What Does Systems Thinking Involve?

Why Use Systems Thinking?

Systems thinking expands the range of choices available for solving a problem by broadening our thinking and helping us articulate problems in new and different ways. At the same time, the principles of systems thinking make us aware that there are no perfect solutions; the choices we make will have an impact on other parts of the system. By anticipating the impact of each trade-off, we can minimize its severity or even use it to our own advantage. Systems thinking therefore allows us to make informed choices.
Systems thinking is also valuable for telling compelling stories that describe how a system works. For example, the practice of drawing causal loop diagrams forces a team to develop shared pictures, or stories, of a situation. The tools are effective vehicles for identifying, describing, and communicating your understanding of systems, particularly in groups.

When Should We Use Systems Thinking?

Problems that are ideal for a systems thinking intervention have the following characteristics:

• The issue is important.
• The problem is chronic, not a one-time event.
• The problem is familiar and has a known history.
• People have unsuccessfully tried to solve the problem before.

Where Should We Start?

When you begin to address an issue, avoid assigning blame (which is a common place for teams to start a discussion!). Instead, focus on items that people seem to be glossing over and try to arouse the group’s curiosity about the problem under discussion. To focus the conversation, ask, “What is it about this problem that we don’t understand?”

In addition, to get the full story out, emphasize the iceberg framework. Have the group describe the problem from all three angles: events, patterns, and structure (see “The Iceberg”).
Finally, we often assume that everyone has the same picture of the past or knows the same information. It’s therefore important to get different perspectives in order to make sure that all viewpoints are represented and that solutions are accepted by the people who need to implement them. When investigating a problem, involve people from various departments or functional areas; you may be surprised to learn how different their mental models are from yours.

How Do We Use Systems Thinking Tools?

Causal Loop Diagrams. First, remember that less is better. Start small and simple; add more elements to the story as necessary. Show the story in parts. The number of elements in a loop should be determined by the needs of the story and of the people using the diagram. A simple description might be enough to stimulate dialogue and provide a new way to see a problem. In other situations, you may need more loops to clarify the causal relationships you are surfacing.

Also keep in mind that people often think that a diagram has to incorporate all possible variables from a story; this is not necessarily true. In some cases, there are external elements that don’t change, change very slowly, or whose changes are irrelevant to the problem at hand. You can unnecessarily complicate things by including such details, especially those over which you have little or no control. Some of the most effective loops reveal connections or relationships between parts of the organization or system that the group may not have noticed before.
And last, don’t worry about whether a loop is “right”; instead, ask yourself whether the loop accurately reflects the story your group is trying to depict. Loops are shorthand descriptions of what we perceive as current reality; if they reflect that perspective, they are “right” enough.

THE ICEBERG

How Do We Know That We’ve “Got It”?

Here’s how you can tell you’ve gotten a handle on systems thinking:

• You’re asking different kinds of questions than you asked before.
• You’re hearing “catchphrases” that raise cautionary flags. For example, you find yourself refocusing the discussion when someone says, “The problem is we need more (sales staff, revenue).”
• You’re beginning to detect the archetypes and balancing and reinforcing processes in stories you hear or read.
• You’re surfacing mental models (both your own and those of others).
• You’re recognizing the leverage points for the classic systems stories.

Once you’ve started to use systems thinking for inquiry and diagnosis, you may want to move on to more complex ways to model systems-accumulator and flow diagrams, management flight simulators, or simulation software. Or you may find that adopting a systems thinking perspective and using causal loop diagrams provide enough insights to help you tackle problems. However you proceed, systems thinking will forever change the way you think about the world and approach issues. Keep in mind the tips we’ve listed here, and you’re on your way!

Michael Goodman is principal at Innovation Associates Organizational Learning

The post Systems Thinking: What, Why, When, Where, and How? appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

One of the reasons for this wide-spread institutional failure is that the knowledge-creating system, the method by which human beings collectively learn and by which society’s institutions improve and revitalize themselves, is deeply fragmented. This fragmentation has developed so gradually that few of us have noticed it; we take the disconnections between the branches of knowledge and between knowledge and practice as a given

A Knowledge-Creating System

Before we can address the issue of fragmentation, we need to establish what has been fragmented. In other words, what do we mean by a knowledge-creating system, and what does it mean to say it is fragmented?

THE CYCLE OF KNOWLEDGE-CREATION

Like theories, the tree’s roots are invisible, and yet the health of the root system determines the health of the tree. The branches are the methods and tools, which enable translation of theories into new capabilities and practical results. The fruit is that practical knowledge. The tree as a whole is a system.

We believe that human communities have always attempted to organize themselves to maximize the production, transmittal, and application of knowledge. In these activities, different individuals fulfill different roles, with varying degrees of success. For example, in indigenous cultures, elders articulate timeless principles grounded in their experience to guide their tribes’ future actions. “Doers, “whether warriors, growers, hunters, or nannies, try to learn how to do things better than before and continually improve their craft. And coaches and teachers help people develop their capacities to both perform their roles and grow as human beings. These three activities-which we can term theory-building, practice, and capacity-building-are intertwined and woven into the fabric of the community in a seamless process that restores and advances the knowledge of the tribe. One could argue that this interdependent knowledge-creating system is the only way that human beings collectively learn, generate new knowledge, and change their world.

We can view this system for producing knowledge as a cycle. People apply available knowledge to accomplish their goals. This practical application in turn provides experiential data from which new theories can be formulated to guide future action. New theories and principles then lead to new methods and tools that translate theory into practical know-how, the pursuit of new goals, and new experience-and the cycle continues.

Imagine that this cycle of knowledge-creation is a tree (see “The Cycle of Knowledge-Creation” on p.1). The tree’s roots are the theories. Like theories, the roots are invisible to most of the world, and yet the health of the root system to a large extent determines the health of the tree. The branches are the methods and tools, which enable translation of theories into new capabilities and practical results. The fruit is that practical knowledge. In a way, the whole system seems designed to produce the fruit. But, if you harvest and eat all the fruit from the tree, eventually there will be no more trees. So, some of the fruit must be used to provide the seeds for more trees. The tree as a whole is a system.

The tree is a wonderful metaphor, because it functions through a profound, amazing transformational process called photosynthesis. The roots absorb nutrients from the soil. Eventually, the nutrients flow through the trunk and into the branches and leaves. In the leaves, the nutrients interact with sunlight to create complex carbohydrates, which serve as the basis for development of the fruit.

So, what are the metaphorical equivalents that allow us to create fruits of practical knowledge in our organizations? We can view research activities as expanding the root system to build better and richer theories. Capacity-building activities extend the branches by translating the theories into usable methods and tools. The use of these methods and tools enhances people’s capabilities. The art of practice in a particular line of work transforms the theories, methods, and tools into usable knowledge as people apply their capabilities to practical tasks, much as the process of photosynthesis converts the nutrients into leaves, flowers, and fruit. In our society,

• Research represents any disciplined approach to discovery and understanding with a commitment to share what’s being learned. We’re not referring to white-coated scientists performing laboratory experiments; we mean research in the same way that a child asks, “What’s going on here?” By pursuing such questions, research-whether performed by academics or thoughtful managers or consultants reflecting on their experiences-continually generates new theories about how our world works.
• Practice is anything that a group of people does to produce a result. It’s the application of energy, tools, and effort to achieve something practical. An example is a product development team that wants to build a better product more quickly at a lower cost. By directly applying the available theory, tools, and methods in our work, we generate practical knowledge
• Capacity-building links research and practice. It is equally committed to discovery and understanding and to practical know-how and results. Every learning community includes coaches, mentors, and teachers – people who help others build skills and capabilities through developing new methods and tools that help make theories practical.

“The Stocks and Flows of Knowledge-Creation” shows how the various elements are linked together in a knowledge-creating system.

THE STOCKS AND FLOWS OF KNOWLEDGE-CREATION

Research activities build better and richer theories. Capacity-building functions translate the theories into usable methods and tools. The use of these methods and tools enhances people’s capabilities. The art of practice transforms the theories, methods, and tools into practical knowledge, as people apply their capabilities to practical tasks.

Institutionalized Fragmentation

If knowledge is best created by this type of integrated system, how did our current systems and institutions become so fragmented? To answer that question, we need to look at how research, practice, and capacity-building are institutionalized in our culture (see “The Fragmentation of Institutions”).

For example, what institution do we most associate with research Universities? What does the world of practice encompass? Corporations, schools, hospitals, and nonprofits. And what institution do we most associate with capacity-building-people helping people in the practical world? Consulting, or the HR function within an organization. Each of these institutions has made that particular activity its defining core. And, because research, practice, and capacity-building each operate within the walls of separate institutions, it is easy for the people within these institutions to feel cut off from each other, leading to suspicion, stereo typing, and an “us” versus “them” mindset.

This isolation leads to severe communication breakdown. For example, many people have argued that the academic community has evolved into a private club. Nobody understands what’s going on but the club members. They talk in ways that only members can understand. And the members only let in others like themselves.

Consulting institutions have also undermined the knowledge-creating process, by making knowledge proprietary, and by not sharing what they’ve learned. Many senior consultants have an incredible amount of knowledge about organizational change, yet they have almost no incentive to share it, except at market prices.

Finally, corporations have contributed to the fragmentation by their bottom-line orientation, which places the greatest value on those things that produce immediate, practical results. They have little patience for investing in research that may have payoffs over the long term or where payoffs cannot be specifically quantified.

Technical Rationality: One Root of Fragmentation

How did we reach this state of fragmentation? Over hundreds of years, we have developed a notion that knowledge is the province of the expert, the researcher, the academic. Often, the very term science is used to connote this kind of knowledge, as if the words that come out of the mouths of scientists are somehow inherently more truthful than everyone else’s words.

Donald Schon has called this concept of knowledge “technical rationality.” First you develop the theory, then you apply it. Or, first the experts come in and figure out what’s wrong, and then you use their advice to fix the problem. Of course, although the advice may be brilliant, sometimes we just can’t figure out how to implement it.

But maybe the problem isn’t in the advice. Maybe it’s in the basic assumption that this method is how learning or knowledge-creation actually works. Maybe the problem is really in this very way of thinking: that first you must get “the answer,” then you must apply it.

THE FRAGMENTATION OF INSTITUTIONS

Because research, practice, and capacity-building each operate within the walls of separate institutions, the people within these institutions feel cut off from each other, leading to suspicion, stereotyping, and an “us” versus “them” mindset.

The implicit notion of technical rationality often leads to conflict between executives and the front-line people in organizations. Executives often operate by the notion of technical rationality: In Western culture, being a boss means having all the answers. However, front-line people know much more than they can ever say about their jobs and about the organization. They actually have the capability to do something, not just talk about something. Technical rationality is great if all you ever have to do is talk.

Organizing for Learning

If we let go of this notion of technical rationality, we can then start asking more valuable questions, such as:

• How does real learning occur?
• How do new capabilities develop?
• How do learning communities that interconnect theory and practice, concept and capability come into being?
• How do they sustain themselves and grow?
• What forces can destroy them, undermine them, or cause them to wither?

Clearly, we need a theory, method, and set of tools for organizing the learning efforts of groups of people.

Real learning is often far more complex and more interesting than the theory of technical rationality suggests. We often develop significant new capabilities with only an incomplete idea of how we do what we do. As in skiing or learning to ride a bicycle, we “do it” before we really understand the actual concept. Similarly, practical know how often precedes new principles and general methods in organizational learning. Yet, this pattern of learning can also be problematic.

For example, teams within a large institution can produce significant innovations, but this new knowledge often fails to spread. Modest improvements may spread quickly, but real breakthroughs are difficult to diffuse. Brilliant innovations won’t spread if there is no way for them to spread; in other words, if there is no way for an organization to extract the general lessons from such innovations and develop new methods and tools for sharing those lessons. The problem is that wide diffusion of learning requires the same commitment to research and capacity-building as it does to practical results. Yet few businesses foster such commitment. Put differently, organizational learning requires a community that enhances research, capacity-building, and practice (see “Society for Organizational Learning” on p. 4)

Learning Communities

We believe that the absence of effective learning communities limits our ability to learn from each other, from what goes on within the organization, and from our most clearly demonstrated breakthroughs. Imagine a learning community as a group of people that bridges the worlds of research, practice, and capacity-building to produce the kind of knowledge that has the power to transform the way we operate, not merely make incremental improvements. If we are interested in innovation and in the vitality of large institutions, then we are interested in creating learning communities that integrate knowledge instead of fragment it.

In a learning community, people view each of the three functions-research, capacity-building, practice-as vital to the whole (see “A Learning Community”). Practice is crucial because it produces tangible results that show that the community has learned something. Capacity-building is important because it makes improvement possible. Research is also key because it provides a way to share learning with people in other parts of the organization and with future generations within the organization. In a learning community, people assume responsibility for the knowledge creating process.

Learning Communities in Action

To commit to this knowledge-creating process, we must first understand what a learning community looks like in action in our organizations. Imagine a typical change initiative in an organization; for example, a product development team trying a new approach to the way they handle engineering changes. Traditionally, such a team would be primarily interested in improving the results on their own projects. Team members probably wouldn’t pay as much attention to deepening their understanding of why a new approach works better, or to creating new methods and tools for others to use. Nor would they necessarily attempt to share their learnings as widely as possible – they might well see disseminating the information as someone else’s responsibility.

In a learning community, however, from the outset, the team conceives of the initiative as a way to maximize learning for itself as well as for other teams in the organization. Those involved in the research process are integral members of the team, not outsiders who poke at the system from a disconnected and fragmented perspective. The knowledge creating process functions in real time within the organization, in a seamless cycle of practice, research, and capacity-building.

Imagine if this were the way in which we approached learning and change in all of our major institutions. What impact might this approach have on the health of any of our institutions, and on society as a whole? Given the problems we face within our organizations and within the larger culture, do we have any choice but to seek new ways to work together to face the challenges of the future? We believe the time has come or us to begin the journey back from fragmentation to wholeness and integration. The time has come for true learning communities to emerge.

Peter M. Senge, best-selling author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, is an international leader in the area of creating learning organizations. He is a senior lecturer in the Organizational Learning and Change Group at MIT. Peter has lectured throughout the world and written extensively on systems thinking, institutional learning, and leadership.

Daniel H. Kim is a co-founder of Pegasus Communications, Inc., and publisher of The Systems Thinker. He is a prolific author as well as an international public speaker, facilitator, and teacher of systems thinking and organizational learning

Editorial support for this article was provided by Janice Molloy and Lauren Johnson

A LEARNING COMMUNITY

In a learning community, people view each of the three functions—research, capacity-building,practice—as vital to the whole

The post From Fragmentation to Integration: Building Learning Communities appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

With a total of 300,000 employees, Ford operates in 50 countries around the world. It sells a huge array of products, and offers an equally widespread range of services — from financing to distributing and dealer support.

VENTURING INTO THE BADLANDS

When system and social complexity are high, the organization enters the realm of “the Badlands.”

Like any large organization, it’s also peopled by individuals who come from all walks of life — and who have the different outlooks to prove it. Engineers, accountants, human-resource folks — they all have unique backgrounds and view their work through unique perspectives. Add Ford’s various stakeholders to the mix, and you’ve got even more complexity. There are media stakeholders, shareholders, customers, the families of employees — all of them with different expectations and hopes for the company.

System and Social Complexity: “The Badlands”

Now let’s look even more deeply inside Ford to see what complexity really consists of. If you think about it, the complexity that Ford and other large organizations grapple with comes in two “flavors”: system complexity and social complexity. System complexity derives from the infrastructure of the company — the business model it uses, the way the company organizes its various functions and processes, the selection of products and services it offers. Social complexity comes from the different outlooks of the many people associated with Ford — workers, customers, families, and other stakeholders from every single country and culture that Ford operates in.

Why is it important to distinguish between these two kinds of complexity? The reason is that, if we put them on a basic graph, we get a disturbing picture of the kinds of problems that complexity can cause for an organization (see “Venturing into the Badlands”). We can think of these problems as falling into four categories:

“Tame” Problems. If an organization has low system and social complexity — for example, a mom-and-pop fruit market in a small Midwestern town — it experiences what we can think of as “tame” problems, such as figuring out when to order more inventory.

“Messy” Problems. If a company has low social complexity but high system complexity, it encounters “messy” problems. A good illustration might be the highly competitive network of tool-and-die shops in Michigan. These shops deal with intricate, precisely gauged devices that have to be delivered quickly. However, the workforce consists almost entirely of guys, all of whom root for the Detroit Lions football team — so there’s little social tension.

“Wicked” Problems. If a company has high social complexity but low system complexity, it suffers “wicked” problems. For instance, a newspaper publisher works in a relatively simple system, with clear goals and one product. However, the place is probably staffed with highly creative, culturally diverse employees — with all the accompanying differences in viewpoint and values.

The Winner: “Wicked messes,” or “The Badlands.” When an organization has high system and social complexity — like Ford and other large, globalized companies have — it enters “the Badlands.” Singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen graphically captured that unique region in South Dakota characterized by dangerous temperature swings, ravenous carnivores, and uncertain survival in his song “Badlands.” But the area and the song also represent optimism and possibilities. More vegetation and wildlife inhabit the Badlands than anyplace else in the United States, and Springsteen’s voice and lyrics offer a sense of hope despite the song’s painful and angry chords.

What’s So Bad About the Badlands?

A company that’s operating in the Badlands faces a highly challenging brand of problems. The complexity is so extreme, and the number of interconnections among the various parts of the system so numerous, that the organization can barely control anything. Solutions take time, patience, and profound empathy on the part of everyone involved.

