THE SYSTEMS GENEALOGY

This is the map of the various systems methodologies, methods, and techniques. Click here to see an expanded version.

Over the years, I’ve found that starting with methods, whether causal loop diagrams or Soft Systems Methodology or Social Network Analysis, often confuses or exasperates novices. Learning one of the above methods is expensive in terms of time, intellectual resources, and effort. Newcomers have enough on their plates without adding yet more things to learn. Furthermore, no single method will equip them with the power of the systems field. Indeed, the statistician George Box is quoted as saying, “All models are wrong. Some models are useful.” If that is so, then should we abandon trying to teach methods to the novice and focus on overarching systems principles?

Yet exploring systems concepts purely at the level of principle, generalization, and especially metaphors such as “machine vs. biological” doesn’t really survive close ontological scrutiny. It has probably been one of the reasons for the field’s reputation in some quarters for vagueness, imprecision, and restating the obvious in obscure ways.

So we have a tension between methods and principles. Without resolving this tension, I believe that we risk having newcomers hesitate or even lose interest in the systems field because of the perceived difficulty and steep learning curve. They will unfortunately miss out on the benefits the systems field offers. The systems field also loses opportunities for cross-fertilization from other fields, for instance, new methodologies in the international development and evaluation fields.

A way around the tension is to acknowledge the existing skills of newcomers and use systems principles as a starting point that can, when necessary, guide them to choose methods that match their skills and situations. The process could go something like this:

1. Apply some basic principles that underpin the systems field to existing, established practice in the new person’s field of expertise (e.g., geography, evaluation, organizational development).
2. If operating at the principles level is insufficient for the task in hand, then adopt, in whole or in part, specific methodologies, methods, and techniques from the systems field. For instance, people often find that the CATWOE (Customers, Actors, Transformation Power, Worldview, Owner, Environmental Constraints) mnemonic from Soft Systems Methodology a good way to order their thoughts when addressing key aspects of a problem situation.

These ideas became the organizing framework for Richard Hummelbrunner and my recent book, Systems Concepts in Action: A Practitioner’s Toolkit (Stanford Business Books, 2010). But first we had to deal with the bad news. As we know, there is no consensus about the core principles that underpin the systems field. So where could we start?

Three Core Concepts

For guidance, Richard and I reached back to a meeting the Kellogg Foundation funded some years ago. This meeting brought together practitioners from across a broad spectrum of the systems field, including soft systems, critical systems, complex adaptive systems, viable systems, system dynamics, and activity systems. Our task at that meeting was to explore what we had in common. After a couple of days, something concrete emerged. We came to the conclusion that underpinning all systems methodologies, methods, and techniques were three interwoven concepts: interrelationships, perspectives, and boundaries.

There was nothing startlingly new about this finding. In fact, as Gerald Midgley indicated in his book Systemic Interventions (Klewer, 2000), these concepts can be described in terms of the waves in the development of systems practice over the past 50 years.

Until the late 1960s, the focus of the systems field was very much on interrelationships. In many ways, this timeframe represented the “wiring diagram” phase of thinking systemically, with variations on boxes linked by arrows, often resulting in complicated schemata.

By the early 1970s, it was clear that the concept of interrelationships, while important, was not neutral. The relative importance of particular interrelationships often depended on the different perspectives through which people observed the system. Thus systemic thinking began to include the implications of applying different perspectives to the same situation.

However, by the mid-1980s, it was concluded that perspectives were not neutral either. Perspectives influence what we see to be relevant or not; they determine what is “in” the frame and what lies “outside” it. Whoever defined the dominant perspective controlled the boundary of a systemic inquiry or intervention. Thus, the importance of studying boundaries and critiquing boundary decisions (including those who made them) is the third core concept underpinning a systems approach.

So let’s look at each of these concepts in turn. In particular, we’ll contemplate how they can be expressed in ways that may be applicable outside the systems field and across other fields and disciplines.

Interrelationships

Many newcomers to the systems field are familiar with the idea of interrelationships. How things are connected and with what consequence stems from the earliest thinking about systems. It is also the concept most strongly embedded in the popular imagination. When we talk about the education system or the health system, we imagine a set of objects and processes that are interconnected in some way. The popularity of system dynamics and complex adaptive systems cements the notion of interrelationships as an important systems concept.

However, systemic thinking doesn’t concern itself with just any interrelationships. It focuses on particular aspects of them:

• Dynamic Aspects — how the interrelationships affect the behavior of a situation over a period of time
• Non-Linear Aspects — how the scale of effect of interrelationships is apparently unrelated to their scale and is often but not always caused by feedback
• Sensitivity of Interrelationships to Context — how the same interrelationship in different contexts or areas has varying results, making it unreliable to translate a “best practice” from one situation to another
• Massively Entangled Interrelationships — how interrelationships can result in simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic behaviors

These ideas are familiar to the experienced systems practitioner but just obscure jargon to the uninitiated. Richard and I needed an alternative way of expressing these general ideas, one that would be easily applied across disciplines and without great technical knowledge of systems concepts, while at the same time avoiding overgeneralization. Our solution was to phrase these as questions implied by thinking systemically about interrelationships:

• What is the structure of the interrelationships within the situation (e.g., resources, stakes, stakeholders, knowledge)?
• What are the processes between elements of that structure?
• What is the nature of the interrelationships (e.g., strong, weak, fast, slow, conflicted, collaborative, direct, indirect)?
• What are the patterns that emerge from these interrelationships in action, with what consequences and for whom?
• Why does this matter? To whom? In what context?

These are not definitive questions, but I have found them a good place from which to help people new to systems concepts consider how they can make their existing practice more systemic.

Perspectives

However, a systemic approach is more than describing how boxes and arrows fit together or networks operate. Just looking at interconnections does not make an inquiry or intervention systemic. It is also important to consider how you look at the interrelationships. People will see and interpret them in different ways.

We frequently overlook that fact that our perceptions promote behaviors that affect the way a situation unfolds. What we see as unintended consequences often result from our unwillingness to understand or explore other people’s perceptions. Many times, somebody, somewhere actually intended the result that we consider problematic. Thus we cannot comprehend the dynamics of a situation without identifying and understanding the range of relevant perspectives that lie behind and in front of it.

I find it helpful for newcomers to distinguish between two forms of perspective: stakeholders and stakes. Stakeholders are groups of people or things that have a common role in a situation or intervention (e.g., teachers, consumers, writers). In contrast, stakes relate to individual values and motivations (e.g., wealth, honor, fairness, historical narratives). People belonging to different stakeholder groups may share the same stakes, and any one stakeholder grouping will contain within it several different (perhaps conflicting) stakes. Assessing how people juggle their own conflicting stakes goes a long way to understanding behavior in certain situations.

For instance, in writing this article, I’d be considered an author in stakeholder terms, and you might be considered a reader. I might also be considered a consultant, and you an academic or manager. However, regardless of my stakeholder identity, I have a range of stakes in this article: Knowledge — I want to improve the understanding of systems concepts. Ego — I’d like to earn some recognition for my thoughts. Economic — I’d like to earn some money by selling books or persuading you to hire me. You, the reader, might be reading this for similar reasons, say knowledge and economic (gaining knowledge that you can use to earn money). So, we may be different stakeholders, but some of us will share the same stakes in this small endeavor. To understand the impact of this article in the medium term, an understanding of the stakes at play may be more reliable than an understanding of the stakeholders.

Deliberating on the impact of different stakeholders and stakes gives us an opportunity to reframe issues (see “Perspectives: Stakes, Stakeholders, and Framing”). And different ways of reframing a situation can make apparently insoluble issues of stakes and stakeholders resolvable. For instance, Russ Ackoff once helped a manufacturer reframe what it considered an industrial relations issue into an economic cycle issue. This reframing gave the business space for creating an entirely new product line and in doing so solve (or in Russ’s terms “dissolve) the industrial relations issue.

Again, Richard and I sought ways to express these general concepts in terms of questions. We have found that variations on the following queries are helpful for newcomers:

• Who or what are the key stakeholders within the situation?
• What are the key stakes?
• What are the different ways in which the situation can be understood or framed? By whom?
• How are these different framings going to affect the way in which stakeholders act, especially when things go wrong from their perspective?

Boundaries

Holism, in the sense of including everything, is an impossibility. Every endeavor has to set boundaries — make choices between which relationships to include and which to exclude, which perspectives to honor and which to marginalize. Setting boundaries is not optional.

A boundary differentiates between what is “in” and what is “out,” what is deemed relevant and what is irrelevant, what is important and what is unimportant, what is worthwhile and what is not, who benefits and who is disadvantaged. Boundaries are the places where values get played out and disagreements are highlighted. A lot of power issues get wrapped up in boundaries — just as the person with the magic marker controls what goes on the whiteboard, the person whose perspective dominates a project decides the boundaries.

Accepting that thinking systemically about perspectives and interrelationships involves boundary choices implies that we must take a deliberate and critical approach to boundary identification and selection. Deliberations about whom or what to exclude have considerations both ethical (e.g., an obligation to do no harm) and pragmatic (e.g., the tendency of those excluded to oppose and resist). We have found the following questions a good place to start boundary discussions:

• Which interrelationships are privileged and which are marginalized? With what effect on whom?
• What perspectives (i.e., stakeholders, stakes, framings) are privileged and which are marginalized? With what effect on whom?
• How can we manage the ethical, political, and practical consequences of these decisions, especially those that cause harm or have the potential to cause harm because they exclude an interrelationship or perspective?

The last question of course raises the further question of what kind of harm to whom. Hence the iterative nature of boundary questions; they raise the possibility that you may need to reassess your initial judgments on interrelationships and boundaries (see “Four Key Boundary Decisions”)

Part Two: Some Methods Are Useful

So our newcomers have a dozen questions from which to start their systemic inquiry. While these might be a starting point, we need to provide a blueprint for what to do with them. Because interrelationships, perspectives, and boundary issues are closely interwoven, is the best idea to throw the questions randomly at the situation and see what happens? Or can practitioners pick and thread them in a useful order?

How can practitioners move beyond the “generalization trap” that is inevitable when operating purely at the principle level? And what about all those systems methods that people in the field have spent so much time and energy developing? How can they be a resource to newcomers? How can they mix and match the systems methods to suit different stages of a systemic inquiry?

These are important questions. Below I suggest a heuristic that attempts to address these issues. I also suggest some systems methodologies, methods, and techniques that could be particularly relevant for each stage. The suggestions are examples; the list is not comprehensive. I draw on methodologies Richard and I covered in our book. There are others that could serve equally well. Nor is any approach restricted to the particular step I’ve identified. Consider the suggestions as a proxy for “approaches like these.”

The heuristic has four steps that loop back on each other:

1. Construct a rich picture of the situation of interest
2. Frame the situation
3. Consider the ethical and pragmatic consequences of these framings
4. Assess the dynamics of the situation

Step 1: Construct a rich picture of the situation of interest

The process of constructing a rich picture of the situation of interest draws from Soft Systems Methodology, although many systems approaches have similar concepts. The following two perspective questions offer a good place to start with constructing the picture:

• Who or what are the key stakeholders within the situation?
• What are the key stakes?

The responses will give you information for three interrelationship questions:

• What is the structure of the interrelationships within the situation (e.g., resources, stakes, stakeholders, knowledge)?
• What are the processes between elements of that structure?
• What is the nature of the interrelationships (e.g., strong, weak, fast, slow, conflicted, collaborative, direct, indirect)?

In essence, this first step provides the ingredients for the remaining three steps. This rich picture will be messy and overly detailed, and it will contain multiple perspectives and unidentified boundaries. Because of the risk of getting lost in this noise, at this stage, you might consider drawing on established systems methods.

Possible systems methods, methodologies, and techniques

Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) has useful techniques that enable a deep exploration of perspectives. Because Outcome Mapping focuses on changes in social actors, many people find it brings a good deal of rigor to identifying how they are contributing to an overall result when it is difficult to assign definite causal routes between an intervention and a broader long-term goal. Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model (VSM) poses questions that can help you explore information flows through organizations. The various methods that cluster under social network analysis and causal loop diagramming can aid in exploring a system’s core structural components.

Step 2: Frame the situation

Having completed Step One, the task now is to consolidate to possible ways of framing the situation.

• What are the different ways in which you can understand or frame this situation?

This step marks the first attempt to make sense of the emerging picture and to break the task down into manageable chunks. For instance, if your rich picture is concerned with violence at a rock concert, there will be several ways of framing the situation that considered separately and together may help you address the problem (e.g., entertainment, income generation, cultural identity, drug consumption, marketing, event management) (see “Perspectives: Framing”).

Possible systems methods, methodologies, and techniques

PERSPECTIVES: FRAMING

If you are concerned with aspects of violence at rock concerts, then framings of the concert as entertainment, income generation, cultural identity, drug consumption can help address that problem.

Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is a well-established approach largely driven by developing and analyzing different ways of framing a situation. Strategic Area Assessment, a regional planning approach developed in Europe, assesses a situation from a variety of different framings. Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), developed initially in Europe and the US, explores the interaction of different motivations within a given situation.

Step 3: Consider the ethical and pragmatic consequences of these framings

Framings imply value judgments about what is relevant and what is to be ignored. These boundary decisions have ethical and pragmatic dimensions that practitioners need to make explicit and deliberate on.

