When errors such as these surface, blaming seems to be a natural reflex in many organizations. Even those individuals who wish to learn from mistakes fall into naming culprits. Once we figure out who’s at fault, we then try to find out what is wrong with the supposed offenders. Only when we discover what is wrong with them do we feel we have grasped the problem. Clearly they are the problem, and changing or getting rid of them (or simply being angry at them) is the solution.

There’s a problem with this common scenario, however: Where there is blame, there is no learning. Where there is blame, open minds close, inquiry tends to cease, and the desire to understand the whole system diminishes. When people work in an atmosphere of blame, they naturally cover up their errors and hide their real concerns. And when energy goes into finger pointing, scapegoating, and denying responsibility, productivity suffers because the organization lacks information about the real state of affairs. It’s impossible to make good decisions with poor information.

In fact, blame costs money. When the vice president of marketing and the vice president of R&D are blaming each other for quality problems in product development, they can’t focus on working together to bring the best products to market. Their finger pointing results in lost sales potential.

Blame rarely enhances our understanding of our situation and often hampers effective problem solving. So how do we avoid the tendency to blame and create organizational environments where we turn less frequently to blame? Clarifying accountability is one option. This process of assigning responsibilities for a situation in advance can help create a culture of real learning.

Accountability comes from clear contracting, ongoing conversations, and an organizational commitment to support accountability rather than blame. The contracting focuses on tasks to be accomplished, roles to be taken, processes to be used, standards sought, and expected results. Periodic conversations over time review both explicit and tacit contracts in order to verify shared understanding. This communication becomes most useful when people are willing and able to discuss their common difficulties within a larger setting that values accountability.

The Differences Between Accountability and Blame

The dictionary helps clarify the differences between accountability and blame. To be accountable is “to be counted on or reckoned on.” To blame is “to find fault with, to censure, revile, reproach.” Accountability emphasizes keeping agreements and performing jobs in a respectful atmosphere; blaming is an emotional process that discredits the blamed.

A focus on accountability recognizes that everyone may make mistakes or fall short of commitments. Becoming aware of our own errors or shortfalls and viewing them as opportunities for learning and growth enable us to be more successful in the future. Accountability therefore creates conditions for ongoing, constructive conversations in which our awareness of current reality is sharpened and in which we work to seek root causes, understand the system better, and identify new actions and agreements. The qualities of accountability are respect, trust, inquiry, moderation, curiosity, and mutuality.

Blaming, on the other hand, is more than just a process of allocating fault. It is often a process of shaming others and searching for something wrong with them. Blaming provides an early and artificial solution to a complex problem. It provides a simplistic view of a complex reality: I know what the problem is, and you’re it. Blame thus makes inquiry difficult and reduces the chances of getting to the real root of a problem. Blame also generates fear and destroys trust. When we blame, we often believe that other people have bad intentions or lack ability. We tend to excuse our own actions, however, because we know firsthand the challenges we face. The qualities of blame are judgment, anger, fear, punishment, and self-righteousness.

The Organizational Consequences of Blame

Blame Slows Information Flow and Reduces Innovation. People sometimes use blame as a strategy to get others to take ownership of problems. But this approach often backfires because people begin to equate acknowledging mistakes and surfacing bad news with punishment. When this happens, two reinforcing sets of behaviors may emerge: one by managers who are ostensibly seeking information and then punishing those who bring bad news, and the other by groups of employees who hide information and try either to protect each other or to blame each other. People who feel compelled to protect themselves can’t admit mistakes-and therefore can’t learn from them. Under these conditions, individuals spend time denying problems rather than solving them, and

The Reinforcing Cycles of Blame

Blame causes fear, which increases cover-ups and reduces the flow of information. The lack of information hinders problem solving, creating more errors (R1). Fear also stifles risk taking and discourages innovation (R2).

As shown in “The Reinforcing Cycles of Blame,” blaming leads to fear, which increases cover-ups and reduces the flow of information by stopping productive conversation. The lack of timely and accurate information about an organization’s current reality hinders problem solving, leading to more errors and more blame (R1).

Blaming and the fear it generates also discourage innovation and creative solutions. Frightened people don’t take risks, which are essential for innovation. Lack of innovation, in turn, leads to an inability to solve problems effectively and an increase in errors (R2).

Blame “Shifts the Burden.” In a “Shifting the Burden” situation, a problem has multiple solutions. People often grab onto the most obvious, short-term fix rather than search for the fundamental source of the problem. The lack of a permanent, long-term solution reinforces the need for additional quick fixes. Blame is a fix that actually diverts the blamers’ attention away from long-term interpersonal or structural solutions to problems (see B1 in “The Addiction to Blame” on p. 3).  Although blame provides some immediate relief and a sense of having solved a problem (“It’s their fault”), it also erodes communication (R3) and shifts the focus even further from accountability (B2), the more fundamental solution.

Blaming can also be addictive, because it makes us feel powerful and keeps us from having to examine our own role in a situation. For example, Jim, a brewery manager, got word that things were slowing down on line 10, a new canning line. He left his office and headed to the plant floor. “Grady, you’ve got to get this line going. Get with it,” he told his line foreman. Grady replied, “Jim, you know those guys on the last shift always screw things up.”

This is a familiar conversation to both men. Each walks away thinking something is wrong with the other. Jim thinks, “That Grady, I give him responsibility and he just can’t get it together.” Grady thinks, “Why is he always on my case? Can’t he see this is a tough issue? He’s so simplistic and short-sighted.”

In this scenario, Jim can walk away feeling relieved because he knows what the problem is-Grady is a lousy supervisor and may need to be replaced. Grady, on the other hand, can blame Jim for being a shortsighted, run-the-plant-by-the-numbers manager. Both get some initial relief from blaming each other, but neither solves the ongoing problem.

Moving from Blame to Accountability

How, then, do we move from blame to accountability? Even within carefully designed systems, people may fail at their work. And even with a knowledge of system dynamics, we still often look for an individual’s failure as a way to explain a problem. One leverage point is to understand the organizational dynamics of blame as described above. There is also leverage in changing how we think about and conduct ourselves at work.

There are three levels of specific behavioral change in moving from blame to accountability-the individual level, the interpersonal level, and the group or organizational level. First, individuals must be willing to change their own thinking and feelings about blame. Second, people need to become skillful at making contracts with one another and holding each other accountable for results. Third, groups need to promote responsible and constructive conversations by developing norms for direct conflict resolution between individuals. These behavioral changes-and the use of systems thinking to focus on the structures involved and not the personalities-can help create a constructive organizational culture.

Individual Level

Below is a list of ways to start breaking the mental models we hold about blame. When you find yourself beginning to blame someone else for a chronic problem, refer to this list and to the sidebar “Distinctions Between Blame and Accountability” (see p. 4).

1. Remember that others are acting rationally from their own perspective. Given what they know, the pressures they are under, and the organizational structures that are influencing them, they are doing the best they can. Give others the benefit of the doubt.

2. Realize that you probably have a role in the situation.Your behavior may be influencing this person’s behavior and may be producing some unintended effects. Keep in mind that you will tend to justify your own actions and point of view and discount the other person’s perspective.

3. Remind yourself that judgment and criticism make it very difficult to see clearly. Judgments are mental models that limit the ability to take in new data. They tend to increase the likelihood of anger and make it difficult to learn. The following questions may help stretch your thinking and ease angry feelings. Ask yourself:

• What information am I missing that would help me understand this person’s behavior?
• How might this behavior make sense?
• What pressures is he or she under?
• What systems or structures might be influencing this behavior?

4. Use a systems thinking perspective to explore the pressures on the players involved. Notice that there are some larger forces at work that are probably having an impact on both of you. For example, when organizational goals, strategies, and values aren’t clear, groups will sometimes work toward different objectives. A group that values customer service over cost will conflict with a group that is trying to lower expenditures. Identify some key variables and their interrelationships, and ask, Is this situation an example of a vicious cycle, “Shifting the Burden,” or “Accidental Adversaries”?

5. Be willing to be held accountable. This means that, when an issue comes up, you are willing to consider whether you have lived up to your end of an agreement or expectation. Ask yourself:

• Did I have a role in this situation?
• Did I take some actions that seemed right at the time, but that had unintended consequences?

6.Work constructively with your anger. Sustained anger may point to personal issues that have been triggered by the current situation. Broken agreements, mistakes, and blame all have difficult associations for most people. However, in a learning environment, constructive resolution of conflict can also lead to significant personal growth. The guiding questions here are:

• What am I learning about myself in this situation?
• What does this remind me of?
• What new behaviors or thoughts does this situation call for that may be a stretch for me?

Interpersonal Level

Initial Contracting. At the beginning of any working relationship, it’s vital to come to some basic agreements defining the nature and scope of the work, specific and yet-to-be-defined tasks, deadlines and related outcomes, processes or methods to be used, interim checkpoints and expectations at those checkpoints, standards, and roles.

It’s also helpful to discuss what to do in the event of a misunderstanding, a lapse in communication, or a failure to keep an agreement. Imagine possible breakdowns and design a process for handling them. If breakdowns do occur, be prepared to remind others of the plan you had prepared.

When lapses do take place, they need to be brought to the collective attention as soon as possible. Misunderstandings and broken agreements often promote anger, frustration, and blame. Allowing unaddressed misunderstandings to fester can hamper productive conversations. By contrast, raising issues early can minimize escalation of problems.

Accountability Conversations. Once any project or working relationship is under way, it’s useful to check in periodically on the state of the partnership through accountability conversations. You may or may not have clear recollections of the initial contract regarding the task, roles, standards, processes, and expected results. Either way, it’s productive to establish or reestablish these agreements and explore what is working or not working as you take action together to create envisioned results.

Accountability conversations aren’t always easy. However, the skills they require can be applied and developed over time. Some of the basic tools of learning organizations come into play here-the ladder of inference, for example, can be used to create a conversation of inquiry rather than inquisition. The accountability conversation is also the perfect setting for practicing left-hand column skills to surface assumptions blocking honest and productive discourse. In addition, admitting the tendency to

Distinctions between blame and accountability

Here are steps for initiating an accountability conversation:

1. Find out whether the person you are working with is interested in seeing problems as learning opportunities. If so, when a problem occurs, include other people who are also interested in the situation. Other people’s perspectives can be helpful because often two people in conflict are actually mirroring the conflict of a larger system within the organization.

2. Create a setting that is conducive to learning.

• Allow plenty of time to address the issues.
• Reaffirm with each other that the goal is to learn, not blame.
• Establish confidentiality.
• Be truly open-minded.
• Listen hard to the other person’s perspective

3. Have a conversation in which the two (or more) of you

• Clarify your intention for the meeting.
• Identify the data and any assumptions or conclusions you have drawn based on that data.
• Identify the pressures each of you is experiencing in the situation.
• Identify any stated or unstated expectations. If implicit agreements were not jointly understood, this is a good time to clarify and reestablish shared agreements.
• Analyze the problem from a systems perspective. Clarify how your mutual beliefs and actions might be related and are perhaps reinforcing each other.
• Identify some new ways to address the problem.

Group Level

How people talk about one another in an organization affects the levels of accountability and trust. Often, because people are reluctant to discuss accountability issues directly, they go to a third party to relieve their discomfort and get support for their point of view. The complaint does not get resolved this way, however, although the person with the complaint gains some relief. Bringing a complaint to a third party to clarify a situation can be a much more productive alternative.

To see how this works, let’s take a situation where Tony is angry with Lee because Lee wasn’t fully supportive in a meeting. Tony complains to Robin that Lee is unreliable. Robin sympathizes with Tony and agrees that Lee is unreliable. Tony and Robin now feel closer because they share this point of view. Lee does not yet know that Tony has a complaint. Later, though, Robin, busy with other projects, puts off one of Tony’s requests. Now Tony complains about Robin to Lee, and Robin doesn’t get the necessary feedback. Over time, all of these relationships will erode.