In Ford’s case, a number of especially daunting challenges have arisen recently. For one thing, the Firestone tires tragedy has left the entire Ford community reeling. Ford faces an immense struggle to make sure this kind of fiasco never happens again. The bonds of trust between company and supplier, and between company and customer, will take a long time to rebuild. In addition, Ford and other automotive manufacturers have come under fire not only for safety issues but also for environmental and human-rights concerns.

Clearly, Ford’s business environment keeps getting tougher. The company is held accountable for parts it buys from suppliers and for labor practices in the various parts of the world where it does business. It’s also accountable for resolving baffling patterns — for example, the demand for

All of these challenges come from a single error in thinking: the assumption that human beings can control a complex, living system like a large organization.

SUVs is rising, along with cries for environmentally friendly vehicles. The majority of Ford’s profits come from sales of SUVs; how will the company reconcile these conflicting demands? Ford’s newly launched initiative — to not only offer excellent products and services but to also make the world a better place through environmentally and socially responsible manufacturing — will probably be its toughest effort ever.

But here’s where the big lesson comes in. All of these challenges come from a single error in thinking: the assumption that human beings can control a complex, living system like a large organization. Systems thinker Meg Wheatley compares the complexity of large companies to that of the world. The world, she points out, existed for billions of years before we humans came along, but we have the nerve to think that it needs us to control it! Likewise, what makes us think that we can control a big, complex organization?

Yet attempt to control we do — often with disastrous results.

Our All-Too-Common Controls . . .

We human beings try to control the complexity of our work lives through lots of different means:

System Fixes. When we attempt to manage system complexity, we haul out a jumble of established tools and processes that seem to have worked for companies in the past. For example, we use something we blithely call “strategic planning.” Our assumption is simple: If we just write down the strategy we want to follow, and plan accordingly, everything will turn out the way we want. We even call in consultants to help us clarify our strategy — and pay them big bucks for it. The problem is that this approach to planning has long outlived its usefulness. The world has become a much more complicated place than it was back when organizations like General Motors and the MIT Sloan School of Management first devised this approach to strategy.

We also use financial analysis and reporting models that were probably invented as far back as the 1950s. These models don’t take into account all the real costs associated with doing business — such as social and environmental impacts. Nor do they recognize the value of “soft” assets, such as employee morale and commitment.

In addition, we all keep throwing the phrase “business case” around — “What’s the business case for that new HR program you want to launch?” “What’s the business case for that product modification?” In other words, what returns can we expect from a proposed change of any kind? Again, this focus on returns ignores the bigger picture: the long-term costs and benefits of the change.

Finally, we try to manage system complexity by making things as simple as possible through standardization — no matter how complicated the business is. Standardization is appropriate at times. For example, the Toyota Camry, Ford’s number-one competitor in that class of car, has just seven kinds of fuel pump applications. The Ford Taurus has more than 40! You can imagine how much simpler and cheaper it is to manufacture, sell, and service the Camry pump. But when we carry our fondness for standardization into areas of strategy — unthinkingly accepting methods and models that worked best during a simpler age — we run into trouble.

Social Fixes. Our attempts to manage social complexity get even more prickly. In many large companies, the human-resources department engineers all such efforts. HR of course deals with personnel planning, education and training, labor relations, and so forth. But in numerous companies, it spearheads change programs as well — whether to address work-life balance, professional development, conflict and communications management, or other social workplace issues. Yet as we’ll see, this realm of complexity is probably even more difficult to control than systemic complexity is.

. . . and Their Confounding Consequences

Each of the above “fixes” might gain us some positive results: We have a strategic plan to work with; we have some way of measuring certain aspects of our business; we manage to get a few employees thinking differently about important social issues. However, these improvements often prove only incremental. More important, these fixes also have unintended consequences — many of them profound enough to eclipse any gains they may have earned us.

The Price of System Fixes. As one cost of trying to control system complexity, we end up “micromanaging the metrics,” mainly because it’s the only thing we can do. This micromanaging in turn creates conflicts of interests. For example, when Ford decided to redesign one of its 40 fuel pumps to make it cheaper to build, it unwittingly pitted employees from different functions against each other. Engineering people felt pressured to reduce the design cost of the part, manufacturing staff felt compelled to shave off labor and overhead costs, and the purchasing department felt driven to find cheaper suppliers. Caught up in the crosscurrents of these conflicting objectives, none of these competing parties wanted to approve the change plan unless they got credit for its success. As you can imagine, the plan languished in people’s in-boxes as the various parties jockeyed for position as “the winner.”

Micromanaging the metrics can also create a “Tragedy of the Commons” situation — that archetypal dilemma in which all the parties in a system try to maximize their own gains, only to ruin things for everyone. For instance, at Ford (and probably at many other large companies), there’s only so much money available to support a new product or service idea. People know this, so when they build their annual budgets, they ask for the money they need for the new ideas — plus another 10 percent as a cushion (because they know the budget office would never give them what they originally asked for!). At the end of the year, everyone’s out of funds because they beefed up their budgets too much. And great, innovative ideas end up going unfunded.

The Price of Social Fixes. The biggest consequence of social fixes is probably a “Shifting the Burden” archetypal situation. Upper management, along with HR, tries to address a problem by applying a short-term, “bandage” solution rather than a longer-term, fundamental solution. The side effect of that bandage solution only makes the workforce dependent on management, thus preventing the organization from learning how to identify and implement a fundamental solution.

What does this look like in action? Usually, it takes the form of upper management’s decision to “roll out” a change initiative to address a problem. For instance, employees might be complaining about something — work-life tensions, conflicts over cultural differences, and so forth. Rather than letting people take responsibility for addressing their problems — that is, get involved in coming up with a shared solution — management force-feeds the company a new program (B1 in “Shifting the Burden to Management”). This might reduce complaints for a time, and managers might even capture a few hearts and minds. But these gains won’t stick. Worse, this approach makes employees passive, as they come to depend more and more on management to solve their problems and “take care of them.” The more dependent they become, the less able they are to feel a sense of responsibility and get involved in grappling with their problems (R3 in the diagram).

This “sheep-dip” approach to change — standardized for the masses — completely ignores employees’ true potential for making their own decisions and managing their own issues. For example, consider the difference between a company that legislates rigid work hours and one that trusts its employees to pull an all-nighter when the work demands it—and to head out to spend time with their kids

on a Friday afternoon because the work is in good shape. People can’t learn how to make these kinds of judgments wisely for themselves if their employer treats them like children.

“Sheep dipping” has another consequence as well: Because it makes employees passive, it discourages the fluid transfer of knowledge that occurs when people feel involved in and responsible for their work. Instead of looking to one another, anticipating needs, and collaborating as a team, employees have their eyes on management, waiting to be taken care of. Knowledge remains trapped in individuals’ minds and in separate functions in the organization, and the firm never leverages its true potential.

From Control to Soul

So, if we can’t control complexity, how do we go to work every day with some semblance of our sanity? Should we just give up hoping that our organizations can navigate skillfully enough through the Badlands to survive the competition and maybe even achieve their vision? What are we to do if we can’t control our work, our employees, and our organization? How can we take our organizations to places they’ve never been — scary, dangerous places, but places that also hold out opportunities for unimagined achievement?

The answer lies in one word: soul. “Soul” is a funny word. It means different things to different people, and for some it has a strong spiritual element. But in the context we’re discussing now — organizational health, values, and change — its meaning has to do with entirely new, radical perspectives on work and life.

To cross the Badlands successfully, all of us — from senior executives to middle managers to individual contributors — need to adopt these “soulful” perspectives:

Understand the system; don’t control it. As we saw above, we can’t manage, manipulate, or avoid problems in our organizations without spawning some unintended — and often undesirable — consequences. Understanding the organizational and social systems we live and work in makes us far more able to work within those systems in a healthy, successful way.

Know the relationships in the system. Understanding a system means grasping the nature of the relationships among its parts — whether those parts are business functions, individuals, external forces acting on the organization, etc. By knowing how the parts all influence each other, we can avoid taking actions that ripple through the system in ways that we never intended.

Strengthen human relationships. Success doesn’t come from dead-on metrics or a seemingly bulletproof business model; it comes from one thing only: strong, positive relationships among human beings. When you really think about it, nothing good in the world happens until people get together, talk, understand one another’s perspectives and assumptions, and work together toward a compelling goal or a vision. Even the most brilliant individual working alone can achieve only so much without connecting and collaborating with other people.

Understand others’ perspectives. This can take guts. People’s mental models — their assumptions about how the world works — derive from a complicated process of having experiences, drawing conclusions from those experiences, and then approaching their lives from those premises. Understanding where another person is “coming from” means being able to set aside our own mental models and earn enough of that other person’s trust so that he or she feels comfortable sharing those unique perspectives.

Determine what we stand for. Why do you work, really? Forget the easy answers — “I want to make money” or “I want to buy a nice house.” What lies beneath those easy answers? Around the world, people work for the same handful of profound reasons: They want their lives to have meaning, they want to create something worthwhile and wonderful, they want to see their families thrive in safe surroundings, they want to contribute to their communities, they want to leave this Earth knowing that they made it better. All these reasons define what we stand for. By clarifying what we stand for — that is, knowing in our souls why we go to work every day — we learn that we all are striving for similar and important things. That realization alone can build community and commitment a lot faster than any “rolled-out” management initiative can.

Determine our trust and our trustworthiness. Strong relationships stem from bonds of trust between people. To trust others, we have to assume the best in them — until and unless they prove themselves otherwise. But equally important, we also need to ask ourselves how trustworthy we are. We must realize that others are looking to us to prove our trustworthiness as well. By carefully and slowly building mutual trust, we create a network of robust relationships that will support us as we move forward together.

Be humble, courageous, and vulnerable. Understanding ourselves and others in ways that strengthen our relationships takes enormous courage — and a major dose of humility. It also takes a willingness to say “I don’t know” at times — something that many companies certainly don’t encourage. And finally, it takes a willingness to make ourselves vulnerable — to explain to others why we think and act the way we do, and why we value the things we value.

Find “soul heroes.” We need to keep an eye out for people whom we sense we can learn from — people who live and embody these soulful perspectives. These individuals can be colleagues, family members, friends, customers, or neighbors. If we find someone like this at work — no matter what their position — we must not be afraid to approach them, to talk with them about these questions of values, trust, and soul.

Tools for Your Badlands Backpack

So, to venture into the Badlands, we need soul — whole new ways of looking at our lives and work. But soul alone won’t get us safely through to the other side. We wouldn’t approach the real Badlands without also bringing along a backpack filled with water, food, first-aid materials, and other tools for survival and comfort. Likewise, we shouldn’t tackle the Badlands of organizational complexity without the proper tools.

These five tools are especially crucial:

Systems Thinking Tools.The field of systems thinking provides some powerful devices for understanding the systems in which we live and work, and for communicating our understanding about those systems to the other people who inhabit them. Causal loop diagrams, like the one in “Shifting the Burden to Management,” let us graphically depict our assumptions about how the system works. When we build such a diagram with others, we especially enrich that understanding, because we pull all our isolated perspectives into one shared picture. From there, we can explore possible ways to work with the system to get the results we want. These diagrams also powerfully demonstrate the folly in trying to manhandle a system: When we draw them, we can better see the long-term, undesirable consequences of our attempts to control the system.

Dialogue. The field of dialogue has grown in recent years to include specific approaches to talking with one other. For example, dialogue emphasizes patience in exploring mutual understanding and in arriving at potential solutions to problems. It also encourages us to suspend our judgments about others during verbal exchanges — that is, to temporarily hold our judgments aside in order to grasp others’ reasons for acting or thinking as they do. Dialogue lets a group tap into its collective intelligence — a powerful way of transferring and leveraging knowledge.

Ladder of Inference. This tool offers a potent way to understand why we think and respond to our world as we do. It helps us see how we construct our mental models from our life experiences — and how those mental models can ossify if we don’t keep testing them to see whether they’re still relevant. In the workplace, we all make decisions, say things, and take actions based on our mental models. By using the Ladder of Inference to examine where those models came from, we can revise them as necessary — and reap much more shared understanding with colleagues. (For information about the Ladder of Inference, see The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook published by Currency/ Doubleday).

Scenario Planning. This field has also grown in recent years. Numerous organizations, notably Royal Dutch/Shell, have used scenario planning to remarkable effect. This tool reflects the fact that we can’t control systems. Scenario planning encourages us to instead imagine a broad array of possible futures for our organization or even our entire industry — and to make the best possible arrangements we can to prepare for and benefit from those potential outcomes. This approach thus acknowledges the complexities inherent in any system; after all, there’s no way to easily determine the many different directions a system’s impact may take.

Managing by Means. New methodologies are emerging that can help us assess the true costs of running our businesses — costs to human society, to the environment, and to the business itself. And costs in the short run as well as the long run. We must grapple with these methodologies if we hope to achieve the only long-term business goal that really makes sense: business that doesn’t destroy the very means on which it depends.

Traditional change management methods build things to stick. They do not build things to last and are thus ineffective because well-intentioned people create the strategy, solution, and problem sets based on a narrow set of assumptions. To create a sustainable organization, we must work to understand the complex system dynamics of the environment and experiment with multidimensional strategies. We must also work to understand diverse social dynamics and allow multiple perspectives and behaviors to emerge. Finally, we must trust ourselves, hold true to our core convictions, and have courage, humility, and soul. In these ways, we can navigate through — and even prosper in — the most desolate and challenging of Badlands.

David Berdish is the corporate governance manager at Ford Motor Company. He is leading the development of sustainable business principles that will integrate the “triple bottom line” of economics, environmental, and societal performance and global human-rights processes. He is also supporting the organizational learning efforts at the renovation of the historic Rouge Assembly site.

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Right or wrong, the Seattle protests highlighted the widespread influence that corporations exert on people’s lives today. As social institutions, companies have an unprecedented impact on individuals, families, communities, nations, and the planet itself. For instance, who among us does not struggle with the challenge of balancing family and work life? Who among us may not someday benefit from biotechnology breakthroughs? Who among us is not concerned about the impact of manufacturing waste on the environment? Who among us does not take advantage of cheap and reliable telecommunications? The pure size, scope, and transnational nature of the modern corporation have given it a unique — and growing — role in our daily lives.

A Tool for Corporate “Response-ability”

With this level of influence come new demands for responsibility, as the demonstrations in Seattle showed. Simply put, the more impact that corporations have on people’s lives, the more people will insist that businesses take responsibility for their actions. Doing so requires “response-ability” — the ability to acknowledge people’s concerns and create innovations to address those concerns. It means being open to change and learning. This is not a new challenge, but the importance and complexity of the task have increased with globalization. Thus, tackling the opportunities and dangers that face today’s businesses requires an equally radical shift in the nature of change processes and strategies.

The practice and philosophy of Appreciative Inquiry (AI), while still in its nascent stage, is emerging as a revolutionary approach to this kind of change and learning. AI first arose in the early 1980s, when David Cooperrider, a graduate student at Case Western Reserve University, conducted an organizational diagnosis of the Cleveland Clinic. During his research, he was amazed by the level of cooperation, innovation, and egalitarian governance that he observed within the organization. Cooperrider and his adviser, Suresh Srivastva, analyzed the factors that contributed to the functioning of the clinic when it was at its best — its moments of exceptional performance. In the mid 1980s, they published the first widely distributed description of the research, theory, and practice of Appreciative Inquiry in the article “Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life” in Research in Organization Change and Development, vol. 1, edited by W. Pasmore and R. Woodman (JAI Press, 1987).

AI is based on a deceptively simple premise: that organizations grow in the direction of what they repeatedly ask questions about and focus their attention on. Why make this assumption? Research in sociology has shown that when people study problems and conflicts, the number and severity of the problems they identify actually increase. But when they study human ideals and achievements, peak experiences, and best practices, these things — not the conflicts — tend to flourish. (Did you ever notice that beginner bicyclists tend to steer toward whatever they’re looking at most — like the big rock at the side of the road? See “Watch Out for the Rock!”)

By encouraging people to ask certain kinds of questions, make shared meaning of the answers, and act on the responses, AI serves as a wellspring for transformational change. It supports organizationwide (i.e., systemic) learning through several means:

• Through widespread inquiry, it helps everyone perceive the need for change, explore new possibilities, and contribute to solutions.
• Through customized interview guides, it emphasizes questions that focus on moments of high performance in order to ignite transformative dialogue and action within the organization.
• Through alignment of the organization’s formal and informal structures with its purpose and principles, it translates shared vision into reality and belief into practice.

A Closer Look at Appreciative Inquiry

To see how this process works, imagine what would happen if you shifted the focus of inquiry (i.e., the process of gathering information for the purpose of learning and changing) from the deficits or gaps in your organization to its successes and accomplishments. Instead of asking, “What are our problems? What hasn’t worked?” you might say, “Describe a time when things were really going well around here. What conditions were present at those moments and what organizational changes would allow more of those conditions to prevail?” This simple shift in perspective constitutes a powerful intervention in its own right that can begin nudging the whole company in the direction of the inquiry.

How? Organizations are manifestations of the human imagination. That is, no organization could exist if one or several individuals hadn’t envisioned it first (even if that vision was sketchy or incomplete). The learnings that surface through the AI process begin to shift the collective image that people hold of the organization. In their daily encounters, members start to create together compelling new images of the company’s future. These images immediately initiate small “ripples” in how employees think about the work they do, their relationships, their roles, and so on. Over time, these ripples turn into waves; the more positive questions participants ask, the more they incorporate the learnings they glean from those questions in daily behaviors and, ultimately, in the organization’s infrastructure.