• Which interrelationships are privileged and which are marginalized? With what effect on whom?
• What perspectives (i.e., stakes, stakeholders, framings) are privileged and which are marginalized? With what effect on whom?
• How can we manage the ethical and practical consequences of these boundary choices and decisions, especially those that cause harm or have the potential to cause harm?

In essence, this step challenges you to deliberate on and critique your framing of the situation. In a subsequent iteration, it might force you to reconsider ways of addressing the situation.

Possible systems methods, methodologies, and techniques

This step can benefit greatly from systems approaches based on bringing together opposing or contradictory perspectives to force deep deliberations that enhance creative or innovative thinking. These include Systemic Questioning, Strategic Assumption Surfacing and Testing (SAST), CHAT, SSM, Circular Dialogue, Proposal One-and-a-Half, and Convergent Interviewing.

Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) takes this dialectical approach even deeper by critiquing how and where we draw boundaries that have significant social and environmental consequences. In particular, it explores the boundaries that surround decisions of purpose, decision making, knowledge, and legitimacy and the tension between the existing situation and different views on how it should develop over time.

Step 4: Assess the dynamics of the situation

Having assessed and critiqued the way in which you understand the situation, the next step is to understand the behavior taking place and to assess the reality of the framings and boundary choices on how the situation actually develops and behaves.

• How are these different framings and boundary choices going to affect the way in which people act within the situation, especially when things go wrong from their perspective?
• How will these individual behaviors affect the overall behavior of the situation? With what result and significance?
• What are the patterns that emerge from these processes? With what consequences for whom? Why does this matter? To whom? In what context?

These last two questions effectively steer you back toward reconsidering Steps 1, 2, and 3; especially Steps 2 and 3. The task is to see if certain negative aspects of the situation can be “swept in” to the system as now defined in a way that continues to serve its positive aspects (which of course is a matter of perspective and boundary setting).

Possible systems methods, methodologies, and techniques

System dynamics is an established approach to exploring how a situation will develop over time due to issues of feedback and delay. The Cynefin framework developed by Cynthia Kurtz and David Snowden and the Containers, Differences and Exchanges (CDE) model developed by Glenda Eoyang have helped many people understand more clearly how to handle the simple, complicated, and complex dynamics present in any given situation. Process Monitoring of Impacts, developed by Richard Hummelbrunner, is a hybrid method that seeks to identify core dynamics within a situation. Assessments of dynamics are heavily dependent on people’s assumptions about the situation and how to address it. SAST, Scenario Technique, and the Rand Corporation’s Assumption-Based Planning all contain questions that can help tease out important assumptions from the unimportant ones.

Part Three: All Methods Are Wrong. Some Methods Are Useful.

By the title of this article, “All Methods Are Wrong. Some Methods Are Useful,” I didn’t intend to criticize method per se or privilege some methods over others. The purpose of the title was to provide a space to addresses the tension between the general and the specific, as well as explore a means by which newcomers can learn to apply ideas that lie at the core of the systems field. I’ve filled that space with an approach that can be used at the level of systems concepts or as a means to help guide newcomers to the potential of specific systems methods. In our book, Richard Hummelbrunner and I take this one step further by proposing additional questions that we think further help people select specific systems methods. We believe that posing questions to identify the utility of particular methods in a systemic inquiry can guide both the newcomer and the more experienced practitioner toward appropriate use. It also advances the idea that no method will be useful in all circumstances and promotes the intelligent and informed use of multiple methodologies and methods in a systemic inquiry.

Bob Williams is a consultant based in New Zealand. He works all over the world, largely promoting the use of systems ideas in the evaluation field. Bob is the coauthor, with Richard Hummelbrunner, of Systems Concepts in Action: A Practitioner’s Toolkit (Stanford Press 2010), a compendium of 20 systems methodologies, methods, and techniques. He’d like to thank Martin Reynolds, Richard Hummelbrunner, Ricardo WilsonGrau, Heather Britt, Irene Guijt, Jan Noga, Gerald Midgley, and Patricia Rogers for their assistance in developing this article.

Go HERE for information on many of the approaches in this article.

The post All Methods Are Wrong. Some Methods Are Useful. appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Systems thinking replaces reductionism (the belief that everything can be reduced to individual parts) with expansionism (the belief that a system is always a sub-system of some larger system), and analysis (gaining knowledge of the system by understanding its parts) with synthesis (explaining its role in the larger system of which it is a part). According to Russell Ackoff, analysis is useful for revealing how a system works, but synthesis reveals why a system works the way it does.

Many methodologies are derived from the systems thinking worldview, including interactive planning, soft systems thinking, and system dynamics. Regardless of the approach, the essence of systems thinking is encapsulated in the concept of systemic wholeness, which is grasped by looking at the whole instead of the parts. A system involves an interconnected complex of functionally related components. Failing to consider the systemic properties as derived from the interaction of the parts leads to sub-optimization of the performance of the whole.

With systems thinking, managers and designers learn how the parts of their organization interact, not how they perform independently. Otherwise, unintended consequences may emerge as changes made within one part of the system may adversely affect other parts. Often, these new problems are much worse than those addressed initially. Ackoff suggested that, for this reason, many performance-improvement initiatives fail and actually throw fuel on the fires they seek to extinguish.

Design Thinking Defined

In recent years, a great interest in “design thinking” has developed. But design in management is not something new. Design philosophy has its roots in Egyptian and Mesopotamian bureaucracies. Even Taylorism was considered a new design philosophy in the early 20th century! Currently, many contrasting concepts of the design process and what makes someone a designer exist. Additionally, many organizations are cited as examples of companies promoting a design thinking culture (for example, P&G). What does this mean?

In 1971, designer and educator Victor Papanek wrote: “All men are designers. All that we do, almost all the time, is design, for design is basic to all human activity. The planning and patterning of any act towards a desired, foreseeable end constitutes the design process. Any attempt to separate design, to make it a thing-by-itself, works counter to the inherent value of design as the primary underlying matrix of life. . . . Design is the conscious effort to impose meaningful order.”

He further asserted that the general design function must incorporate considerations of Methods (tools, processes); Use (does it work?); Need (real vs. evanescent requirements); Telesis (reflection of the times and conditions surrounding the project); Association (psychological connections with aspects of the project); and Aesthetics (shaping colors, textures, etc. into pleasing forms). More than 30 years later, professor of design studies Nigel Cross pointed out that designers have specific abilities to “produce novel unexpected solutions, tolerate uncertainty, work with incomplete information, apply imagination and forethought to practical problems and use drawings and other modeling media as means of problem solving.”

The term “design thinking” now generally refers to applying a designer’s sensibility and methods to problem solving, no matter what the problem is. IDEO’s Tim Brown explains that, from this perspective, it is not a substitute for the art and craft of designing, but rather “a methodology for innovation and enablement.” Lately, some in the management sciences think that a lot can be learned from the way designers think and “know” that could help us with innovative solutions.

American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce made the case that when new data exists, and that data doesn’t neatly fit into a currently understood model, the first activity the mind performs is to wonder. Wondering, as opposed to observing, is the key to abductive reasoning, as opposed to deductive or inductive reasoning. Abductive reasoning is the act of creatively thinking about what can be done with the data in order to orient it to the current environment. Since the data is new, practitioners have no method of reliably determining the appropriate method of dealing with it; therefore, they must rely on a “logical leap of the mind” to make sense of it.

In a recent interview, Roger Martin described design thinkers as “willing to use all three kinds of logic to understand their world.” He explained that neither analytic nor intuitive thinking alone is enough to sustain competitive advantage since each, while providing tremendous strength, also creates systemic weakness if applied in isolation. He also made clear that the goal of abductive reasoning is not to declare a conclusion to be true or false. Instead, it is to posit what could possibly be true. It is this mode of thinking that allows a designer to seek out new ways of doing things, challenge old approaches, and infer what might be possible. It offers the careful, balanced application of the reliable lessons of the past and the logically valid leaps of what might be in the future.

Design thinkers bridge these two worlds and work to make the abductive logic explicit so they can share and refine it. Information systems and cognitive science professor Fred Collopy recently wrote in Fast Company: “If thinking is at the center of the activity that we want to encourage, it is not the kind of thinking that doctors and lawyers, professors and business people already do. It is not a feet up, data spread across the desk to be absorbed kind of thinking. It is a pencil in hand, scribbling on the board sort of thinking.” While that depiction may be obvious to those close to the design thinking process already, it is not what folks conjure up when they first hear the phrase. Our institutions provide little or no formal training in the creative design process.

The appeal of design thinking lies in its human-centered heuristics and growing track record of success. We can cite numerous examples, such as those produced by IDEO, a California company that has designed many successful products. As we read about the application of design thinking in the business world, we find that it is most often applied to product-oriented problems despite its value to services, systems, and processes. While successful applications do exist in these areas, they are less commonly highlighted. And while the strengths of taking a design approach are seen in the successful outcomes, the term is so common that it risks becoming yet another meaningless, fashionable concept without true business value.

The Role of Design in Systems Thinking

Design in systems thinking is not the same as design in design thinking. Many divergent views exist on design within the systems process; however, there is agreement on a number of underlying principles that systems thinkers follow when planning toward a desired future. While a full explanation of these principles goes beyond the scope of this article, systems thinkers generally aim to do something today to improve the system tomorrow.

In systems thinking, design is a creative act that attempts to estimate how alternative sets of behavior patterns would serve specified goals. In the systems community, design has become the preferred approach to problem solving and planning for a variety of reasons: the belief in the synthetic mode of thought, the idea that the future is subject to creation (design being the creative process), the concept that you need to dissolve problems (and not solve them) through redesign of the system, etc.

To understand the role of design in systems thinking, let’s look at Ackoff’s view on planning. Ackoff describes four orientations to planning: Reactivism, Inactivism, Preactivism, and Interactivism. Reactivist planners embrace the past. Inactivist planners are generally satisfied with the way things are in the present and want to avoid making mistakes within the current system; they seek to avoid errors of commission. Preactivist planners are unsatisfied with the past as well as the current environment and seek change. They attempt to understand all aspects of the future that may affect the success of their intervention; they want to avoid errors of omission. Finally, interactive planners believe the future is subject to creation. They think the best means of revealing a desirable future is by enabling the stakeholders to do it themselves.

Not surprisingly, Ackoffian systems thinkers embrace the interactive planning perspective. They believe our failures are often due to misguided assumptions made when planning for how our future ought to be. They think knowledge of the past does not enable us to solve complex problems, and they seek to avoid both errors of commission and omission. We can say that interactive design is the execution of design thinking with a systems worldview.

On Designing, With and Without the Systems Worldview

Kenneth C. Bausch said that: “To accomplish its goals, system design cannot be a top-down operation nor can it be expert driven. It must actively involve the stakeholders of the design in shaping a shared vision that represents their ideas, aspirations, values and ideals.” Taking this view, someone who plans, redesigns, manages, and organizes social systems must embrace a systems worldview. And given this reality, it is the role of the stakeholders in the design process that separates the systems thinkers’ approach to design from that of the design thinker.

We believe we have identified the core differences in the systems thinking and design thinking approaches to problem resolution:

• Design thinking methodologies arose from the consideration of products and artifacts. The problems are ultimately resolved by people identified as designers by trade. The design team observes and studies the stakeholders.
• Systems thinking methodologies arose from the consideration of social systems. The stakeholders are the designers.

The good news is that design thinkers are moving away from the “First Generation of Design,” where the act of designing is the prerogative of a certain talented group called “designers.” The First Generation Design methods rely heavily on the idea that professionals hold knowledge that is critical to the design and inaccessible to the user. Professionals create a design and are under no obligation to go further. This approach is the one typically taken in the past in the design of operating systems. The designer developed an operating system design on paper, and supplied all the documentation and blueprints to a contractor, who converted the paper design to a physical system. The designer figuratively threw the design over the “wall” that separated the professional design organization from the contractor or user.

Designers today more often operate from the “Second Generation of Design.” They recognize the need for collaboration among designers and external perspectives to guide them. For example, IDEO’s Deep Dive methodology made it standard practice for designers to gain input from many different stakeholders, including the end user. The design team observes and interacts within the larger system before going back to the design table to piece the data together and design a solution. Such ethnographic and anthropological studies have added tremendous value to the solutions that are generated. This is where design thinking today seems to incorporate some aspects of systems thinking.

This approach still has its risks, however. Even though there are many perspectives involved in parts of the design process, the stakeholders give input solely from their individual experiences and never see how it fits into the whole system. The designers’ role is still to piece it all together. They need to get into the heads of the stakeholders and attempt to interpret what they think. Because neither the organization nor the end user has been involved in the entirety of the design process, the designers need to elicit their buy-in. They also risk missing a key stakeholder group. We caution that unintended consequences often occur when interdependent pieces of the larger system have not been consciously considered in the context of the whole system. It is in the use of what Tim Brown describes as the “designer’s sensibility…to meet people’s needs” where this form of design thinking strays from the systems thinking worldview.