What is the alternative to this kind of dysfunctional blaming and resentment? The solution is a deep commitment on the part of all these people to work through their reluctance to give and receive difficult feedback. In addition, they need to learn how to hold one another accountable in an ongoing way. Now, when Tony is angry with Lee and goes to Robin, the purpose is to get coaching on how to raise the issue with Lee, not to get Robin’s agreement on what is wrong with Lee. In addition, Robin’s role is to make sure that Tony follows through on raising the concern directly with Lee.

To resolve conflict directly:

1.Bring your complaints about someone else to a third person to get coaching on how to raise your concerns.
Valuable questions from the coach include:

• Tell me about the situation.
• What results do you want?
• What’s another way of explaining the other person’s actions?
• How might the other person describe the situation?
• What was your role in creating the situation?
• What requests or complaints do you need to bring to the other person?
• How will you state them in order to get the results you want?
• What do you think your learning is in this situation?

2. Raise your concerns directly with the other person. Reaffirm your commitment to maintaining a good working relationship and find a way to express your fundamental respect for the person. The ladder of inference can be a helpful tool for focusing on the problem. Start by identifying the data that is the source of your concern. Then spell out the assumptions you made as you observed the data and any feelings you have about the situation. Finally, articulate your requests for change. During the conversation, remind the other person that reviewing the concern is part of learning to work together better

3. Let the coach know what happened.

4. Outside of this framework, refrain from making negative comments about people

5. For listeners who frequently hear complaints about a third party and want to create a learning setting, it can be helpful to say something like: “I’d like to help, but only if you want to create a constructive situation. We can explore these questions; otherwise, I prefer not to listen to your complaints.”

Organizational Accountability: The IS Story

Systems thinking provides useful tools for surfacing and breaking reinforcing cycles of blame within an organization. In the story below, a group was able to use causal loop diagrams to help them move beyond blame and craft a constructive, long-term solution.

The Information Systems group of a manufacturing plant was meeting to discuss their lack of progress on a large project to overhaul the department. Initially, the IS group decided that top management’s actions caused the group’s ineffectiveness. The plant management team (PMT) kept adding projects to the group’s already full plate. Members of the PMT responded to “squeaky wheels” by giving otherwise low-priority projects the force of their support. Also, the PMT didn’t reinforce plant wide policies the IS group had developed. Most important, the team didn’t give group members the support they needed to stick to the IS overhaul they had committed to, and wouldn’t give them the budget to hire the additional staff they sorely needed.

But when the group mapped out their current situation in a causal loop diagram, they gained a new perspective on the problem. They found that the situation resembled a “Success to the Successful” story, in which two or more projects or groups compete for limited resources.

The diagram “Success to the Squeaky Wheel” shows how, in this case, the IS group’s attention to urgent requests diverted resources away from prioritized items. Because rewards for completing urgent requests were heightened, the urgent tasks continued to receive greater attention (R2).  At the same time, the rewards for and focus on prioritized tasks decreased (R1). Finally, as people realized that urgent requests received greater attention than prioritized items, the number of “squeaky wheels”-or people promoting their own agenda items to management-proliferated. This development was followed by an increase in management’s efforts to get action on those agenda items, which further promoted urgent items over prioritized ones (R3).

After examining the causal loop diagrams, the group realized that they had played a role in the stalled progress on the overhaul project. Although IS team members encouraged each other to blame the PMT, no one in the group had given the PMT feedback concerning the impact of their requests and lack of support.

Armed with a systems view, the group identified several actions they could take to shift these unproductive dynamics. They decided to tell the PMT that they recognized that the IS overhaul was a top priority for the plant as a whole. They would point out that they couldn’t make progress on the overhaul if they continued to respond to “squeaky wheels. “The group would also let the PMT know that when they received additional requests, they would ask:

• How much of a priority is this request for you?
• Are you aware that there is a tradeoff in priorities?

The group concluded that they would issue a memo to the PMT describing their priorities and soliciting the PMT’s support of those priorities. They would also request that the PMT clearly communicate the priorities to the rest of the plant. In the memo, they would indicate the tradeoffs they were making and identify how their choices would help the company as a whole. The group felt that, with the PMT’s support, they would have the authority to focus on the prioritized project instead of responding to urgent requests.

Conclusion

Developing accountability skills is challenging; it takes courage and the willingness to learn new ways of thinking and acting. So why is moving from blame to accountability worthwhile? Because blame is like sugar – it produces a brief boost and then a let-down. It doesn’t serve the system’s long-term needs and can actually prevent it from functioning effectively. On the other hand, developing accountability skills and habits on every level of your organization can be an important element in maintaining your organization’s long-term health.

Marilyn Paul, PhD, is an independent organizational consultant affiliated with Innovation Associates, an Arthur D. Little company. She has sixteen years of experience facilitating organizational change. One focus of her work is peer mentoring and capacity development.

The post Moving from Blame to Accountability appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

What Is Organizational Anxiety?

Anxiety can be an insidious force: Not only does it sap energy levels and damage our health, it also eats away at job performance and stifles innovation and creativity. Like individuals, organizations can also suffer from symptoms of anxiety. Over the long run, anxiety can reduce an enterprise’s strategic adaptability and effectiveness.

In recent years, researchers have looked at anxiety from an intriguing new perspective. As they see it, the origin of anxiety is the struggle between life and death. This struggle that rages within individuals also takes place in work groups and organizations. Of course, organizations do not experience death in the same way that individuals do; however, they do face the very real possibility of financial or operational demise. Organizations can cease to exist through bankruptcy, takeover, mergers, and so forth. As a result, they experience their own brand of anxiety

Defenses Against Anxiety

Literature abounds on how work-groups and organizations try to cope with the destructive feelings of anxiety. According to one theory, some companies resort to a form of defense that combines three tactics called splitting, projection, and introjection that individuals often use to fend off anxiety. Splitting happens when we separate the “good” aspects of our lives from the “bad.” We then project “bad” qualities onto others and introject “good” qualities into ourselves. This tactic helps us to feel more in control of our panic, because we turn our attention to judging and trying to control others.

For example, an anxious manager might split good and bad by considering himself all-powerful (he introjects good into himself) while at the same time dismissing subordinates as unworthy (he projects bad onto others). Even worse, a manager in this frame of mind might be compelled to act on these projected feelings by punishing workers with extra work, impossible schedules, unreachable goals, and so forth. Companies tend to “institutionalize” this kind of behavior. Employees may quit and new ones may be hired, but the tough schedules and unattainable goals persist regardless of the individuals employed at any given time.

Groups or organizations that are leaderless can suffer more anxiety than most. For example, self-directed work teams may have difficulty making decisions if no leader steps forward. The team may become ineffective as it struggles to search for a leader, thus creating what can be paralyzing anxiety.

In these cases, the people involved often defend themselves against fearful emotions in three ways:

• Dependency. The group stops trying to solve its problems and instead waits for a “messiah” to save it.
• Pairing. Two individuals related to the group (for example, two group members, or one member and an outside consultant) combine to try to oust someone they consider a “bad” member.
• Flight/Fight. Group members blame all problems on an outside cause, or they pretend that no problem exists.

Defense mechanisms are neither good nor bad, and indeed can help protect us from emotional overload. But, the way these mechanisms are stitched together in an organization’s mental model can create the exact opposite of what the group wants and needs: Instead of reducing the anxiety, the behavior only worsens it. And mental models are notorious for leading to self-fulfilling prophecies: We see only what we expect to see, and then we act in ways that bring about results that confirm our assumptions.

When anxiety lodges itself in a company’s collective mental model of how things work, it will continue to perpetuate itself until the organization’s behavior changes to balance or reduce the increasing anxiety. For example, many organizations pride themselves on their “heroic” acts. When crises strike, creating high levels of anxiety, a few heroes step forward to “save the day.” The organization rewards the heroes. At the same time, by giving rewards, the organization inadvertently encourages the creation of future crises, which will lead to more anxiety and then to additional rewards for heroic action. This behavior is a perfect example of self-perpetuating anxiety.

Anxiety Amplified

Defensive actions can trigger reinforcing processes that serve to amplify and perpetuate anxiety. Here are examples of three reinforcing loops that can sustain or even worsen anxiety in organizations. Although these loops were created by a work group at a large company, they reflect dynamics experienced by many organizations.

The “Messiah” Loop. In this dynamic, if Anxiety about the organization’s performance intensifies, employees look for a “messiah”(Search for Savior). This search diminishes workers’ Accountability, in turn reducing their Perceived Ability to Succeed. The diminishing of workers’ self-esteem then leads to an increase in Anxiety.

The loop contains a bitter irony: The group searches for a savior to ease its anxiety, but waiting for a “messiah” only leads to more anxiety. The team could design a more fundamental, enduring solution to their anxiety by focusing instead on learning and performing. Sadly, however, the “quick fix” of seeking a savior diminishes the organization’s need for—and thus its ability to apply—a more fundamental solution.

THE “MESSIAH” LOOP

if Anxiety about the organization’s performance intensifies, employees Search for a Savior. This search diminishes workers’ Accountability, in turn reducing their Perceived Ability to Succeed and increasing Anxiety.

The “Manic Defense” Loop. In this reinforcing process, anxious managers project the organization’s problems onto their subordinates and then try to punish them. To justify this punishment, the managers focus obsessively on quantitative measurements, slavishly using them to control the action around them. Through this emphasis on metrics, the managers deplete the organization of the physical, financial, and—perhaps most important—psychological resources the team members need to succeed. All of this ultimately leads to even more intense anxiety.

In the “Manic Defense” loop, increased Anxiety leads to more Focus on Metrics, which in turn causes Resources Used for Measuring to go up. As Resources Used for measuring rises, Resources Available for Projects diminishes, which in turn increases Resources Requested. The diminished resource base for projects puts added pressure on those trying to complete projects. The project manager then requests more resources in order to complete the projects. As Resources Requested increases, Percentage of Resources Received is reduced because of the multiple demands on the system created by the additional resources requested for measurement.

This development further cuts into Perceived Ability to Succeed and ultimately heightens Anxiety.

The “Fight” Loop. We call the third reinforcing process the “Fight” loop because it captures the way anxiety sparks conflict within the team and encourages an aggressive desire to have one’s own viewpoints and decisions prevail. Increased Anxiety leads to increased Internal Competition, which leads to a greater Need to Be Right. Intensifying the Need to Be Right reduces the level of inquiry (Questions), which also lowers Understanding and increases the Resources Used for Making Decisions. More employee time and energy is needed to make decisions when there is little understanding of the issues facing the organization. The rest of the loop follows the “Manic Defense” loop, ultimately creating even more Anxiety.

Understanding Our Own Role

As we look at the three reinforcing loops, we can begin to see how team members themselves might create and intensify their own anxiety. Often, factors viewed as external causes for anxiety, such as perceptions of failure or layoffs, could really be internally driven. To surface these factors, we might ask, “Who is perceiving this failure—our own organization, stockholders, or customers?” If it is our own organization, we can begin to search for ways to change that perception. If we have suffered layoffs, could it be that our business is cyclical? If so, how is our organization perpetuating industry cycles? Many organizations aren’t aware of the role they play in perpetuating not just their own business cycles, but those of the entire industry.

Thus, often what an organization views as “not our problem” is just that. The organization tries to behave in a way that will produce positive results, but inadvertently creates undesired outcomes. This is an example of what Jay Forrester called “the counter-intuitive behavior of social systems.” Realizing that we often cause our own problems may be embarrassing, but it is also good news, for whatever we create in a system, we may be able to change if we gain insight into it.

In Search of Balancing Loops

The dynamics shown in the three loops present a grim image of the system of organizational anxiety. The picture is particularly discouraging because all the loops are reinforcing, creating a vicious cycle. But the picture does not have to remain grim: Reinforcing processes are not all necessarily bad. Just as the reinforcing loops in the diagrams can heighten anxiety exponentially, they can also reduce anxiety, if they are turned around to become virtuous cycles.

The lack of balancing loops is another important piece of information about the systems the diagrams depict. Without balancing loops, there are no processes in place for returning the system to equilibrium after a disturbance caused by the reinforcing loops. All three loops amplify the central variable—Anxiety—and no loops have been identified that keep it under control.