Unlike many behavioral-science approaches to change, AI does not focus on changing people. Instead, it invites people to engage in building the kinds of organizations and communities that they want to live in. AI thus involves collaborative discovery of what makes an organization most effective, in economic, ecological, and human terms. From there, organization members weave that new knowledge into the fabric of the firm’s formal and informal systems, such as the way they develop and implement business strategy or the way they organize themselves to accomplish tasks. This process represents true learning and change.

Finally, AI rests on another deceptively simple notion: that organizational members are competent adults capable of learning from their own experiences and from those of others. In a company that truly believes this precept, everyone feels energized by new knowledge and change. As AI becomes a regular way of working, employees at all levels and all functions identify best practices that the organization can build on in order to respond to new challenges. They then spread that knowledge and initiate action as a matter of routine.

Consultant Diana Whitney has summarized Appreciative Inquiry in the following way:

• AI is a high-participation, full voice process targeted at organizational innovation. People at all levels of an organization engage with one another to discover, dream, and design the corporation’s future.
• AI is an organizational learning process designed to identify and disseminate best practices. AI assumes that people possess high levels of competence and encourages them to discover what works within their own organization as well as in other businesses and organizations.
• AI fosters positive communication and can result in the formation of deep and meaningful relationships. Through simple interpersonal communication, people build relationships, accomplish work, and express value.
• • AI can be used to radically redesign the governance structures and processes of an organization. By applying what they learn from the inquiry, people begin to redesign the organization’s social architecture — its systems, structures, roles, and measures — in ways that better align it with their dreams and needs.

One of the most attractive aspects of AI is its flexibility. Organizations that have implemented AI have found that it engages individuals and teams while it simultaneously provides a framework for companywide innovations.

The Five “D’s”

Thus, AI is a way of managing and working as well as a process for organizational learning and change. From the latter perspective, it is an ongoing, iterative cycle consisting of five phases: Definition, Discovery, Dream, Design, and Delivery/Destiny (see “The Five ‘D’s’ of Appreciative Inquiry” on p. 1). In large companies, the process often begins by engaging individual units or divisions. In small companies, everyone can take part right from the start.

Definition. This phase is arguably the most important one in the AI cycle, because it establishes the initial focus and scope of the inquiry. Defining the direction of inquiry is much more than just sharpening a problem description. Because organizations move in the direction of the questions they ask, the choice of questions is vital.

In the Definition phase, the organization’s focus shifts from describing the problem to determining what its members want to achieve and what they need to know to get there. For example, when a Mexican cosmetics firm wanted to solve the problem of discrimination against women, the management team first asked consultants to help them understand the causes of this unequal treatment. Dissatisfied with the direction their conversations were taking, they decided to shift their focus — to inquire instead into the causes and conditions that contribute to excellent cross-gender relationships in the workplace.

This change led the organization to a whole new body of knowledge about the issue. The members of the firm then came up with a compelling vision that they could work toward based on the conversations that took place during the inquiry process: a business world in which everyone is treated fairly regardless of gender. Not long thereafter, the company won an award for having one of Mexico’s most supportive workplaces for women.

Discovery. In the Discovery phase, participants interview hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people from within and outside of the organization. Interviewers use a customized guide to gather information on the line of inquiry that the group identified during the Definition phase. Frequently, a small group of volunteers develops the guide. These volunteers often represent a diagonal “slice” of the organization, along with representatives from key partners outside the company’s formal boundaries (i.e., customers and suppliers). Sometimes this volunteer group conducts the interviews; other times, hundreds of people gather to interview each other. During the Discovery phase, the organization identifies “best practices,” “life-giving forces,” or “root causes of success.”

This practice represents a dramatic departure from normal statistical “sampling.” AI operates on the premise that the act of asking positive questions is as important as the data it elicits. For that reason, the more people interviewed, the stronger the organization’s movement in the direction of the inquiry.

Dream. Participants then come together to build on the new learnings developed during the Discovery phase. They also ask larger questions, such as “What is the world calling us to become? What are those things about us that, no matter how much we change, we want to continue to do in the future?” Dream meetings can range from small teams to “summits” in which hundreds of people participate.

During this phase, people throughout the business create images of what life in the organization and its relationships with key constituents would look like if the company’s very best practices became the norm rather than the exception. This approach differs greatly from other visioning processes, because these dreams are grounded in what participants know to be the system’s past or present capabilities. For example, the employees of a transnational pharmaceutical company developed the following dream:

“The Research Organization of ABC Pharmaceuticals has four significant assets: an energizing work environment that affords freedom of action at all levels; a research process that is market-focused, goal-oriented, and strategically driven; world-class science supported by state-of-the-art technologies; and multi-disciplinary collaboration that transcends internal and external boundaries.

“Our people like to work here. The work environment is creative and empowering. . . . Our collaborative culture leads to sharing across functions. . . . People leverage and learn from each other’s expertise to jointly reach our organization’s goals. ABC Pharmaceuticals is a scientific Center of Excellence!”

Design. During the Design phase, participants identify the high-leverage changes in the organization’s systems, processes, roles, measures, and structures necessary for achieving the dream. Participants craft micro-images, or design statements, for redesigning the corporation’s infrastructure. For example, a consumer products distribution company wrote the following micro-image (one of about 20) describing its ideal strategy development process:

“DIA accelerates its learning through an annual strategic planning conference that involves all 500 people in the firm as well as key partners and stakeholders. As a setting for strategic learning, teams present their benchmarking studies of the best five other organizations, deemed leaders in their class. Other teams present an annual appreciative analysis of DIA, and together these databases of success stories (internal and external) help set the stage for DIA’s strategic, future search planning” (from “A Positive Revolution in Change: Appreciative Inquiry,” by David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney in Appreciative Inquiry: Rethinking Human and Organizational Change, by Cooperrider, et al. (Stipes Publishing, 2000)).

The Design phase is more than just breaking down the dream into short-term actions; it is about “translating” the dream into the “language” of the organization’s social architecture. It is about enacting the essence of the vision in the policies, core processes and practices, and systems — all of the formal and informal structures that sustain the corporation’s essence.

Delivery/Destiny. In the Delivery/Destiny phase, the organization fleshes out, experiments with, and redesigns yet again the innovations that it identified during the Design phase. The hallmarks of this phase are creativity, innovation, and iteration — buttressed by ongoing inquiries into the progress being made and the effectiveness of the changes. Employees work to identify, highlight, and expand what is working well. They also continue to innovate where needed, so that the organization can grow and learn.

The main challenge that groups face during this stage is sustaining — and even magnifying — the inspiration that characterizes the earlier phases. We come from a “project mentality” that values clear starts and conclusions. But we are increasingly confronted with a world in which change does not occur during a separate time period, after which we get back to business as usual. Rather, change is now the very water in which we swim.

We are increasingly confronted with a world in which change does not occur during a separate time period, after which we get back to business as usual. Rather, change is now the very water in which we swim.

First Steps Toward Appreciative Inquiry

There’s no one right way to engage in Appreciative Inquiry; indeed, the process can take many different forms. The examples in the following section illustrate just a few of the many different ways that organizations have applied Appreciative Inquiry — with variations on the topic of inquiry, the process for discovering exceptional moments, the method used in dreaming new futures, and the innovations developed in the Design and Delivery/Destiny phases. But the following conditions seem to be present when Appreciative Inquiry has been most effectively incorporated into a process of organizational learning and change:

• The organization honestly acknowledges any difficulties that currently exist. After all, this kind of struggle often provides the impetus for change. AI practitioners don’t advocate denying negative emotions or problems. Rather, they encourage participants not to dwell on them.
• The organization’s formal and informal leaders have expressed a need or desire for deep inquiry, discovery, and renewal. They’ve also demonstrated an openness to grassroots innovation.
• The organizational culture supports participation of all voices, at all levels — with the understanding that, when participative processes are used, outcomes cannot be known in advance.
• People throughout the organization see change as an ongoing process, not a one-time event.
• The company’s leaders believe in the organization’s capabilities and agree that accessing this “positive core” can drive learning and change.
• The organization supplies the structures and resources needed to collect “good-news stories” and support creative action (from “Appreciative Inquiry: An Overview” by Kendi Rossi, from the AI List Serv, 1999).

These conditions can expedite the AI process, but they are not prerequisites. Unlike other approaches to intentional change, with AI, you can start anywhere, anytime, and with anyone. Most companies learn AI by doing it. The very act of inquiring into the best moments of an organization’s life begins to shift the system. As this process continues, individuals become open to wider applications of Appreciative Inquiry. They begin with some trepidation and generally end up with a strong commitment to the principles and practice.

AI in Action

AI has been used to catalyze change in a wide range of efforts: from business process excellence, diversity, and knowledge management, to customer service, mergers and acquisitions, and community development. Though it is still in its infancy, proponents of this work have scored some remarkable successes, as the examples below reveal.

In 1999, Nutrimental SA, a food manufacturing facility in Paraná, Brazil, shut down so that all 700 employees could talk together about how to beat the stiffening competition facing the company. The co-CEOs invited David Cooperrider (currently a faculty member at Case Western Reserve University) to facilitate. Cooperrider asked employees to identify “the factors and forces that gave life to the company when it was most effective, most alive, and most successful as a producer of high-quality health foods.” In an interview, Cooperrider described what happened:

“With cheers and good wishes, a smaller group of 150 stakeholders — employees from all levels, suppliers, distributors, community leaders, financiers, and customers — launched a four-day strategy session during which they articulated a new and bold corporate dream. Participants said, ‘Let’s assume that tomorrow, when we wake up, a miracle will have occurred: We’ll discover that all of Nutrimental’s best qualities have come to the fore in exactly the way we would like. What would we see when we arrived at work that would tell us that this miracle had happened? What would be different?’ Over the following days, participants clarified three new, strategic business directions.

“Six months later, Nutrimental’s profits had increased by a whopping 300 percent. The co-CEOs attributed these dramatic results to two changes: bringing the whole organization into the planning process, and realizing that organizations thrive when people see the best in one another, when they can affirm their dreams and ultimate concerns, and when their voices are heard.”

At about the same time, in Harlow, England, members of an internal organization-development (OD) group at a transnational pharmaceutical company and their clients decided to use AI in evaluating an intervention. The goal of the initiative had been to improve core business processes and, ultimately, the quality of life for their research scientists. The OD practitioners and representatives from the research community fanned out to ask questions of both the scientists who had participated in the intervention and their supervisors.

But rather than asking whether the intervention worked, they asked how it had helped people to work together more effectively and in what ways the quality of their work lives had been enhanced. As a result, the evaluators compiled a rich collection of data, in the form of stories, themes, and recommendations, that promises to yield even more powerful interventions in the future.

In a primary school in Maine, Tom Morrill, the new principal, faced a faculty struggling with the impact of a recent merging of three schools into one. After a few brief meetings with a consultant, the school’s leadership team decided to engage the faculty and staff in three two-hour meetings. During the meetings, participants identified the best aspects of the cultures they had left behind and explored ways to carry those elements forward into a shared future. Morrill described the outcome of this approach:

“People’s interactions focused on what was working well or on kernels of possibilities, as opposed to lists of what was wrong. Now, you hear teachers talking about AI frequently. We have also used AI in decision-making. I’ve purposefully moved to a more inclusive decision-making model, which reflects people’s desire for inclusion. Also, team leaders have used AI to create reporting processes and even staffing arrangements. This has built better school unity and has strengthened communication. People are getting better about working and planning together.”

Appreciative Inquiry as an approach to intentional change is still evolving. We are all in the process of learning how to use this radically different, yet breathtakingly simple approach in ways that truly energize and sustain learning organizations. But we do know that AI is best learned by doing.

In Leading the Revolution, Gary Hamel said: “The world is increasingly divided into two kinds of organizations: those that can get no further than continuous improvement, and those who’ve made the jump to radical innovation.” Companies that see the need for the latter approach to change are increasingly turning to Appreciative Inquiry as a tool for making this leap. We invite you to do the same.

Bernard Mohr (bjmSynapse@aol.com) is the founder of The Synapse Group, Inc., an international consultancy in the fields of organizational learning, design, and capability building. His focus is the collaborative innovation of new work settings that are ecologically sound and economically sustainable, and that bring out the best in human beings. He is a founding partner of Appreciative Inquiry Consulting and co-author of the forthcoming book, Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination (Jossey Bass, 2001).

Author’s Note: Many of the concepts in this article have evolved from ongoing dialogues, both verbal and written, with my colleagues in the Appreciative Inquiry Consulting founders’ group: Jim Ludema, Diana Whitney, Adrian McLean, Marsha George, Jane Watkins, David Cooperrider, Marge Schiller, Diane Robbins, Steve Cato, Frank Barrett, Joep de Jong, Mette Jacobsgaard, Jim Lord, Ada Jo Mann, Anne Radford, Judy Rodgers, Jackie Kelm, David Chandler, Ralph Kelly, and Barbara Sloan.

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We use the term “Habits of Mind” to mean having a disposition toward behaving intelligently when confronted with problems to which we do not immediately know the answers. When humans experience dichotomies, are confused by dilemmas, or come face to face with uncertainties, our most effective actions require drawing forth certain patterns of intellectual behavior. When we draw upon these intellectual resources, the results that we produce are more powerful, of higher quality, and of greater significance than if we fail to employ those patterns of intellectual behaviors.

Employing Habits of Mind requires a composite of many skills, attitudes, cues, past experiences, and proclivities. It means that we value one pattern of thinking over another, and therefore it implies choice making about which pattern should be employed at which time. It includes sensitivity to the contextual cues in a situation signaling that it is an appropriate time and circumstance to employ this pattern. It requires a level of skillfulness to employ and carry through the behaviors effectively over time. Finally, it leads individuals to reflect on, evaluate, modify, and carry forth to future applications their learnings.

Research in effective thinking and intelligent behavior indicates that there are some identifiable characteristics of effective thinkers. Scientists, artists, and mathematicians are not the only ones who demonstrate these behaviors. These characteristics have been identified in successful mechanics, teachers, entrepreneurs, salespeople, and parents — people in all walks of life.

Habits of Mind

Following are descriptions and an elaboration of 16 attributes of what human beings do when they behave intelligently (see “16 Habits of Mind”). These Habits of Mind are what intelligent people do when they are confronted with complex problems. These behaviors are seldom performed in isolation. Rather, clusters of such behaviors are drawn forth and employed in various situations. When listening intently, for example, one employs flexibility, metacognition, precise language, and perhaps questioning.

Please do not think that there are only 16 ways in which humans display their intelligence. It should be understood that this list is not meant to be complete. You, your colleagues, or your students will want to continue the search for additional Habits of Mind by adding to and elaborating on this list and the descriptions (for an example of an additional list, see “13 Habits of a Systems Thinker,” compiled by the Waters Foundation).

1. Persisting

“Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time.”

— Marabel Morgan

Efficacious people stick to a task until it is completed. They don’t give up easily They are able to analyze a problem to develop a system, structure, or strategy to attack it. They employ a range and have a repertoire of alternative strategies for problem solving. They collect evidence to indicate their problem-solving strategy is working, and if one strategy doesn’t work, they know how to back up and try another. They recognize when a theory or idea must be rejected and another employed. They have systematic methods of analyzing a problem that include knowing how to begin, what steps must be performed, and what data need to be generated or collected. Because they are able to sustain a problem-solving process over time, they are comfortable with ambiguous situations.

• Managing Impulsivity“. . . . [G]oal-directed self-imposed delay of gratification is perhaps the essence of emotional self-regulation: the ability to deny impulse in the service of a goal, whether it be building a business, solving an algebraic equation, or pursuing the Stanley cup.”

  —Daniel Goleman

  Effective problem solvers have a sense of deliberativeness: They think before they act. They intentionally form a vision of a product, plan of action, goal, or destination before they begin. They strive to clarify and understand directions, develop a strategy for approaching a problem, and withhold immediate value judgments about an idea before fully understanding it. Reflective individuals consider alternatives and consequences of several possible directions prior to taking action. They decrease their need for trial and error by gathering information, taking time to reflect on an answer before giving it, making sure they understand directions, and listening to alternative points of view.

• Listening to Others — With Understanding and Empathy“Listening is the beginning of understanding. … Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening. Let the wise listen and add to their learning and let the discerning get guidance.”

  —Proverbs 1:5

  According to Stephen Covey, highly effective people spend an inordinate amount of time and energy listening. Some psychologists believe that the ability to listen to another person, empathize with them, and understand their point of view is one of the highest forms of intelligent behavior. Being able to paraphrase another person’s ideas, detecting indicators of their feelings or emotional states in their oral and body language, accurately expressing another person’s concepts, emotions, and problems — all are indications of listening behavior (Piaget called it “overcoming egocentrism”).

  Peter Senge and his colleagues suggest that to listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow your mind’s hearing to your ears’ natural speed and hear beneath the words to their meaning. This is a complex skill requiring the ability to monitor one’s own thoughts while, at the same time, attending to the partner’s words. Honing this behavior does not mean that we can’t disagree with someone. A good listener tries to understand what the other person is saying. In the end, he may disagree sharply, but because he disagrees, he wants to know exactly what it is he is disagreeing with.

• Thinking Flexibly“If you never change your mind, why have one?”

  — Edward deBono

  An amazing discovery about the human brain is its plasticity — its ability to “rewire,” change, and even repair itself to become smarter. Flexible people are the ones with the most control. They have the capacity to change their minds as they receive additional data. They engage in multiple and simultaneous outcomes and activities, draw upon a repertoire of problem-solving strategies, and know when it is appropriate to be broad and global in their thinking and when a situation requires detailed precision. They create and seek novel approaches and have a well-developed sense of humor. They envision a range of consequences.