In a recent blog post, designer Kevin McCullagh said, Let’s forget about design thinking as a magic process, and focus on how designers and managers should best work together to deliver great quality outputs.” The systems thinking worldview offers a method of doing just that. We propose that by taking this approach, design thinkers can move into a “Third Generation of Design,” which builds in a purposeful consideration of systems thinking principles. It addresses many of the challenges of trying to get into the heads of others. A successful design is therefore not one that is imposed on or provided to the organization from a source external to the system. The best way to ensure that the design will serve the organization’s purpose is to include the stakeholders in its formulation. Hence, the success of a design is directly related to the level of stakeholder participation in its development.

In the “Third Generation of Design,” the stakeholders are the designers. They are not external sources of input. Instead, they are the concept generators and implementers. An underlying principle of interactive planning is that people must be allowed to plan for themselves. The process involves the interaction of groups of individuals with diverse values. The design facilitator creates an environment where these differing views are honored within the context of the larger system. Creating a shared vision of the future can also be described as finding “common ground,” a place where participants are able to get past the current situation and make decisions based on what is good for the system. In fact, designing creative solutions becomes much more straightforward if the practitioner is able to address the conflicts that arise due to differing stakeholder values, beliefs, and worldviews.

By empowering all stakeholders from the beginning, it is possible to tap the creative energy of every participant so that innovative ideas emerge from the collective of the differing perspectives. One thing that design practitioners using a systems approach bring to the table is the ability to help an organization take ownership of the ideas that emerge through the design process. This is a critical consideration for today’s designers. It is much more likely that the ideas generated will be implemented and maintained if the stakeholders involved are the ones who came up with the solutions in the first place. When people within an organization have had input throughout a change process and believe they have influenced its direction, the resistance to new ideas dissipates.

Designers must help participants uncover their underlying assumptions about the problem they think needs to be solved. Often, cultural assumptions and traditions contribute to the dilemma. Cultural assumptions include those specific to leadership, both formal and informal, which can have an effect on how people approach the assumed problem. Designers applying systems thinking principles can support participants in recognizing the assumptions they and the organization hold. In this way, they can provide them with the means to develop a new framework and shared worldview.

An Integrated Approach to Problem Resolution

In 2009, leaders at the Johns Hopkins Hospital anticipated its 2011 relocation to new multi-billion dollar quarters. Hospital administrators could have enlisted “design thinking” folks to look at the needs of the different units, gather ethnographic data, and then lay out a plan with recommendations for the relocation. Instead, the Johns Hopkins team took a different tack. Members looked at the move as an opportunity to redesign their current situation into a more desired future. The hospital would upgrade its system as it upgraded its physical environment. Their change would be systemic and not purely geographic.

Championed by a number of VPs, the hospital formed design teams comprised of the hospital’s stakeholders. They defined stakeholders to mean anyone who could either impact or be impacted by the decisions made in the design teams, including not only administration and management, but representatives from all of the hospital’s units, such as doctors, nurses, technicians, customer services representatives, and custodial staff. Most important, the design teams included the end users: the patients.

Before starting, the teams attended a short course on systems thinking. The orientation created a shared understanding of how the hospital operated as a system. Facilitators also shared information and data from research that had been done across different hospitals with the goal of finding out how patients thought about and described the care they received. The trends showed that patients valued more in a hospital stay than the level of care they received. In some instances, patients who had successful procedures with high-quality medical care stated they would never return to that hospital again. Some of the reasons provided included poor treatment by diagnosticians; multiple room switches; unsanitary bathroom conditions; and long waits for transportation for tests. The patients’ evaluation had nothing to do with the quality of the medical care provided by the doctors and everything to do with how they perceived their experience with the hospital as a whole.

These early steps in the design process gave people who had never communicated before a common language and point of reflection. They also removed the risk of blame and finger pointing by redirecting the focus to patterns that were happening in the larger environment of hospital care in general. Even though people came to the table with different experiences and frameworks, they shared an understanding that any design created and implemented had to meet two systems thinking criteria:

• Identify and consider the essential parts of the system
• Decide the design based on the amount of improvement to the system as a whole, not just to individual parts or units

Once these criteria had been determined, the group considered the next question:

If John Hopkins is a system, what does the hospital do to support the patient experience versus simply considering patient care?

As doctors, janitors, technicians, and other hospital staff interacted with patients, the interdependence of their contribution to the hospital as a whole began to emerge. This analysis led to what can only be described as an “A-HA!” moment. The participants realized that two essential components of the hospital were traditionally overlooked, yet had a great impact on the patient experience: Patient Transportation (responsible for moving patients from one part of the hospital to another) and Environmental Services (responsible for cleaning throughout the hospital). This realization had significant implications for the new design. The additional awareness that these functions directly affected both the hospital experience and the bottom line produced exciting designs. But most important, all of these considerations resulted in a new approach to recruitment, training, and compensation for employees within these key departments.

Within Patient Transportation, an innovative and effective design resulted from measuring how long it took to move patients between various locations in the hospital in a pleasant and timely manner. Additionally, this consideration helped the design team determine a logistically optimum location to place the wheelchairs in the new buildings. The increased ability of Patient Transportation to move patients quickly improved other departments’ performance; for example, diagnostics will no longer stay idle waiting for patients to arrive. Furthermore, the design team was able to improve the internal communication system, eliminating the additional work and time lost when nurses tried to contact patient transporters.

In the Environmental Services team, one solution improves the bed turnaround time, which also means that patients won’t be left waiting in the hall for a room at the new facility. The design team also became aware that the Environmental Services unit does more than simply change over the rooms; it also affects the overall quality of care in the hospital, specifically as it relates to infectious diseases. This was an epiphany for everyone.

The Johns Hopkins example shows the instrumental role that taking a systemic worldview can play in design. It also highlights how important design is to any consideration of the system. By starting with an overview of systems thinking principles, everyone was operating from a shared mindset. By hearing trends collected from the larger healthcare environment within which they operated, the Johns Hopkins team was able to develop a shared understanding of the current situation.

Moreover, by bringing everyone to the design meetings, the facilitators ensured that stakeholders who rarely had a voice were heard. For the first time, a level power dynamic existed, which was a monumental shift from the traditional hierarchy with surgeons and doctors at the top of the ladder. Johns Hopkins achieved its goal of a system redesign with the ownership of those most impacted by it.

If Johns Hopkins’ administrators had simply brought in designers to look at the problem, interview various stakeholders, and design recommendations based on the compiled feedback, they would not have achieved such a rich redesign. It was only by having everyone in the same room, under the same shared context of hospital trends in the larger environment, using the same systems language throughout the entire process that the resulting design had the input and ownership of the entire system.

Conclusion

In today’s business world, design thinking and systems thinking are considered separate things. The challenge remains how the design thinking community can learn from the systems thinking community and vice versa. We believe that practitioners should intentionally integrate systems thinking with design thinking to enhance the chances of creating the right designs! We have shown that systems thinking can help designers better understand the world around them. Furthermore, designers can achieve more sustainable designs by following systems principles. Design can be greatly enhanced if it improves the performance of the system as a whole, even if you are redesigning the part. Being aware of the principal of unintended consequences can also enhance design thinking.

Yet the most valuable principle that systems thinking can add to design thinking is the need to bring the whole system to the discussion from the beginning. The stakeholders within the system must plan for themselves. If problem formulation is the first step in the design process, then adopting a systems mindset can help with framing and especially reframing the problems.

We have proposed that the two approaches complement each other and each incorporates components of the other implicitly. We believe it is possible — and necessary — to create an approach that explicitly incorporates the strengths of both, thereby addressing the gaps and increasing the chance of creating sustainable solutions to the wicked problems facing organizations and society today.

John Pourdehnad serves as affiliated faculty in Organizational Dynamics at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also associate director, Ackoff Collaboratory for Advancement of Systems Approaches, and adjunct professor, Systems Engineering, in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Erica R. Wexler holds a master’s in Organizational Dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently communication & training coordinator of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Autism Services.

Dennis V. Wilson holds a master’s in Organizational Dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently project manager/senior process analyst at Penn Mutual Life.

The post Integrating Systems Thinking and Design Thinking appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

As a result, we started a dialogue with one of the authors (Michael), who had academic and practical experience in both the fields of learning organizations and lean transformation. We then decided to “reboot” our lean approach and frame it from a learning perspective, with smaller, more frequent projects involving more people from throughout the company. We also committed to work together more closely to discuss and reflect on the demands of lean implementation and its impact on the company.

The process has been taxing, to say the least, but rewarding both in terms of performance and process improvement. A year after we started, with the onset of the global economic crisis late in 2008, we hit the worst industrial crisis of living memory throughout 2009, and we struggled just as much as our competitors with a sudden 15 percent plunge in demand. Still, we believe that our lean work has helped us steer true in the storm, and as the dust settles, we have not lost too much ground on profitability and have increased our market share.

More surprising has been how much the lean approach has challenged our self-image as a learning organization. We thought we learned, but we were totally unprepared for the steepness of the learning curve involved with lean practice. Lean practice requires not just learning, but learning how to learn. The other surprise from the lean work is how far down the ranks the learning needs to occur. Everyone from the CEO to the janitor, every day, must go up their own learning curve.

In reflecting on these eventful years, we asked ourselves: What distinguished the second lean approach from the first? We now believe that lean has to be understood in terms of creating a learning organization, and vice versa. On the one hand, without a commitment to learning, lean can easily devolve into just another Taylorist project in which specialists “fix” the people. On the other hand, trying to build a learning organization without the rigor of the lean toolset may be hard to do. We now believe that to dramatically improve our business performance, we need both to understand the philosophy of the learning organization and to master lean practices through its principles and tools.

This is the insight we will share in this article. For each of the disciplines of organizational learning — personal mastery, mental models, systems thinking, team learning, and shared vision — we will show how we have used the lean tools to leverage those intentions into practical action. None of this work has been easy, and we realize now more than ever that a vast amount remains to be done. However, we are confident that blending both approaches is the key to enduring success.

Personal Mastery

Personal mastery is usually defined as a personal commitment to learning. The overall idea is that a workforce that can learn quicker than its competitors holds a competitive advantage. Two significant challenges exist in generalizing personal mastery throughout an organization. First, you can force people to do many things, but you can’t force them to learn. The impulse to learn has to come from inside the individual. Second, most real learning is incidental and occurs serendipitously in the course of one’s work rather than in a classroom.

As it turns out, lean practice has three specific ways to generalize a commitment to learning within an organization:

1. Select people carefully on the basis of their demonstrated will to learn. The importance of personal commitment to learning became painfully obvious in the course of our lean work. One of the aspects of lean is to empower managers by teaching them to solve their own problems and make better day-to-day decisions. To help them develop these skills, they are expected to complete standardized exercises with their teams (called “kaizen events”), in which they look at issues of ergonomics, quality, productivity, and flow through a set analytical framework and with given targets. The improvement results are nice to have, but they are not the main purpose, which is teaching managers to better understand — and thus better manage — their own processes.

You can’t force anyone to learn, but you can create an environment in which the gap between where we are and where we need to be is updated real time and obvious at a glance.

As the rhythm of these exercises got established, it became apparent that some managers were interested in improving and some were not. This latter group was unable to take their teams to the next level of performance. Over time, this realization led to some reshuffling of the organization. It also shed light on the importance of commitment and ability to learn as the number one selection criteria for managerial positions.

2. Create and sustain an environment of creative tension. Lean has a specific practice for sustaining the creative tension that leads to “aha!” moments: the lean “challenge” is about expressing problems in terms of what we need to do rather than what we can do. For instance, in the past, we accepted that our on-time delivery rate fluctuated, and as long as it didn’t become catastrophic, no one but the sales director really worried. The lean approach changed that attitude. We all agreed that to sustain our business model, we needed no less than 100 percent on time delivery.

Several years later, we still haven’t achieved our goal, but we have a much better understanding of how the delivery process works and what to do about it. We started tracking on-time delivery, committed to improve it, and refused any backsliding. Any backsliding triggered serious investigation and deep thinking. This single indicator became the source of many management debates about how to solve the problem and where to place resources.

Robert Fritz has long theorized that tension seeks resolution and that the main driver of innovation is the perceived gap between a vision and current reality. The lean practice of setting challenging targets and tracking progress through simple, handwritten charts on the shop floor is a practical way of reasserting the pull of creative tension on a daily basis. You can’t force anyone to learn, but you can create an environment in which the gap between where we are and where we need to be is updated real time and obvious at a glance. On-time delivery is now visible real time on a large screen in the shipping area.

3. Build a work environment with specific learning opportunities in the course of day-to-day work. Learning is incidental; it occurs in the course of work when a specific event triggers an “aha!” experience as we connect the dots unexpectedly. How can this serendipitous process possibly be organized? This is probably where lean practice differs most widely — and most counterintuitively — from the normal industrial way of doing things. Lean processes are designed to stop when something goes wrong. If a bad part is identified, the process stops. If the requisite work to replenish what has been consumed is finished, the process stops. If an employee does not follow the standard method of doing things, the process stops. It doesn’t stay stopped, but it does stop long enough for the worker to confirm what the issue is and immediately make a correction to get back to standard conditions. The next step is to start a root-cause investigation to figure out the source of the problem and fix it. Stopping the process when there is a problem creates many learning opportunities every day, some small (quickly corrected by training), some large (a source of process improvement).