When drawing their system of anxiety, teams often neglect to build balancing loops into their models, perhaps because people tend to notice things that create rapid change (R loops) more than forces that keep things stable (B loops). Also, when addressing a specific problem, team members may focus on how their anxiety is worsening, not on how it might be alleviated.

Clearly, though, balancing loops have to exist in every organization; otherwise, the place would unravel toward anxiety-induced paralysis, anarchy, or some other extreme endpoint of a reinforcing process. Some sort of balancing dynamic often subtly works to keep the situation relatively under control. In fact, these hidden loops can create the sense of oscillating, persistent anxiety experienced by the staff.

Balancing loops that might control anxiety could include coping mechanisms such as open communication, flexible work hours, and personal leave time. Unfortunately, if the reinforcing loop around anxiety dominates the system, these coping mechanisms may never be able to balance out the increasing anxiety. Communication may open up and temporarily reduce anxiety, but then a sudden crisis may shut down communication and thereby increase anxiety again. This pattern causes the organization to ride the waves of anxiety time and again.

A team can also balance their anxiety by linking a new, outside force to Anxiety in a way that will ease feelings of fear rather than heighten them. If, for instance, the members of a group develop coping mechanisms in their private lives (loving families, close-knit communities, and so forth), they might be able to calm their collective anxiety, as shown in “Reversing Anxiety.” As the Use of Private-Life Coping Mechanisms increases, Anxiety and the Search for a Savior decrease. Account-ability and the group’s Perceived Ability to Succeed are then enhanced, leading to less of a need for reliance on the coping mechanisms.

REVERSING ANXIETY

As the Use of Private-Life Coping Mechanisms increases, Anxiety and the Search for a Savior decrease. Accountability and the group’s Perceived Ability to Succeed are enhanced, leading to less of a reliance on coping mechanism.

A Systemic Makeover

According to the field of System Dynamics, there are two main ways of actually changing a system: Shifting Loop Dominance or Direction, and Changing Loop Structure so as to alter the flow of feedback through the system. Here are some additional strategies for breaking the cycle of anxiety.

Shifting Loop Dominance or Direction. Often, the main loops in a system all lead to greater anxiety. For this reason, teams may want to explore how they can weaken those loops and reshape the system. For example, the “Messiah” loop could be reversed if team members gave up the search for a savior and instead enhanced their own empowerment and accountability. A team could weaken the “Manic Defense” loop by consciously reducing the focus on metrics. To do this, management could cut back on the number of metrics used, employ other ways of measuring the company’s performance, emphasize customer service over internal metrics, streamline bureaucracy, free up resources used for measuring, and so forth. Finally, a team could disarm the “Fight” loop by finding ways to reduce internal competition and the need to be right, by promoting inquiry skills (Questions), and by lessening resources used for making decisions.

Changing Loop Structure.We can actually reshape a systemic structure by incorporating new variables and links and removing others. By making these changes, we can alter the pathway by which feedback flows throughout the system. There are many possibilities for creating new links. In dealing with a system of organizational anxiety, one valuable addition might be the use of inquiry skills. Inquiry skills include methods of conversing that can overcome barriers to understanding and learning, whether the barriers are organizational or interpersonal. Thinkers such as Chris Argyris, David Bohm, and William Isaacs have written extensively about this set of skills. In the case of an anxious team, as the group gets more and more practice in using inquiry—and begins to achieve some success—it will learn to use these tools more readily in response to a surge in anxiety

Looking Ahead

Of course, a causal loop diagram is only an early step in the process of solving a systemic problem. Actually changing a systemic structure takes a lot more than just redrawing links. To reshape the way they do things, a group will need to think about what the links in its drawings mean.

For example, the more managers understand the anxiety-intensifying system that they’ve helped to create, the more motivated they may feel to restructure that especially irksome “Manic Defense” loop. Instead of projecting their anxiety onto “bad” subordinates, they could learn to recognize both the good and the bad in the way their organization operates. In a difficult but profoundly healthier process, the team members would examine things in a far more systemic way than the traditional short-term perspective on metrics allows, and would join together to do the hard work essential for improving their performance.

Making attitude changes isn’t simple or easy, and the team will need to dig even deeper to find the best leverage points for change. However, altering some key mental pictures of how things work is an organization’s best hope for pulling itself out of the anxiety-ridden system it has created. Talking about their anxiety system and drawing causal depictions of it can give a team vital insight into how they are creating their own problems.

The team might learn more at this stage if they also used a computer simulation model of their anxiety system. Modeling their system would require them to identify the things they think most strongly drive the loops, and it would give them a way to test the insights that they found while drawing the loops. In addition, modeling would make it easier for them to redesign the problematic structures in their system.

The group could then design interventions that apply pressure to any leverage points it identifies in the earlier steps. In many cases, the most powerful interventions would involve using new tools—particularly inquiry skills—for deepening the organization’s collective knowledge about itself. If all goes well, the team will grow less dependent on self-defeating defense mechanisms and rely increasingly on its own strengths, knowledge, skills, and resources.

An Example: ABC, Inc

A computer manufacturer, ABC, Inc., had suffered some significant business failures that generated a tremendous level of anxiety in the organization. Arguments over how to price products became the focus of people’s anxiety. The “old-timers” thought that the company should maintain its high prices to reflect its image as a pioneer in the industry and as a producer of high-quality products. On the other hand, the “newcomers” thought that customers were becoming more price sensitive because of the lower prices offered by ABC’s competitors.

The first step to resolving the impasse was to have both sides share their mental models of what was creating the anxiety over pricing. Using tools such as the ladder of inference, the groups discussed their own interpretations of the data they used to make pricing decisions. One manager reported, “Our data show that our best customers are more concerned about quality and are willing to pay the higher price.” Another stated, “All our customers care about is a low price. We are being destroyed by our competition.” Each side held tightly to its position and blamed the other group for undermining ABC’s success.

The groups then developed causal loops that captured the two perspectives. Through this process, they found that price was not the key issue; the real issue was defining what type of organization ABC would be in the future. Would ABC be an innovative producer of high-quality products, or would it be a mass producer of relatively high quality, but less innovative goods?

At this point, the company created a computer simulation to test the financial impact of the two scenarios. The simulation revealed that the innovative strategy would result in a loss of customers. However, by charging more per unit, the company could make up much of the lost revenue. Further investigation showed that customers who buy lower-priced products tend to demand more technical services, cutting further into revenues. This finding made the mass-production scenario less appealing in the long run.

By using causal loops and simulation in this way, ABC diffused the anxiety within the organization and took the focus away from blaming individuals for the company’s troubles. ABC was also able to make more informed decisions regarding its pricing and long-term business strategy.

Eradicating Anxiety

It is easy to view organizational anxiety as something that is out of a group’s—or anyone’s—control. But the discussion above shows how we can play a role in creating our own anxiety. Managers and employees often become trapped in mental models that only worsen their anxiety. Yet the team is far from helpless to control its behavior. We all possess the power to change our attitudes and behaviors in order to reshape dynamics that we ourselves have created. With this enhanced understanding, we can then take intelligent steps to manage or even eradicate anxiety and thereby enhance our effectiveness.

For references and further reading, please see Anxiety in the Workplace: Using Systems Thinking to Deepen Understanding (Pegasus Communications, 1998).

Janet M. Gould Wilkinson is director of the Organizations as Learning Systems project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

John J. Voyer is associate professor of business administration and co-director of the MBA program at the School of Business, University of Southern Maine.

David N. Ford is an associate professor in the system dynamics program at the University of Bergen in Norway and a visiting professor in the School of the Management of Technology and Economics at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.

The post Overcoming Organizational Anxiety appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

We regularly find ourselves stuck in futile conflicts over the choices we face. How can intelligent, committed people in the same organization be so divided? Could it be that both sides are right? If so, how does the conflict come about? And how can you and your team leverage the differences that exist among you? Help lies in understanding the structure of paradox.

Managing Paradox

In their study of organizational effectiveness, James Collins and Jerry Porras noted that a distinguishing characteristic of highly visionary companies is the capacity to manage paradox. These authors define such capacity as “the ability to embrace both extremes of a number of dimensions at the same time” (Built to Last, p. 44). This rare capability seems to allow successful companies to avoid falling into a pattern of values-based conflict, with parties becoming increasingly polarized around “either/or” choices.

Many decisions that groups face involve a choice between opposing values. Thus, when resolving a dispute, a team may feel the need to choose between the rights of an individual member and the well-being of the group as a whole.

Because the two choices are opposites, the group will take actions that support one value rather than the other. For example, in an emergency, people within a group may be expected either to “pitch in” and take actions that help the group as a whole, leaving aside their personal objectives for a time, or to complete their personal objectives first and help the team if they have spare time. Group norms and organizational reward systems tend to encourage one approach over the other.

In many cases, though, the values are interdependent. Over time, an organization requires both values to be healthy (Barry Johnson, Polarity Management). Thus, when any group is formed, a cycle begins between opposing values (see “Circularity of Values”). Initially, the team feels a strong need for one value, such as individualism. Team members then take actions that value individualism. If unchecked, however, individualism destroys the cohesiveness of the group. So, individualistic actions eventually create a need for actions that value community. Over the long run, this focus on community will in turn create a need for individualism, as group members lose their sense of personal identity. Some investigators of organizational culture refer to this movement between opposites as the “circularity of values“ (Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, The Seven Cultures of Capitalism).

For example, Performance Management Associates (PMA), a small consulting company founded by Ralph and Sarah, had experienced consistently high demand for its services. Ralph was known for introducing leading-edge management concepts to organizations in need of change. He continually sought new ideas and built them into his consulting work. Ralph’s clients found his approach innovative and challenging.

Sarah, on the other hand, had long recognized that Ralph’s ideas were of limited value for businesses unless they could be further developed into systems and training products. By framing Ralph’s insights in ways that organizations could implement and use, Sarah helped clients institutionalize needed changes. She brought stability and quality control to PMA.

Encouraged by their company’s success, Ralph and Sarah hired two new consultants. With the support the additional staff would provide, Ralph planned to increase the pace of his innovative work, Barry and Frank, the newcomers, were excited by the prospect of further developing Ralph’s ideas.

CIRCULARITY OF VALUES

In this reinforcing loop, healthy circularity operates, as actions supporting one value create a need for its opposite.

However, at PMA, Barry and Frank felt they were approaching clients with half-formed products. Worse, Ralph kept coming up with new ideas even though the old ones still weren’t fully developed. Barry and Frank grew frustrated with their work. When they complained that life at PMA had gotten too chaotic, Ralph felt they didn’t understand the principles on which he and Sarah had built the business.

Thus, after years of success, PMA reached a state of crisis. The new consultants threatened to leave the organization. And several clients voiced their concern about the errors that sometimes crept into PMA’s administrative practices.

The introduction of new people at PMA disrupted what had been a healthy movement between the opposing values of innovation and product quality. At the same time, Ralph’s increased focus on innovation ultimately became detrimental to the organization as a whole. As we will see, PMA needed to learn how to manage opposing values, or paradox, in this new configuration.

Unconscious Assumptions

The movement between two opposites rarely happens smoothly. Often, the delay between actions that support one value and the growth in the need for its opposite leads to an unconscious overemphasis on the original value. For instance, when a group clearly sees a gain from actions valuing the individual, it tends to resolve subsequent dilemmas in favor of the individual. Over time, the team will find that it emphasizes individualism without consciously thinking about the alternative. In this way, the group creates an unconscious assumption that pursuing one value ahead of its opposite is the best way to act. Thus, individualism may become part of the group’s culture—its unconscious assumptions regarding the best way to act. This is represented in “Over-reliance on One Value” as the variable “Strength of Individualism,” which grows as a result of loop R2.

Another factor that causes imbalance between opposing values is that, as group members act in support of a value, they build their capacity to support that value (R3). An organization that has a history of valuing individualism is likely to have built up systems and skills that support individualism.