  13 HABITS OF A SYSTEMS THINKER

  The Water Foundation has identified 13 Habits of a Systems Thinker. For detailed definitions of each, click here.

  • Seeks to understand the “big picture”
  • Observes how elements within systems change over time, generating patterns and trends
  • Recognizes that a system’s structure generates its behavior: focuses on structure, not on blame
  • Identifies the circular nature of complex cause and effect relationships, i.e. interdependencies
  • Changes perspectives
  • Surfaces and tests assumptions
  • Considers an issue fully and resists the urge to come to a quick conclusion
  • Considers how mental models (i.e., attitudes and beliefs derived from experience) affect current reality and the future
  • Uses understanding of system structures to identify possible leverage actions
  • Considers both short- and long-term consequences of actions
  • Finds where unintended consequences emerge
  • Recognizes the impact of time delays when exploring cause and effect relationships
  • Checks results and changes actions if needed:, “successive approximation”

  Flexible people can approach a problem from a new angle using a novel approach (deBono refers to this as lateral thinking). They consider alternative points of view or deal with several sources of information simultaneously. Thus, flexibility of mind is essential for working with social diversity, enabling an individual to recognize the wholeness and distinctness of other people’s ways of experiencing and making meaning.

  Flexible thinkers are able to take a “macro-centric” perspective. This is similar to looking down from a balcony at ourselves and our interactions with others. This bird’s-eye view is useful for discerning themes and patterns from assortments of information. It is intuitive, holistic, and conceptual. Since we often need to solve problems with incomplete information, we need the capacity to perceive general patterns and jump across gaps of incomplete knowledge or when some of the pieces are missing.

  Yet another perceptual orientation is “micro-centric” — examining the individual and sometimes minute parts that make up the whole. Without this “worm’s-eye view,” science, technology, and any complex enterprise could not function. These activities require attention to detail, precision, and orderly progressions.

  Flexible thinkers display confidence in their intuition. They tolerate confusion and ambiguity up to a point, and are willing to let go of a problem, trusting their subconscious to continue creative and productive work on it. Flexibility is the cradle of humor, creativity, and repertoire.

• Thinking About Our Thinking (Metacognition)“When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.”

  — Plato

  Occurring in the neocortex, metacognition is our ability to know what we know and what we don’t know. It is our ability to plan a strategy for producing what information is needed, to be conscious of our own steps and strategies during the act of problem solving, and to reflect on and evaluate the productiveness of our own thinking. Probably the major components of metacognition are developing a plan of action, maintaining that plan in mind over a period of time, then reflecting back on and evaluating the plan upon its completion. Planning a strategy before embarking on a course of action assists us in keeping track of the steps in the sequence for the duration of the activity. It facilitates making temporal and comparative judgments, assessing the readiness for more or different activities, and monitoring our interpretations, perceptions, decisions, and behaviors.

  Metacognition means becoming increasingly aware of one’s actions and the effect of those actions on others and on the environment, forming internal questions as one searches for information and meaning, developing mental maps or plans of action, mentally rehearsing prior to performance, monitoring those plans as they are employed. It involves being conscious of the need for midcourse correction if the plan is not meeting expectations, reflecting on the plan upon completion of the implementation for the purpose of self-evaluation, and editing mental pictures for improved performance.

• Striving for Accuracy and Precision“A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it is committing another mistake.”

  — Confucius

  Embodied in the stamina, grace, and elegance of a ballerina or a shoemaker is the desire for craftsmanship, mastery, flawlessness, and economy of energy to produce exceptional results. People who value these qualities take time to check over their products. They review the rules by which they are to abide; they review the models and visions they are to follow; and they review the criteria they are to employ and confirm that their finished product matches the criteria exactly.

  To be craftsman-like means knowing that one can continually perfect one’s craft by working to attain the highest possible standards and pursue ongoing learning in order to bring a laser-like focus of energies to task accomplishment. For some people, craftsmanship requires continuous reworking. Mario Cuomo, a great speechwriter and politician, once said that his speeches were never done — it was only a deadline that made him stop working on them!

• Questioning and Posing Problems“The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advances.”

  — Albert Einstein

  One of the distinguishing characteristics between humans and other forms of life is our inclination and ability to find problems to solve. Effective problem solvers know how to ask questions to fill in the gaps between what they know and what they don’t know. Effective questioners are inclined to ask a range of questions. For example, they request data to support others’ conclusions and assumptions through questions such as, “What evidence do you have?”

  They pose questions about alternative points of view:, “From whose viewpoint are we seeing, reading, or hearing?”

  They inquire into causal connections and relationships:, “How are these people/events/situations related to each other?”

  They pose hypothetical problems: “What do you think would happen if …?”

  Inquirers recognize discrepancies and phenomena in their environment and probe into their causes:, “Why do cats purr?”, “Why does the hair on my head grow so fast, while the hair on my arms and legs grows so slowly?”, “What are some alternative solutions to international conflicts other than wars?”

• Applying Past Knowledge to New Situations“I’ve never made a mistake. I’ve only learned from experience.”

  — Thomas A. Edison

  Intelligent human beings learn from experience. When confronted with a new and perplexing problem, they will often draw forth experience from their past. They can be heard to say, “This reminds me of . . .” or “This is just like the time when I . . .” They call on their store of knowledge and experience as sources of data to support, theories to explain, or processes to solve each new challenge. Furthermore, they are able to abstract meaning from one experience, carry it forth, and apply it in a new and novel situation.

• Thinking and Communicating with Clarity and Precision“I do not so easily think in words . . . after being hard at work having arrived at results that are perfectly clear . . . I have to translate my thoughts in a language that does not run evenly with them.”

  — Francis Galton

  Language refinement plays a critical role in enhancing a person’s cognitive maps and their ability to think critically, which is the knowledge base for efficacious action. Enriching the complexity and specificity of language simultaneously produces effective thinking. Language and thinking are closely entwined. Like two sides of a coin, they are inseparable. Fuzzy language is a reflection of fuzzy thinking. Intelligent people strive to communicate accurately in both written and oral form, taking care to use precise language, defining terms, correct names, and universal labels and analogies. They strive to avoid overgeneralizations, deletions, and distortions. Instead, they support their statements with explanations, comparisons, quantification, and evidence.

• Gathering Data Through All Senses“Observe perpetually.”

  — Henry James

  The brain is the ultimate reductionist. It reduces the world to its elementary parts: photons of light, molecules of smell, sound waves, vibrations of touch — which send electrochemical signals to individual brain cells that store information about lines, movements, colors, smells, and other sensory inputs. Intelligent people know that all information gets into the brain through the sensory pathways: gustatory, olfactory, tactile, kinesthetic, auditory, visual, Most linguistic, cultural, and physical learning is derived from the environment by observing or taking in through the senses. To know a wine it must be drunk; to know a role it must be acted; to know a game it must be played; to know a dance it must be moved; to know a goal it must be envisioned. Those whose sensory pathways are open, alert, and acute absorb more information from the environment than those whose pathways are withered, immune, and oblivious to sensory stimuli.

  Furthermore, we are learning more about the impact of arts and music on improved mental functioning. Forming mental images is important in mathematics and engineering; listening to classical music seems to improve spatial reasoning. Social scientists solve problems through scenarios and roleplaying; scientists build models; engineers use cad-cam; mechanics learn through hands-on experimentation; artists experiment with colors and textures; musicians learn by producing combinations of instrumental and vocal music.

• Creating, Imagining, and Innovating“The future is not some place we are going to but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.”

  — John Schaar

  All humans have the capacity to generate novel, original, clever, or ingenious products, solutions, and techniques—if that capacity is developed. Creative individuals try to conceive problem solutions differently, examining alternative possibilities from many angles. They tend to project themselves into different roles using analogies, starting with a vision and working backward, imagining they are the objects being considered. Creative people take risks and frequently push the boundaries of their perceived limits. They are intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated, working on the task because of the aesthetic challenge rather than the material rewards. Creative people are open to criticism. They hold up their products for others to judge and seek feedback in an ever-increasing effort to refine their technique.

• Responding with Wonderment and Awe“The most beautiful experience in the world is the experience of the mysterious.”

  — Albert Einstein.

  Efficacious people have not only an “I can” attitude, but also an “I enjoy” feeling. They enjoy figuring things out by themselves and continue to learn throughout their lifetimes. They find beauty in a sunset, intrigue in the geometry of a spider web, and exhilaration at the iridescence of a hummingbird’s wings. They see the congruity and intricacies in the derivation of a mathematical formula, recognize the orderliness and adroitness of a chemical change, and commune with the serenity of a distant constellation.

• Taking Responsible Risks“There has been a calculated risk in every stage of American development — the pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness, businessmen who were not afraid of failure, dreamers who were not afraid of action.”

  — Brooks Atkinson

  Flexible people seem to have an almost uncontrollable urge to go beyond established limits. They are uneasy about comfort; they “live on the edge of their competence.” They seem compelled to place themselves in situations where they do not know what the outcome will be. They accept confusion, uncertainty, and the higher risks of failure as part of the normal process, and they learn to view setbacks as interesting, challenging, and growth producing.

  However, they are not behaving impulsively. Their risks are educated. They draw on past knowledge, are thoughtful about consequences, and have a well-trained sense of what is appropriate. They know that not all risks are worth taking! It is only through repeated experiences that risk taking becomes educated. It often is a cross between intuition, drawing on past knowledge, and a sense of meeting new challenges.

• Finding Humor“Where do bees wait? At the buzz stop.”

  — Andrew, age six

  Another unique attribute of humans is our sense of humor. Laughter transcends all cultures and eras. Its positive effects on psychological functions include a drop in the pulse rate, the secretion of endorphins, and increased oxygen in the blood. It has been found to liberate creativity and provoke such higher-level thinking skills as anticipation, the identification of novel relationships, visual imagery, and analogy. People who engage in the mystery of humor have the ability to perceive situations from an original and often interesting vantage point. Having a whimsical frame of mind, they thrive on finding incongruity and perceiving absurdities, ironies, and satire; finding discontinuities; and being able to laugh at situations and themselves.

• Thinking Interdependently“Take care of each other. Share your energies with the group. No one must feel alone, cut off, for that is when you do not make it.”

  — Willie Unsoeld

  Humans are social beings. We congregate in groups, find it therapeutic to be listened to, draw energy from one another, and seek reciprocity. In groups, we contribute our time and energy to tasks that we would quickly tire of when working alone. In fact, we have learned that one of the cruelest forms of punishment that can be inflicted on an individual is solitary confinement.

  Cooperative humans realize that all of us together are more powerful, intellectually and/or physically, than any one individual. Probably the foremost disposition in the post-industrial society is the heightened ability to think in concert with others and to find ourselves increasingly more interdependent and sensitive to the needs of others. Problem solving has become so complex that no one person can go it alone. No one has access to all the data needed to make critical decisions; no one person can consider as many alternatives as several people can.

• Learning Continuously“Insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

  — Albert Einstein

  Intelligent people are in a continuous learning mode. Their confidence, in combination with their inquisitiveness, allows them to constantly search for new and better ways. People with this Habit of Mind are always striving for improvement, growing, and learning. They seize problems, situations, tensions, conflicts, and circumstances as valuable opportunities to learn.

  A great mystery about humans is that we confront learning opportunities with fear rather than mystery and wonder. We seem to feel better when we know rather than when we learn. We defend our biases, beliefs, and storehouses of knowledge rather than inviting the unknown, the creative, and the inspirational. Being certain and closed gives us comfort, while being doubtful and open gives us fear. The highest form of thinking we will ever learn is the humility of knowing that we don’t know.

In Summary

Drawn from research on human effectiveness, descriptions of remarkable performers, and analyses of the characteristics of efficacious people, we have presented descriptions of 16 Habits of Mind. This list is not meant to be complete but rather to serve as a starting point for further elaboration and description.

These Habits of Mind may serve as mental disciplines. When confronted with problematic situations, students, parents, and teachers might habitually employ one or more of these Habits of Mind by asking themselves, “What is the most intelligent thing I can do right now?”

• How can I learn from this? What are my resources? How can I draw on my past successes with problems like this? What do I already know about the problem? What resources do I have available or need to generate?
• How can I approach this problem flexibly? How might I look at the situation in another way? How can I draw upon my repertoire of problem-solving strategies? How can I look at this problem from a fresh perspective?
• How can I illuminate this problem to make it clearer, more precise? Do I need to check out my data sources? How might I break this problem down into its component parts and develop a strategy for understanding and accomplishing each step?
• What do I know or not know? What questions do I need to ask? What strategies are in my mind now? What am I aware of in terms of my own beliefs, values, and goals with this problem? What feelings or emotions am I aware of which might be blocking or enhancing my progress?
• The interdependent thinker might turn to others for help. She might ask, How does this problem affect others? How can we solve it together? What can I learn from others that would help me become a better problem solver?

These Habits of Mind transcend all subject matters commonly taught in school. They are characteristic of peak performers, whether in homes, schools, athletic fields, organizations, the military, governments, churches, or corporations. They are what make marriages successful, learning continual, workplaces productive, and democracies enduring.

The goal of education therefore should be to support others and ourselves in liberating, developing, and habituating these Habits of Mind more fully. Taken together, they are a force directing us toward increasingly authentic, congruent, ethical behavior. They are the tools of disciplined choice making. They are the primary vehicles in the lifelong journey toward integration. They are the “right stuff” that makes human beings efficacious.

This article is adapted with permission from Arthur Costa and Bena Kallick, “Describing 16 Habits of Mind.” Click here to access the original article. The authors have a new book coming out, Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind: 16 Essential Characteristics for Success (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2009).

Arthur L. Costa, Ed. D., is an Emeritus Professor of Education at California State University, Sacramento and co-director of the Institute for Intelligent Behavior in El Dorado Hills, California. He has served as a classroom teacher, a curriculum consultant, and an assistant superintendent for instruction and as the director of educational programs for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Bena Kallick, Ph. D., is a private consultant providing services to school districts, state departments of education, professional organizations, and public sector agencies throughout the United States and abroad. Her areas of focus include group dynamics, creative and critical thinking, and alternative assessment strategies in the classroom.

The post Habits of Mind: Strategies for Disciplined Choice Making appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

In the world of big data and high-stakes, disruptive change, learning becomes essential for leadership. Reason may have been concerned with high-risk leadership situations, but he could have easily been referring to any leader. In fact, contemporary leaders in business organizations share many of the same challenges faced by well-known high-stress and high-consequence positions such as pilots, surgery teams, and military quick reaction forces.

The Shift from Traditional to Learning-Directed Leadership

Traditional approaches to leadership focus on power, influence, and position as the sources of leadership. No doubt, these are important factors. However, they prove less important in a complex and dynamic world where disruptive change is considered normal. Leaders working in the world of “big data” engage learning rather than power, knowledge rather than influence, expertise rather than position. Learning-directed leaders see continual learning, not the hoarding of power and resources, as their primary advantage. At their core, learning-directed leaders work to be open to new information and ready to revise past assessments of a situation, cultivating knowledge, learning, and expertise along the way as described by psychologist Theodore Mills (1967).

Leadership requires a shift in understanding about the nature of problems and how these problems are solved. The study of knowledge distinguishes between ill-structured and well-structured problems. Well-structured problems require time, patience, and persistence. Given enough time and resources, leaders can always solve well-structured problems. An example of a well-structured problem is reducing a budget by 15 percent. On the other hand, determining a new strategic direction in a fast-changing marketplace is an ill-structured problem.

Well-structured problems are the work of traditional leaders. Learning-directed leaders, on the other hand, work to solve ill-structured problems. No matter how much time, persistence, and patience a leader puts into solving an ill-structured problem, it can never be fully understood, and people will never fully agree on one right decision. In fact, there is no single best solution for an ill-structured problem. “Moving from Traditional to Learning-Directed Leadership” represents the shift in thinking required for a leader to be successful in this context. The shift, although difficult, is essential for leading, as an example from the medical profession illustrates.

CHARACTERISTICS OF A COMPLEX LEADERSHIP ENVIRONMENT

Eliminating Infections in Critical Care Medicine

Medical personnel insert or replace thousands of central line catheters each day. These catheters, which are inserted into veins in the neck, groin, or chest, dispense medications or fluids and can be used to measure blood volume. In the most trying cases, a central line catheter can save a life or limit pain. Inserting one of these devices is a common procedure. Unfortunately every year, an estimated 80,000 patients contract an infection that could have been avoided. Between 30,000 and 50,000 of these patients die as a result (Landro, 2010).

The procedures involved in changing a central line catheter may seem simple and routine, but learning to do something other than the existing procedures is much more difficult. In reality, improving the process of inserting or changing central line catheters has proven particularly challenging. Changing a well-established procedure involves monitoring hundreds of pieces of information, coordinating complex processes, and overcoming deeply ingrained cultural barriers.

MOVING FROM TRADITIONAL TO LEARNING-DIRECTED LEADERSHIP

Several factors contribute to the problem. A medical professional may care for hundreds of patients a month. The human mind is only capable of remembering a limited amount of data at any one time and so keeping track of each procedure becomes difficult. Further, many professionals don’t have direct access to the correct supplies. Changing a catheter may prove a challenge because resources come from different locations and quality is difficult to assess. Adding to the problem, changing and inserting a catheter requires coordination among various professionals.

A group of physicians sought to change the way medical professionals go about inserting and changing catheters in patients to decrease the high rate of infection and death. Led by Dr. Peter Pronovost of the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, they tackled the problem by turning learning into action (Pronovost & Vohr, 2010). They began by reviewing prior research on catheter-related infections and related topics. From this research, they identified five practices that showed promise in limiting infection.