We haven’t yet figured out how to get operators to stop the process when they see something nonstandard — for one thing, establishing the standards is no easy challenge — but we are working consistently on confirming problems. We’ve also started creating visual signals to show that the process is out of normal conditions, such as red bins for suspect parts. These techniques develop ownership and spur learning in both operators and frontline managers.

Mental Models

In learning organization theory, mental models are the deep representations of reality that people hold. These assumptions about how the world works usually express themselves as espoused theories (what people say they believe and intend to follow) and theories-in-use (how people actually behave and their underlying assumptions). A learning organization seeks to come up with mechanisms to surface these mental models, evaluate them against reality, and change them when necessary.

Lean uses a different vocabulary, but essentially takes the same approach. The first step in the lean process is to clarify the problem you’re trying to solve. A problem is defined as the gap between a standard (espoused theory) and the current situation (theory-in-use). This gap is then explained as cause-effect relationships. In fact, lean practice is a relentless machine for explicating mental models and reducing the gap between espoused theory and theory-in-use. Habits are challenged. Pet theories are disproved. Deeply held beliefs are questioned routinely.

For instance, in our company, we believed that for people to be satisfied, we had to give them flexibility to deal with their life out of work. Consequently, workers were free to choose their work schedules as long as they completed the requisite number of weekly hours. As we established visual performance and process standards, it became obvious that such flexibility was detrimental to both efficiency and teamwork. Although convenient for workers, it did not contribute to their job satisfaction, as they couldn’t develop team ownership and solidarity.

As we decided to tackle this issue, the management team decided to institute common work hours (start time, end time, and breaks) to create stable teams on the shop floor. This move generated strong protests from employees and their representatives. We learned that no problem can be solved by arbitrarily applying across-the-board solutions, particularly when it is not shared by all and when individual implications are not taken into account. We thought we had identified a global problem (which we had) and that we could implement a global solution (which we couldn’t).

In the end, we still have the goal of creating stable teams and increasing communication, but we have chosen to compromise and attack the issue area by area, taking different circumstances into consideration. Although the shift is now more incremental, it is happening in a more positive manner than our first efforts. We prided ourselves on our learning capabilities, but in most cases, we tended to implement simplistic, across-the-board solutions. We learned to slice situations into different cases and treat each slice as unique.

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking is probably the aspect of organizational learning that most clearly parallels lean. In a nutshell, by giving us a way to view the business as a system rather than a set of coexisting parts, systems thinking helps us avoid boom and bust dynamics in our processes. In taking into account the interrelationships within the system, we can avoid optimizing locally at the expense of global performance. The just-in-time dimension of lean essentially puts systems thinking into practice throughout the supply chain.

Manufacturing companies that do not practice lean tend to use computer-based scheduling systems that tell each production cell what to do when. Lean uses “pull” (you only make what your customer has consumed) to establish customer-supplier links throughout the production process. Each production cell becomes responsible for maintaining its own inventory of finished parts and basically reproduces what has been consumed. Although this process requires detailed upstream planning (a lean practice called “leveling”), it stabilizes the production flow and makes relationships between units explicit.

The impact of establishing pull throughout the production process is twofold. First, because the links of cause and effect are clear, managers better understand how logistical decisions taken at the planning stage can affect the entire chain. In practical terms, for instance, we have been able to significantly improve the synergy between sales promotion campaigns and production capacity. The result is that we have enough products to respond to the increased demand created by a promotion without frustrating customers with unfilled orders or bloating our stocks with finished products we then have trouble selling.

Second, we have considerably tightened the links between processes. The lean challenge is that no work-in-progress (WIP) parts should transit through warehouse storage. All WIP is held at the station that produced it as in a supermarket, waiting to be pulled. Making the change to this new system required drastic reduction of batch sizes, but in doing so, we realized how important it is to be flexible if one’s business model rests on quick delivery of a wide catalogue of parts.

Lean differs radically from traditional production models inasmuch as it focuses equally on producing parts and on the information that drives the scheduling of producing parts. In fact, lean modes of production rely on clearly separating each link of the chain and organizing the feedback mechanisms between them. In a lean system, four elements are specified in great detail:

1. The link’s output: how much of what gets sent to whom and when

2. The link’s pathway: who does what for whom

3. The link’s connections: what triggers which exchanges

4. The link’s method: how the work is done by whom

As our frontline managers learn to specify these four elements in detail and to manage variations, they also acquire a deeper understanding of how different aspects of the system interact: the relationship between scheduling and production, between maintenance and planning, between quality and sales, etc. Here again, learning does not occur through formal training but through the process of trying to tighten the link and seeing firsthand how the system behaves.

Team Learning

The lean definition of teamwork is “resolving problems across functions.” Because stable teams are the basis of lean organizations, what is known as “team learning” in the organizational learning framework plays an important role in lean. Individual employees develop knowledge more quickly if there are robust mechanisms for sharing knowledge and experiencing learning together. Furthermore, “teamwork” specifically addresses the issues of crossing organizational boundaries and facing difficult problems with an open mind.

One of the hardest truths we’ve had to confront in following lean precepts is how poor we were at actual teamwork. This revelation came as something of a shock, because we all get along really well in the company, and we thought we were good at working together — which is actually the case. Nonetheless, when lean forced us to try to solve specific issues as a team, we found that we were not better at doing so than anybody else.

For instance, as mentioned above, our lean initiative immediately stressed on-time delivery and quality. We were convinced that we had excellent quality, certainly better than our competitors. While generally true, when we asked the salespeople to systematically describe what complaints they heard about us from our customers, we learned that sales managers spent much of their time trying to cool off unhappy customers. This was a wake-up call, not just on the quality front, but on the fact that, as a management team, we had no shared awareness of the extent of the problem.

Quality problems are difficult to resolve for two main reasons. First, they tend to be non-repeatable, one-off situations that are hard to catch in normal operations; second, they often involve several links in the chain and can’t be fixed from one department alone. In this respect, the lean approach taught us to create “platforms” for teamwork; that is, regular working sessions in which members of different functions meet to solve problems together.

For instance, we established quality “marketplaces” in each production shop. When an operator comes across a bad part (either a supplied part or a mistake he just made), he puts the part into a red container at his station, and he calls the team’s coordinator. The coordinator conducts a quick analysis and tries to find the cause of the problem and fix it. She places the defective part in a central “marketplace” area. In this central place, defective parts are regrouped by defect types. A cross-functional management team inspects these groups of defective parts each week and focuses on one quality issue after the next. We’ve already seen spectacular improvements in areas such as paint and assembly — in some instances, reducing defectives by as much as 30 percent annually.

The hard lesson for us here was that getting along doesn’t guarantee team learning. For team learning to happen, you have to structure specific platforms for teamwork, where groups regularly examine specific cross-functional issues. We are learning that unless we push the questioning process beyond what all parties easily agree on, we are not learning as a team.

Shared Vision

As you’ve probably gathered by now, lean is never easy, because it forces you to see the practical consequences of your policies and choices. At the executive level, we’ve shared a clear strategic vision for years. We make money by delivering quality products, on time, to our customers out of a large catalogue. Yet as we started exploring our operational processes in greater detail, we realized that in many areas, our business model wasn’t supported by our actual practices. Worse, when we tried to persuade our frontline managers that they needed to urgently improve their quality and flexibility, we found that many of them resisted the idea as impractical, unfeasible, or both.

Lean is never easy, because it forces you to see the practical consequences of your policies and choices.

The lean tool for achieving shared vision is called the “North Star”: clarifying the key dimensions we need to make progress on, so that we do not improve one dimension at the expense of others. The North Star is about formulating an ideal — such as 100 percent on-time delivery, zero defects, one-by-one production in sequence, 100 percent value-added work, low ergonomic risk, zero accidents, suggestions from every employee, and so forth — as well as the key dimensions we need to focus on to get to this vision.

The value of trying to reach these goals became clearly visible as we hit the 2008 crisis. During a period of total uncertainty and brutal retrenching of markets, we could see when we were being pulled away from our intended course. In many cases, we were unable to resist this momentum in the moment, but we did learn not to lose our focus and then to strive to come back on course. On the desire for on-time delivery, for instance, the necessity to reduce any temporary work because of the free-fall crash of demand also severely affected our capacity to deliver to our distributors within a day. After many internal debates, we decided that our commitment to our customers was more important than short-term cost cutting, and while we maintained a zero temporary staff policy for the rest of the company, we softened our stance for the shipping department and hired the people necessary to continue to deliver. As we tackled these and other issues, we also discovered that our commitment to continuous improvement had a reassuring impact on the staff, who not only saw that management was not panicking but also that they themselves could contribute by continuing to make progress every day.

In defining our North Star, we discovered that our shared vision at the executive level was not shared at the frontline management and operator level. We realized that we have never attempted to express our strategic vision in operational terms that would make practical sense at the shop-floor level. The lean approach to shared vision is to express strategic intent in the form of clear problems (such as short production runs in machining, which involve quick tool changes and frequent set-ups, something machining operators are traditionally uneasy with) and to translate that intent on the shop floor by getting people to follow their own indicators and do regular improvement events to learn to fix their own problems. These two basic practices spur endless questions, and we’ve seen that as progress (or lack of) is discussed, the business vision is progressively shared all the way down to the operating level.

The Blind Spot: Embeddedness

We had been using learning organization concepts to structure our management style for many years — so what did working with lean teach us? To us, the main contribution that lean can make to the field of organizational learning is embeddedness: creating learning opportunities throughout the day-to-day production process at all levels. Lean embeds learning in the organization in three fundamental ways:

1. Lean forces a high speed of learning: The practice of establishing challenges by drawing a “line in the sand” (what we need to do as opposed to what we can do) considerably accelerates the need to learn.

2. Lean creates many small learning opportunities in day-to-day work: Rather than restricting improvement efforts to large issues needing large solutions, lean designs processes themselves as the source of learning.

3. Lean links learning at the policy level to learning at the detailed work level: The foundational precept of lean management is “go and see”: go into the workplace to see facts at the source. By doing so, senior managers learn to see the consequences of their own policies and figure out what to focus on next.

These three processes explain how lean can act as a “learning accelerator.” On the one hand, we have found that lean provides operational tools for embedding learning into everyday operations, making abstract intentions a day-to-day, hour-by-hour reality. On the other, we have also seen that applying lean techniques without the broader frame of establishing a learning organization is structurally disappointing beyond garnering the early low-hanging fruit. Without a relentless focus on individual and collective learning, lean tools can easily be reduced to traditional productivity methods with limited local success and the possibility of damaging the company’s social context.

Conclusion

The conclusion we’d like to share is that the lean toolbox offers a pragmatic — and challenging — way to operationalize the intent of organizational learning. We learned from our first, less-than-successful attempt to implement lean that using lean practices without infusing them with the spirit of the learning organization delivers disappointing results. We believe this issue is a general challenge, as many companies adopting lean bemoan the fact that they fail to see transformation. Learning organization theory has much to contribute to the lean field by clarifying the purpose of the lean tools and spelling out for managers what the tools are supposed to achieve: making people before making products.

Old habits die hard, and maintaining the learning impetus day in and day out is by no means easy. The lean approach regularly forces us to confront our weaknesses, misunderstandings, and misalignments. Still, we believe the results are worth the effort, in terms of creating immediate gains, developing future capabilities, involving people in the company, and growing its human capital. We hope this testimony will encourage more managers to open the same door we did, and think deeply about how to merge the learning organization and lean approaches for sustainable competitive advantage.

Michael Ballé (m.balle@orange.fr) is co-founder of the Institut Lean France and associate researcher at Télécom Paristech. He is also co-author of The Lean Manager and The Gold Mine, two novels of lean transformation.

Jacques Chaize is president of Danfoss Socla, cofounder of SOL-France and author of Quantum Leap.

Frédéric Fiancette is vice president of Operations of Danfoss Socla.

Eric Prevot the continuous improvement director of Danfoss Socla. 

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Life-Sustaining Organizations

When talented employees passionately love an organization and hate the idea of leaving it, that organization is most likely life sustaining. Life-sustaining organizations demonstrate commitment to the well-being of their people, their social context, and the natural environment. They have a magnetic quality that attracts highly energetic people aspiring to do great work. These organizations care about the products they make and the people involved in the process of producing and using them. They sustain and improve the quality of their physical surroundings. While certainly imperfect, companies like Apple, Google, and Trader Joe’s are exemplars of complex systems that are guided by life-sustaining principles.

Life-sustaining organizations know themselves to be living organisms that exist within interdependent social, economic, political, and natural contexts. They are responsive and ready to act. These organizations have a highly developed awareness of which forces in their environment deserve their full attention, enabling them to focus on what matters. By continually nurturing their people, their environment, and themselves, they are able to adapt in order to survive and thrive in the world that is emerging rather than remaining tied to an outdated paradigm.

Living systems are able to evolve without losing their identity. Their principles, values, and purpose endure even as their organizational form, processes, and products change over time, sometimes substantially. Life-sustaining organizations seek to sustain healthy functioning at every level and in all activities. These organizations have positive influences on people inside and outside the organization and on the natural environment.