PMA was experiencing similar dynamics based on the values of “innovation” and “quality”: The company could invest in finding new products or in improving the quality of existing ones. Ralph found that his efforts to introduce innovative products brought gains in the form of satisfied customers. His capacity for generating further innovations also grew. Not surprisingly, his assumption about the benefits of innovation became embedded in PMA’s culture. This dynamic explains why Ralph, and PMA, pushed for more and more innovation in their work, despite the problems this created.

Finally, as mentioned earlier, “Actions Valuing Individualism” will eventually lead to a need for “Actions Valuing Community.” As the need to value community grows, the “Utility of Individualism” and the group’s gains from its actions valuing individualism also fall (B4). B4 thus acts as a limit to the growth that comes from the reinforcing processes in R2 and R3.

Conflicting Cultures

As at PMA, most organizations include groups with opposing values. Some focus on the gains to be made by sticking with the values that have brought them success in the past. Barry Johnson refers to such groups as “tradition-bearers.” As the need for the opposite value grows, other members of the organization act as “crusaders” for new values.

Tradition-bearers and crusaders within organizations conflict over values. As the strength of each group’s culture develops, so does the belief that the other’s values are wrong. At PMA, Ralph’s ever-growing belief in the value of innovation led him to reject calls for greater stability.

So far, the description of interdependent opposites has focused on the behavior of those in the organization holding the primary value (individualism in the diagram, or innovation in PMA’s case). Within most organizations, these dynamics will be mirrored by those holding the opposing value. It is easy for any group to look past the interdependence of the values that are in conflict. An organization has experienced gains based on its values and has made a commitment to those values by developing capacity around them. We often feel that if one value is good, its opposite must be bad (De Bono, I Am Right, You Are Wrong).

In addition, any group can readily find examples of the misuse of the opposing value. A value is misused when people continue to apply it past the point where it starts to undermine its opposite. Thus, extreme individualism destroys a group’s sense of community. Concern for community, taken too far, erodes individual freedom and opportunity.

This pattern allows people holding one value to categorize all those holding the opposite value as extremists who want to take the rejected value too far. So, for example, people who value individualism may label those with values that focus on community as “communists.” People who value community may label those with individualistic values as “anarchists.”

At PMA, Ralph could point to numerous examples of clients who suffered from their reluctance to adopt new ideas, and these cases intensified his reliance on innovation. Frank and Barry, on the other hand, saw plenty of clients who were unable to institutionalize change based on their work with PMA. In their view, these examples confirmed the need for higher levels of product quality at PMA.

Leverage

The circularity of values is a naturally occurring cycle in living systems; for instance, there is constant movement between inhaling and exhaling, exertion and relaxation, integration and differentiation. Healthy movement between these opposites is needed to sustain the system. Problems arise because of the unconscious over-reliance on one value at the expense of another. Conflict between groups within an organization is usually a tip-off that this unconscious process has begun.

Many people assume that solutions to problems caused by values-based conflict must involve power. Those crusading for a change in organizational practices feel that they should have more power in order to exert a greater influence. Tradition-bearers use the power they have to hold on to what they value. However, power-based strategies address only the symptoms of the structure of interdependent opposites; they resolve conflict by allowing one group to “win.” In the future, either the conflict will return because the need for the “losing” value remains, or the system will die. To expose the self-destructive nature of this power-based approach, Johnson encourages people to imagine the effect of treating breathing (inhaling and exhaling) as a conflict and having one side “win” at the expense of the other.

The back-and-forth dynamics within the structure tend to draw participants’ attention away from the healthy operation represented by the outside loop (see “Values-Based Conflict“). To gain leverage, participants need to become aware of the possibilities that emerge when the outside reinforcing loop is working well. Those functioning within the system should also become conscious of the interdependence of the opposing values. Dialogue can be a useful tool for surfacing the need for a circularity of movement between values.

People must be willing to move away from what they value in order to bring about the vision they desire—while trusting that the organization will eventually come back around the loop. They do not have to give up what they believe; they just have to live with a delay before their beliefs take center stage again. According to Robert Fritz, without awareness of this cycle, groups may oscillate between values rather than applying those most likely to bring about the greatest gains and highest leverage.

In Polarity Management, Johnson describes a simple yet powerful approach to attaining this leverage. His method involves charting both the upside and downside of each of the opposing values. This allows people to see and feel the need for movement between the values, determine the direction of movement currently needed, and establish how they will recognize the need to change emphasis. This approach is one way to achieve what Hampden-Turner describes as “reconciliation of values.”

At PMA, Sarah recognized the need to stop the values-based conflict. Her solution was to split the company into two divisions. At one division, Barry, Frank, and Sarah concentrate on customizing and running existing programs for clients, and on improving the quality of PMA’s services. At a separate location, Ralph develops new products. Once he develops a product, he passes it on to the other group, so that he can move on to new ideas.

The new structure allows everyone at PMA to appreciate all the values contained within the company. Ralph now sees the need for quality. Barry and Frank are increasingly innovative in their own work, building on a foundation of solid products. They often consult Ralph about ways to improve their practice. The reconciliation of values at PMA has had a beneficial impact on the company’s work with clients as well. Because client organizations also require this movement between innovation and quality, the company can offer them consulting services at whichever stage of the cycle the clients find themselves. As members of one division of PMA see their clients’ gains diminishing, they might refer them to the other division.

Interdependent Opposites and Organizational Learning

Research by Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars suggests that English speaking democracies (such as the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) are characterized by:

• putting universal rules ahead of relationships
• putting individual rights ahead of community health
• dealing with complexity analytically as opposed to integratively
• awarding status on the basis of achievement rather than ascribing status on some other basis (for example, age or experience)

Each of these pairings follows the dynamics illustrated in “Values-Based Conflict”; for example, Universal Rules could be featured at the top of the diagram, with Relationships featured at the bottom. Because many groups and organizations in the West follow the pattern of valuing rules, individualism, analysis, and achievement, we could group all four of these values at the top and call them “Cluster A,” and then group relationships, community values, integration, and ascription at the bottom and call them “Cluster B.”

Organizational cultures within English-speaking democracies tend to overemphasize the Cluster A values. We can view the disciplines of organizational learning as a movement designed to compensate for this over-reliance. So, for instance, team learning emphasizes relationships and community ahead of managing or controlling individuals through the use of universal rules. Systems thinking encourages integrative thinking over analysis. Learning organizations may award status to members of the organizational community who share the community’s vision, rather than to those who achieve success according to analytically derived performance indicators.

Organizational learning practitioners thus take on the role of crusaders for values opposite to those unconsciously held by many in their organizations. Yet this crusading inevitably generates conflict with tradition-bearers. To support their crusade, practitioners may inadvertently enter into low-leverage, power-based strategies. They would do better to make the circularity of the values in contention visible to all, using the techniques described above.

Reconciliation

All groups face challenges involving opposing values. Indeed, the very nature of values and the structure of paradox lend themselves to conflict. Groups too easily see the benefit to be gained from their own values and a danger in pursuing values held by others.

The structure of paradox also encourages groups to pursue their traditional values until they experience crisis. But by definition, a crisis cannot be resolved by relying on the assumptions that originally got the organization into the situation (Mitroff et al., Framebreak). As we have seen, overemphasis on one value requires a shift to its opposite to undo harm that has been done. “Managing Opposing Values” provides examples of the results of either managing or mismanaging common pairs of opposing values. Only when these are managed well can an organization sustain itself over time.

Most diverse, complex organizations already possess the values required for building a sustained future. The challenge groups face is to reconcile these differing values—the same values that often generate the most heated conflict within the organization. Rather than experiencing differences in values as a struggle that immobilizes an organization, people should enjoy these differences as diversity that infuses the organization with vigor and variety.

Philip Ramsey is a lecturer in Training and Development and Organizational Learning at Massey University in New Zealand. He is the author of the Billlbonk series, a set of stories that teach systems thinking and organizational learning concepts.

The post The Structure of Paradox: Managing Interdependent Opposites appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

The first meeting begins with a “post-mortem” on the latest launch crisis. The team members tackle the issue with enthusiasm, jumping in with their own perspectives of what went wrong and why. At first the meeting seems to be going well, since everyone is obviously engaged in solving the problem. But as the meeting progresses, you start to feel like the group is spinning its wheels. The stories begin to resemble a jumble of personal anecdotes that share no common elements: “Well, on project X, we tried doing something new, and this is what happened…” or “This reminds me of the time when we implemented process Y and we were carrying spare parts in brown paper bags…” Lots of interesting stories are being exchanged, but they do not seem to be leading to a common understanding of the root causes.

The Storytelling Trap

Stories can be a powerful tool for engaging a group’s interest in a problem or issue. The specific details about people and events make it easy for most people to relate to stories, and they often provide a firm grounding in the day-to-day reality of the situation. But storytelling’s strength is also its Achilles heel: when we remain at event-level storytelling, it is difficult to generalize the insights to other situations, and so the solutions are often situation-specific. Without a deeper understanding of why something happened, the most we can do is find ways to react faster to similar events in the future.

FROM EVENTS TO VISION: STRUCTURED PROBLEM-SOLVING

By using a modified version of the “Vision Deployment Matrix,” a team can look at a particular problem under study from different perspectives. The “Current Reality” and “Desired Future Reality” columns allow you to differentiate between diagnosis of the current situation and proposed solutions for the future

Storytelling at Multiple Levels

One way that managers can move beyond event-level storytelling to a deeper understanding of an issue is to use a modified version of the Vision Deployment Matrix (see “Vision Deployment Matrix: A Framework for Large-Scale Change,” February 1995). In particular, applying the first two columns of the matrix (“current reality” and “desired future reality”) to a particular problem can provide a framework for both analyzing the current situation and designing an effective, long-term solution (see “From Events to Vision: Structured Problem-Solving”).

The matrix distinguishes between different levels of seeing and understanding a situation. The “Events” level captures stories about specific incidents or events that indicate a problem. The next level,“ Patterns,” expands the time horizon. At this stage, the team might ask, “Are these individual events or stories part of a larger pattern that has been unfolding over time?” Next, the “Systemic Structures” level looks at the structures that might be producing the observed pattern of behavior. Since those systemic structures are usually physical manifestations of deeply held mental models in the organization, the “Mental Models” level prompts the team to surface them. Finally, at the “Vision” level, the group considers how the vision of what the organization is creating might be influencing those mental models.

Analyzing a problem or situation from multiple levels can be useful in several ways. First, it forces us to go beyond event-level storytelling, where our ability to affect the future is low, to a perspective that offers greater leverage for creating systemic change. Second, the matrix provides a way to distinguish between different ideas and experiences (e.g., “Does this story illustrate a problem situation or a prevalent mental model?”). Finally, when the conversation does jump from events to specific systems to assumptions and so on, the matrix can provide a coherent framework for mapping everyone’s contribution in real time.

Using the Matrix

By filling in the matrix around a particular problem or issue, the team members can work together to raise their understanding from the level of events to patterns, systemic structures, mental models, and vision. For example, in the product launch situation, the team started with stories of a particular launch failure. After some discussion, the team discovered that the proper tests for verification were never conducted. But instead of going further into the details of why that process was neglected, the team can ask questions designed to draw the stories up to the patterns level, such as, “Was this indicative of a pattern that happens on all products?” Additional stories can then be used to establish whether that is indeed a pattern.

The next step is to identify the underlying structures that may currently be responsible for such behavior. In this example, the test and verification efforts all relied on a central group of people who were chronically overused by all the products under development, hence verifications were rarely done to the level specified. When the group tried to understand how engineers could justify skipping such an important step, they revealed an implicit mental model: “not knowing there is a problem and moving forward is better than knowing there is a problem and moving forward.” In short, the division had been operating according to an “ignorance is bliss” strategy.

To understand where this assumption came from, the group asked, “What is the implicit vision driving the process?” The most common answer was “to minimize unwanted senior management attention.” In other words, no one in product development wanted to have problems surface on their “watch.”

Although this team focused on the “Current Reality” column, they could also fill out the “Desired Future Reality” column by asking what kinds of new structures might be needed to prevent these problems from happening in the future.