First, they introduced an educational program to teach physicians, residents, nurses, and other medical professionals about the existing procedures and how small changes might reduce infections. Second, they created a central cart that included all the materials needed to conduct the procedure with a greater degree of safety. In the past, medical personnel might have to search for the proper equipment, losing valuable time and focus in the process. Third, they instituted a daily care plan meeting that addressed whether patients needed a new catheter. Fourth, and most important, they implemented a checklist procedure, adopted from preflight checklists used by airline flight crews. The process, led by the bedside nurse, ensured that personnel followed proper and safe procedures. The checklist was to be used each time a new catheter was inserted or rewired. Fifth, they called on nurses to stop the process if any care provider failed to follow the guidelines as stated on the checklist. The steps on the checklist were clear and concise. When inserting a catheter, the professionals were to wash their hands; clean the patient’s skin with a disinfectant; wear a cap and gown and use a surgical drape; insert the catheter through parts of the body other than the groin; and remove any unnecessary catheters.

The physicians achieved a successful result by almost any measure. Researchers estimated that, when adopted in 50 intensive care units in Michigan, the procedure might have prevented 2,000 infections, reaching an infection rate of near zero (Landro, 2010). The procedures demonstrate the power of learning-directed leadership. Learning-directed leadership impacts organizational effectiveness through five processes: increasing awareness of a problem or system, learning from (rather than simply repeating) experience, facilitating behavioral change through coordination, improving judgment of individual employees, and breaking down hierarchy to transfer knowledge across levels of the organization. We present each of these in turn.

Increasing Awareness. Like most successful organization-wide learning initiatives, the catheter safety effort began by focusing attention on the general problem. The hospitals that adopted the catheter safety process implemented a training course for the general population and garnered the support of management. Frontline employees, those who were responsible for insertion and replacement of catheters, received additional training that focused on the specific elements of the problem. Increasing awareness stands as the first step in learning by focusing the attention of the entire organization on an otherwise misunderstood or overlooked problem.

Learning from Past Experience. One reason that the intervention proved so successful was that it relied on a comprehensive review of existing knowledge. The researchers didn’t start from scratch; they sifted through years of studies, in fields from medicine to flight crew operations. They identified ways to put these research findings into action. But they went further by culling best practices. They identified what practices were cursory and which were central to success. Much of the success could be attributed to the fact that these techniques had been used before, and only the most successful processes were adopted.

The researchers went beyond use of existing experience; they made gains in applying the model to a new situation. No one could logically accept that a flight crew checklist would be appropriate for a hospital. The researchers knew they had to adapt the checklist for their own unique purposes. The process of adaptation cannot be underestimated, for it seems that many best practices go unused because organizations fail to adapt them to the specific circumstances they face.

Facilitating Behavior Change. The central line catheter awareness program also involved behavioral change by encouraging medical professionals to consider small changes in how they work. Behavioral components included adoption of a common cart, institution of a checklist to detail critical procedures, and establishment of standardized review procedures for each patient.

These changes help medical professionals focus on the processes most important to achieving the goal, in this case infection-free catheter insertion. At the same time, the professionals develop a clearer picture of the larger task, seeing how their individual actions fit into the larger treatment plan for the patient. Learning occurs through the constant monitoring of patient treatment as given by other caregivers. Thus, this approach engages the best element of goal setting. It helps to simplify a complex process by focusing attention on key aspects of a task while simultaneously allowing for learning about the implications for the larger task. The most important behavioral change may not be the actual medical procedures itself, but the improved coordination that results.

We know that learning involves collective rather than just individual processes. Yet, the role of coordination in learning is often characterized as mysterious and therefore often overlooked. Perhaps this is because coordination can be difficult to observe and capture. Psychologist Daniel Wegner (Wegner and Wegner, 1985) has taken some of the mystery out of coordinated learning with something he calls “transactive memory.” His early research was largely confined to laboratory studies. In one study, pairs of individuals who had been in a relationship more than three months were better able to recall words than those who were not in these relationships. Over the last few years, the notion of transactive memory has been confirmed in dozens of studies in real-world settings. These studies largely confirm Wegner’s findings – teamwork matters. The catheter safety program demonstrates the role of transactive memory in learning. Teams that demonstrate transactive memory share three characteristics.

First, team members believe in the credibility of the information shared by other members. The catheter safety program appears to increase credibility because it provides a shared template, common repository, and agreed-upon procedure for documenting knowledge. Essentially, the shared checklist replaces individual memory with a team memory. Credibility increases because the checklist serves as a shared and likely more credible source of memory, so that memory is no longer assigned to the more fallible process of individual cognition.

Second, transactive memory involves effectively coordinating actions. Coordination means that information moves across and between individuals in a way that contributes to the team’s overall performance. The catheter safety program encourages coordination by helping teams establish a common set of procedures that guide action. The development, implementation, and integration of a checklist fosters learning because coordination becomes an everyday practice, not an abstraction. Coordination leads to learning because it necessitates an agreed-upon procedure, standardizes routine processes, and creates a template for improving processes.

Third, the common checklist improves coordination among a group of specialized professionals. Organizations manage complexity by distributing labor. Nurses, physicians, and residents each perform a specific duty. This division of labor helps the organization but creates challenges for coordination. Learning occurs when team members understand, respect, and utilize the unique expertise of these diverse roles. The catheter safety program provides evidence that when learning becomes a daily practice, it improves performance.

Improving Judgment. In addition to creating awareness and making incremental changes to behavior, lessons from catheter safety checklists point to the importance of improving professional judgment. The checklist implementation process marks an important shift from institutionalizing organization-wide policies to allowing experienced professionals to exercise judgment. For example, the development and implementation of a checklist is not abstract but part of the daily routine of professionals. For sure, implementation requires a coordinated effort at all levels of the organization, including strong support from management, but ultimately, the change occurs at the most direct levels of patient care, not policy. The program success results from the learning that occurs as professionals exercise autonomy and judgment unencumbered by overly burdensome institutional rules.

Improving professional judgment is an important part of learning. In a 1986 study, Vimla Patel and colleagues found that experienced physicians saw medical situations in a more holistic and complete way than did residents. In other words, physicians relied on a greater source of data, including patient histories and lifestyle data, to make a diagnosis. In non-routine cases, experts rely on “flexible reasoning” to generate alternatives, revise hypotheses, and develop meaningful courses of action. Judgment and its cousin learning require adapting, looking at a broad range of information, challenging, and understanding context.

Breaking Down Hierarchy. The cornerstone of the catheter safety program can be found in the introduction and use of a common checklist. However, from a learning standpoint, the checklist itself serves simply to facilitate a larger psychological purpose. It facilitates the breakdown of traditional organizational and professional hierarchies.

Medicine’s adoption of checklists builds on a legacy established by commercial pilots. Studies of numerous air tragedies and near misses have revealed that all too often, dysfunctional power dynamics among the flight crews contributed to the disaster. Overly authoritarian cockpit captains ignored the insights and warnings of copilots, leading to a crash or near miss. The checklist serves to neutralize traditional forms of power such as rank or profession because authority no longer rests in the rank of individuals but in their knowledge, and this paves the way for learning. Nurses and residents gain the authority to stop a procedure if it doesn’t conform to guidelines.

Each of these five processes underscores the importance of learning in improving organizational effectiveness. The initial experiment for catheter safety has been adopted by other hospitals around the US. It stands as a remarkable example of learning in organizations. We can’t emphasize enough that the learning from such an effort occurs on two levels. The first level is the learning that occurs from engaging in the process of building the procedure. The second level of learning occurs as an outcome of the continued engagement in the process itself.

A successful program can tell us something important, but an overt collapse of learning can tell us something else. Next we turn to the case of Lehman Brothers and the failure to learn.

Failure to Learn at Lehman Brothers

As one way to understand just how the catheter safety program invokes learning, we can contrast it with an organization that failed to learn. Lehman Brothers can be described as a collapse of learning because it had, at the time of this writing, the largest bankruptcy in the world’s history, topping an estimated $639 billion in assets.

Over years, Lehman grew into a rigid culture, where it enforced strict informal rules for behavior. The culture served the company well at times, but the same rigidity also restricted its ability to learn and adapt. During the mortgage crisis of 2007, the managers at Lehman needed to assess and change their behavior and respond to the need for new direction. Rather, as former chief talent officer Hope Greenfield indicated in Leader to Leader, managers “stood in the sidelines waiting to see who was going to take the reins next” and occupied themselves with “finger pointing and blame.” The culture did not change behaviors even when the company needed that change to survive.

Lehman found itself plagued by widespread turnover, which resulted in continual loss of talent. These trends meant that professional judgment was constantly under threat. As Greenfield pointed out, managers who tried to exercise their professionalism found themselves sidelined and ostracized, and many eventually left the organization. As a result, the culture at Lehman restricted independent professional judgment in favor of rigid thinking. Learning ultimately became stifled.

Team coordination, another hallmark of learning, is built on a foundation of credibility that allows individual team members the freedom to act. However, in cultures that breed a strong sense of competitiveness among managers, it is difficult to build credible, trustworthy teams in which members place the team’s interests and welfare above their personal interests. In this “underdog eat underdog world,” managers prided themselves on their work ethic and fierce competitive spirit rather than good leadership.

This competitive spirit often overshadowed level-headed thinking. The head of Lehmann was bound for retirement, and his number two in command was not a likely successor. This dynamic enhanced the spirit of competition, since according to Greenfield, “any newcomer was regarded as a potential rival and there was smug satisfaction in seeing peers falter.” Although some competition can be a good thing, too much competition can lead to wasted resources, knowledge hoarding, and lack of cooperation. Eventually, problems go unaddressed because leaders lack the information and perspective necessary to overcome them.

Lehmann Brothers had a strong belief in the firm as a family. While this is generally a positive attribute – with, for example, the firm rushing to help when an employee had an ill family member – too much of a family culture means that the hierarchy is rigid and unyielding in decision making. When the firm had 8,000 employees, having only a handful of people at the top making the key decisions may have worked, as these were the handful that Lehmann believed really understood the business. By the end of 2008, the firm had grown large and complex, but the hierarchical family decision-making structure had not changed. The executive committee briefly tried to expand its membership, involving more in the decision-making process, but this effort was short-lived and threatened those in power. The case of Lehman shows that when organizations fail to break down rigid hierarchies, learning and adaptation are the primary victims.

Lehman Brothers’ ultimate bankruptcy stands in sharp contrast to the organizational learning demonstrated by hospitals that adopted the catheter safety procedures. The contrast cannot be overstated: Leaders who foster learning in organizations perform better, provide better work environments for employees, and stand a stronger chance of survival in the face of threats or challenges, as the next example confirms.

Learning-Directed Leadership in Consulting Firms

Whether the organization is involved in healthcare, professional services, or other fields, learning provides an advantage. A recent study by Richard Boyatzis (2006) of Case Western Reserve University illustrates how learning connects to revenue. The study involved a professional service firm with more than 3,000 partners worldwide. Professional service firms serve as a good proving ground for the advantage of learning because they typify the kinds of problems commonly faced by knowledge workers. Only partners and those who ranked at the top of the firm based on quality of client relationships, performance in growing the business, and strength in managing the practice were included. Thirty-two of the top-ranked performers met the benchmark as the best of the best. On average, the partners billed $2.4 million annually and produced a gross margin of 57 percent.

The study first gauged the behaviors and attitudes of the senior partners using a 360-degree feedback process, with five of the partners’ peers, five of their subordinates, and their boss completing a survey. Each partner also completed the survey. The survey sought feedback on 20 different competencies considered important by the organization. One cluster of competencies involved leadership, initiative, and planning. The second included knowledge-based competencies such as pattern recognition, systems thinking, and general knowledge of the job. A third cluster measured the degree to which senior partners valued learning and facilitated learning in others.

Just over a year and half later, the researchers looked at the relationship between the competencies and the partners’ performance. Performance was measured using two clear, agreed-upon measures: revenue, or how much money the partners brought into the firm, and gross margin, or how well the partner utilized the organization’s resources. Once the researchers collected this data, they then conducted various analyses on the relationship between these two performance measures and the 20 competencies.

The results resonate with learning-directed leadership. While several competencies showed value for performance, only two correlated significantly with both revenue and gross margin: valuing learning and facilitating learning in others. We estimate that the competency of valuing learning accounted for almost $800,000 in additional revenue. Facilitating learning accounted for an additional $1.6 million! Performance on gross margin was more than 10 percent higher for those senior partners who valued and facilitated learning.

As with any study, this one had limitations; however, it provides evidence of a clear relationship between desired performance outcomes and the value of learning-directed behaviors. The study not only shows the importance of learning in knowledge work, but also provides solid evidence of how important it is for leaders to facilitate learning in others.

Identifying new problems faced by clients, forging new relationships, and building new business lie at the heart of consulting work. Recall the distinction between ill-structured and well-structured problems. A second consideration for learning involves learning in the face of both complexity and novelty. “Learning Situations Based on Complexity and Novelty” plots these considerations along two dimensions.

Leaders in the medical profession and consultants share something in common: learning in the face of complexity. For the medical professionals, the situation involved routine. The physicians involved in the effort to decrease catheter-related infections learned by focusing on the most important issues and standardizing procedures. The consultants, on the other hand, learned to identify novel situations and new business opportunities. The physicians and consultants both employed learning to improve organizational performance, but learned different things. Of course, the nature of learning is constantly shifting. The consultants will at some point need to learn under routine, just as the medical professionals will also face novel problems.

Conclusion

Through the examples above, we can begin to see how the demands of novelty and complexity shape leadership. The stories of learning in this article highlight the remarkable link between leadership, learning, and organizational performance. We provided examples of how expertise, knowledge, and creativity hold a clear advantage over position, influence, and authority. Ultimately, leadership is embedded in learning-directed actions.

LEARNING SITUATIONS BASED ON COMPLEXITY AND NOVELTY

© 2011 Anna B. Kayes and D. Christopher Kayes

Anna B. Kayes (EdD, the George Washington University) is Associate Professor of Business in the School of Business and Leadership at Stevenson University. She is author of articles on learning and leadership in outlets such as the Journal of Managerial Psychology and the Journal of Management Education, and is co-author of the forthcoming book, The Learning Advantage: The Six Practices of Learning Directed Leadership.

D. Christopher Kayes (PhD, Case Western Reserve University) is Dean’s Research Scholar and Associate Professor of Management at the George Washington University. His article, “The Destructive Pursuit of Idealized Goals,” was recognized as the most significant contribution to the practice of management by the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management. He is the author of “Destructive Goal Pursuit: The Mt. Everest Disaster” and co-author of the forthcoming The Learning Advantage: The Six Practices of Learning Directed Leadership.

References

American Management Association. How to build a high performance organization, 2007. [link]

Boyatzis, R. E., “Using tipping points of emotional intelligence and cognitive competencies to predict financial performance of leaders,” Psicothema, 18, 2006.

The Economist, “Data, data everywhere. A special report on managing information,” February 27, 2010).

Greenfield, H., “The decline of the best: An insider’s lessons from Lehman Brothers,” Leader to Leader, 55, 2010.

Landro, L., “Building team spirit: Nurses hesitate to challenge doctors even when doctors are ordering the wrong drug or operating on the wrong limb,” Wall Street Journal Online, February 16, 2010.

Mills, T. M. The Sociology of Small Groups. Prentice-Hall, 1967.

Patel, V. L., Groen, G. J., & Frederiksen, C. H., “Differences between students and physicians in memory for clinical cases,” Medical Education, 20, 1986.

Pronovost, P., &Vohr, E. Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals: How One Doctor’s Checklist Can Help Us Change Health Care from the Inside Out. Hudson Street Press, 2010.

Reason, J., “Safety in the operating theatre — Part 2: Human error and organizational failure,” Current Anesthesia and Critical Care, 6, 1995.

Wegner, T. G., & Wegner, D. M., “Transactive memory,” in A. S. R. Manstead & M. Hewstone (Eds.), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Psychology, Blackwell, 1995.

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knowledge and shape its future. But the process of co-creating the future through conversation is so natural we usually overlook it.

Since our early ancestors gathered in circles around the warmth of a fire, conversation has been a primary process for making sense of our world, discovering what we value, sharing knowledge, and imagining our future. Small groups exploring important questions — and connecting with other groups that are doing the same — have always played a major role in social and institutional renewal. Consider the sewing circles and “committees of correspondence” that helped birth the American Republic; the conversations in cafés and salons that spawned the French Revolution; and the Scandinavian “study circles” that stimulated an economic and social renaissance in Northern Europe. Reaching out in ever-widening circles, members of small groups spread their insights to larger constituencies, carrying the seed ideas for new conversations, creative possibilities, and collective action (see “Conversation as a Path to Large-Scale Change”).

Today, especially with the advent of the Internet, we are becoming increasingly aware of the power and potential of these dynamic networks of conversation and their systemic importance for large-scale collaboration, learning, and change. The crosspollination of ideas from group to group can lead to the emergence of surprising creativity and focus as we discover innovative ways to support a “system thinking together.”

What if we could create an intentional, simple, and effective approach for fostering greater collaborative learning and coherent thought than is often available in large group settings? Our research reveals that what we have come to call “The World Café” has a unique contribution to make when the goal is the focused use of dialogic inquiry to foster collective insight around real-life challenges and key strategic questions at increasing levels of scale.

What is The World Café? It is an innovative methodology that enhances the capacity for collaborative thinking about critical issues by linking small group and large-group conversations. In the process, knowledge grows, a sense of the whole becomes real, and new possibilities become visible. The World Café utilizes the principles of dynamic networks and living systems to access a source of deeper creativity and shared knowledge that might not be available through more traditional approaches to collaborative work.