Life-sustaining organizations intuitively engage in systems thinking. They nurture and actively strive to retain the talented people they need to adapt and flourish. In a reinforcing cycle, these people spread the word, attracting others like themselves. Living systems understand that their organizational environment, internally and externally, determines individual behavior to a significant degree. Rather than placing blame on individuals, they look beyond immediate causality to discover systemic drivers of issues.

These organizations exhibit design integrity by creating the environments, processes, and tools required to most effectively achieve desired results. People have no need to “work around” the system. Because the elements of these systems support one another seamlessly, little internal friction exists as they move toward goals. They are oriented toward achieving the results they have defined for themselves. The products and services that emerge from living systems look right, feel right, and perform well. In this way, they are able to achieve the financial returns they need to sustain themselves.

Is the Health System Life Sustaining?

Because the core mission of the health system is to promote well-being, prevent injury and disease, and care for the afflicted, we would expect the organizations that make up this sector to be life sustaining. How well the health system is functioning depends on where and how you look:

• Medical science is making impressive strides in preventing and curing disease. Huge investments are being made in research and development in the health arena.
• The use of advanced technology is significantly improving outcomes. Early testing can identify disease before it becomes acute. Super-computers help doctors match symptoms to rare illnesses. Remote monitoring allows timely and accurate intervention.
• Fitness is an established trend; yoga centers, gyms, and athletic clubs abound. Approaches like acupuncture, massage, chiropractic, and mind/body therapies are gaining wider acceptance.

On the other hand:

• The aging of the population is exacerbating the shortage of skilled medical professionals and healthcare providers. Fewer people are serving a greater demand for services.
• Complexity and inefficiencies make the health system prone to errors that affect patient safety.
• The personal connection between provider and recipient is strained as professionals are driven to spend less time per appointment, patients travel between specialists and facilities in the course of treatment, and records are often missing, incomplete, or inaccurate.
• Costs are soaring.

These are only a few examples that indicate ways in which the health system is unwell. The system is skewed toward addressing illness rather than maintaining health. This focus drives up costs while reducing the overall quality of life. To be life-sustaining, health organizations must continually and consciously make choices that preserve their positive aspects while simultaneously addressing their challenges.

Applying Structural Dynamics to a Health Organization

Let’s consider the case of OneLife Health Insurance (a composite case derived from a series of engagements in the health system). OneLife employs physicians to review claims with an eye to minimizing the amount it pays out. The company spends more on marketing and advertising than its competitors. Policyholders sense a disconnect between the image OneLife projects of itself as a caring company and the response they receive when they need coverage.

STRUCTURAL DYNAMICS

The Structural Dynamics process has four stages: Exploring facts, Discovering options, Embodying action, and Sustaining results.

OneLife understands that its operations may be affected as the large population of Baby Boomers reaches retirement age. In order to engage people throughout the organization in strategic thinking, future analysis, and the integration of strategic direction into day-to-day operations, the OneLife executive committee decides to use Structural Dynamics to investigate the impact of the aging population on the company’s business.

As shown in “Structural Dynamics,” the process has four stages: Exploring facts, Discovering options, Embodying action, and Sustaining results. OneLife begins by convening a team of internal strategic thinkers from all parts and levels of the organization. Company leaders select these individuals for their diverse perspectives on the past, present, and future of the health sector, their willingness to consider views that differ from their own, and their ability to cogently describe their ideas. The team continually communicates with decision makers and colleagues throughout the Structural Dynamics initiative as they:

1. Explore a wide range of forces affecting the issue under consideration. The team builds a structural model that represents the dynamics surrounding the issue and identifies a set of divergent, equally plausible future scenarios.
2. Discover strategies that work in each of the future scenarios. They choose strategies that work well across the scenarios and/or those that support a particularly appealing scenario.
3. Embody the strategies in a way that supports the strategic direction of the whole organization.
4. Sustain results by identifying the signposts, indicators, and warnings to monitor and assess. This information feeds back into the process to refine the analysis and deepen the thinking.

The OneLife team formulates the issue they will investigate as: “What services will OneLife provide to the elderly population?” By considering this potent issue before it becomes a crisis, OneLife will be better prepared to make timely, informed choices than competitors that haven’t anticipated the changes on the horizon.

Exploring Facts

The OneLife team proceeds in the Exploring stage of Structural Dynamics by moving through four levels of increasing depth and complexity: events, patterns, structure, and mental models (see “Diving into Complexity” on p. 4).

At the event level, team members respond to the question: “What events, if they happened within the next 15 years, would have a significant impact on the services OneLife provides to the elderly population?” This question might generate hundreds of events. From these, the team identifies the events that are the most critical to the issue under consideration and the most uncertain, usually three to five. The team states these “critical uncertainties” as variables that can move in one direction or another. The OneLife team selects as one of its critical uncertainties: “The health and well-being of the elderly population.” We will use this variable as an example in our description of the process.

Some of the uncertainty surrounding this variable includes:

• Will the elderly be predominately fit and active?
• Will they tend to be obese and prone to disease?
• Will new discoveries make aging bodies infinitely renewable?
• Will financial need, social isolation, and health concerns combine to create a demographic that is depressed and despairing? (Click here for “Population Demographics.”)

PATTERN 1

Life expectancy has increased significantly over the last 60 years. Following the Baby Boomer spurt, the U. S. birth rate has been declining. As a result of these trends, the median age of the U. S. population has been increasing.

These questions have no definitive answers.

At the pattern level, the team considers how the critical uncertainties they identified have been trending in the past, using the same 15-year timeframe. These trends cannot simply be projected into the future. The Structural Dynamics model the team constructs will identify forces that could very well shift the pattern in another direction.

Patterns are interconnected variables that repeat under particular circumstances. These chains of cause and effect are responsive to the conditions that exist. As Christopher Alexander said, “The shape of the wave is generated by the dynamics of the water, and it repeats itself wherever these dynamics occur.” Buckminster Fuller stated it this way, “The wave is not the water. The water told you about the wave going by. But the wave has a patterned integrity of its own–absolutely weightless.” The OneLife team identifies patterns of closely related variables (see “Pattern 1” and “Pattern 2” as examples).

PATTERN 2

As the population ages, health concerns increase. Historically, people over 65 visit doctors more than twice as often as those under 18. This is one of many factors contributing to exponential growth in healthcare costs, which have risen from 3 percent of GDP in 1950 to approaching 20 percent currently. Myriad choices are available to the aging to maintain (preventive measures) and improve (remedial services) their health. These individual and institutional choices greatly influence the health and well-being of the population.

At the level of structure, patterns link together to form a system. Closing the loop, we see that the health and well-being of the population affects life expectancy. Based on the choices of the elderly and their providers, the health and well-being of the population could stay the same, improve, or decline in the coming years.

A systemic structure has two distinct types of connections: the first based on mathematics and the second based on human choice. “Pattern 1” shows that the combination of increasing life expectancy and declining birth rate results is a rising median age of the population. There’s no choice involved; it’s the simple math of the situation. In “Pattern 2,” we see that human choices (how individuals and institutions balance preventive measures and remedial care) affect the overall health and well-being of the population.

SYSTEMIC STRUCTURE

A systemic structure has two distinct types of connections: the first based on mathematics and the second based on human choice.

At the level of mental models, the team probes the assumptions people hold regarding the critical uncertainties. The diverse opinions represented on the team help to insure that OneLife considers a wide range of views. The team looks at the implications of any critical uncertainty using two sets of structural dynamics:

1. Abrupt vs. Gradual Dynamics (i.e., will this critical uncertainty evolve slowly over a long period of time? or… will it change abruptly in a transformational torrent?) is based on mathematical relationships. For example, a snowflake landing on a snowy overhang could add incrementally to the snow mass or that snowflake could be the tipping point, triggering an avalanche that abruptly and significantly changes the landscape. In many cases, we cannot know if or when an abrupt change will occur; however, we still form mental images of the impact of the snowflake that we use as a basis for subsequent actions and decisions. We may not be consciously aware of the many mental models that continually guide our thinking and actions.

For example, some OneLife team members hold a mental model that the health and well-being of the elderly will have a rapid and transformative impact on the services OneLife provides (, “It’s going to hit us like a ton of bricks!”). Others believe the impact will be more gradual and evolutionary (, “We’ll muddle through.”).

Regardless of team members’ views of the rate of change, the physics of the situation will be what it will be. If OneLife is not aware of and testing its view of the impact that the health of the aging population will have on the services it provides, it will be blindsided by surprises for which it is unprepared. The team is charged with identifying and communicating the full range of possibilities. OneLife will then be able to position itself to deal with whatever happens.

2. Conserve vs. Expand is based on human choice. Faced with the possible occurrence of a critical yet highly uncertain event, we can choose a conservative stance. We can hunker down and attempt to preserve what we have or we can be expansive: treating the eventuality as an opportunity to make needed changes.

The figure below shows the possible human stances toward critical uncertainties, ranging from fear to hope. Both stances are natural, situationally appropriate, and understandable. OneLife might see the impact of the health and well-being of its elderly policyholders with anxiety, e.g., too many elderly people needing too much care. If so, it may take a conservative stance to protect its resources and preserve its current methods of operation. On the other hand, OneLife can choose an expansive stance, repositioning its operations and services to meet the impending demand.

At this point in the initiative, OneLife begins to see that they have tended toward a stance of preserving and that they have the choice to be expansive — offering services that would attract additional customers. In fact, they understand that their current methods are having an unintended effect, as customers are being drawn away to more responsive competitors.

Overlaying these two axes, we get four quadrants (see “Scenario Game Board”), each representing a unique future scenario. While we recognize that an infinite number of future possibilities exist, grouping them allows us to analyze starkly different futures. In discussions with Jim Dator at the University of Hawaii’s Research Center for Futures Studies, we started thinking in terms of archetypal scenarios. An archetype represents something that many people respond to at a visceral level as if recognizing a basic truth, something they’ve always known or believed.

SCENARIO GAME BOARD

Each quadrant on the Scenario Game Board represents a unique future scenario.

The four scenarios that emerge from the intersection of these dynamics represent the images of the future held by people across cultures and over time that Dator and his associates identified. Building on their work, four archetypes emerge to describe distinct future scenarios:

Status Quo: The future emerges gradually from the present. This scenario occurs when critical uncertainties unfold relatively slowly and steadily. Organizations and societies are able to take stop-gap measures to solve any problems that arise. The OneLife team sees this scenario world as one in which the health system remains basically the same. As issues arise (e.g., professional burnout, more costly treatments), steps are taken to fix the problem.

Discipline: This future is characterized by investment and invention. Critical uncertainties unfold gradually, and a lot of “can do” energy exists. A variety of technologies and methodologies emerge to meet the needs of the aging population.

New Reality: Huge breakthroughs result in a world radically different from the one we’ve known. In this scenario, one or more abrupt changes results in dramatic new conditions. OneLife envisions genetic medicine in this world, which might extend life expectancy to 100+ years.

Collapse: In this future, social, economic, and environmental systems break down. People react by doing the best they can for themselves, their families, and the organizations they depend upon. OneLife posits a global epidemic resulting in the death of many millions; the survivors are unable to maintain the complex health system that sustained them in the past. Life expectancy declines.

“Scenario Outlines” is an overview of how the OneLife scenarios begin to take shape based on the variable we have been using as an example.

Discovering Options, Embodying Action, Sustaining Results

In this article, we have focused on the Exploring stage of Structural Dynamics. In the next stage, Discovering, to enrich and deepen their understanding of the forces in play and how they impact one another, the OneLife team integrates the Game Boards of all of the critically uncertain variables that they have been investigating. The team tries on life in possible future worlds. They use their insights to develop strategies within each scenario and test them. Some strategies will be robust, viable across all the scenarios. The applicability of other strategies may be contingent on the nature of the future that emerges.

In the Embodying stage, OneLife adopts a strategy that integrates the promotion of nutrition and exercise, particularly targeted toward people over fifty. It implements this strategy broadly, both within the organization as well as in its customer policies. Employees who smoke or are obese receive support in meeting specific targets. Working with nutritionists, the company’s food service team dramatically improves the offerings in the cafeteria. To encourage employees to bike, carpool, use mass transit, or walk to work, OneLife facilities charge employees for parking cars. With the reduced number of cars onsite, the company turns paved areas into green space over time.

Physicians in OneLife’s provider network are encouraged to move patients to healthy choices; they are compensated based on their success in meeting these goals. Subscribers who make healthy choices receive generous benefits, including free fitness classes. OneLife forms marketing partnerships with grocers who offer nutritional services that meet OneLife’s criteria. The company makes preferential arrangements with drug stores that don’t sell cigarettes. It forms alliances with senior centers that place a priority on physical exercise. OneLife also becomes a prominent sponsor of municipal, regional, and national recreational facilities and programs to promote exercise. As a result, OneLife repositions its brand and attracts the most active and fit seniors.

In the Sustaining stage, OneLife monitors the effectiveness of these initiatives by continuously observing signposts, indicators, and warnings that might indicate the need to add, modify, or drop initiatives. Employees at all levels, particularly those who interact with customers, participate in the company’s ongoing monitoring activities. The organization’s boundaries become more permeable, extending into the customer base, the communities OneLife serves, and the natural environment.