Guiding Questions

The following set of questions can be used to guide conversations as a team moves among the different levels of perspective. In looking at current reality, it may be easier to start at the level of events (since that is where stories usually begin) and work your way up the levels. When mapping out the desired future reality, however, it may be better to begin at the level of vision and go down to the other levels so that your desired future reality is not limited by the current reality. Having said that, it is likely that in actual meetings the conversation will bounce all over the place. The main point is to use the matrix to capture the conversation in a coherent framework.

Current Reality

• What are some specific events that characterize the current reality?
• Are those specific events indicative of a pattern over time? Do other stories corroborate this repeated pattern?
• Are there systemic structures in place that are responsible for the pattern? Which specific structures are producing the most dominant pattern of behavior behind the current results?
• What mental models do we hold that led us to put such structures in place? What are the prevailing assumptions, beliefs, and values that sustain those structures?
• What kind of vision are we operating out of that explains the mental models we hold? What is the current vision-in-use?

Desired Future Reality

• What is the espoused vision of the future?
• What sets of assumptions, beliefs, and values will help realize the vision?
• What kinds of systemic structures are required (either invented or redesigned) to operationalize the new mental models and achieve that vision?
• What would be the behavior over time of key indicators if the desired vision became a reality?
• What specific events would illustrate how the vision is operating on a day-to-day basis?

By elevating the conversation from events to systems structure and beyond, this simple tool can help managers make clearer sense of their own experiences, and use those experiences to formulate more effective solutions to the problems at hand.

Daniel H. Kim is co-founder of the MIT Center for Organizational Learning, and of Pegasus Communications, Inc. He is a public speaker and teacher of systems thinking and organizational learning.

The post From Event Thinking to Systems Thinking appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

In a normal meeting we hear none of this, yet such issues are often foremost in everyone’s minds. We might discuss the new advertising campaign, next month’s budget, or the status of a project, but no one knows what is really going on with the others in the room. And by ignoring these undertones, we prevent ourselves from being fully present with each other.

As managers spend more and more time in increasingly unproductive meetings, it is becoming critical that we create environments for more productive conversations. The checking process is a quality tool for good communication that can create such an environment. Although the mechanics are extremely simple and require little time, the check-in process can dramatically increase the effectiveness of any meeting.

The check-in process is an invitation to share what is most present in participants’ minds. Each person is asked to respond to the question, “What’s on your mind right now?”

The purpose of this process is to bring concerns and issues into the open so there are no unspoken thoughts or distractions from the meeting. The check-in is an invitation to be fully present—not just present with the “official story,” but with whatever is on our minds. We are legitimately allowed into the meeting with our whole array of concerns and interests (see “The Check-in Process”). Empathic listening is an integral part of the check-in process.

Empathic listening implies adopting an open, non-judgmental stance toward the speaker and positioning ourselves in his/her situation. It means asking ourselves questions such as, “What is going on with me that encourages me to pay attention to some things and disregard others?” “How is my attitude filtering out thoughts and feelings?” “How is the speaker expressing his or her truth?” “What does this truth reveal about his or her mental models?” “What does my reaction reveal about my mental models?”

Benefits of the Process

Any time we go into a meeting, we approach it with expectations—about what the agenda is, who will say what, how the process will evolve, etc. These expectations bias our listening, so we pay selective attention to what fits our ideas and ignore what doesn’t. If we don’t put a check on this bias, we will end up in a situation where each person talks and listens to his or her own projection of who the other person is. The conversation becomes a hall of mirrors where everybody interacts with their own self-fulfilling expectations.

It is only when we speak from our hearts that we become fuller than the frozen models and presuppositions that others hold about us. It is only when we begin to listen without judgment that we open the door for a deeper understanding and dialogue.

The check-in process opens up that space for understanding and fuller communication by allowing us to bring concerns into the group. Once we acknowledge that something is on our mind, it is much easier to focus on the meeting. When we repress our concerns, we might place them out of sight, but we also place them out of control. When we express our concerns, we can actively choose to let them rest or deal with them openly. That brings our mind fully to the present experience.

For example, in one check-in, one member of the group shared that she was under a lot of stress and felt that her other commitments were more important than the meeting. At the end of the check-in, the group discussed whether it was really necessary for her to participate. Through this conversation, she understood much better why she was there and decided to stay—in spite of the group’s permission for her to leave.

In another check-in, several people said that they did not understand the purpose of the meeting and why they had been invited. At the end of the check-in, the leader explained what he believed was the objective of the meeting and the group discussed whether it made sense to continue. They agreed that there were some critical players missing and decided to postpone the meeting until those members could attend. Afterward, the leader commented that without the check-in process they would probably have wasted three hours in the meeting, without anybody understanding why they were there.

The check-in process can also be helpful for the many people who have trouble speaking in groups. For them, the process provides an opportunity to express themselves. Having their voice heard right from the start reduces any anxiety they might feel and can help them become more comfortable participating in the meeting. As one participant explained, “After you check in, the first time you talk is not really the first time but the second. You’ve already broken the ice.”

Nothing encourages people to share their views more than the knowledge that they will be listened to with empathy. We jump in and out of tasks so frantically that we often have little time left to create the field of appreciation that enables full self-expression. This type of listening can extend beyond the check-in process. Once people begin listening to each other with empathy, they simply can’t go back to their ordinary meeting style. The empathy remains even as they advocate for their views, inquire into other views, and make decisions together.

Once people begin listening to each other with empathy, they simply can’t go back to their ordinary meeting style.

One manager who tried the check-in process was shocked to see some people break down and cry as they spoke. “It’s really sad to realize how much pain and suffering there is in organizations today,” he commented later. “And the saddest thing is that no one has ever asked these people, ‘Tell me about you. Tell me what’s on your mind.’” Pain and suffering are not popular topics, but they are pervasive in corporate life. Dealing with them is a necessary step in the healing process that can lead to the creation of a learning organization.

Check-Out

The meeting is over. You are unhappy with the outcome. Vivian is upset because the meeting ran over; she will not finish her report. Bart can only think about his pregnant wife. Everybody rushes to the next meeting, hoping it won’t be as bad as this one. Later, at the water cooler or after hours over drinks, they speak their minds. In fact, that is where the real issues come out. How can we bring that reflection and processing time into the meeting, where the participants can benefit from it?

The check-out process can improve the quality of meetings by bringing closure. At the end of most meetings everyone rushes out in order to get to their next meeting. Who has the time to reflect on the process? Or to check that there is a common understanding of the situation and that the commitments are clear? Even if the final two minutes in the agenda are reserved for concluding remarks, that time is usually spent on a summary blanket statement. No space is made to include individual perspectives, to reflect on what worked or what didn’t work for each participant, or to know where each person stands. There may be issues needing further consideration, or doubts requiring further inquiry. There may be the need to talk some more.

The check-out process allows each person to say what they want, and be appreciated and celebrated by the group. They might ponder the process, consider the content, ask questions, or even make requests for further conversations.

• • •

The Native American people had a simple rule for their check-ins and check-outs (they called them “council rounds”): be brief, and speak from the heart. How would our business meetings change if we took a little time to bring ourselves fully into them? What if meetings began with everyone’s mind as present as their body? What if they finished with a note of reflection and appreciation for the time shared?

What if, in your next meeting, you shared this article with your colleagues, asked them to take a few seconds to breathe and become aware of their thoughts, and, well, you know how the process goes.

Fred Kofman is an assistant professor of accounting and management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and works at the Organizational Learning Center.

The post Check-in Check-out appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

In Japan, by contrast, cars are sold door-to-door. A salesperson visits prospective customers in their homes and shows them the various offerings. Customers then place an order, specifying the color, trim, and options they want. Back at the office, the salesperson enters the order and the customer receives the car in approximately two weeks.

However, Toyota’s management was not satisfied with the two-week delivery time. They knew their manufacturing cycle had a standard two-day turnaround time, so they commissioned a team to investigate the source of the additional delay. What they discovered was that it did indeed take only two days to manufacture the car. The remaining 12 days were spent on administrative tasks associated with processing the order!

“Invisible” Delays

The above story illustrates one of the tricky things about trying to manage a complex system — some delays can be less visible than others. Toyota spent years systematically identifying and eliminating the delays in its production process (such as buffer stocks of inventory). But delays in the office environment were much more difficult to recognize. This is because administrative processes are usually not tightly coupled, and they do not manifest themselves in the form of excess “stuff” piling up somewhere. When Toyota uncovered the administrative delay in its ordering process, it redesigned the system so that the orders could be put directly into the manufacturing system, thus reducing the processing delay.

From a systems thinking perspective, the structures that produce delays look the same in any type of system and therefore can be made visible. They are represented by accumulators (or stocks), which highlight where any kind of “stuff ” accumulates in the system, whether it be car engines or office memos (see “A Structural View of a Delay”). The key, then, to discovering significant delays is to identify important accumulators in the system.

Managing Accumulators

A semiconductor manufacturer, for example, was concerned about a sudden increase in the number of customer complaints about delivery time — especially since it had recently implemented a more streamlined customer order system that appeared to be operating smoothly.

In this new system, orders were received at the company and processed within 48 hours of receipt. The approved orders were then sent off to the manufacturing department for shipment (see “Order-Processing System”). All departments were operating within the specified time parameters, and there was plenty of inventory on hand to fill orders without creating a backlog. So why were customers complaining about lengthening delivery times? The company’s managers suspected that there might be an “invisible” delay at work.

To uncover hidden delays, we need to take a closer look at the system and make sure that all the relevant flows are being tracked. In this case, the customer order system was evaluated by how quickly paperwork was processed for each order that came into the system. As orders came in, they were checked for completeness and entered into the system. Orders that contained incomplete or incorrect information were followed up on, while completed orders were entered and forwarded to the “Orders to Ship” accumulator, which alerted the factory to ship the merchandise. Since the factory had also been streamlined, inventory was always available for shipment.

But where did those orders that contained incomplete or incorrect information go? What was missing from the original picture was another accumulator and flow that linked “Orders in Process” and “Orders to Ship” (see “Credit Bypass”). One significant category of “incomplete” orders consisted of those that required credit approval. These orders flowed from “Orders in Process” and accumulated in “Orders on Credit Hold” until they were resolved and passed on to “Orders to Ship.” Because these orders were considered “processed” by the customer order processing system, they did not show up as a problem there. If the flow into credit was small or the “Credit Hold” delay was not too long (i.e., the size of the “Orders on Credit Hold” accumulator was small), it wouldn’t have been much of a problem. But the number of orders on credit hold was becoming a significant percentage of the order flow, thereby affecting the overall delivery time.

Once a “hidden” accumulator is identified, the accumulation can be reduced by focusing on the inflows and/or outflows. (Since accumulators simply convey information about the state of a system, whereas flows indicate actions being taken, the only way to affect the state of a system is by changing the flows.)

In the case of the semiconductor manufacturer, the leverage was to focus on the criteria that determined when orders needed credit approval, and to streamline the credit approval process itself. Upon further investigation, they discovered that 90% of the orders diverted for credit checks were approved, suggesting that more orders were being run through the credit office than was necessary. By changing the approval criteria on credit orders, they were able to reduce the flow into the “Orders on Credit Hold” accumulator and dramatically reduce the overall delay.

“Collapsing” Accumulators

In general, we can think about reducing delays as a process of identifying and “collapsing” accumulators. For example, Toyota’s Just-in-Time system removed the buffer inventory at each production step and thus converted a multistage, semi-coupled production process into one continuous flow system (see “Just-in-Time Flow System” on page 7). In essence, they eliminated all the accumulators in the process between production starts and finished inventory.

When trying to reduce delays in any process, you may want to follow these steps:

1. Map out your current process by identifying all the significant accumulators and flows.

2. Check for “hidden” accumulators by investigating the outflows of each accumulator to make sure that they balance with the inflows to the accumulator and the accumulator itself. (For example, if 10 cows flow into a pasture, but the total number of cows in the field at the end of the day is 2, the flow of cows back into the barn should be at least 8. If it is less than that, there must be another outflow somewhere — like a hole in the fence!)

3. Explore why flows are being diverted to other accumulators. Could policies or processes be changed to reduce those flows?

