Ed Batista

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.

Jonathan Knee on Sales, Analysis and Operations

In Must I Bank? on today's WSJ Opinion page (I'm not sure how long that link will remain outside their paywall), Jonathan Knee of Evercore Partners and Columbia Business School astutely narrows down the career options faced by MBAs (and by extension to most business professionals) to three primary paths: Sales, Analysis and Operations:

Like all service professions, investment banking is fundamentally a sales job. Individuals who feed on human interaction, and have natural empathy (sales is about putting yourself in your customer's shoes), do well in sales. Being good with numbers, often assumed to be the key to banking success, will be of little use in getting a big office with a view if you do not have sales aptitude.

Private equity, like hedge funds and other investing jobs, is essentially analytical. These are solitary professions, and one is judged on the quality of the analysis produced. The quality of this analysis is in turn assessed on highly quantifiable metrics – like whether the stock you recommended went up or if the investment in a private company you sponsored turned out well. If the classic sales person is a deeply social being, the typical analytical person is a bit of a loner.

Working at a start-up or any other company is an operational job. Operators must communicate and "sell," both internally and externally, to effectively function in their positions. Operators must also be "analytical" enough to attain the domain expertise needed to achieve credibility in their operating role.

But the defining characteristic of the operating role is a commitment to a continuing level of involvement with the organization's objectives. A sales person makes a sale and moves on. Analytical people make a call or do a trade, and reap whatever rewards that insight yields. Operators are in it for the long haul.

Most jobs fall into one of these three categories: sales, analytical or operational. The odds that the same person would prosper equally in more than one of these environments are low. The personal qualities that each position draws upon are simply too different. Some...introspection in order to identify which category would likely yield the greatest personal satisfaction is an excellent investment.

...Dedicating oneself to any profession...should not be undertaken lightly. Doing so would ignore the unique gifts that each of us has to offer. It would also meaningfully reduce our chances of ultimate personal fulfillment.

You could argue that Knee's three-headed framework is an oversimplification.  But what I find useful is how many career paths can be boiled down to one of Knee's three options and how the framework's simplicity forces us to ask whether we truly understand the essence of a given profession.

I also think Knee's observation that banking is actually a misunderstood sales field (in which analytical skills are helpful but not sufficient) is a comment on our business culture's habitual failure to appreciate the importance of sales (and the interpersonal and relational skills that make a successful salesperson).  As an MBA working in a business school, I see this attitude reflected in how we develop future business leaders--strategy and finance are held in the highest esteem, while sales is something of an afterthought.

In my experience as an organizational leader, I found that operational and analytical skills were useful, but sales skills were essential.  The organization's effectiveness was impacted by my ability to analyze options and to execute operational plans, but its very survival depended on my ability to sell--to build relationships and convince others to invest their time, energy, faith and money.  As we grew, I hired people whose operational and analytical skills were stronger than mine would ever be--but everything started with that ability to sell.

I benefited greatly from the operational and analytical education I got in business school, but I suspect I would have been a better leader after graduation had there been a greater focus on sales, relationships and interpersonal skills, i.e. "soft" skills.

Someone who really gets this is Tom Peters.  From a November 2007 post (his first-ever in all caps, apparently, reflecting his rage):

BOB WATERMAN AND I, IN 1980, DEVELOPED A MANTRA IN THOSE DAYS OF YORE WHEN "STRATEGY [STRATEGIC PLANS] WAS EVERYTHING." WE SAID:

HARD IS SOFT.
SOFT IS HARD.

THE READILY-MANIPULABLE NUMBERS ARE THE TRUE "SOFT STUFF."

THE RELATIONSHIPS-LEADERSHIP-"CULTURE"-"ACTION BIAS" [OR NOT] ARE THE TRUE "HARD STUFF."

I'm hopeful that Stanford's new curriculum and its emphasis on experiential education and leadership development (soft stuff) is a step in the right direction.

The Fundamental Attribution Error Meets the No Asshole Rule

When I studied Organizational Behavior in grad school with Roberto Fernandez (pictured on the left), one of the most important concepts he taught was the Fundamental Attribution Error, which he described as:

Ascribing causality to personal characteristics when causality actually lies with the situation.