A Robust Health System

Looking at OneLife’s learning process, we are reminded that the future is shaped by our collective human choices—at the personal, organizational, governmental, and global levels. The decisions we make influence the degree to which we have the resilience and fortitude to face whatever comes. To what degree will we be oriented toward embracing something new and potentially better? To what degree are we focused on conservation and preservation? Organizations that interrogate the future, probe its many possibilities, and arrive at strategies to pursue a preferred future have the confidence to act swiftly and decisively as threats and opportunities present themselves. Their sense of possibility affects who they are, their interactions with their people, and their orientation toward nature and society. Life-sustaining organizations have boundless horizons for learning, and that keeps them vibrant and relevant! A health system full of life-sustaining organizations vigorously supports the well-being of all.

For a complete description of Structural Dynamics and a comprehensive case study, see Sales and Savage, Life Sustaining Organizations: A Design Guide (Art of the Future, 2011).

Anika Ellison Savage (anika@artofthefuture.com) is co-founder of Art of the Future, a strategic leadership consultancy and co-author of Life-Sustaining Organizations: A Design Guide, which applies Structural Dynamics to help organizations realize their potential as living systems. Anika is a recognized authority on scenario analysis.

Michael Sales (michael@artofthefuture.com) is cofounder of Art of the Future and co-author of LifeSustaining Organizations: A Design Guide. Michael holds an Ed. D. in Organization Behavior from Harvard and is a skilled consultant, executive coach, futurist and educator.

The post Treating America’s Health System with Structural Dynamics appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

I doubt many people would disagree. There’s already enough blame in organizations without adding another excuse: “It wasn’t me. My relationship made me do it.” But taking a relational perspective doesn’t preempt people from taking responsibility. Paradoxically, just the opposite happens. When people think in relational terms, they are more willing and able to take responsibility for their part in any problems or difficulties.

To illustrate, this article introduces two perspectives that leaders might take to any differences, challenges, or troubles they face. The more common is what I call the individual perspective, based on the assumptions that there is one right answer, people either get it or don’t get it, and when they don’t, their dispositions are largely to blame. When leaders hold this perspective, their relationships grow weaker over time, and many break down altogether.

Less common is what I call the relational perspective, based on the assumptions that different people will see different things, that solid common ground can only be found after exploring basic differences, and that the strength of a relationship will determine how well and how quickly people can put their differences to work. Leaders who take this perspective are able to use the heat of the moment to forge stronger relationships. Let’s take a look at each perspective, then consider both in light of recent research on relationships.

The Individual Perspective

This perspective rivets our attention on individuals and turns it away from what everyone is doing to contribute to outcomes no one likes. As a result, when we differ with others, or others behave in ways we find difficult, we assume they are either mad (irrational, stubborn, out of control) or bad (corrupt, selfish). With the problem now located inside people and outside our influence, we feel as if we have no choice but to act the way we do – say, firing someone, or quitting, or reprimanding someone, or withdrawing – all things we’d prefer not to do, but feel compelled to do because the other person has left us little choice. In the end, what we fail to see – or even consider – is that we are often reinforcing in others the very behavior we find difficult.

I witnessed an especially telling example of this perspective at a pharmaceutical company, when two executives got into a debate over who was to blame for their division’s poor performance. It started when Peter Naughton, the division’s new CEO, confronted Tom Bedford, the division’s VP of research and development. Listen in as Naughton launches the debate:

Naughton: So now the question is: To what extent is R&D going to make the really difficult choices? Because one thing is clear: We can’t just keep adding and adding costs to R&D.

Bedford: We’ll start looking at that next month. But actually, I think we’ve got to revisit [corporate’s] strategy first. Our competitors see a very different future than the one corporate imagines for us. That’s the big problem. They’re spending fortunes and putting down bigger bets than we’re able to—

Naughton: —[Interrupting] Hang on a second! If we’re honest about this, our problem is that we were late waking up to what we might, could, and should do. There is an issue, but the issue is, we were late. Many of these questions should have been tackled three years ago. They weren’t. It was simply, “Oh, let’s toss another three million into the annual R&D budget.” That’s hardly a strategic answer.

Notice what happens in this opening exchange, in which Naughton defines and Bedford accepts the terms of the debate: who’s to blame for the division’s woes. Naughton says it’s the division; Bedford says it’s corporate. Now what? With the two immediately at an impasse, Naughton raises the stakes with an appeal to honesty — “If we’re honest about this, our problem is that we were late” — as if his view is the only honest view to take. Although this could easily put Bedford in a bind (either admit blame or appear dishonest), Bedford forges on, undeterred:

Bedford: [Looking down, shaking his head] I’m not complaining. I’m—

Naughton: [Interrupting] We can’t just chalk it up to corporate isn’t supporting us.

Bedford: [Looking up, raising his voice] But there’s no criticism in my statement!

But there clearly is criticism in Bedford’s statement. He’s just said that they need to revisit corporate’s strategy. So what would lead Bedford to deny that he’s criticizing corporate when he’s clearly doing so? One possibility is that it allows him to appear honest (he’s not criticizing or blaming anyone) while still not accepting blame himself. Naughton doesn’t buy it:

Naughton: [Emphatically] You’re saying, “It’s not our fault in R&D. If only corporate would open their eyes, they would have seen all this.” But if you look at how long it’s taken us, you can’t blame corporate—

Bedford: —And if you look at the history of this business, we all know where blame can be placed, and it is on many heads [glares at Naughton].

Barred from blaming corporate yet unwilling to blame himself, Bedford eludes Naughton’s grasp once again, this time by placing blame on many unnamed heads. This move, which reveals the hopeless nature of their debate, prompts Naughton to deny having launched it in the first place.

Naughton: [Sighing] I wasn’t trying to assign blame. I’m merely stating the reason the organization is behind is because we’ve been late.

Bedford: And I’m merely saying that we’ve been late because we have yet to convince our corporate masters that the future is different than the one they see.

Now we have Bedford and Naughton both placing blame, while claiming they’re not: They’re merely “stating” this or “saying” that. This joint denial makes it much harder to continue placing blame, which leaves Naughton no choice: He must close down the debate.

Naughton: Then let it start here [jabbing the table with his index finger]. We haven’t convinced ourselves yet. We’re the ones who need to figure out what we’ll invest in and what we’ll cease to do. Until we do that, we can’t possibly make a compelling case for support. [Putting his papers aside] Next item?

Naughton has the last word, but he convinces no one, least of all Bedford. The more Naughton pushes, the less responsibility Bedford takes — and not just for the division’s failure: He won’t even take responsibility for not taking responsibility!

These are the games we play to navigate around assumptions that make it hard to say what we think, because what we think is so problematic. When we assume that one person is responsible for outcomes we don’t like, and that this person is either mad or bad for causing them, all we do is compel that person to defend himself. If that person then also assumes that only one person (or side) is at fault, the best he can do is throw the blame right back at us.

Unless people seek to understand how they are both contributing to outcomes no one likes, they will be forever caught in the same paradoxical game in which the more individual responsibility is sought, the less individual responsibility is found.

So what’s the alternative? As unlikely as it may seem, the glimmers of one can be found in Bedford’s notion of blame falling on many heads. What makes this notion problematic is that the heads are unnamed and the purpose is to blame, not to understand. But what if Bedford and Naughton had sought to understand how the heads of both corporate and division had contributed to results neither liked? Perhaps they would have discovered how their waiting for the other to act had made it harder for either to do what they needed to do to improve the division’s performance. That is, with the division waiting for corporate to place bigger bets before focusing, and corporate waiting for the division to focus before placing bigger bets, and neither of them looking at their joint responsibility, they together created an impasse that prevented them from improving the division’s performance.

Most people I know believe deeply in personal responsibility, recognize how self-defeating it is to blame others, and are acutely aware when others are doing it. But curiously, few people are aware when they’re doing the same thing. Indeed, in the heat of the moment, most us believe that, in this one case, the other really is to blame for our substantive impasse or our relationship troubles, and we ourselves have little choice but to act the way we do.

Only in the interactions of the most mature leaders do you see a perspective based on a different set of assumptions. These assumptions, which constitute what I call the relational perspective, focus on mutual responsibility and stress the importance of relationships. The next section shows what these assumptions look like in action.

The Relational Perspective

When World War II brought Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt together, they were a study in contrasts: Roosevelt, secretive; Churchill, transparent. Roosevelt, calculated and at times manipulative; Churchill, expressive and at times impulsive. Roosevelt, intent on keeping the United States out of the war; Churchill, equally intent on bringing the United States into the war. Roosevelt, a constant critic of colonialism; Churchill, a steadfast defender of the British colonial empire. Roosevelt, convinced that a leader ought to keep his ear to the ground of popular opinion; Churchill, equally convinced that a leader ought to get out in front and shape popular opinion. And yet over the course of the war, as Jon Meacham recounts in Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, Random House, 2003, they were able to forge an alliance based on a common purpose and what Meacham calls an “epic friendship.”

Of the many things they did to build that friendship, one thing Meacham mentions stands out: “They always kept the mission — and their relationship — in mind, understanding that statecraft is an intrinsically imperfect and often frustrating endeavor.”

When it came to that mission, Roosevelt and Churchill saw and cared about very different things, triggering disagreements over a wide range of topics. How they handled these disagreements is striking. Instead of discounting each other’s views or assuming the other just didn’t get it, they engaged in hours of debate, seeking to persuade and to understand. They never denigrated the other’s interests or beliefs; they took them into account and sought to address them whenever they could. And if either of them did things to make matters worse, more often than not they looked to the other’s circumstances, not his character, to understand why, and they repeatedly offered a helping hand.

The relational perspective focuses on mutual responsibility and stresses the importance of relationships.

This way of handling their differences became apparent early on, when Churchill repeatedly petitioned Roosevelt to enter the war, and Roosevelt just as repeatedly refused. With 90 percent of Americans opposed to the war, Roosevelt sought every way possible to support Britain short of sending troops. It wasn’t enough. France quickly fell, and Britain alone was left fighting the Nazis. Roosevelt came under attack in the British Parliament for refusing to enter the war. The one person who came to his defense was Churchill.

“[America has] promised fullest aid in materials, munitions,” Churchill began at a closed session of Parliament on June 20, 1940. Calling the aid a “tribute to Roosevelt,” he then alluded to America’s upcoming presidential election, saying, “All depends upon our resolute bearing until Election issues are settled there. If we can do so, I cannot doubt a whole English-speaking world will be in line together.”

Given Churchill’s political pressures and beliefs, it would have been easy for him to join in Britain’s outrage or to accuse Roosevelt of being a slave to public opinion. But he didn’t. Instead he pointed to the circumstances that impinged on Roosevelt’s choices, and instead of pressing Roosevelt to deliver something he couldn’t practically do, he made it easier for Roosevelt, believing that this would be more likely to bring them in line after the election.

Roosevelt took a similar approach after the fall of Singapore, the jewel of the British empire. In an effort to soften the blow, Churchill gave a radio address in which, among other things, he referred to American sea power as having been “dashed to the ground” at Pearl Harbor. Washington’s inner circles complained that Churchill had just blamed the U. S. Navy for the fall of Singapore.

Roosevelt, waved away their complaints and, picking up a pen, wrote Churchill a note. “I realize how the fall of Singapore has affected you and the British people,” he began. “It gives the well-known backseat drivers a field day… I hope you will be of good heart in these trying weeks because I am very sure that you have the great confidence of the masses of the British people. I want you to know that I think of you often and I know you will not hesitate to ask me if there is anything you think I can do.”

Because Roosevelt and Churchill understood that their relationship would have a decisive impact on the success or failure of their mission, they gave it the same strategic attention they gave every other aspect of the war. All told, they met nine times between 1941 and 1945 in a range of different locales from Canada to Casablanca to Iran. In between, they exchanged countless wires, letters, and phone calls on everything from their families’ well-being to their flagging spirits to matters of war.

At a dinner during World War I where Roosevelt met Churchill for the first time, the former remarked on “the importance of personal relationships among allied nations.” When Churchill was appointed first lord of the Admiralty in 1939 — sent eight days after Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, nine months before Churchill became prime minister, and two years before the United States entered the war — Roosevelt wrote,

My dear Churchill, It is because you and I occupied similar positions in the World War that I want you to know how glad I am that you are back again in the Admiralty. Your problems are, I realize, complicated by new factors but the essential is not very different. What I want you and the Prime Minister to know is that I shall at all times welcome it if you will keep me in touch personally with anything you want me to know about.

Once Churchill became prime minister, the two men went to great lengths to meet face-to-face. In August 1941, four months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and six weeks after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, they traveled by ship in secret and at great risk to Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. There, aboard their two vessels, through days of talking, drinking, and smoking together, they forged a common bond and a common purpose.

Churchill left their initial encounter believing that Roosevelt’s “heart seemed to respond to many of the impulses that stirred my own,” while Roosevelt’s son, Elliot, observed, “My experience of [my father] in the past had been that he had dominated every gathering he was part of; not because he insisted on it so much as that it always seemed his natural due. Tonight, Father listened.”

But basic differences also emerged. “The two disagreed,” Meacham recounts, “and would for the rest of the war, about colonialism… setting the stage for a long-running source of tension between the two men.” And this was not their only source of tension — or their most difficult one.