4. Focus on the outflows from the “hidden” accumulators. Are there changes that could be made in policies or procedures to increase those flows?

The End Result

Hidden accumulators may be chewing up valuable time and resources without anyone being aware of them. By identifying and eliminating as many accumulators as possible, you can work toward creating a process where every stage is directly contributing to the value creation chain.

Daniel H. Kim Is co-founder of the MIT Organizational Learning Center and of Pegasus Communications. Inc. He is a public speaker and teacher of systems thinking and organizational learning.

Editorial support for this article was provided by Colleen P. Lannon.

The post Delays-Making the Invisible Visible appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

The teacher paused for a moment before replying, “The world is held up by a giant elephant.”

The student nodded his head and reflected on the answer in silence. A few minutes later, he spoke again.

“Teacher, what holds up the elephant?”

The teacher gave this question equal consideration, and then replied, “The elephant is held up by a great big whale.”

The student again nodded his head. But then he asked, “Teacher, what holds up the whale?”

“Ahhh, the whale is held up by a giant turtle!”

By now, the student was getting a bit perturbed and he blurted out, “But then what holds up the turtle?!”

The teacher’s eyes lit up. He paused ever so briefly before leaning over to the student and whispering, “It’s turtles all the way down.”

Looking for the Silver Bullet

We all have a tendency to believe that somewhere out there lies the answer to all of our problems. Like the student searching for a definitive answer about the foundation of reality, we search for “the root cause” as if we could find one if only we dug deeply enough. But each time we search for the cause of a problem, we uncover layers of new meanings that lead us to discover new problems.

The “Shifting the Burden” archetype helps us distinguish between solutions that address the symptoms of a problem from ones that focus on the fundamental structures or assumptions underlying the problem (see “Shifting the Burden: The ‘Helen Keller’ Loops,” September 1990). In the basic storyline of the archetype, a “problem” is addressed by applying a symptomatic solution that quickly alleviates the symptom. But by reducing the problem symptom, the symptomatic solution actually diverts attention away from more fundamental solutions. Furthermore, the symptomatic solution often produces a reinforcing side-effect that further reduces the ability to invest in more fundamental solutions.

When using the “Shifting the Burden” archetype, it is tempting to believe that whatever is put in the fundamental solution box is actually the fundamental solution. In past articles, we have pointed out that what is considered “fundamental” may differ depending on one’s point of view. For example, a manufacturing team would probably see the fundamental solution to a delivery delay problem very differently than a sales and marketing staff would. But even though we may acknowledge the importance of different perspectives, we may still believe that if we could only identify the fundamental solution, we could be done with the problem once and for all.

Multiple Fundamental Solutions

An alternative picture that is much more in line with organizational reality is shown in “‘Shifting the Burden:’ An Expanded View.” As this diagram shows, it is more accurate to think of the “Shifting the Burden” structure as an endless series of alternating symptomatic and fundamental solutions layered on top of each other—it’s balancing loops all the way down!

Oftentimes, discovering and implementing a fundamental solution uncovers deeper problems. But this does not mean that we can never hope to solve complex problems. When we have worked through an issue and uncovered the fundamental solution, we are then able to expand our perspective and see new problems and possibilities that were not obvious before.

For example, in the ’70s and ’80s, companies worked hard to address product quality issues (see “Product Quality Example”) by shifting their emphasis from inspecting-in quality (symptomatic solution, loop B6) to improving their manufacturing processes (fundamental solution, loop B7). Once the manufacturing processes were enhanced further, such efforts became a symptomatic fix relative to more fundamental improvements in product development (loop B9). But until manufacturing processes were improved, the shortcomings of the product development process were not apparent.

We-They Syndrome: The Team Dilemma

A typical problem symptom that any team may encounter is conflict among the members. Since most people do not like to be in an environment of conflict, they will try to reduce it as quickly as possible. One easy way to smooth over the conflict is to act as if everything is fine (loop B12 in “Team and Organizational Conflicts” on page 3). Although this strategy does nothing to actually build the sense of teamwork, it provides a semblance of surface calm and allows us to get things done in the short term. But over time, a culture of avoidance often develops, making it virtually impossible to address the underlying problem because no one wants to “rock the boat.”

A more fundamental solution would be to develop a true sense of team cohesiveness (loop B13). This could happen through off-sites, team activities, or extended investments in creating an open and trusting work environment. Over time, team members begin to notice that people are watching out for the interest of the whole team and not just what works for the individual. Of course, this takes longer to accomplish than just smoothing over conflicts, but it provides a more fundamental basis for the team to operate more effectively in the future.

As a team grows more cohesive, however, there is a tendency for it to see itself as separate from others in the organization. References to “us vs. them” increase as individuals identify more and more with their team and less and less with the larger organization. As this happens, others in the organization may begin to feel that the team members are putting the team’s needs before the organization’s. For example, when resources grow tight in the organization, actions by team members to garner additional resources for the group may be viewed by others as “hoarding.”

Gradually, the conflict between this cohesive team and the rest of the organization grows (B15). While these conflicts may be temporarily relieved by pulling the team closer together, this process can actually make the conflict with the larger organization worse (R17). When this happens, the fundamental solution of improving team cohesiveness becomes a symptomatic solution. This does not mean that team building efforts should stop, but rather that equal emphasis should be placed on working with the larger organization—perhaps by helping others better understand what the team is trying to accomplish in the context of the organization’s goals. Otherwise, the reinforcing effects of an ever-increasing inward focus can make it almost impossible to get the team to engage with the larger system.

Everything is Connected

Now, if the whole organization becomes as cohesive as the original team, we might think that that was the fundamental solution. But the same dynamic can actually happen to the whole organization with respect to its suppliers. As the organization’s identity grows stronger, it can become a barrier when dealing with suppliers. The same can be said with respect to customers, and so on.

With “Shifting the Burden,” as with most systems thinking tools, the value is not just in the “answer” that is generated, but in the greater understanding of the system that is gained as we go deeper into the underlying issues. The “Shifting the Burden” archetype can help us continue peeling back different layers of reality. As we become more effective at one level, it reminds us that there is always more leverage at the next level of understanding. Although it may be “turtles all the way down,” by looking carefully at the role of each one of those turtles in the larger system, we can be more effective at operating within the larger system.

Daniel H. Kim is co-founder of Pegasus Communications, Inc. and a co-founder of the MIT Center for Organizational Learning.

Editorial support for this article was provided by Colleen Lannon.

The post Shifting the Burden Revisited: Turtles All the Way Down appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

We clearly need ways of improving our thought processes, especially in groups where finding a solution depends on people first reaching a common formulation of the problem. Dialogue, a discipline for collective learning and inquiry, can provide a means for developing such shared understanding. Proponents of dialogue claim it can help groups reach higher levels of consciousness, and thus to become more creative and effective. The uninitiated, however, may view dialogue as just one more oversold communication technology.

I believe that in addition to enhancing communication, dialogue holds considerable promise as a problem-formulation and problem-solving philosophy and technology. It is a necessary vehicle for understanding the cultures and subcultures in which we live and work, and organizational learning will ultimately depend upon such cultural understanding. Dialogue thus becomes a central element of any model of organizational transformation.

If dialogue is to become helpful to organizational processes, it must be seen as accessible to everyone. In order to demystify dialogue, therefore, I’d like to focus on the process — how to get started, and how and why dialogue often breaks down — while exploring some of the issues that groups must address if they are to create an effective dialogue process.

We clearly need ways of improving our thought processes, especially in groups where the solution depends on people reaching a common formulation of the problem.

Dialogue vs. Discussion

To understand the different phases of the dialogue process, I have found it helpful to draw a road map based on Bill Isaacs’ basic model (see “Ways of Talking Together,” p. 2). The diagram maps different forms of conversation in terms of two basic paths — dialogue and discussion.

One basic question that all groups must face before entering into dialogue is, “How do we know whether discussion and/or debate is more or less desirable then dialogue? Should we always go down the dialogue path?” I would argue that discussion/debate is a valid problem solving and decision-making process only if one can assume that the group members understand each other well enough to “talk the same language.” Such a state of shared understanding, however, probably cannot be achieved unless some form of dialogue has previously taken place. The danger in premature discussion is that the group may reach “false consensus”: members assume they mean the same thing in using certain terms, but only later discover subtle differences in meaning that have major consequences for action.

Dialogue, on the other hand, is a basic process for building common understanding. By letting go of disagreement, a group gradually builds a shared set of meanings that make much higher levels of mutual understanding and creative thinking possible. As we listen to ourselves and others, we begin to see the subtleties of how each member thinks and expresses meanings. In this process, we do not strive to convince each other, but instead try to build a common experience base that allows us to learn collectively. The more the group achieves such collective understanding, the easier it becomes to reach a decision, and the more likely it is that the decision will be implemented in the way the group meant it to be.

Getting Started

In the groups that I have observed, the facilitator started by arranging the setting and then describing the concept of dialogue. The goal is to give the group enough information to understand dialogue sufficiently to begin the conversation. Next, small group discussion and reflection is used to link dialogue to past experiences of “real communication” (see “Role of the Facilitator: Setting the Context,” p. 3). This introductory session has several objectives which frame the session and allow a more effective dialogue to occur:

• Make the members feel as equal as possible. Having the group sit in a circle neutralizes rank or status differences in the group, and conveys the sense that each person’s unique contribution is of equal value.
• Give everyone a sense of guaranteed “air time” to establish their identity in the group. Asking everyone to comment ensures that all participants will have a turn. In larger groups, not everyone may choose to speak, but each person has the opportunity to do so, and the expectation is that the group will take whatever time is necessary for that to happen.
• Set the task for the group. The group should understand that they have come together to explore the dialogue process and gain some understanding of it, not to make a decision or solve an external problem.
• Legitimize personal experiences. Early in the group’s life, members will primarily be concerned about themselves and their own feelings; hence, legitimizing personal experiences and drawing on these experiences is a good way to begin.

The length and frequency with which the group meets will depend upon the size of the group, the reason for getting together, and the constraints on members. The meetings that I participated in at MIT were generally one-and-a-half to two hours long and occurred at roughly two-to-three-week intervals.

After watching various groups go through a first meeting, I often wondered how the second meeting of each group would get going. I found that the best method was to start by asking everyone to comment on “where they were at” and to go around the circle with the expectation that everyone would speak. Again, what seems to be important is to legitimize “air time” for everyone and to imply tacitly that everyone should make a contribution to starting the meeting, even though the content of that contribution can be virtually anything (see “Check-In, Check-Out: A Tool for ‘Real’ Conversations,” May 1994).

WAYS OF TALKING TOGETHER

The facilitator has a choice about how much theoretical input to provide during a dialogue session. To determine what concepts to introduce when, I have drawn a road map of the dialogue process based on Bill Isaacs’ model, which describes conversation in terms of two basic paths — dialogue and discussion.

Deeper Listening

As a conversation develops in the group, there inevitably comes a point where we sense some form of disconfirmation. Our point is not understood, or we face disagreement, challenge, or attack. At that moment, we usually respond with anxiety and/or anger, though we may be barely aware of it. Our first choice, then, is whether to allow that feeling to surface and trust that it is legitimate.

As we become more aware of these choices, we also become aware of the possibility that the feeling might have been triggered by our perception of what the others in the group did, and that these perceptions could be incorrect. Before we give in to anxiety and/or anger, therefore, we must determine whether we accurately interpreted the data. Were we, in fact, being challenged or attacked?

This moment is critical. As we become more reflective, we begin to realize how much our initial perceptions can be colored by expectations based on our cultural learning and past experiences. We do not always accurately perceive what is “out there.” What we perceive is often based on our needs, expectations, projections, and, most of all, our culturally learned assumptions and categories of thought. Thus the first challenge of really listening to others is to identify the distortions and bias that filter our own cognitive processes. We have to learn to listen to ourselves before we can really understand others. Such internal listening is, of course, especially difficult if one is in the midst of an active, task-oriented discussion. Dialogue, however, opens up the space for such reflection to occur.