The World Café is also an evocative metaphor that enables us to pay attention to aspects of organizational life that are often invisible, hidden by formal structures and policies. It highlights the naturally occurring networks of conversation and social learning through which we access collective intelligence, create new knowledge, and bring forth desired futures. Using The World Café as an organizing image allows leaders to intentionally design processes that take advantage of the natural dynamics that are already at play in order to create sustainable business and social value.

How The World Café Was Born

Several years ago, we serendipitously discovered the unique power of Café style conversations. One rainy morning, we wanted to provide a comfortable setting for participants in a global dialogue on intellectual capital to enjoy their coffee while waiting for the session to begin. We set up small tables in our living room and covered them with paper tablecloths. We added flowers and set out colored crayons, like in many neighborhood cafés.

People were delighted and amused. They got their coffee and gathered in small, informal groups around the tables. Soon, everyone was deeply engaged in conversation. As they talked, people scribbled ideas on the tablecloths. After a while, someone expressed curiosity about what was happening in other conversations. One person agreed to stay at each table as a host while others traveled to other tables to discover what interesting ideas were pollinating there.

People buzzed with excitement. At a certain point, they decided to leave a new host at each table. The other members traveled to new tables, connecting ideas, testing assumptions, and adding to each other’s diagrams and pictures on the tablecloths.

As lunchtime drew near, we took a “tour” of all the tablecloths, seeing what new connections and questions had emerged. Our interactive graphics specialist captured collective insights from the morning on a large piece of newsprint in the middle of the room. We suddenly realized that we had tapped into something very simple but potentially very powerful. Through the Café conversations, a shared knowledge base, larger than any individual or group in the room, had become accessible to us. Our unique contributions had combined and recombined into rich new patterns of living knowledge and innovative thought that had not been visible when we started.

The World Café As Methodology

What makes such a seemingly simple practice — that of talking together about things we care about and intentionally linking the essence of our conversations with others in ever widening circles — so useful? We think it’s because Café conversations offer us the opportunity to notice the possibilities for mutual insight, innovation, and action that are already present in any group, if we only knew how to access them. We are discovering that this process offers a unique mixture of freedom and focus, of coherence without control. Depending on an organization’s needs, Café events can be designed around particular themes or topics. The Café format is flexible and adapts to different circumstances, based on a few simple practices and principles (see “Café Hosting Tips”).

Groups as small as 12 and as large as 1,200 from around the world have engaged in Café learning conversations in a wide range of settings. In a global consumer products company, executives from over 30 nations used Café principles to integrate a new worldwide marketing strategy. In New Zealand, Maori leaders combined The World Café with indigenous meeting formats during regional treaty negotiations. Mexican government and corporate leaders applied The World Café to scenario planning. A Fortune 100 company is using “Creative Cafés” to explore corporate responsibility with stakeholders. And faculty members in the U. S. and Europe are creating virtual online “Knowledge Cafés” to conduct distance-learning programs.

After participating in Café conversations, members share comments such as, “I developed productive relationships and learned more from others than I ever expected. You can actually see the knowledge growing.” Participants often develop an increased sense of responsibility for making use of the practical insights they gain and for staying connected as they expand the conversation to larger constituencies.

The practice of The World Café is based on a set of working assumptions that we continue to explore:

• The future is born in webs of human conversation.
• Compelling questions encourage collective learning.
• Networks are the underlying pattern of living systems.
• Human systems — organizations, families, communities — are living systems.
• Intelligence emerges as the system connects to itself in diverse and creative ways.
• We collectively have all the wisdom and resources we need.

Five Key Operating Principles

We are discovering that the unique contribution of Café learning seems to come from translating these working assumptions into the following five operating principles that, when used in combination, increase the likelihood of generating breakthrough thinking.

Create Hospitable Space. Café hosts around the world emphasize the power and importance of creating a welcoming environment to enliven collaborative conversation. We thrive and are better able to confront difficult questions, explore underlying assumptions, and create what we care about in surroundings that evoke warmth, friendliness, and authenticity than in those that are less hospitable to the human spirit. Most meeting places are sterile, cold, and impersonal. Consider choosing environments with natural light. Create comfortable seating. Honor our traditions of human hospitality by offering refreshments. Play soft music as people enter. Decorate the walls with art. Hospitable space means “safe” space — where everyone feels free to offer their best thinking.

Hosts can create hospitable space even in large, impersonal venues. For instance, at a conference for 1,000 people, we asked the hotel staff to set up small, round cocktail tables instead of rows of chairs in the cavernous ballroom. We then decked out each table with a red-checked tablecloth and a vase of red and white carnations. Volunteers placed sheets of white paper over the tablecloths and left small containers of colored markers for doodling. We also brought in palm trees and other greenery. When people entered the room, they were greeted by soft jazz music. The buzz of conversation almost instantly filled the space.

Knowledge emerges in response to compelling questions that “travel well” as they attract collective engagement and exploration throughout a system.

Explore Questions That Matter. One of our most important learnings in working with The World Café is that discovering and exploring “questions that matter” opens the door to catalytic conversation, insight, and innovation. Knowledge emerges in response to compelling questions that “travel well” as they attract collective engagement and exploration throughout a system. Powerful questions provide focus and coherence to networks of conversation that might otherwise spin off in random directions. Well-crafted strategic questions define intention, focus energy, and direct attention toward what really counts.

Hone the skill of shaping open-ended questions that are relevant to the group’s real-life concerns. These questions need not imply immediate action steps or problem solving. Allow the questions to invite inquiry and exploration. At one Café in Denmark focused on improving a school system, the hosts framed the central question as “What could a good school also be?” rather than as “How can we fix the problems in this school?” In doing so, they opened up the conversation to appreciating what might be possible in the future, rather than limiting the focus to what is wrong in the present.

Connect Diverse People and Perspectives. “Intelligence emerges as the system connects to itself in diverse and creative ways,” according to Margaret Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science (Berrett-Koehler, 1992). By cross-pollinating ideas among tables in several rounds of conversation, we intentionally invite a more accelerated and richer network of dialogic interactions on a larger scale than is common in most dialogue circles.

One technique for enriching the ways in which the system connects to itself is to vary the different rounds of conversation. Hosts stay at each table to welcome guests while the other members travel to new tables to share as well as gather insights. Travelers might then return to their home Cafés or continue to move from table to table for several iterations. Sometimes the hosts change, with the first host becoming a traveler during the second cycle. Or several members might stay at the table while the others go out for brief visits as “ambassadors” to other tables, collecting new seed ideas that bring diverse perspectives to the home table.

Additionally, all living systems — including human systems — benefit from diversity. In her book The Quantum Society: Human Nature and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics (William Morrow and Company, 1994), Danah Zohar states: “Social evolution requires that different points of view, different ideas, different ways of life, and different traditions recombine into larger, more complex emergent wholes.” Breakthrough thinking is more likely to emerge when diverse viewpoints and perspectives contribute to the exploration. For example, “Strategy Cafés” that engage multiple stakeholders, including employees from all levels as well as customers and suppliers, can offer richer opportunities for innovation than traditional strategic planning activities among senior executives alone.

Listen Together for Patterns, Insights, and Deeper Questions.

Through Café conversations, participants often discover coherent patterns of meaning in what may appear, at first glance, to be a chaotic and messy self-organizing exchange of ideas and perspectives. The emphasis is on shared listening — listening for the wisdom or insight that no individual member of the group might have access to by themselves. To that end, invite members to offer their unique perspectives and listen for new connections in the “space in-between.” Allow for silence and reflection. Ask members to notice what’s evolving in the middle of the table. By focusing on these special qualities of collective attention, we have a greater opportunity to experience what our Danish colleague Finn Voldtofte calls “the magic in the middle.”

For example, in Sweden, hosts of a multi-stakeholder forum used Café conversations to clarify areas of inquiry that could influence the future of both the information/communications industry and the environment. They began the first round of conversation by giving each table of participants a “talking stone.” Each member took the talking stone in turn and presented his or her key insights, thoughts, or deeper questions about the query “How can information technology contribute to a sustainable future?”

The three other participants at each table were to listen carefully and draw any connections they noticed between ideas in the middle of the tablecloth. In the second and third rounds, the Café hosts asked everyone to begin listening as a group for the deeper assumptions underlying their perspectives and to write them on the tablecloth as well. When the final round was over, the group pooled the collective insights and “ahas” that had emerged from linking the small-group dialogues from Café tables and creating a “conversation of the whole.” Through this intentional process of discovering and connecting underlying assumptions and insights, participants who might have opposed each other in a different setting came to a mutual appreciation of the deeper questions they faced together in contributing to a sustainable future.

Make Collective Knowledge Visible to the Group. We’ve come to realize that the simple act of scribbling ideas and pictures on a paper napkin or tablecloth so that the others at the Café table can literally “see what you mean” is integral to knowledge creation and innovation. As Michael Schrage says in Shared Minds: The New Technologies of Collaboration (Random House, 1990), “The images, maps, and perceptions bouncing around in people’s brains must be given a form that other people’s images, maps, or perceptions can shape, alter, or otherwise add value to. . . . It takes shared space to create shared understanding.” By providing paper and markers, we encourage the use of “shared space” where people can build on each other’s ideas, weave together their thoughts, and engage in deeper collective listening.

Many Café events include an interactive graphics specialist, who creates large visual maps that synthesize key insights and ideas. Commented Nancy Margulies, who has hosted many Cafés, “It’s like having a big ‘tablecloth’ in the middle of the whole group. Participants can quite literally see that they are creating something new together.” Other possibilities for making collective knowledge visible include having a “gallery walk,” with participants taking a tour of the tablecloths created by the different groups; publishing a Café newspaper on the spot; and creating theater presentations that reflect group discoveries. Each of these techniques allows participants to capture and build on the momentum and ideas that emerge. In addition, creating “storybooks” from the session allows participants to take the results of their work to larger audiences after the event.

The five operating principles seem quite simple, but embodying them as an integrated practice demands creativity, thoughtfulness, artistry, and care. The creativity of the host can make the difference between an interesting conversation and the magic of experiencing what our colleague Tom Atlee calls co-intelligence in action.

Conversation As Action

But is all of this talk just that, talk? What about the urgent need for action in our organizations today? We have found that, by its nature, The World Café challenges the ways most of us think about creating desired results in organizational and community life. Many leaders still preach that we should “stop talking and get to work” — as if talk and work were two separate things. Humberto Maturana, a pioneering evolutionary biologist, has helped us see that human beings think together and coordinate action in and through language. Conversation is “real work.” Through conversation people discover who cares about what and who will be accountable for next steps. We are finding that when people come to a new level of shared understanding around real-life issues, they want to make a difference. When participants return from Café conversations, they often see additional action choices that they didn’t know existed before.

Café As Metaphor

As reported by members of Café events, The World Café is a powerful methodology for collaborative learning and knowledge evolution. We are also finding that it is a provocative metaphor that can help us see organizational and societal change in a new light. How might the metaphor of “The World as Café” invite us to think differently about ways to catalyze system-wide innovation and action?

We are learning that Café conversations are based on a larger natural process of mutual inquiry and discovery that does not depend on small, round tables and red-checked tablecloths. By experiencing the power of focused networks of conversation on a small scale, members see how they might utilize this strategic insight in the larger systems they are part of. What if conversation were as much a core business process as marketing, distribution, or product development? What if it were already the core process — the source of organizational intelligence that allows all of the others to generate positive results?

For example, imagine your organization as a series of Café tables, with employees moving between functions inside the organization as well as connecting with multiple “tables” of customers, suppliers, distributors, and other conversation partners. What difference would it make to your own action choices if you viewed your workplace as a dynamic, living network of conversations and knowledge creation rather than as a traditional hierarchy (see “What We View Determines What We Do”)?

Based on an understanding of The World Café, leaders can take greater responsibility for designing infrastructures that bring coherence and focus to organizational conversations. For example, they come to recognize the key role they play in discovering “the big questions” and hosting strategic conversations with multiple stakeholders. This shift of lens also has practical implications for how leaders work with strategy formation, organizational learning, information technology, the design of physical space, and leadership development.

In one Café session, senior leaders from major corporations were mapping the implications of taking this view. The director of global operations for a company with more than 50,000 employees suddenly jumped up from his seat and exclaimed, “Do you know what I’ve gone and done? I’ve just reorganized my entire global operation. I’ve broken up the informal knowledge networks and relationships that have developed over the years. If I had looked at my reorganization through these glasses, I would have done it a lot differently. It’s going to take us a long

time to recover!” His heartfelt comments stimulated a lively conversation about the role of leaders in developing organizational strategies that honor these less visible but critical conversational and learning processes.

We’re seeing many practical examples of how people are intentionally using the metaphor of The World Café to guide strategic work in larger systems. Executives in a high-tech corporation helped to decrease the injury rate dramatically by using Café principles to engage existing networks of conversation and introduce questions about safety risks. The World Café has led intellectual capital expert Leif Edvinsson of Sweden to observe that the office design of the past is inadequate to support effective knowledge work. In response, he has engaged leading-edge architects in alternative space design.

World Café principles are also being used to redesign a Museum of Science and Industry in Florida to highlight not only formal exhibits but also learning conversations as doorways to discovery. And the initiative From the Four Directions: People Everywhere Leading the Way is intentionally weaving a global network of conversations among leaders of all ages on several continents. Using the Internet and other information technologies, local conversation circles feed insights back into the network, catalyzing these worldwide leadership dialogues into a growing force for societal innovation.

Creating Sustainable Value

The World Café is one path for stimulating courageous conversation about questions that matter to our lives and work—especially in large group settings. We are now seeing the systemic ways in which focused networks of conversation, especially with the support of collaborative technologies, can help organizations and communities evolve. Using The World Café as a methodology and as a metaphor offers a practical yet innovative way to cultivate both the knowledge required to thrive today and the wisdom needed to create the futures we want, rather than being forced to live with the futures we get.

Juanita Brown and David Isaacs serve as strategists and thinking partners with senior leaders, applying living systems principles to the evolution of knowledge-based organizations and large-scale change initiatives. They have hosted Café conversations and strategic dialogues internationally in a wide variety of business and community settings. (Contact info@theworldcafe.com or call 415-381-3368). The World Café Community is comprised of a growing global group of leaders and others committed to courageous conversations and positive futures. We thank Anne Dosher, Ken Homer, Susan Kelly, Janice Molloy, Nancy Margulies, Karen Speerstra, and Sue Wetzler for their special contributions to this article.

The post The World Cafe: Living Knowledge Through Conversations That Matter appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

A shared commitment to act toward a compelling goal.

Why do I like it?

• First, it emphasizes that strategy is about action – not about analyzing, forecasting, writing papers, filling out forms, compiling spreadsheets, but about action.
• Second, it speaks of a shared commitment – the kind of commitment that management needs so that they continue to act as a team, even when things get tough.
• Third, it recognizes the importance of a compelling goal – the objective, that, when realized, brings vision into reality.

I recognize that the statement makes no declaration about what the goal should be or about what actions should be taken, but I ask that you ride with that gap for the moment — all will be revealed in due course. I also recognize that are many ways of building a shared commitment to act and of defining a good strategy. Scenario planning, which I will focus on, is just one of them.

Gods, Gamblers, Grinders, and Guides

All organizations have their own dominant beliefs, and top managers have their own styles. Some people believe, for example, that it is possible to predict the future (if not in general, then at least as far as their own organizations are concerned); others prefer to believe that the future is uncertain and that the journey into the future is one of exploration. As regards style, some leaders exercise very strong control, while others seek to empower those in their organizations (see “Four Leadership Styles”).

Strong, controlling leaders who believe they can predict the future are much like gods: Not only do they know what they want, they know best, too. You don’t have to read Homer to learn that any mortal who incites the wrath of an angry god soon has an uncomfortable time. Such leaders need no tools and techniques to formulate a strategy: They know. From time to time, they might actually be right.

Strong, controlling leaders who are less certain of their powers of prediction often behave like gamblers: They place a bet that the future will evolve in a certain way and, if it does, fine; if it doesn’t, well, let’s throw the dice again and see what happens a second time. Gamblers, too, need few tools and techniques, but they might like some financial analyses to give them a feel for the odds.

Empowerers who believe they can predict the future are convinced that, somewhere out there, the “right” strategic answer exists, if only they can find it. These are the grinders, managers who are forever grinding away on more analyses, more research, more numbers. These people love tools and techniques, with their five forces, their value chains, their PERTS, and their SWOTS.

In many cases, the most successful leaders may be those empowerers who choose to serve as guides: They seek to carefully steer their organizations through the uncertainties that the future will inevitably bring. How can they steer the safest course? Well, to do so, they need a map. The problem is that no such map can be found, for maps exist in space, not in time.

It is in this last arena that scenarios can help, for scenarios are stories describing how the future might evolve. Scenarios therefore do a similar job in time to that done by maps in space. But because the future might evolve in many ways, there are many possible scenarios, each of which represents one possible view of what might happen over the next five, 10, or 20 years. Importantly, the emphasis within each scenario is not on the internal aspects of the business, but rather on the external context in which the business might operate; robust scenarios depict the future in terms of politics, economics, sociology, demography, technology, and industrial structures.

By imagining what such a future might be, you can test whether or not a particular strategy for your own business will be beneficial, should that future indeed come to pass. And by explicitly recognizing that there might be several different futures, any one of which might happen, you can test your strategy against each and see if some strategies are more robust than others. In essence, scenario planning is a form of simulation: It is the business manager’s equivalent of the jet pilot’s flight simulator. The scenarios project you and your organization into the future, and provide a realistic, rich context in which you can examine whether or not particular strategies – the development of new products, the entry into new markets, or whatever – are likely to be successful.