As the war neared its end, Roosevelt and Churchill disagreed vehemently over how to handle Premier Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union. In their first three-way meeting, Roosevelt sought to charm and placate the premier in hopes of securing his support for a United Nations, while Churchill took a tougher stand, fearing they would face Soviet aggression after the war. Though Churchill would eventually prove prescient, at that meeting, it was Churchill, not Stalin, who played the odd man out.

Unsurprisingly, during this time of constant tension, Roosevelt and Churchill’s relationship grew more contentious. In a steady stream of cable traffic, the two fought over how best to end the war and structure the peace. With Churchill intent on protecting Britain’s post-war place, and Roosevelt just as intent on advancing America’s interests, the two men argued fiercely. In their last fight, this one over whether they should try to beat the Soviets to Berlin, the two failed to reach agreement. In the end, Churchill conceded. Afterward he wrote Roosevelt a note to reassure him that there were no hard feelings: “I regard the matter as closed,” he wrote, “and to prove my sincerity I will use one of my very few Latin quotations, ‘Amantium irae amoris integratio est.’” Translation: “Lovers’ quarrels always go with true love.” A week later, their friendship came to an end with Roosevelt’s death.

Meacham writes, “For all the tensions, and there were many… there was a personal bond at work that, though often tested, held them together.” I would argue that the strength of that bond was a product of the way they saw and handled their most fundamental differences. When disagreements broke out and pressures mounted, they sought to understand how the other thought and ticked. And while neither man hesitated to advance his own views or interests, they were equally quick to ask about the other’s opinion and to listen with genuine interest. As a result, no matter how frustrated they became, they never reduced each other to a caricature. Instead they built an ever more nuanced and subtle understanding of — and appreciation for — each other as people and for each other’s views and beliefs.

Most important and most unusual, despite the many competing demands on their time and the geographic distance between them, Churchill and Roosevelt took great pains throughout the war to invest in their relationship. More than anything else, this investment — and their mutual willingness to make it — allowed them to find common ground in the face of basic differences and to withstand the vast uncertainties and pressures of war.

Throughout, the two leaders illustrated a perspective built on a set of assumptions many leaders espouse but few enact (see “The Relational Perspective”). This perspective is based on a core belief best expressed by Karl Popper: “While differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.”

This basic belief leads people to assume that we all see things others miss, that disagreements are inevitable and valuable, that those disagreements will at times cause frustration, and that people will be better off if they help each other build relationships that can handle those differences well, especially under pressure.

Reality Check: The Power of Relationships

Aware of it or not, we all tend to make two assumptions: behavior is caused by an individual’s disposition, and those dispositions are impervious to change.

We’re wrong, it turns out, on both counts.

All of us are exquisitely sensitive to experience and to circumstance. For decades now, one psychology experiment after another has shown that situations have far greater sway over people’s behavior than we think. Yet the belief that behavior is determined by disposition is so pervasive that psychologists call it the fundamental attribution error.

Even more intriguing is recent research conducted by genetic and family researchers. A number of them are discovering that our relationships have the power to either amplify or modify even genetically based predispositions. Take, for example, a twelve-year study of 720 adolescents led by family psychiatrist David Reiss. It found that relationships within a family affect whether and how strongly genes underlying complex behavior get expressed.

“Many genetic factors, powerful as they may be,” says Reiss, “exert their influence only through the good offices of the family.” Some parental responses to genetic proclivities – say, toward shyness or antisocial behavior — exaggerate traits, while others mute them. In other words, to have any effect, genes must be turned on, and relationships are the finger that flips the switch.

Behavioral geneticist Kenneth Kendler of the Medical College of Virginia describes just how they flip this switch:

Family is like a catapult. Kids with a difficult temperament can be managed and set on a good course, or their innate tendencies can be magnified by the family and catapulted into a conduct disorder… A child with a difficult temperament brings on parents’ harsh discipline, verbal abuse, anger, hostility and relentless criticism. That seems to exacerbate the child’s innate bad side, which only makes parents even more negative, on and on in a vicious cycle until the adolescent loses all sense of responsibility and academic focus.

This power of relationships to shape behavior doesn’t stop in childhood. If we’re wired to do anything, it seems, we’re wired to learn. “Learning is not the antithesis of innateness,” says Gary Marcus in The Birth of the Mind. “The reason animals can learn is that they can alter their nervous systems based on external experience… experience itself can modify the expression of genes.”

Reams of research suggest that the brain continues to change in response to experience. Even adult brains are proving more mutable than most people think. Indeed, it’s looking more and more that our genes are continually working together with our environments — and most important, our relationships — to define and redefine who we are by structuring and restructuring our brains.

All this research adds up to one important conclusion: Our assumptions about individuals are quite simply wrong. Even so-called “difficult” people aren’t innately or irrevocably mad or bad. The relationships we build with others have the power to bring out the best or the worst in all of us. It’s the relationship we should be focusing on, not on individuals alone and in isolation.

This article is excerpted from The Elephant in the Room: How Relationships Make or Break the Success of Leaders and Organizations (Jossey-Bass, 2011).

Diana McLain Smith is Chief Executive Partner at New Profit Inc. She has also served as a partner and thought leader at the Monitor Group, a global management consultancy, and she is co-founder of Action Design, specializing in professional and organizational learning. Diana earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in consulting psychology at Harvard University.

The post Shifting Perspective to Shift Results appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Just like the rest of the world, functions within our organizations are increasingly interconnected and interdependent. Complex situations requiring a systemic approach are much more common than in the past. Nonetheless, many leaders and managers regularly use linear thinking, with its sequential, short-term focus on individual parts, which not only creates more complications, but also frustrates those of us who seem to “naturally” use systems thinking.

Why aren’t more people applying systems thinking tools and skills to manage the complex needs in the world today? In some ways, systems thinking is like chess: It is easy to learn the basic rules, but you need experience to become good at it. While many resources exist to enhance one’s ability to learn and practice systems thinking (including The Systems Thinker), our experiences tell us that certain people don’t seem to “get it,” use it, or even care about it. As Dave Packer observed in a 2004 article, “Whatever the reason, despite the promise of systems thinking, its impact has been surprisingly limited” (The Systems Thinker, V.14, N.10).

Why Don’t More People Use Systems Thinking?

We believe that at least two major barriers exist to the widespread adoption of systems thinking:

1. People get confused about what “systems thinking” means.

Multiple terms. Even highly educated professionals are often uncertain about how to define “systems thinking.” Similar concepts about systemic thinking are used in various applications throughout the world, including fields of study related to a systems approach to complexity — i.e., cybernetics, systems theory, complexity science, chaos theory, family systems theory, system dynamics, etc.

Internal debates. In the United States, arguably the most popular academic understanding of systems thinking developed out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where Professor Jay Forrester founded system dynamics in the 1950s, and where Peter Senge (a student of Forrester’s) raised awareness of systems thinking through The Fifth Discipline (1990). Twenty years after the publication of this bestselling book, an internal debate still festers among practitioners regarding the history and scope of systems thinking and system dynamics. As these internal debates continue, the arguments can confuse individuals seeking to clarify which tools, skills, and approaches are necessary and useful for better working with systems.

2. The tools and skills of systems thinking are not always consistent with the way people naturally think.

Learning to easily apply the tools and language of systems thinking has been compared to becoming fluent in a foreign language, in that it requires time and repetition with the material to build skills and confidence in applying it (Michael Goodman, “Systems Thinking as a Language,” The Systems Thinker, V2N3; David Bridgeland, “Technology Versus Discipline: Why I Am Not a Systems Thinker,” The Systems Thinker, V9N2). Yet our experience has shown that even with repeated exposure, some individuals within any group consistently disregard the majority of systems thinking practices, dismissing their value or return on investment. In contrast, within any group, some individuals quickly embrace and delight in discovering the “language” of systems thinking. (In our classes, these are the students who say, “This is the way I’ve always thought; you’re just giving me language to express it.”)

Our Study and Survey

While many great teachers and organizations are helping to clarify what systems thinking means, we have found little research regarding any connection between how people think and the use of systems thinking skills. Curious about the different levels of appreciation for systems thinking, we engaged in a study to see if at the individual level, a link might exist between a person’s personality and his or her preference for using systems thinking skills. Our research study asks: In what ways might the preference for systems thinking be connected to one’s preference for how to learn and evaluate information? In our post-study reflections, we also consider: How can we use our findings to help spread the appropriate use of systems thinking more broadly?

For our study, we engaged in two main activities:

1. We developed a comprehensive inventory and administered a survey of practices commonly associated with systems thinking.

2. We compared assessment responses to participants’ Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) typologies. Note: While many other useful and credible tools for assessing personality and style types are available, we chose the MBTI based on its popularity, name recognition, and the possibility of comparing our data to other MBTI correlation studies.

What We Mean by Systems Thinking

Given the variety and vagueness of definitions of systems thinking, we decided to clarify what we mean by systems thinking as a basis for collecting our data. Analyzing multiple sources, including material from Linda Booth Sweeney, Barry Richmond, and the Waters Foundation, we methodically developed a list of 17 practices that we consider important to systems thinking. (Immense thanks to our colleague Lucy Garrick for her partnership in the development of the list and survey instrument. For more information about the source materials, see www.lindaboothsweeney.net, www.watersfoundation.org, and Barry Richmond’s The ‘Thinking’ in Systems Thinking (Pegasus Communications, 2000).

How We Collected Data

We developed a questionnaire to assess a respondent’s preference for using any of the 17 systems thinking practices. Participants were asked to consider a brief scenario of a complex problem and answer 17 questions, each representing one of the systems thinking skills.

Imagine that you are on a citizen panel working on solutions to decrease crime in your hometown. You are given a great deal of data and requested to propose solutions. Think about how you would naturally want to process information and approach the issues.

Study volunteers were asked to choose the one answer that best fit with their preferred approach to learn and understand the information, given the scenario. We also requested that participants provide their MBTI types. If they were uncertain of their current MBTI type, they were able to take a validated online MBTI assessment at no charge. (We appreciated the grant assistant from Consulting Psychologists Press (CPP) for this project.)

Results were scored and means calculated for the level of preference for each of the 17 systems practices in the survey. We also conducted one-way analysis of variance tests as described in more detail later (see “Correlating Preferences for Using Systems Thinking with MBTI Type Dimensions”).

Findings

Overall Use of Systems Thinking. Our first analysis was to explore the level of preference for the 17 systems thinking practices contained in our questionnaire. “Participants’ Preferences for Each Systems Thinking Practice” summarizes the level of preference by the respondents for each of the 17 practices. Our purpose in developing this summary was simply to evaluate the level of familiarity the respondents had with systems thinking practices. As you will note, all practices were quite familiar to the survey respondents.

The table may seem to indicate strong acceptance of system thinking processes, but a fair degree of variation does exist. This is why we were interested in further investigating whether the MBTI dimensions might explain some of this variation.

Using the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI)

The MBTI is a survey based on the theory of psychological type introduced by Carl Jung in the 1920s. The survey results provide a level of preference individuals have for each of four dimensions, which can help explain how they perceive and judge situations they encounter as well as how they prefer to behave in routine interactions. The survey provides preferences for four dimensions:

Extroversion (E) or Introversion (I), which relates to how individuals focus their perception on the world around them. Individuals associated with E tend to gather information by exploring the world around them versus I individuals, who tend to focus more inward.

Sensing (S) or Intuitive (N), which relates to whether you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in (S) or whether you prefer to interpret and add meaning (N).

Thinking (T) or Feeling (F), which relates to making decisions. T individuals prefer to first look at logic and consistency as opposed to S individuals, who first look at the people and special circumstances.

Judging (J) or Perceiving (P), which relates to how one deals with the outside world. J individuals tend to like to have things decided whereas P individuals tend to prefer to stay open to new information and options.

If you’re interested, we encourage you to explore the many resources describing the MBTI on the web for further information. One site in particular we recommend is the Myers & Briggs Foundation.

Systems Thinking Practices and MBTI Dimensions. Our second analysis assessed whether any of the four primary factors of the Myers-Briggs indicator were correlated with the level of preference for any of the 17 systems thinking practices. To do so, we employed a simple analysis of variance to test

whether any of the four MBTI dimensions was statistically more identified with responses to any of the 17 practices. In short, we were interested in whether someone who was intuitive (N) expressed a higher level of preference for a given systems thinking practice than someone who was sensing (S), etc. Our findings are shown in “Statistically Significant Preferences for ST Practices, by MBTI Dimension.”

In summary, 11 of the 17 systems thinking preferences were statistically significant for intuition (N) and 6 of the 17 for perceiving (P). Only one systems thinking variable was significant for extroversion (E) and two for feeling (F).

The data suggests that respondents who identified themselves as intuitive (N) and, to a lesser extent, those identifying as perceiving (P) are more likely to express preference for systems thinking practices than those identifying themselves as having other types.

What Might This Analysis Mean?

