in their place. Balance suggests the same amount of two things on either side of a scale. Boundaries keep one of those things from oozing past the edge of its platter and taking over the other side...

Boundaries and integration go together. Maybe it's just the biologist in me, but it seems that good boundaries are what make integration work. Just as functional membranes (letting the right things through and keeping the wrong things out) facilitate the healthy interaction of the cells of our bodies, so do functional personal boundaries facilitate the healthy interaction of the various parts of our lives. Bad boundaries lead to either being overwhelmed or withdrawal. Good boundaries lead to wholeness and synergy.

I still agree--but how do we put these notional boundaries into practice?  In my own experience, T-groups have been extremely helpful in allowing me to develop practical skills in this area.  It's impossible to participate in a T-group without feeling some frustration and anger.  At the same time, it's impossible to NOT feel caring and compassion for the very same people who are making us frustrated and angry.  The challenge of a T-group is that the experience compels us to hold on to--and express--both sets of feelings simultaneously.

And coincidentally (or not), this is textbook-perfect practice for learning how to best identify, express and sustain boundaries in our working relationships.  If we're doing work that's meaningful to us, we tend to feel caring and compassion for our colleagues and managers--and at the same time, we also feel frustrated and angry with them on a regular basis because of the professional demands that continually pull our lives out of balance.

Standard operating procedure in most organizations is to sweep those negative feelings under the rug until they get expressed in unproductive ways (at work or elsewhere.)  That's clearly not helpful--but what's also lost in that process are the positive feelings we have for our colleagues and managers.  Note that these oppositional feelings don't cancel each other out.  The frustration and anger we might feel at our colleagues and managers is just as real as the caring and compassion we also feel for those same people.  We have to hold on to, honor and express both sets of feelings, as contradictory as they might be.

I'm not suggesting this is easy--far from it.  It's incredibly hard work, which is why specialized training like a T-group can be so useful (and that's just one reason why I'd love to see T-groups adopted more widely.)  But even if you never set foot in a T-group, I believe strongly that there's substantial value in substituting "boundaries"  for "balance" in your efforts to make work that you're passionate about more sustainable.

Photos by bionicteaching and lemoncat1.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

The Influence Pyramid

My last post on the nature of interpersonal power coincided with some thinking I've been doing on influence (which, of course, isn't quite the same thing.)  That work resulted in the model shown here, which is an attempt to understand not the conceptual basis of influence, a la Robert Cialdini, but a larger process that begins with a decision to influence, concludes with an actual attempt to influence, and is layered throughout with Argyris-style learning loops.

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I. Foundations of Influence

The ability to influence 1) starts with a choice to be powerful, 2) builds upon an awareness of our strengths, weaknesses and capacity to change, 3) relies upon an understanding of conceptual models of influence 4) which we translate into specific tools and techniques that 5) must be tested empirically and repeatedly:

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II. Influence Learning Loops

Practical experience leads to learning at ever-deeper levels: 1) refined execution of tools and techniques; 2) strategic application of conceptual models; 3) a more accurate sense of self via feedback and reflection; and ultimately 4) a belief structure that supports our choice to be powerful:

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Here's a 3-slide PowerPoint file of the graphics above (49 KB).  This model is a rough work-in-progress, to be sure, and I'd be grateful for any feedback and critiques.  That said, I do like the way it integrates A) a deeper sense of personal empowerment (or lack thereof) and beliefs about power that support or inhibit our efforts to be influential with B) a more cognitive awareness of our interpersonal impact and the concepts, tools and techniques that underlay contemporary "theories of influence."

Continued thanks to Patricia Day Williams, whose "Self-Empowerment, Awareness and Choice" in the Reading Book for Human Relations Training got me thinking about all this at a much deeper level.

Interpersonal Power

Recent reflections on the dimensions of cultural difference, specifically the concept of "power distance," have led me to think further about the nature of power and how it's expressed interpersonally.

What, precisely, do we mean by "power"?  I find that my MBA students are often uncomfortable with the word; they tend to prefer "influence," which is much less...powerful.  And, of course, their resistance suggests that there's something worth exploring here.

Merriam-Webster's first definition of "power" is the "ability to act or produce an effect."  OK, but I'm particularly interested in interpersonal power.  Can we get a little more specific?

Kai Sassenberg, et al's Why Some Groups Just Feel Better: The Regulatory Fit of Group Power* includes this definition of "relative power differences between groups":

One group has a higher capacity to modify the other group's state than vice versa.

Dacher Keltner, Deborah Gruenfeld and Cameron Anderson take a similar approach in Power, Approach and Inhibition (PDF version):

We define power as an individual's relative capacity to modify others' states by providing or withholding resources or administering punishments.

So a simple definition of "interpersonal power" might be the ability to modify another person's state.

But this definition poses a problem: It identifies a subject--i.e. another person--and a relationship between ourselves and that subject--i.e. the capacity to modify--but it says nothing about us and our internal state.  And yet our level of comfort with power (and our ability to wield it effectively) varies so widely in different circumstances that it seems essential to include ourselves in the equation more explicitly.

In "Self-Empowerment, Awareness and Choice" (from the Reading Book for Human Relations Training), Patricia Day Williams discusses power in a way that emphasizes a sense of self:

If "power" is the ability to act or produce an effect, then we daily face situations in which we feel more or less powerful; more or less able to affect circumstances...

Self-empowerment begins with self-awareness.  We must first become aware of the many internal and external factors affecting our behavior and the difference between the two.  Most of us find it relatively easy to identify forces "out there" that hold us back or down...but it is far more difficult to uncover the ways we undermine ourselves with self-limiting beliefs...

There are three beliefs that commonly disempower us.  The first is the belief that power is determined primarily by factors outside our influence or control...  At worst, ascribing our power or lack thereof to forces beyond our control results in overlooking those factors over which we do have some control.

A second, related way in which we unnecessarily undermine our power is believing our view of the world is the same thing as external reality... Then, acting in accordance with what we "know," we collude in the continued external manifestation of our view of reality.

A third belief that undermines us is the belief that power is a fixed commodity, a limited resource for which we must compete...  The more I have, the less you have, and vice-versa.  If I want more power, I will spend considerable time and energy trying to increase mine and prevent you from increasing yours.  If I feel undeserving, I may try to avoid using my power, pretend not to have it or give it away to others whom I believe to be more deserving.

Williams makes it clear that although our understanding of power may initially focus on others and our mutual relationships, the ability to actually wield power ultimately depends on our level of self-awareness and our ability to modify our beliefs and our internal state.  So in seeking to be more powerful (or more influential, if you prefer) we should first seek to better understand ourselves. 

*Thanks to Nora Richardson of the Jackson Library reference staff for bringing this article to my attention.

Photo by octal.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.