Once we realize that our perception itself may not be accurate, we face a second, more fundamental choice — whether actively to explore our perception by asking what the person really meant, explaining ourselves further, or in some other way focusing specifically on the person who produced the disconfirming event. As we have all experienced, choosing to confront the situation immediately can quickly polarize the conversation around a few people and a few issues.

An alternative choice is to “suspend” our feelings to see what more will come up from ourselves and from others. What this means in the group is that when I am upset by what someone else says, I have a genuine choice between (1) voicing my reaction and (2) letting the matter go by suspending my own reaction. Suspending assumptions is particularly difficult if we perceive that our point has been misunderstood or misinterpreted. Nevertheless, I have found repeatedly that if I suspend my assumption, I find that further conversation clarifies the issue and that my own interpretation of what was going on is validated or changed without my having actively to intervene.

When a number of members of the group begin to suspend their own reactions, the group begins to go down the left-hand path toward dialogue. In contrast, when a number of members choose to react by immediately disagreeing, elaborating, questioning, or otherwise focusing on a particular trigger that set them off, the group goes down the path of discussion and eventually gets mired in unproductive debate.

Suspending assumptions allows for reflection, which is very similar to the emphasis in group dynamics training on observing the “here and now.” Bill Isaacs suggests that what we need is proprioception — attention to and living in the moment. Ultimately, dialogue helps us achieve a state in which we know our thoughts at the moment we have them. Whether proprioception is psychologically possible is debatable, but the basic idea is to shorten the internal feedback loop as much as possible. As a result, we can become conscious of how much our thoughts and perceptions are a function of both our past learning and the immediate events that trigger it. This learning is difficult at best, yet it lies at the heart of the ability to enter dialogue.

Group Dynamics

The dynamics of “building the group” occur parallel to the process of conducting the dialogue. Issues of identity, role, influence, group goals, norms of openness and intimacy, and questions of authority all have to be addressed, though much of this occurs implicitly rather than explicitly. The group usually displays all of the classical issues that occur around authority vis-à-vis the facilitator: Will the facilitator tell us what to do? Will we do what we are told? Does the facilitator have the answers and is withholding them, or is he or she exploring along with the rest of us? At what point can we function without the facilitator?

Issues of group growth and development have to be dealt with if they interfere with or confuse the dialogue process. The facilitator should therefore be skilled in group facilitation, so that the issues can be properly sorted into two categories: those that have to do with the development of the dialogue, and those that have to do with the development of the group. In my own experience, the dialogue process speeds up the development of the group and should therefore be the primary driving process in each meeting. A major reason for this acceleration is that dialogue creates psychological safety and thus allows individual and group change to occur, assuming that some motivation to change is already present (see “Containment”).

The group may initially experience dialogue as a detour from or a slowing down of problem solving. But real change does not happen until people feel psychologically safe, and the implicit or explicit norms that are articulated in a dialogue session provide that safety by giving people both a sense of direction and a sense that the dangerous aspects of interaction will be contained. If the group can work on the task or problem using the dialogue format, it should be able to reach a valid level of communication much faster.

Task vs. Process

Once a group experiences dialogue, the process tends to feed on itself. In several cases, I have been in groups that chose to stay in a circle and continue in a dialogue mode even as they tackled concrete tasks with time limits. I would hypothesize, however, that unless a dialogue group is formed specifically for the purpose of learning about itself, it eventually needs some other larger purpose to sustain itself. Continuing to meet in a dialogue format probably does not work once members have mastered the basic skills.The core task or ultimate problem, then, is likely to be the reason the group met in the first place.

Dialogue is, by definition, a process that has meaning only in a group.

The best way to think about dialogue is as a group process that arises initially out of the individual participants’ personal skills or attitudes. Dialogue is, by definition, a process that has meaning only in a group. Several people have to collaborate with each other for dialogue to occur. But this collaboration rests on individual choice, based on a certain attitude toward how to get the most out of a conversation and on certain skills of reflection and suspension. Once the group has gained those attitudes and skills collectively, it is possible to have even highly time-sensitive problem solving meetings in a dialogue format.

Most people have a general sense of what dialogue is about and have experienced versions of it in their past relationships. Therefore, even in a problem-solving meeting, a facilitator may suggest that the group experiment with dialogue. In my own experience, I have found it best to introduce early on in a meeting the idea that there are always assumptions behind our comments and perceptions, and that our problem-solving process will be improved if we get in touch with these assumptions. Consequently, if the conversation turns into too much of a discussion or debate, I can legitimately raise the question of whether or not the disagreement is based on different assumptions, and then explore those assumptions explicitly. Continually focusing the group on the cognitive categories and underlying assumptions of conversation is, from this point of view, the central role of the facilitator.

One of the ultimate tests of the importance of dialogue will be whether or not difficult, conflict-ridden problems can be handled better in groups that have learned to function in a dialogue mode. Because severe conflicts are almost always the result of cultural or subcultural differences, I would assume that initial dialogue in some form will always be necessary. Dialogue cannot force the conflicting groups into the room together, but once they are there, it holds promise for finding the common ground needed to resolve the conflicts.

Edgar H. Schein is Sloan Fellows professor of management emeritus and a senior lecturer at the Sloan School of Management. He chairs the board of the MIT Organizational Learning Center and is the author of numerous books on organization development, such as Process Consultation, Vol. 1 and 2 (Addison-Wesley, 1987, 1988).

This article is edited from “On Dialogue, Culture, and Organizational Learning” by Edgar H. Schein, which appeared in the Autumn 1993 issue of Organizational Dynamics. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, American Management Association, New York, NY. © 1993.All rights reserved.

The post The Process of Dialogue: Creating Effective Communication appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Yet Sigma Tech was stuck. Its executive team members found themselves unable to make basic decisions about how to ensure the company’s continued growth. Should it be fueled by new product introductions? What about the development of new distribution channels? Would geographic expansion work? Consistent with their values of Total Quality and empowerment, they established numerous task forces and committees. While these groups met frequently and absorbed hours of middle management time, they made few real decisions and little, if any, progress. The vice presidents were perceived as having conflicting political agendas, and the managers under them felt as if they were in the position of implementing contradictory orders. Morale was down, middle managers were frustrated, and trust between middle and upper managers was at an all-time low.

The Need for Team Learning

Scenarios like the one at Sigma Tech are all too typical in executive and management teams. Frustrated team members from different organizations share common stories about team failures:

• “Our executive team does not know how to model collaborative, productive behavior for the organization. In fact, we often model the opposite. What can we do to change this pattern?”
• “Our business success depends on our ability to break out of stovepipes and work effectively in cross-functional teams. But these teams consist of people who report to different executives with different agendas, often operating under disparate reward systems. How do we get them to work effectively together?”
• “Every major change effort we try — from Total Quality, to re-engineering, to self-managed teams — seems to produce far less than satisfactory results. After some initial success, the key teams that are implementing change get stuck.”
• “Our management team has tried several kinds of team-building activities. Everyone feels better for a little while afterward, but then we slip back into repetitive, time-consuming, and nonproductive activities that have little to do with our real work.”

These concerns raise some general questions about team performance: How can teams function optimally? And why do they become dysfunctional in the first place? In many cases, a team stagnates despite persistent and well-intentioned attempts to address key issues. Or, interventions appear to help initially, but short-term progress quickly evaporates. To create long-term improvement, a more systemic discipline of team learning needs to be developed — one that integrates existing approaches and tools while providing a framework for the creation of advanced technology that can enable teams to develop greater breadth and depth of capability over time.

A Systemic Map of Teams

For team learning to be a viable discipline in an organization, it must be linked directly to results. In other words, it must enhance a team’s ability to do its work, to make decisions, and to deal effectively with the business issues team members face every day. In this context, team learning can be defined as a team’s ongoing, systematic, and systemic activity of continually increasing its ability to create its desired results.

By carefully observing teams in operation, we have begun to identify the underlying forces that influence a team’s ability to produce results. There are at least three levels of structure that exert powerful influence on teams: Social Structures, Face-to-Face Structures, and Individual Structures. A map of the presence and interaction of these different forces can serve as a diagnostic and a planning framework to guide team learning and enhance performance (see “Levels of Structure”).

In many cases, a team stagnates despite persistent and well-intentioned attempts to address key issues. Or, interventions appear to help initially, but short-term progress quickly evaporates.

Social Structures. The organization in which the team exists, the business of that organization, and the cultural environment in which the organization operates significantly influence a team’s performance. Organizational forces that make up this social context include culture (stories, norms, acceptable behaviors), organization design (who reports to whom), and processes (how work is designed). Business forces include business and market strategies, and products and customers. Environmental forces include the industry, business environment, and culture in which the organization exists.

Face-to-Face Structures. The face-to-face structures are part of the visible work of a team that includes clarifying desired results, setting direction, managing the team process, designing and structuring activities, and executing the day-to-day tasks. Many of these activities involve and depend on effective interpersonal interactions with others, which can either support or hamper the team’s ability to produce results. For example, if a team member has questions about someone else’s thinking or actions and cannot raise those concerns in an open and constructive manner, the team’s results may be seriously compromised.

Individual Structures. Individual structures that affect team performance consist of what each person brings to his or her participation on the team. This includes the person’s genetic makeup, set of life experiences, deeply held beliefs, and mental models and feelings about “how things ought to operate around here.”

This structural framework illustrates the broad nature of the forces at play in team functioning and how these forces intersect at the face-to-face level. The face-to-face structures are thus a window through which a team can discover how broader organizational structures and deeper personal structures influence its performance.

Creative Tension: The Underlying Structure of Change

Of all the potential social, face-to-face, and individual forces at play in a given team, there are usually a few high-leverage structures that significantly influence a team’s ability to create its desired results — some combination of the social, face-to-face, and individual structures described above. By learning to identify those high-leverage structures, team members can redesign them to be more congruent with the team’s vision.

So, how can teams change their high-leverage structures in order to enhance their performance? One useful framework is the concept of creative tension. When an individual or a group of people holds a clear picture of what they want to accomplish while simultaneously maintaining an awareness of their current reality, they generate a natural tension that can be used to move the team toward its goal. The principle of creative tension suggests that teams can dramatically improve their ability to move toward their desired state by learning to do three things: 1) be clear about the results they want to create; 2) understand the underlying structural dynamics that influence their ability to create; and 3) work on changing those underlying structures in order to bring the current reality in line with the desired outcome (see “Working with Creative Tension” on page 4).

Identify and Change Structures

As team members use the principles of creative tension to identify those underlying structures that are preventing them from reaching their goals, there are opportunities to observe how those structures play out in their day-to-day interactions. The team’s challenge is to identify those structures that are most limiting, to understand their individual and collective responsibility for creating or sustaining them, and to begin to experiment with new structures and behaviors.

The face-to-face structures are the most visible and therefore the easiest to observe and reflect on. These structures are the repetitive patterns of interactions people use when they work together. They are more evident in situations where stress or conflicting views among different stakeholders are present, or when people need to ask for support or to express concern about another person’s actions. The following guidelines can help in this difficult process of identifying and changing strutures:

• Work to create real business results. Use real business issues as the forum in which the team learning occurs. Tie the team learning work directly to creating desired results; do not allow it to become an end in itself.
• Learn to see and change face-to-face structures. Learn to identify and modify the structures that guide how team members interact, do their work, and manage themselves as a team so that the structures begin to help the team achieve better results.
• Begin to see the relationships between structures. Notice the interactions between the face-to-face, organizational, and individual structures. For example, describe how team interactions are influenced by team members’ mental models and by the larger power structure in the organization.
• Learn to influence broader organizational and business structures. Identify those forces the team can change, those they can influence, and those they can recognize but not change. For example, team members can influence but not eliminate the degree of competition between their bosses, just as they can recognize the effects of, but cannot change, the organization’s reward system.