This bias, named by Stanford psychologist Lee Ross, leads us to award far more credit (or blame) to individuals for successes (or failures) than they deserve.  We see it at work most clearly with high-profile, archetypal leaders--presidents, CEOs, coaches, quarterbacks--who are hailed as geniuses when their organizations accomplish their goals and derided as bums when their organizations stumble.

But the bias is at work in ordinary interactions with our peers and colleagues as well.  We view those interactions through a lens that overemphasizes others' personal characteristics and underemphasizes the systems within which we operate.  As a result, we tend to ascribe positive characteristics to others when those interactions go well, and we tend to ascribe negative characteristics to others when those interactions are unpleasant.

This isn't to say that people are all the same, and different interpersonal experiences are solely the result of systemic factors.  Some people truly are wonderful, and others truly are, well, assholes.  But awareness of the fundamental attribution error helps us to expand our frame of reference, to question the accuracy of our perceptions and (as a result) to select interpersonal strategies that are likely to be more effective in future interactions.

I've been thinking about the fundamental attribution error recently in the wake of an unpleasant interaction with another person at work.  I came away thinking, "Wow, what an asshole" (and perhaps he did as well.)  After further reflection I realized that 1) there were a number of things I could have done differently to improve the outcome, and 2) there were a number of systemic factors at work that affected the other person's response to the situation.

But despite these efforts to hold myself accountable and take a broad-minded view of the other person, it's hard not to wonder whether my initial response was right even it if was biased: Maybe he is an asshole.  And this line of thought led me back to The No Asshole Rule, one of the most thought-provoking and entertaining books on organizational life I've ever read, by Bob Sutton (pictured on the right above).

Sutton describes two tests he uses to determine "whether a person is acting like an asshole":

Test One: After talking to the alleged asshole, does the "target" feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized or belittled by the person?  In particular, does the target feel worse about him or herself?

Test Two: Does the alleged asshole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those people who are more powerful?

By these measures, my counterpart qualifies.  But Sutton goes on to make an important distinction between "temporary" assholes and "certified" ones:

Nearly all of us act like assholes at times... It is far harder to qualify as a certified asshole: a person needs to display a persistent pattern, to have a history of episodes that end with one "target" after another feeling belittled, put down, humiliated, disrespected, oppressed, de-energized and generally worse about themselves.  Psychologists make the distinction between states (fleeting feelings, thoughts and actions) and traits (enduring personality characteristics) by looking for consistency across places and times--if someone consistently takes actions that leave a trail of victims in their wake, they deserve to be called certified assholes.

And I just don't have enough data to draw a meaningful conclusion in this case.  Maybe the systemic factors I'm aware of are even more influential than I realize.  Maybe there are other factors I'm not aware of at all.  Maybe my own missteps are to blame.  Maybe he's a great guy, and I just caught him on a bad day.

It hasn't been a pleasant experience, but it has been instructive.  Reflecting on what I learned from Roberto Fernandez a decade ago, I'm inspired to look beyond my gut-level response and take a larger view of the situation, give the other person the benefit of the doubt, inquire into my own culpability and see the ways in which systemic factors shape our responses to others.  And reflecting on what I've learned from Bob Sutton, I realize that an awareness of the fundamental attribution error doesn't mean that my intuitive response is wrong--it may well be right, but only time and more data will tell.

At the very least, I've learned some valuable lessons about myself and my work environment, I have a heightened awareness of issues I should be paying closer attention to, and I'm better prepared to handle future situations like this one.  Hey, no one said experiential learning was always going to be fun and games.

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.

Three Questions with Mark McGuinness

Mark McGuinness is an executive coach based in London who specializes in working with artists and creative professionals and who writes regularly at Wishful Thinking.  He's also the most tech-savvy coach I know, and he's found a number of innovative ways to integrate technology with his interpersonal work.  As another fan of technology who happened to spend two years in art school as an undergrad, I was thrilled when Mark agreed to do a Three Questions interview with me--thanks, Mark!

1) You describe yourself as "a poet and a business coach," but which came first? Were you writing when you saw an unmet need for coaching among artists and creative professionals, or did you begin to write as a form of personal expression to complement your coaching practice?

Poetry came first. And it will last longest. I never planned on being a coach, I just wanted to write poetry. I got interested in hypnosis as a way of tapping into creativity, and as I like to do things properly I trained as a hypnotherapist. I found myself being consulted by writers who were stuck on their latest novel and actors with stage nerves - they were great fun to work with, and of all the clients I worked with they seemed to get the most out of the sessions. So I started looking for ways of working with more artists and creatives, and developing it as a niche. Most of them weren't really looking for therapy, just a way of kick-starting their creativity, so I started offering professional coaching instead of therapy.