Scenarios also serve to heighten your understanding of risk, so that when you put your strategy into action, you will be much more aware of how changes in the external environment are likely to impact your business. Then if you notice that the world is in fact evolving in a direction for which your strategy is less appropriate, you will be able to change course easily and quickly, far more so than your competitors, who may not have noticed what is going on, or, if they have, may continue for some time in a state of denial.

But how does scenario-based strategic planning – to give it its full name – actually work?

Scenario-Based Strategic Planning

Scenario-based strategic planning comprises two principal activities:

• First, the development of a small number of scenarios – say, up to five – each of which describes a different view of how a future world might look.
• Second, the agreement on a strategy – a set of actions that the organization is committed to take.

As indicated by “Scenario Development and Strategy Formation,” the process of scenario development is divergent and strives to embrace as broad as possible a view of how the future might evolve, in order to encompass the future’s inevitable uncertainties. This is done through a series of group workshops, supported by research, and the gathering of expert opinions. The purpose of the scenarios is to provide a series of backdrops against which different strategies can be assessed. Questions such as “Should we enter the [whatever] market?”, “What are the risks of making [whatever] investment?” and the like are tested against each of the scenarios. Participants assume that, yes, they do enter that market, and that, yes, they do make that investment, and then imagine that they and their organization are projected into each scenario 10 years into the future. They can then assess, using “projected hindsight,” whether or not those decisions were “good” or “bad.” By exploring various decisions against each scenario in this way, team members can then determine that set of decisions that they collectively feel most comfortable taking now and therefore converge upon an agreed strategy.

The following pages describe the process in more detail. First, we need to introduce and define three terms that have a special role in scenario planning: worlds, levers, and outcomes.

Worlds. A world is a comprehensive description of the context in which a business operates. Worlds are therefore described in terms of (often long!) lists of adjectives and adjectival phrases, describing all aspects of the world of interest, including the political, social, economic and regulatory structures, nature of market competition, technology, and all the rest.

SCENARIO DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGY FORMATION

The process of scenario development is divergent and strives to embrace as broad as possible a view of how the future might evolve, in order to encompass the future’s inevitable uncertainties. The purpose of the scenarios is to provide a series of backdrops against which different strategies can be assessed. By exploring various decisions against each scenario in this way, team members can then determine that set of decisions that they collectively feel most comfortable taking now and therefore converge upon an agreed strategy.

The most familiar world is today’s world, and an important part of the scenario planning process is to come to a shared view of just what it is. Different people see different things, and some lively workshops can be run focused on describing today’s world. Ultimately, any description of today’s world must pass the Martian Test: If the description were e-mailed to a group of Martians approaching Earth, on stepping out of their saucer, they must be able to recognize where they have landed.

If today’s world is defined in terms of a long list of descriptive phrases, then, by definition, a different world must have a different list. A major milestone in scenario planning is to generate a small number of different worlds – three to five is usually sufficient – that have self-consistent descriptions. These worlds should be significantly different from one another, and from today’s world.

Some of the different worlds might appear favorable, others harsh; some may appear to be relatively likely, other less so; some might be desirable, others positively repulsive. At the moment, though, such issues aren’t important; all that matters is that any different world must be believed to be, in principle, possible.

Levers and Outcomes. Levers represent the actions and decisions that managers can take. For example, managers can determine product range, target markets, staffing levels, skills, investments in infrastructure, level of R&D, location of manufacturing sites, amount spent on advertising, and so on. At any time, each lever has a setting – the numeric amount associated with that lever.

Outcomes represent the commercial results of the organization: levels of sales and profit, reputation, share price, market share, staff morale, and so on. At any time, each outcome has a numeric value.

Fundamentally, the job of strategic management is to determine the levers and assign their settings, so as to generate desirable outcomes. As every manager soon learns, however, levers are not directly connected to outcomes; there simply is no lever to allow managers to directly control profit, market share, or share price. Rather, the levers that managers can actually pull are only indirectly, and sometimes rather loosely, coupled to the outcomes, and managers act in the belief – or hope – that by cutting costs here and increasing staff there, shareholder value will be increased. To make matters worse, time delays occur before any change in a lever setting begins to take effect.

This process is, as we all know too well, very complex. A powerful tool in taming this complexity is system dynamics modeling. This kind of simulation goes far beyond the typical spreadsheet and can handle loosely coupled variables, time lags, and feedback loops. (For a more complete definition of system dynamics, go to http://www.systemdynamics.org.)

The Rules of Innovation

Many people feel that inventing new worlds is difficult, fearing not only that they lack the expert knowledge, but also – and far worse – that they just don’t have the imagination. In fact, inventing new worlds is easy and a lot of fun, provided, of course, that you do it in the easy, fun way – and that is to borrow from the techniques of innovation.

Briefly, two of the key rules that make innovation deliberate, systematic, and safe are:

• Rule No. 1: Don’t try to leap directly into the unknown – start from something or somewhere you know well.
• Rule No. 2: New ideas are best generated not by waiting for lightning to strike, but by challenging assumptions and asking, “How might this be different?”

A simple but nonetheless startling example of these rules in action is the familiar nine dots puzzle (see “Nine Dots Puzzle”). There are two questions:

• How can you join all nine dots with four straight lines, without taking your pencil off the page?
• And if that is too easy, how many different ways can you find of joining all the dots with just one line?

Most people tackle the first question by picking up a pen and drawing various alternatives; they usually don’t even know where to start with the second question. But then most people don’t know the two rules of innovation. Picking up a pen, drawing, and trying to solve the puzzle by trial and error breaks the first rule – you’re leaping into the dark. The first rule says “Let’s understand all we can about the nine dots.” There are nine, they are in a square array, they are an inch or so apart, and they are about a quarter-inch square. The second rule says, “Challenge the assumptions.” Is the shape the dots form a square? What would happen if the dots weren’t an inch apart? They might be a mile apart or close together. But if they were close, I could wipe a felt-tip pen across all nine at once. So, if they’re an inch apart, I need a thick pen – maybe a paint roller. Ah yes, that’s it, a paint roller. And the puzzle is instantly solved.

Inventing New Worlds

The easiest way of inventing new worlds is therefore to apply the two key rules of innovation defined above. In the context of scenario planning, if we follow Rule No. 1, our starting point is something we all know well indeed, namely, today’s world. In fact, we take the time to define today’s world not only to build a genuine, deeply shared view of where we are, but also as a springboard to innovation.

One observation about today’s world might be that “the current industrial structure is consolidating.” Rule No. 2 requires us to challenge assumptions and ask, “How might this be different?” How might the industrial structure be different? Well, perhaps it will concentrate even further into a global monopoly; perhaps it will fragment as a result of government intervention; perhaps new entrants will come in on the back of a new technology.

Applying Rule No. 2 thus results in many alternative possibilities. As a group begins to list these potential futures, people start associating characteristics together, so that a small number of self-consistent worlds emerge, each with its appropriate set of descriptions. Created by a process of deliberate challenge and deliberate and systematic innovation, these descriptions will be very different from today’s world. When you are in the middle of the process, it can appear to be something of a muddle, with hundreds of post-its all over the walls. But rest assured that it works: The human mind is quite adept at seeing patterns. Just as the solution to the nine dots puzzle emerged, seemingly out of nowhere, so the process of challenge, coupled with the interactions of a group and the human ability to see patterns, will create a compelling series of new worlds.

“Scenario Planning Summary” forms the heart of a scenario planning exercise. Each column represents a different world, the first being today’s world. The often extensive descriptions of each world are incorporated in the first row. The levers are named in the title box of the second row, and the corresponding lever settings are identified in the appropriate column. Similarly, the outcomes are named in the title box of the third row, and the outcome values, for the defined lever settings in each world, are assessed and entered into each column.

The question then becomes, What are the lever settings and what new levers might be required to give favorable outcomes in as many of the worlds as possible? Once the most favorable set of levers and lever settings have been determined, then your strategy is that set of managerial actions required to move the levers from their current settings to the desired ones.

Testing the Levers

By now, you will have:

• Defined today’s world.
• Defined up to five alternative worlds.
• Defined the levers and the outcomes.
• Seen how the lever settings in today’s world generate today’s outcome values.

It is at this point that the scenarios themselves are written, each scenario being a vivid story describing how each of the alternative new worlds evolved, in its own particular way, from today’s world. Well-written scenarios capture your imagination and are powerful vehicles for communication and training. Immersing yourself in the scenarios builds “a memory of the future,” so that as time passes and the future becomes reality, you recognize what you see. But the scenarios themselves are not the end of the exercise: The purpose of the scenarios, and the alternative worlds they describe, is to form a context in which your business might operate in the future.

To test out this method:

• Imagine that the levers and their settings are the same as in today’s world. What will the outcome values be in the different worlds? Are they favorable or unfavorable?
• If the outcome values in any alternative world are unfavorable, what would the lever settings have be to give rise to favorable outcomes? Do you need to invoke any new levers?

This process is best carried out through group discussion; it can also be supported by modeling and specific, well-focused analysis. The objective is to examine how robust different lever settings are to future uncertainty. Suppose, for example, you decide that the current lever settings give favorable outcome values in just one of the alternative future worlds. That analysis implies that, if you leave the lever settings as they are and that particular future does indeed come to pass, your business is likely to be successful. But if the future were to evolve toward any of the other worlds, things might not be so rosy.

Turning Scenarios into Strategy

As a result of the exploration of the lever settings in the various worlds, you will discover one of a number of things, for example, that:

• The current levers, and their settings, are indeed robust under future worlds, or
• The current levers, and their settings, are not robust under future worlds, or
• Some different lever settings are robust under many of the future worlds, including today’s world; or there are no lever settings that work well under many worlds, but several clusters of settings that work well in some worlds but not others; or there are no generally safe lever settings – each world has its own.

These insights are guides to strategy. How so? Let’s go back to our definition of strategy: a shared commitment to act toward a compelling goal.

A shared commitment to take what specific actions, toward which particular goal? Well:

• The goal must be defined in relation to one or more of the worlds, and
• The actions must be to move existing levers to new settings or to deploy new levers.

The process of strategy development is therefore that of deciding which levers need to be placed at what settings. And the strategy itself is the set of actions you decide to take to move the levers from their current settings to their new ones.

Scenario-based strategic planning has the objective of providing a framework to enable managers to make strategic decisions (see “The Scenario-Based Strategic Planning Process”). These decisions can relate only to levers and their settings; managers, quite literally, can do little else. As we all know, the problem with resetting the levers is that some of them are difficult to reset; some, once reset, cannot be reversed to their original settings; many require a long time to reset; and, once settings have been reset, it may be a long time before the results are actually achieved—time during which the world is fast evolving, often in such a way as to make the new settings no longer fit for their originally conceived purpose.

THE SCENARIO-BASED STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS

Scenario-based strategic planning has the objective of providing a framework to enable managers to make strategic decisions. As such, it comprises a number of activities, beginning with defining today’s world and the range of actions that managers can take to creating scenarios of different possible worlds to testing levers in different settings and, finally, identifying effective actions.

But the levers must be reset from time to time. Doing nothing, and so betting that the world will stay still, is often a worse bet than taking a gamble on one particular future. The process is exciting, challenging, stimulating, exhausting, amazing – and, most importantly, it works.

Dennis Sherwood is the author of nine books, including Seeing the Forest for the Trees: A Manager’s Guide to Applying Systems Thinking, Smart Things to Know About Innovation, and Unlock Your Mind. For 12 years, he was a consulting partner with Coopers & Lybrand and was subsequently an executive director at Goldman Sachs in London, a partner in Bossard Consultants, and vice president of SRI Consulting. He is currently with the Silver Bullet Machine Manufacturing Company. Dennis was educated at the Universities of Cambridge, Yale, and California, and is a Sloan Fellow, with distinction, of the London Business School. He is a well-known speaker at conferences, has written many journal articles, and has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s programs In Business, Shoptalk, and Nice Work.

The post Turning Innovative Scenarios into Robust Strategies appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

I had good teachers in organizational development, but none of them, except Chris Argyris, could articulate his or her practice theory. When I began to work with teams and organizations using Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline as a point of departure, I realized that the disciplines Senge describes are useful approaches, but that the approach lacked a practice theory — I couldn’t tell which discipline to use when. So, I took some bits and pieces of ideas from colleagues and I made one up. And since I’m a visual person, it’s a practice theory as a picture (see “The Learning Action Matrix”). I call it the Learning Action Matrix, though the name isn’t important.

What is important is that the Learning Action Matrix knits Senge’s learning disciplines into a system that provides a logical “map” to guide practitioners through a process that produces real results and continuous learning. It helps identify where you are in any given process, suggests what to do at any given point, and indicates where to go next.

Learning Action Matrix

Level of Reasoning

The vertical axis “Levels of Reasoning” is borrowed from Daniel Kim’s “Vision Deployment Matrix” (see “Levels of Understanding” in The Systems Thinker, June/July 1993). His work, in turn, owes a debt to the “Iceberg Model” from Innovation Associates’ Systems Thinking curriculum.

What is a matrix? A matrix is a grid with different elements on the horizontal and vertical axes. Each cell combines the attributes of the vertical and horizontal axes to create a unique meaning.

The Learning Action Matrix is a five by four (5 x 4) grid. Let’s understand each axis of the grid, and then see what happens when we combine these axes into a matrix.

On the vertical axis is listed “Level of Reasoning.” Each of these five levels represents different ways of seeing, frames through which situations can be viewed at increasing levels of complexity. The more complexity that can be brought into the conversation, the more potential for change.

All of these levels are informed by vision. The key question at this level is “What do we want to create?” or, taken retrospectively, “What do we seem to be creating?” These aspirations, stated or unstated, exert a powerful influence on the events, patterns, systemic structures, and mental models working in any given situation. Systemic structures, in turn, are frequently held in place by mental models — assumptions that may be undiscussable theories on what constitutes quality, good service, or an acceptable return on investment. These “theories in use” may also treat interpersonal dynamics, for example, approaches toward conflict or the correct way to interact with senior leaders. Once a pattern has been identified and described, it is possible to document the systemic dynamics that maintain it. The level of systemic structures marks the boundary between what can be easily observed in the objective world (events and patterns) and what must be assessed, often laboriously, from the data (mental models and vision). Systemic dynamics are abstractions, but they stay close to the data. The causal loop language is an example of this kind of thinking. There is nothing wrong in understanding the world as a series of events. It’s just not a very high-leverage way to approach problems. Leverage begins with pattern recognition, with the basic insight that “this has happened before.” Most discussions begin at the events level, with some version of “this is what happened.” Discussions on this level usually assign a single cause to each effect: “This happened because that happened.” Listen to an explanation of stock market behavior on any given day for a good example of reasoning at the events level. The horizontal axis of the matrix describes a four-phase iterative learning cycle: observe, assess, develop, and implement.

Learning begins with observation

Learning begins with observation, with seeing what has occurred. An assessment or diagnosis is made about what one has observed — one develops a theory about what is going on. This theory influences the development of a response, which leads to the implementation of certain actions. These actions are observed, initiating a second trip through the cycle. When we combine the two axes described in the last section, we get the Learning Action Matrix (below).

Notice how the terms on the horizontal axis are verbs (“Observe”) and the terms on the vertical axis are nouns (“Events”). When we combine the two, we get a series of imperative sentences that we can group into four “Zones of Work.”

THE LEARNING ACTION MATRIX

The Learning Action Matrix knits the learning disciplines into a system that provides a logical “map” to guide practitioners through a process that produces real results and continuous learning.

The four zones on the matrix are:

• Zone 1:Observe Current Events and Patterns
• Zone 2:Assess Current Systemic Structures, Mental Models, and Vision
• Zone 3:Develop New Systemic Structures, Mental Models, and Vision
• Zone 4:Implement New Events and Patterns

The arrows in the Learning Action Matrix show the logical progression through the four zones.

Progressing Through the Zones

Learning begins with observing events and patterns (Zone 1).

People make assessments about the underlying structures that drive the behavior they have observed (Zone 2).

They then work to develop new structures, based on that assessment (Zone 3).

They implement the new patterns of behavior suggested from the changed structures (Zone 4) and observe the results of these actions, initiating a second iteration of the learning cycle.

While the boundaries between the zones are not hard and fast (rarely does a group say “O. K. — done with Zone 2; let’s move on to 3!”), the zones are helpful for a number of reasons: There are different kinds of work that one must to do integrate reflection and action, and the zones do a good job describing these differing kinds of work. Observing what is (Zone 1) is different from developing ideas about what could be (Zone 3). The differences are “different enough” to be useful.

Knowing where you are can help you get to where you want to go. If you’re leaping from seeing something (Zone 1) to doing something (Zone 4) without reflecting (Zones 3 and 4), chances are you’ll create unwanted conditions. The matrix helps to direct careful, learning-oriented work by suggesting what to do next.

Finally, the zones provide a way for groups to quickly self-assess what type of work they’re doing now. My clients use the vocabulary of the zones as “sound bites” to describe what they see themselves doing. It’s a vocabulary that carries over beyond my work with them, which I really like.

The work that takes place in the different zones is discussed in more detail below.

Zones 1 and 2 in Detail

Here’s a detailed tour through the first two zones of the matrix.

Zone 1: Observing Events and Patterns.

In Zone 1, team members observe and report on events in the workplace; they tell stories that focus on “what happened” in a given situation. These organizational war stories are like potato chips — no one can tell just one.