Team Learning at Sigma Tech

The approach to team learning outlined above enabled the people at Sigma Tech to gain a systemic understanding of how they were getting stuck in unproductive team structures. For example, when they viewed their company using the “Levels of Structure” diagram, they uncovered the following dynamics:

Sigma Tech’s social and business environment demanded consistent quarterly increases in revenues and profits. The organizational culture was highly competitive and characterized by a positive, “can-do” attitude — no challenge was too difficult. Their organizational and business processes reflected a high dependence on cross-functional teamwork and on informal, non-hierarchical decision making. These social forces were reinforced by underlying values of team play. The primary mental model of a “team player” was a person who was courteous and respectful, supportive of other people’s goals and efforts, and focused on potential accomplishments rather than problems.

When Sigma Tech was on a roll and times were good, things worked extremely well. But when the company was faced with increasingly tough choices and challenges, the same social structures and underlying mental models became their worst enemies. For example, because of the entrenched “can-do” attitude, Sigma Tech’s forecasting processes swept reality under the rug and continued to make overly optimistic projections, even when the market realities simply did not justify such forecasts.

On the face-to-face level, managers who felt dependent on the help of people in other parts of the company did not question or express concerns about actions being taken by others because they feared being perceived as “negative” and “not a team player.” The managers thought, “I need to support what they (other managers, departments, or functions) are doing or else they will not provide me with what I need to get my job done.” The consequence of this mental model was that ideas and possibilities for the future were constantly generated, but people held back from making choices. As a result, the company’s focus became increasingly diluted. At the same time, the underlying mental model of “team players” stopped people from confronting others when their behavior was perceived as a problem. Creative opposition was virtually missing from face-to-face interactions. Problems were masked in the spirit of, “When things get tough, we’ll all pull together and make it work!” All the while, frustration simmered and the company’s ability to generate profitable growth became increasingly strained. Finally, the bottom fell out. Revenues flattened out, profits sank, and the stock price fell over 50% within a matter of weeks.

Engaging in an Ongoing Learning Process

Through focus groups, management off-sites, dialogue sessions, and individual conversations, the Sigma Tech managers began to unravel these central issues. They started by identifying the structures that were keeping them stuck, in order to see how their own mindsets and actions were perpetuating those structures. They also worked on telling themselves the truth about the current reality while revisiting their basic values, clarifying their vision, and developing new ground rules for interpersonal interactions. Ultimately, Sigma managers began to change their underlying patterns of thought, to redesign the broader organizational processes, and to modify their face-to-face behaviors for enhanced results.

The team learning process used by Sigma Tech is both cyclical and ongoing (see “The Team Learning Cycle”). Changing the underlying team structures by establishing creative tension and closing the gap between vision and current reality is a process that builds over time. However, the manner in which a specific team engages in this learning process is influenced by its own challenges and desires. Any team may engage in this iterative process by:

• Clarifying its vision;
• Identifying one or two key visible structures;
• Learning to change these structures for enhanced performance;
• Perceiving how changes in these more visible structures affect the broader and deeper structures;
• Learning how to influence the broader and deeper structures for enhanced performance;
• Continuing this process in an ongoing, cyclical fashion.

Reflect on Results and Insights

Reflection on results and insights is an ongoing and integral part of every aspect of team learning. It is important throughout the process to step back and assess how the team has changed and where it currently stands. The greatest risk to a team as it gains momentum is its own success. Having gone through the difficult challenges of committing to, and then following through on, a path of development, a team must continue to articulate, share, and maintain its individual and collective learnings.

As we saw with Sigma Tech, this ongoing sharing and assimilation enables a team to commit itself to continuous learning, to shift its fundamental orientation from knowing to learning, and to dramatically increase its capability to produce outstanding results. Without this sharing and assimilation of learning, the team risks slowly drifting back to its old ways, or becoming frozen in a new pattern that has its own limitations.

Joel Yanowitz Is managing director of Innovation Associates. Inc. (Framingham. MA) where he helps clients design and implement organization change strategies.

Steve Ober. EdD. is a senior consultant and project leader for Innovation Associates’ team learning efforts.

David Kantor. PhD. Is a family therapist and consultant with Innovation Associates. He is also the founder and director emeritus of the Kantor Family Institute, a lecturer at the Harvard Medical School, and a consultant to the Dialogue Project at the MIT Center for Organizational Learning.

Editorial support for this article was provided by Kettle T. Wardman.

The post Creating Business Results Through Team Learning appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

“People Resist Change”

When efforts to roll out a vision statement are met with resistance or produce no tangible results, we often conclude that “people resist change.” In many organizations, this has become a corporate maxim that is often accepted without challenge. As organizations undertake change efforts — whether visioning, TQM, reengineering, or something else — much discussion and effort is usually devoted to dealing with people who are resistant to change. How do we convince them to go along with the plan? What incentives can we use to entice them to buy in?

Rather than spending time formulating strategies to deal with these “unchangeable” people, we should step back and ask ourselves, “Do they really exist?” When invited to participate in creating something they truly care about, people are usually more than willing to change — and sometimes they are even impatient with the larger organization’s inability to move fast enough toward the goal. Most people do not resist change; they resist being changed when it is imposed from the outside.

The Chasm

Designing a process for involving people in sharing a vision is only one part of the formula for success. Visioning also requires a commitment to articulating current reality with clarity and honesty — talking about daily events as they really are, not as we wish them to be. In between vision and current reality lies an enormous “chasm” that must be crossed in order to realize the desired future.

Many change efforts fail to achieve expected results because they do not strategically address ways to bridge the “chasm.” Successfully managing large-scale organizational change requires a comprehensive, broad-based approach. To bridge the gap between future and current reality, we need to be explicit about the multiple levels on which we must think and act: events, patterns of behavior, systemic structure, mental models, and vision.

Vision Deployment Matrix

The Vision Deployment Matrix offers a schema for strategically planning how to cross the “chasm” between current reality and vision by painting a comprehensive picture of the desired future reality and current reality at five levels of perspective (see “Vision Deployment Matrix”). The Vision Deployment Matrix is meant to help everyone in the organization understand the current reality, the desired future reality, the gaps between the two, and the actions that should be taken to close the gap. This includes translating the ideals of a vision into a practical reality that guides and affects not only the strategic thinking in the organization, but the day-to-day operations as well.

To see how the Vision Deployment Matrix can be used to plan a large-scale change process, let’s look at the health-care industry, and “fill in” the matrix as we create a possible action plan for achieving a new vision of healthcare.

VISION DEPLOYMENT MATRIX

The Vision Deployment Matrix offers a schema for strategically planning how to cross the “chasm” between current reality and vision by painting a comprehensive picture of the desired future reality and current reality at each level of perspective.

Start at the Vision level of Desired Future Reality. Beginning with the desired future reality is desirable because it allows us to be expansive in our thinking and not get bogged down by current reality. It also frames the effort in terms of creating “what we want” rather than eliminating “what we don’t want.”

In the healthcare industry, for example, one vision of the future that has been articulated is “the creation of healthier communities.”

Move down the multiple levels of Desired Future Reality. Staying with our focus on the desired future reality, we can flesh out what the vision means at each level by asking the following questions:

Mental Models: “What are the beliefs and assumptions that will be congruent with the vision?”

Systemic Structures: “How can we create structures that will be consistent with those beliefs?”

Patterns of Behavior: “What patterns of behavior do we want the structures to produce?”

Events: “Can we describe tangible events that would indicate that the vision had been achieved?”

By addressing these kinds of questions, we can clarify how our desired future reality will operate at multiple levels and create a more robust picture of what we want.

In our healthcare example, the mental models we might have are that we are responsible for our own health, the human body needs to be approached holistically, and prevention is the highest leverage point. Systemic structures that are consistent with those beliefs might be smaller, more individualized service providers, self-help prevention programs, and networked information systems that contain fully integrated health profiles for each person. The patterns we might hope to see are a steady decrease in preventable diseases and less reliance on symptomatic treatments. At the level of events, we would envision patients interacting with doctors in two-way conversations that are mutually respectful of each other’s role and responsibility for the patient’s health.

Begin describing Current Reality at the level of Events. When we move to describing current reality, we want to start at the level of events because it is usually fairly easy to rattle off “today’s news” that characterizes the current system. We can then move up through the other levels.

In healthcare, the current system can be described as one where patients sit passively while the expert “treats” them. People are bounced from one physician to the next as each specialist tries to diagnose a singular or localized cause for an ailment. These events are characterized by a pattern of behavior that has shifted the burden of wellness from the patient to the medical expert. The predominant structures that support and produce these behaviors are the doctor-patient relationships, the narrow specialties, large hospitals that treat symptoms instead of people, and a system that has no direct feedback connection between the customer, the supplier, and the payer. These structures are the manifestations of a worldview that sees the human body as a collection of parts that are to be treated when they “break down.”

Articulate the operating (tacit) Vision in Current Reality. Although there may never have been an explicit vision, there is usually a tacit vision that is guiding the current reality. That is, when we look at the mental models, structures, patterns, and events, it appears as if they are being guided by an implicit vision of the way things ought to be. In healthcare, for example, the industry acts as if guided by a vision of being a disease treatment system, where the emphasis is on efficient diagnosis and treatment of health breakdowns.

Identify Gaps or Challenges at each level. After filling in each cell under Desired Future Reality and Current Reality, we want to highlight the gaps or challenges that surface at each level.

Formulate Action Steps to close the Gaps. For each of the gaps identified, formulate the actions that will begin addressing them at each level.

In between vision and current reality lies an enormous “chasm” that must be crossed in order to realize the desired future.

Establish Indicators of Progress. In any change effort, we need ways to measure our progress. We want to be able to answer the question, “How do we know when we have arrived?” It may also be helpful to establish appropriate time frames in which to expect progress at each of the levels.

Continual and Iterative Process. Although the steps outlined above have been presented in a linear fashion, the vision deployment process is a continual and iterative process. The emphasis should not be so much on whether we have the matrix filled in “just right,” but rather on the diligence with which we are focusing our efforts to continually clarify what goes in every part of the matrix.

Where Is the Leverage?

Our ability to influence the future increases as we move from the level of events to vision. This does not, however, mean that high-leverage actions can only be found at the higher levels. Leverage is a relative concept, not an absolute. When someone is bleeding, the highest leverage action at that moment is to stop the bleeding, not to formulate a vision of that person being completely healed. As we shift from looking at events to looking at shared vision, however, the focus moves from being present-oriented to being future-oriented. Consequently, the actions we take at the higher levels have more impact on future outcomes than on present events. (See “Summary of Action Modes” on p. 4, for an explanation of the types of actions that are characteristic of each level.)

In addition, our understanding of a situation at one level can feed back and inform our awareness at another level. Events and patterns of events, for example, can cause us to change systemic structures and also challenge our vision. The key to successful large-scale change is to operate at all levels simultaneously as much as possible.

The Implementation Challenge: From Vision to Reality

Articulating a compelling vision and building commitment around it marks the beginning of the journey, not the end. The greater challenge that lies ahead is to actualize the vision in every aspect of organizational life. There needs to be a clear and coherent strategy for making the vision a reality at multiple levels of the organization, including all divisions, departments, and teams. The bottom line is that in order for this work to be effective, it must be done by individuals at each level of the organization.

Top management may begin the deployment process by using the Vision Deployment Matrix to articulate a vision for the organization, but they also need to take the next step and invite those at the operating divisions to articulate what the vision means to them. Those managers, in turn, must invite those at the departmental level to articulate what the vision means to them, and so on (see “Organizational Deployment: An Action Plan” on p. 5).

Ultimately, visions must be real and meaningful to all those involved in order for them to be compelling and successful in transforming an organization. Although the vision deployment process may appear intensive and arduous, it is the shortest path to building an enduring shared vision. As many failed attempts at mandating visions from the top have shown, there are no short-cuts to building true shared vision. Simply put, no one can demand commitment from someone else. It is a personal choice that, once made, can be a powerful catalyst for change.

Daniel H. Kim, publisher of The Systems Thinker, is co-founder of the MIT Organizational Learning Center, where he is currently Learning Lab Research Project Director.

ORGANIZATIONAL DEPLOYMENT: AN ACTION PLAN

The post Vision Deployment Matrix: A Framework for Large-Scale Change appeared first on The Systems Thinker.