After a few years another coach invited me to do some work with him at Vodafone, which introduced me to the world of coaching in business. One assignment led to another and I ended up doing a lot of work with various organisations, mostly helping managers to become better coaches for their teams. After a few years of that, I decided to put the creative and business coaching together and focus on companies in the creative industries - advertisting, marketing, TV, computer games, web development etc.

I felt reasonably confident of my coaching skills, having been doing it for around 10 years, but I wanted to get more of a sense of the big picture of the industry sector. So I took the MA in Creative and Media Enterprises at the Unversity of Warwick, which was a fantastic course - we studied the usual core business topics like strategy, marketing and organisation theory, alongside intellectual property law, theories of creativity and theories of the creative economy. A great mixture of inspiration and business knowledge, that made me look at my business and my poetry in a different light.

2) Your recent e-book on Creative Management for Creative Teams does a great job of explaining coaching, but I'm also curious about how working with your particular clientele affects your approach. What do you think you might do differently as a coach because of your focus on creative people?

Well two things I might do differently are not to wear a suit and not to call myself a coach! It's probably no surprise that creative types don't feel comfortable with suits, but I discovered through my work and via my MA research dissertation that a lot of people in creative businesses really don't like the word 'coaching'. They associate it with corporate management-speak, so the image doesn't work for them at all. But when we get down to work, the label doesn't matter, we're too absorbed in looking at the situation and finding new options.

Image aside, a lot of what I do with my creative industries clients is no different to what I would do with any other client. People are people after all. There are a lot of issues around communication, collaboration, teamwork, management and generally dealing with other people that are the same, whatever industry you're working in.

The obvious area that is different is working on the creative process, which we can approach from several different angles. Sometimes we focus on fine-tuning creative thinking strategies. Sometimes people have difficulty getting into the right state of mind for creative flow, so with my background in hypnotherapy I can help them find the right triggers for a particular emotional state. Time management doesn't sound like a particularly creative topic, but I show people that if you don't manage your workload it can play havoc with your creativity. Other times we might focus on the craft element - using your critical faculty to appraise and revise your work. And for me the creative process doesn't end until you've reached an audience with your work, so sometimes we're focused on presenting it to others (boss, client, public) in an engaging way.

Another nice thing about working with creatives is sharing what I've learned from my own practice as a poet. I find that a lot of clients are quite intrigued by poetry, so it can be very fruitful to look for the common ground between poetry and graphic design or singing opera or writing a film script or whatever it happens to be. Clients seem to find that helpful and it's fascinating for me - I get a window on all these creative worlds that I can never enter properly, but I can have a look inside as a visitor and see some of the amazing things people are doing.

3) One of the reasons I've enjoyed your work is your effective use of technology--photos from Flickr, a Facebook group, a Tumblr link blog, prominent links to your feed, etc.  I wish more people in the field did the same, but I know that many coaches and consultants are daunted by the prospect.  How do you decide which new tools are worth using, and how do you implement and support them?

I discovered blogging by reading Seth Godin's e-book Who's There? (PDF, 2MB) and it was such an exciting idea there wasn't a decision to make - I was going to do this and I was prepared to learn all the techy stuff I needed to get it up and running. So I immersed myself in the blogging world out of sheer enthusiasm, reading sites like ProBlogger and CopyBlogger and devouring what they were teaching.

A lot of the other tools came about by seeing cool things on other people's blogs and thinking 'How do they do that?' and investigating from there. These days time is a big factor for me. E.g. I wanted to do a links blog for a while but looked around for something that wouldn't add to my workload. I was already bookmarking pages on Delicious, so I wanted a Firefox extension that would allow me to simultaneously post to Delicious, my Tumblr links blog and StumbleUpon - I found the Mahalo share extension [for Firefox] which does a great job. It means I'm creating a whole new blog without any extra work - result!  [On a related note, see Mark's e-book on Time Management for Creative People.]

If you're thinking of taking the plunge with blogging and social media, the key thing to remember is that it's not about technology, it's about people. That's why they call it social media - the tools are designed to connect people and they do a great job, I've met loads of great people since I started blogging, and the tools are getting more user-friendly as they develop.