But to gain leverage, storytelling must move up the axis from “Observing Events” to “Observing Patterns.” Recognizing a pattern begins with the simple insight that “this has happened before.”

Having teams identify the patterns in their work is useful for lifting conversation out of the Events level.

For example, one group was considering rolling out an update to a product development method when I asked, “How do you usually do this, and what usually happens?” One member responded immediately that their pattern was to announce changes through a large meeting like the one they were planning, and that very little usually happened as a result. (Notice how this constitutes Zone 1 work of “Observing Patterns.”) Others laughed in agreement. The moment was an important one, as they realized the truth of the cliché “If we do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always gotten.”

Many of the best tools for Zone 1 work come from Total Quality. Statistical process control, with it’s ability to distinguish normal from special variation, supports a rigorous analysis of production patterns. Group process practices like multi-voting and affinity diagramming make clear patterns of opinion that a group holds but cannot articulate. Stripped of its elaborate architecture, Process Reengineering reveals itself as a process of replacing one work pattern with another more rational one, here moving from Zone 1 of the matrix to Zone 4.

Zone 2: Assessing Current Systemic Structures, Mental Models, and Vision.

Once group members have identified and described a pattern, they can begin to document the underlying systemic structure that maintains that pattern. This zone is usually the first one teams experiment with when they begin to practice the five disciplines. They try to draw causal loop diagrams to explain the patterns they identify and eagerly point out each other’s mental models. As individuals become more experienced in this practice, they recognize that they need to examine their own beliefs as well.

New practitioners frequently strive to create the “right” causal loop diagram to describe a pattern. More experienced practitioners learn to tolerate more complexity and thrive in the intricacies of contradiction. Eventually, deep and sustained work with causal loop diagramming and mental models leads to a vision-oriented understanding of “what we seem to be creating here.” Vision is the foundation for all of the levels below and exerts a powerful influence on the events, patterns, systemic structures, and mental models working in any given situation. The simple question “What do we seem to be creating here?” can often lead a group to state the obvious.

Loop B1 describes a balancing structure where pressure to improve leads to change initiatives, such as new teaching methods, sexuality education, anti-gang programs, and state-mandated curriculums. These initiatives lead to actual improvements and a perception that things are improving, but only after delays. Reinforcing loop R1 illustrates how new change initiatives actually increase impatience for improvements, which increases the pressure for improvements. R2 is a reinforcing loop, where each new initiative reduces the ability to focus on any single initiative, reducing the work and slowing the rate of actual improvement.

The group also identified mental models supporting a few of the key links in this system. These are indicated by the “thought bubbles” drifting off the links. In addition, they identified the highest level of “what we are creating here,” namely, a system in which the stereotype that schools resist change will lead to behavior (more and more initiatives), which will then reinforce this very perception.

I see groups working with “chaotic purpose” in this zone, jumping from working on causal loops to speculating on mental models to reflecting on the present culture (an “assessing vision” discussion) without resolving any of these issues. Teams in this zone, especially teams new to the disciplines, are like student archeologists wandering over an area they are convinced is an important historical site. The process of learning is iterative. They will need to dig in one spot several times before they become skilled enough to understand what’s there.

Zones 3 and 4 in Detail

Zone 3: Developing New Systemic Structures, Mental Models, and Vision.

While the work of Zone 2 is like an excavation, the work of Zone 3 is more creative, like the work of an architect or artist. Like all activities that relay on inspiration, it follows its own pace, oblivious to deadlines and urgency

Teams that skip this zone imperil their ability to implement in Zone 4. Without Zone 3 work, the actions of Zone 4 are just different versions of “what we’ve always done.” They have to be, because the team lacks the cognitive infrastructure (mental models), the causal infrastructure (systemic structures), and the aspiration (vision) to create anything else.

Teams sometimes begin work in Zone 3 by literally making something up that serves as a provisional vision of the way they want things to be. In fact, I find many groups already have reflected on their vision for the future, inspired by the fact that, as one manager told me, “Vision is hot right now.” However, their visions have remained castles in the air, with little hope of informing action directly. The development of new beliefs and systemic structures are needed to link these castles to the “ground” of Zone 4 implementation.

The work of Zone 2 is a necessary point of departure for the work of Zone 3, especially in the development of new systemic structures. These structures can be creatively recast by:

• Linking existing variables in a new way
• Breaking existing links between variables
• Reducing delays in the system. (Thanks to Innovation Associates for first putting this so clearly.)

Using these as redesign principles, groups can reconfigure the structures in which they find themselves.

Extending the example of the educators and their challenge managing change, let’s look at how this team developed a new systemic structure in response to their original loop (see “Zone 3 Loop and Its Strategies”). Their Zone 3 strategies are:

1. Break the link between “Impatience for Improvements” and “Pressure to Improve.”

2. Add a link between “Impatience for Improvements” and “Ability to Focus on Any One Initiative.”

3. Reduce the delays in B1 between “Change Initiatives” and “Actual Improvements” and between this variable and “Perception of Improvements.”

In Zone 4, they make these theoretical changes concrete.

Zone 4: Implementing New Events and Patterns.

Obviously, drawing or crossing out a link on paper changes nothing in the material world (other than the paper, of course). Zone 4 work demands that these paper changes be translated into actual actions.

For most groups, Zone 4 work is familiar territory. They are comfortable with the methods that make sense in this zone. After all, planning actions is what most traditional managers do most of the time. Especially useful are those simple methods that support team planning, such as making public commitments through action plans and accountability charting.

To return to our example, reducing the two delays in the balancing loop might involve some or all of the following actions:

In “Example of Zone 2 Work,” a group of public school administrators impatient with the pace of change in their schools built the above causal loop diagram to describe what they saw.

Reduce these delays

• Designing an initiative for early successes
• Improving something simple and visible early
• Starting work before announcing the initiative to have some successes in-hand (an old fund-raising trick)
• Lowering expectations regarding the speed of change

Obviously, the mental models identified in the original loop will need to be addressed along with the systemic dynamics. For example, the assumption that “In X weeks I should see some improvement. If not, something’s wrong” needs to yield to a belief more consistent with the actual pace of change.

The educators will need to determine how best to influence this belief, possibly choosing different approaches for different constituencies; i.e., one influences a governor differently than one influences a parents’ committee. In the case above, both constituencies will need to be influenced, since both are sources of change initiatives.

How might the educators accomplish their second strategy, breaking the link between “Impatience for Improvements” and “Pressure to Improve”?

A strategy might include:

• Testing whether or not people believe that the causal loop diagram makes sense, and then
• Seeking their agreement to shift their impatience to increasing the focus on present initiatives

This last point represents an implementation of the strategy “Add a link between ‘Impatience for Improvements’ and ‘Ability to Focus on Any One Initiative.’”

In addition, the educators could establish a pattern of having senior people visit the sites of present initiatives and publishing these visits in the school-system paper, along with statements that changes take time.

Typical Group Patterns

In moving through the four zones of work, groups often follow a similar developmental course as they becomes better able to integrate reflection (Zones 2 & 3) with action (Zones 1 & 4) in the service of learning and results.

Leaping to Action

Most teams initially move from Zone 1 directly to Zone 4 (see “Leaping to Action”). They see something happening (Observe) and they do something about it (Implement), without passing through the zones where they assess and develop new systemic structures, mental models, and vision.

Lost in Space As teams begin to learn the disciplines of organizational learning, they add Zone 2 work to their “Leaping to Action” habits, developing a “Zone 1/Zone 2/Zone 4” dance step, which one group called “Lost in Space” (see above).

Teams at this stage are able to use systems thinking and mental model disciplines to assess current reality in increasingly complex ways, yet they have difficulty using much of what they learn to implement new actions. They have usually learned just enough to see how the solutions they might have used in the past will not serve them in the long term, but have not learned enough to create new approaches. The result can be “analysis paralysis.”

Alternatively, when groups at this stage do take action, they can get into trouble. They haven’t yet developed the systemic structures or beliefs to underpin a desired future based on a new vision of what the team wants to create (Zone 3 work).

For example, one executive team I worked with used the matrix structure to redesign an organization. Working through Zones 1 and 2, they did a good job of describing current reality. However, once the outlines of a new organization began to emerge, they moved quickly to draw up the new pattern for the organization (Zone 4 work).

They presented this new organizational chart to their boss a few days later. Intrigued, he asked them to put some names on the positions on the chart. When they tried to assign the executive positions — their own slots — their agreement broke down, and part of the group went to the boss to retract the new design.

I now wonder what would have happened if they had developed a deeper understanding of the future they desired by working through Zone 3 in a disciplined manner, articulating the different beliefs they would have needed to function in this organization and developing the systemic structures to support these beliefs. At least, they might have confronted their own resistance to changing responsibilities.

Acknowledgments

As I mentioned earlier, the vertical axis “Levels of Reasoning” is borrowed from Daniel Kim’s “Vision Deployment Matrix” (see “Vision Deployment Matrix:A Framework for Large-Scale Change,” The Systems Thinker V6N1). His work, in turn, owes a debt to the “Iceberg Model” from Innovation Associates Systems Thinking curriculum, as do several other concepts from this article.

This piece benefited from early readings by Marty Castleberg, Peter Senge, and Janice Molloy. Several clients have advanced my understanding of how to apply the Matrix, most notably the Product Development Leadership and Learning Team at Harley-Davidson.

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People don’t become systems thinkers because systems thinking is so cool; they do so because they discover that linear thinking won’t answer their questions. Linear thinking is cause-and-effect thinking: One cause has one effect. Sometimes it works adequately, as when you run out of gas and your car stops. Your car stopped (effect) because it had no gas (cause). If you put gas in again, your car will run. Linear thinking is quite effective in solving this kind of problem.

However, our world is made of many complex relationships and interrelationships. Systems thinking provides a perspective that, most of the time, various components affect each other in various, and often unexpected, ways. So, for example, the use of the pesticide DDT to kill mosquitoes led to a number of unanticipated side effects. These included the decimation of several species of mosquito-eating birds and the rise of DDT resistant mosquitoes. Over time in some places, this dynamic made the mosquito problem worse (see “Unintended Consequences of DDT”). In organizations, systems thinking brings powerful tools and enlightened perspectives to organizational diagnosis, problem solving, strategy, and leadership (see “Linear vs. Systems Thinking”).

The Road to Becoming a Systems Thinker

Adopting a systems approach takes persistence and curiosity. Being the sole systems thinker in a linear thinking organization can be a lonely place. People will not understand you. You’ll feel like you’re walking around with two heads… whenever you talk, people will stare at you, confused.

Of course, many people have thought systemically all their lives. Many of them don’t even know that what they are doing is labeled “systems.” But for the vast majority of us, the jump to systems thinking requires time, practice, curiosity, and intentionality (see “Making the Shift”).

Is It a Problem or a Symptom?

One way to start to shift from linear to systems thinking is to practice identifying whether something is the problem or merely a symptom of something deeper. Linear thinking tends to focus on addressing surface-level behaviors – or symptoms. Unfortunately, making a symptom go away won’t solve the problem. In fact, it may make things worse and cause effects in other parts of the organization. A manager taking a systems thinking approach will work to understand the underlying problem before addressing any of the symptoms. Usually, if the true problem is solved, the symptoms will be eliminated as well.

How do you know if you’re seeing the real, underlying problem or simply a symptom of something deeper? Below are eight clues that what you are experiencing is an indicator of a larger problem rather than the problem itself:

1. 1. The Size of the Problem Isn’t Commensurate with the Discussion Around It.

Is the problem too small in comparison to the time and energy it is taking? If people are spending all their time, for example, complaining about the color of the carpet or the shape of their offices, you can assume that their reaction is a symptom of another problem.

• People Don’t Solve a Solvable Problem. Is it within the power of the people in your organization to solve the problem, but they don’t? For example, people complain there is no decaffeinated coffee, but no one does anything about it. Why don’t they feel empowered to change the status quo?
• The Problem Won’t Go Away. What has the history of the problem been? Is it something that won’t go away? Have you tried to solve it and have been unsuccessful? Does it keep coming back, like a monster in a horror movie? Does the problem morph into a related issue once you “solve” the original issue? Generally speaking, if you “solve it” and it comes back, then you haven’t addressed the underlying problem.
• The Problem Involves Emotional Barriers. In the middle ages, prior to Christopher Columbus, mariners were afraid to sail south of the equator. Contrary to popular belief, they weren’t afraid of falling off the edge of the world. (The ancient Greeks had proven that the world was round in about 500 B. C.) They were unwilling to do it because it hadn’t been done before. Sailors never even considered it a possibility. As such, it was an emotional barrier, a product of stunted imagination. The same kinds of emotional barriers are present in today’s organizations. What are the things that are never talked about? What are the things that, if someone mentions them, people laugh them off? Where is the imagination stunted in your organization?
• The Problem Has a Pattern. Does the problem have an annual cycle? Is it predictable? If so, it may be a symptom of something deeper.
• The Organization Has Kept the Problem Around, like a Pet. In a healthy organization, if a problem arises, people solve it once and for all. Unhealthy organizations need problems because they give people something to focus on and fuss about. No one consciously tries to keep the problem, and everyone says they want to solve it. However, even though we may not be aware of it, we manage to keep the challenges we like!
• Other Stresses and Anxieties Are Present in the Organization. The more anxiety in an organization, the more likely it is that real problems are hidden, manifested only in symptoms. For example, in companies with a domineering culture, employees can feel victimized by management. Most people, when feeling victimized, will complain about other things rather than reveal their true feelings. The more stresses that are present, the more likely there will be a variety of seemingly unrelated symptoms.
• As One Problem Is “Solved,” Another Crops Up. In an organization that relies on reactive, quick-fix, cause-and-effect management, once one problem is solved, another tends to crop up. Most linear thinkers won’t realize that the two issues are related. Meanwhile, the underlying dynamics fueling the problems fail to be addressed.

Ten Enemies of Systems Thinking

The ten statements below are usually evidence of linear thinking and, thus, enemies of systems thinking. Hearing them is not always a sure-fire guarantee that linear thinking is coming, but they should set off warning bells.

1. We’ve got to fix it quick! This is the proverbial “quick-fix” mentality. We see a problem, and we react to fix it before we really understand it. There is nothing wrong with quick, assertive action, and a systems response to a problem is not necessarily slow. But doing the fix before grasping the problem is a recipe for disaster.
2. “Oh, let’s just put a bandage on it.” The bandage solution is often a half-hearted attempt to fix a problem. The danger is that it can cover up the worst of the symptoms while allowing the problem to continue to fester.
3. “We must make the budget by the end of the fiscal year!” Budgets are notoriously linear. They force us to make decisions based on money rather than on whether the idea is good. In particular, making a decision to fix something so we are “in the black” by an arbitrary deadline is problematic. While being profitable is desirable, last-minute Herculean efforts to reach monetary targets are the antithesis of systemic thinking. Short-term quick fixes almost always harm long-term sustainability.
4. “We need to respond immediately!” Knee-jerk reactions and panic attacks, borne out of anxiety and learned helplessness, create linear solutions. A calm, reasoned strategy offers a more systemic way to address a situation. This does not mean acting slowly; it means taking a moment to consider the different variables that contribute to a situation.
5. “Who cares?” An apathetic approach, or a plain lack of curiosity, is a barrier to effective problem solving. Curiosity, play, imagination, and adventure are the antidotes to stuck organizations.
6. “We need more information.” There is nothing wrong with seeking more information, unless we believe it will solve the problem for us. Additional data is good when we know its place. We – not information -have the power to act. And we – not information – must have the courage to do so.
7. “Oh, you’re just thinking too much.” Shallow and superficial thinking is everywhere – just watch the nightly news. All of the complex problems of the world are boiled down to a few sound bytes. The accusation of “thinking too much” usually means “Stop thinking differently from me.” The reality is that systems thinking is a new kind of thinking, and not everyone likes to stretch in new ways.
8. “To hell with the rest of the organization; we must get our own needs met.” Many people in organizations hold this kind of fortress mentality. In our companies and schools, we live in bunkers, protecting our own needs and the resources of our unit. Consequently, we end up thinking of win-lose strategies and strategizing about how to get more for ourselves. This approach is classic linear thinking.
9. “We can’t have any conflict.” Some of us will do anything to keep the peace in our organizations. Edwin Friedman calls this “peace-mongering.” Peace-mongers will avoid, suppress, and mask conflict, at the expense of discussing and addressing real issues.
10. “You will do it this way, and you will enjoy it!” Authoritarian managers who force their will on the workforce are prime examples of linear thinkers. Wisdom is collaborative, and domineering interventions undermine innovation, collective problem solving, and creativity.

Systems thinking is easy for some and difficult for others. Some people intuitively think in systems terms and have done so their entire lives. However, most people today think in linear, reductionistic, and mechanistic terms.

At first when people start thinking in systems, they can find things to be a bit chaotic. They become overwhelmed by the number of variables and think, “How can I do anything if I don’t know what effect my intervention will have?” This kind of thinking is normal and usually gives way to a sense of deeper insight as an individual begins to learn various principles of systems behavior. We hope the ideas in this article offer a first step toward that kind of understanding.

Jim Ollhoff (jim@ollhoff.com) is a college professor, with an academic background that includes training in education, family studies, developmental psychology, social psychology, and systems theory. His academic interests are the process of discovery in anxious systems, effective management from a complexity perspective, leadership, strategy, and adult learning. Jim teaches courses in the areas of family studies and in management.

Michael Walcheski is the chair of the Department of Family Studies at Concordia University, St. Paul, Minnesota. He has a PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy and is a licensed marriage and family therapist.

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