Bonus Personal Question: Your first New Year's Resolution for 2008 was maintaining a daily meditation practice.  How's it going?

So far so good! I've settled into a rhythm of meditating first thing in the morning for 15-20 minutes and now it feels like the normal thing to do. I'll admit there have been a few days I really didn't feel like sitting, but I found myself thinking 'Well, you promised your readers you would do it - what are you going to tell them?'. And sat down. So there you have it - the power of blogging!

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.)

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.

Grant McCracken on the Elements of Reinvention

When we sit down to make change happen, when we seek to reinvent our organizations (and ourselves), what dynamics characterize that process?

Grant McCracken has come up with a short list based on his recent work on a "reinvention exercise" with "a large American corporation."  I intend to refer back to this regularly in my own work, so I'm pulling out the key phrases that caught my attention, but you really should read the whole thing:

1. Furiously Framing and Reframing

...a really liquid kind of problem solving.  We are are framing and reframing and reframing yet again...until the wisdom of this little crowd becomes apparent.

2. Tagging

Vivid pictures and phrases get the job done...  Good ideas have no hope of surviving to maturity and adoption unless (or until) they are well tagged.

3. Pattern Migration

There are wonderful moments when someone will say, "look, here's something we know about this context.  I wonder if we could transfer this to another problem set."

4. Scaling Up, Scaling Down

At one moment, we were dealing with the biggest possible problem sets in the broadest possible ways.  The next, we have zeroed down to a very particular problem.

5. Messier Models

We saw people insisting on messier models in order to honor some of the messiness in the world in the model.  The bigger point to make here is that as the world gets messier, more multiple, more various and changeable, discourse about change is beginning to take on these structural properties.

6. Acknowledging Fear

For the first time, I saw people building models of process that acknowledge the emotional difficulties inherent in the change making process.  Everyone always feels the pain of entertaining new ideas and having to give up old verities, but this used to be a very private condition.  Now people are openly acknowledging it.

7. New Language like "Chunking"

When problem sets are really messing and heard to read, "chunking" is useful.  It's a way of saying let's call this [thing] a something. Because we are chunking we are not obliged to say or to know what it means.  We are just saying "there's something here we need to look at."

8. Porousness

People are now prepared to acknowledge that the corporation is no longer a free standing, discrete entity.  It is customary to hear people dealing with the fact that the corporation has loose boundaries.

Grant's conclusion after coming up with this list?

All of these new intellectual inclinations and practices suggest I think that the corporation is learning to live with dynamism by learning how to practice dynamism.

Three of these dynamics jump out at me and seem closely intertwined: tagging, messier models, and acknowledging fear.  Grant's reference to the importance of tagging ideas reminds me of Howard Gardner's emphasis on "representational redescriptions" in the influence process:

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...

"Messy models" reminds me of Pema Chödrön's embrace of imperfection:

[T]rying to tie up all the loose ends and get it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience.  There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride... Death is wanting to hold on to what you have and to have every experience confirm you and congratulate you and make you feel completely together.

And I'm particularly struck by Grant's inclusion of fear as a key factor to be addressed (or at least acknowledged) in any reinvention or change management process.  (He goes a step further and references any "emotional difficulty" in the text, but I agree that "fear" made for a better headline.)  Our inability to sense, legitimize and express our emotions in the workplace creates a huge gap between our collective and our individual experiences. For example, I'm scared or angered by your proposal, but I can't effectively communicate those feelings at work, so you never truly understand my position--and we're left wondering why we make so little progress!

A link I see among these three dynamics is an acceptance of the fact that our brains work in ways that are often described as "irrational" (or at the very least run counter to many notions of rationality):

Ideas stick when they're made vivid and colorful--and even the best ideas will die if not made sticky.

The world is messy and complicated--and models that incorporate the mess are actually more useful to us than reductive, straightforward ones.

And we're scared and angry--a lot!--and pretending those feelings aren't there doesn't make them go away.

Much of my work as a coach and group facilitator involves helping people better understand and express feelings that typically get ignored in a professional setting, and Grant's observations suggest to me that this is precisely what we need to do more of when we're involved in any change-making process.

Logrolling: I encourage you to pre-order Grant's new book, which is due out in May, but be warned that I consider him a friend and an inspiration.

Photo by Pop!Tech 2004. © All rights reserved.

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.