The findings from the overall analysis suggest that within the general population, some segment of people naturally practice and prefer systems thinking as a way for them to better understand complex issues. This tendency is not necessarily related to someone’s capability of applying a given systems thinking practice or its frequency of use. Given the generally high percentages of strong/moderate preference for all of the practices, we may be able to generalize to say that if someone prefers to practice one aspect of systems thinking, he or she will also likely prefer several, if not all aspects of systems thinking. While this conclusion fits with our observation that some people tend to use more systemic thinking than others, the variance in the findings suggests that some practices remain less used overall: in particular, being comfortable with ambiguity (#6) and being cautious of a win/lose attitude (#14). Indeed, it may be possible that these and similar practices are actually discouraged in classrooms and the workplace in favor of other Western ideals such as knowing the “right answer, right away” and competing to win.

This systems thinking/MBTI analysis offers one explanation for the varied levels of appreciation and use of systems thinking in the workplace. It also suggests an approach of focusing on one or more specific practices to encourage the spread of this approach.

Application

We see several applicable lessons here about how to use knowledge about MBTI types to help engage more people in systems thinking practices. Here are a few that we believe are particularly useful:

“Preference” Doesn’t Mean “Ability.” As Myers Briggs professionals are quick to point out, one’s type is only a preference, and it is possible to learn how to adapt to situations as necessary. Put another way, just as someone with a strong P might adopt a to-do list to ensure she doesn’t forget to perform critical tasks, we believe people can use a variety of tools and techniques to help them focus on utilizing systems thinking practices. Some suggestions are included in “Sample Actions to Enhance Systems Thinking Practices.”

Remember That Systems Thinking Is One of Many Approaches. Recall the famous Mark Twain quote, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” As groups begin to gain skills and confidence in systems thinking practices, they will be tempted to see every organizational problem as a systems issue. This is of course not the case. Systems thinking is best used only under certain circumstances — with complex issues where the problem is not clear and the solution is unknown, what Ron Heifetz refers to as “adaptive challenges.” This is in contrast to a complicated or linear technical issue — where the problem is understood and the solution is known. For more on adaptive challenges versus technical problems, see Heifetz’s book, Adaptive Leadership (2009).

The point is this: if you do not have an adaptive issue on your hands, don’t spend time with systems thinking practices. A systemic approach may over-complicate the situation — and turn people off from the practices as they’ll see limited value for the time and thinking invested.

To Improve Systems Thinking as a Whole (Overall List of Practices), Pay Attention to the Parts (Individual Practices). Make sure you understand the basic idea of each practice. If a particular practice is relevant but underused in your organization, refer to “Statistically Significant Preferences for ST Practices, by MBTI Dimension” to help identify whether that particular practice may be related to individual MBTI preferences. If so, you may need to raise awareness first as opposed to immediately ordering another training.

For example, individuals with a strong MBTI preference for S, J, or both may refer to “Statistically Significant Preferences for ST Practices, by MBTI Dimension” as a guide to deciding which systems thinking practices may be less comfortable for them. So, someone with a J preference may want to focus on Practices 2, 3, 4 etc. first. In “Sample Actions to Enhance Systems Thinking Practices,” we provide suggestions for how to enhance this awareness and use it for two of the 17 practices. We suggest working on no more than one or two practices at a time.

To use this table, review the definition of the practice in the middle column and then think of how you might incorporate the suggested tools provided in the third column the next time your group faces a complex issue. Individuals working on building their systems thinking competencies are encouraged to self-reflect and seek feedback from others as to how effectively they are able to engage in the particular systems thinking practice and how their use of the practice affects results. We have found that this kind of focused approach can have a significant impact on people’s comfort with systems thinking practices and their development of new insights, both of which increase the perceived value of a systems thinking approach.

Implications for Using and Spreading Systems Thinking

We can draw a number of conclusions from the study that should be helpful to those applying or thinking about applying systems thinking in their organizations. For one thing, familiarity with systems thinking concepts appears to be quite widespread, indicating that most of us likely have the basic skills that are required to be successful in applying them to our organizational challenges. Second, not surprisingly, our personal preferences may affect our use of systems thinking, particularly from the standpoint of our omitting certain practices when they are not aligned with our preferred means of learning. By becoming aware of how our preferences might influence our (or other’s) desire to engage in systems thinking, we can begin to consciously focus our effort on specific learning tools to support the use of systems thinking when it might be helpful.

Most descriptions of systems thinking do not explicitly delineate the full set of 17 practices used in our survey. We recommend incorporating this list of practices into academic and professional development curricula to help expand awareness of the capabilities involved, as well as to bolster the confidence of new learners about their existing mastery of some of the practices.

Possibilities for Future Research

We caution that this study was an initial investigation into the use of MBTI types to think about preference for systems thinking use. It was not meant to be comprehensive or representative of the general population or even the subset of current users of systems thinking. Rather, the study sought to determine if any relationship might exist between the four MBTI dimensions and systems thinking practices among a small set of volunteers in order to determine if further investigation may be appropriate. We believe this study provides sufficient evidence to warrant further investigation and suggests:

1. The replication of this study with a larger sample that more clearly represents the four MBTI dimensions.

2. The development of an expanded methodology to identify a priori those likely to employ systems thinking and those less likely.

3. The inclusion of appropriate demographics into the selection of respondents to test whether factors such as age, sex, education, etc. may have intervening or direct consequences in the adaptation of these practices.

4. The inclusion in future questionnaires of indicators of frequency of use and a self-assessment of the degree of capability the respondent has in a given systems thinking practice.

5. An exploration of systems thinking correlating with other behavioral assessments, such as DiSC and FiroB.

While further research is needed to better understand personal preferences for systems thinking, it seems clear to us that this way of thinking is developed through a combination of both nature and nurture. We hope that this idea can serve those of us who are “natural systems thinkers” in at least two ways. First, it can remind us to be more patient and less judgmental when our colleagues don’t seem to “get it.” Second, it can help us look to specific exercises and tools to build capacity for particular systems thinking skills in both ourselves and others. We hope that, over time, with enough encouragement and practice, organizational groups will begin to naturally engage in systems thinking practices when complex issues come up — resulting in more systemic strategies and better, more sustainable solutions.

Nalani Linder is founder and principal of N P Linder Consulting, providing organizational development and systems thinking resources to organizational and community change agents since 2005. Nalani has been teaching systems thinking workshops since 2008. She currently divides her time between facilitating organizational change efforts for clients and consulting to Washington State K–12 educators about integrating systems thinking into their curriculum. Nalani received her master’s degree in Whole Systems Design from Antioch University–Seattle.

Jeff Frakes, Ph. D., serves as CEO of Performance Innovations, Inc., which provides coaching and conferencing in the human and organization development fields. He is a field faculty member for the organizational management program at Fielding Graduate University. Jeff has more than 20 years of experience as a human resources executive. He has contributed extensively to the use of Statistical Process Control and the administration and monitoring of drug dosages for those with neurological diseases.

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Mental models, the pictures or maps we have in our minds that we employ when interpreting, judging, and deciding, are one of the five disciplines of a learning culture (the others are systems thinking, shared vision, personal mastery, and team learning). Our mental models control our actions, and yet we tend to be unaware of the specifics embedded within them. Most of us have not been trained in reflective learning to test our own thinking and understand its impact on ourselves and others.

As a result, when confronted by opinions that conflict with our own, we generally defend our thinking or feign interest in someone else’s mindset rather than submit to the subtle and deep work of testing our own mental models. We rely on and are often rewarded for the repertoire of responses we have developed to familiar stimuli in our environment. We look for the right answer to solve the problem or question, based on our past experience. If well practiced, we can be on automatic pilot and push our way through a workweek of data, expectations, and requests from others without examining or questioning our underlying assumptions.

The situation gets messier the more people are involved. Groups hold mental models about their relationships and actions. As we join a team, organization, club, or society, we may have a mentor who guides us through the norms for that group, for example, the proper way to assert oneself and to disagree, the distribution of power and status, the type of data that the team values, the role of money, ground rules, etc. Often the subtleties and undiscussables are left for us to discover as we inadvertently bump into them in the course of our work. In the process of trying to dive into the thinking behind people’s actions, we may end up putting them on the defensive, whether we intend to or not.

Add one more layer of complexity by focusing on a group with fiduciary responsibility for an organization in perpetuity. A board of directors or trustees must work together to govern an organization in all its complexity and ensure the public that best decisions are being made on behalf of all stakeholders. Many boards meet in person four to six times a year, with committee meetings in between, either in person or through conference calls. Members begin to build familiarity by observing each other’s behaviors (he talks too much, she asks good questions, she demands data, he rushes to decide, etc.), but they seldom get to know each others’ mental models about the institution, governing, the role of senior leadership, group decision making, and so on. To be an effective board, members need to know a lot about how other members think. And they need to carve out time for defining their prevailing governance model.

Building shared mental models while taking advantage of the diversity of thinking in a group requires the disciplined deployment of time and talent. If we were better at reflective learning, we could draw out each person’s key assumptions and beliefs. In the absence of such facility, one method to promote deep conversation, model building, and coordinated action is to display a continuum of possible models. There are numerous ways to organize options about a given situation, and each has a distinct impact on the members, organization, and future. Start by doing the research and designing a continuum of positions on an issue. It’s not about having the perfect representation or right answers; the goal is to stimulate the group’s thinking so members can arrive at a shared mental model about a critical issue. Here’s an example of a group that took this approach.

A Green Story

Senior leaders in a public utility client felt it important to engage the board in an exploration of the company’s commitment to being green. Green strategy isn’t free; it requires an investment, depending on the chosen course of action. I partnered with the newly appointed leader of the environmental science department to craft a continuum of positions to provoke a broad and deep conversation about which position the board could support (see “Continuum of Positions”).

The first two positions – Compliance with Regulation and Follower of Best Practices – are reactive and depend on others in the industry to do the initial experimentation and learning. Both avoid risky investment because others prove the practice. The board members clearly understood the distinction between the two approaches. It was the discussion of Environmental Stewardship versus Environmental Leadership that enlivened the executives and directors.

After a rich dialogue, they decided that, in their model, Stewardship would involve activities within their organization. It would include a bias toward innovation as long as there was some evidence that the proposed initiative would be effective and provide an adequate ROI. Leadership would involve researching and experimenting with existing and new technologies, perhaps inventing a new process or technology, and teaching others in the industry the lessons learned along the way. Clearly Leadership is the most expensive and intensive choice.

CONTINUUM OF POSITIONS

One method to promote deep conversation, model building, and coordinated action is to do the research and design a continuum of positions on an issue. It’s not about having the perfect representation or right answers; the goal is to stimulate the group’s thinking so members can arrive at a shared mental model about a critical issue. A public utility used this continuum to provoke conversation about its green strategy.

As the executives and directors became comfortable with the emerging model, they realized it wasn’t necessary to declare only one position. The director suggested that, over the next five years, in some areas, they will fall into compliance; in others, they will seek out best practices to implement; and in still others they will commit to innovate for the benefit of the communities they serve. When asked if this approach represents a cop out, the leaders were adamant that their aspiration is Environmental Leadership but practicality required discernment of what they could afford to execute in the near future.

The team couldn’t be too attached to the model we had crafted from our research because throughout the process, we redefined and rearranged the continuum. Our satisfaction came from the quality of thinking and conversation and the commitment generated by the joint model-building process. The model served the purpose of helping a group of people make hard choices.

A Continuum of Evolving Governance

Sometimes the shared model is not about choosing but about becoming aware of a developmental path. A continuum of governance models for boards of directors or trustees that I developed with my colleague Martha Summerville (see “A Continuum of Governance Models”). It allows board members to clarify their personal model of “good governance” and engage in a dialogue about what type of board the group believes it currently is and aspires to be.

Let me briefly describe the differences among the options:

Consent Board. A consent board perceives that it has a few direct responsibilities: financial oversight and audit; the hiring, firing, and compensation of corporate officers; ethical corporate behavior; and understanding of customer interactions. Senior leaders are responsible for operations and strategy, which the board reviews. This board takes direction from senior leaders for setting the agenda for board meetings and for selecting new board members. The executive committee makes most decisions that arise that do not require a specific number of affirmative votes in the bylaws. Most items that come before the board for a vote have already been vetted by the chair of the board and the CEO. Votes in board meetings are usually unanimous, so interactions are cordial. Any serious conversations are taken “off line.”

Some dangers of remaining a consent board are unanticipated events in the organization that reflect poorly on the board, unethical behaviors among the leadership team, and boredom on the part of board members. Recruiting strong board members can be difficult unless the board changes its mind and culture.

CONTINUUM OF GOVERNANCE MODELS

Sometimes the shared model is not about choosing strategies but about becoming aware of a developmental path. This continuum of governance models for boards of directors or trustees allows board members to clarify their personal views of “good governance” and engage in a dialogue about what type of board the group believes it currently is and aspires to be.

Working Board. To increase their effectiveness or in response to pressure from key stakeholders or the media, consent boards generally find that they need to learn about the organization from the inside out rather than remain superficially aware of operations. Boards often make this shift after a scandal or crisis. Their focus becomes critical measurable outcomes. A working board usually has several committees, for example, Quality & Safety, Finance & Audit, Regulatory, Culture & Employee Engagement, Governance & Leadership. Each committee works with a senior leader as a liaison to consider relevant data and assess pending strategic decisions. Early in the evolution from consent to working board these committees may dive too deeply and get too involved in operations. Senior leaders and board members need to establish clear boundaries and responsibilities to maintain a positive working relationship.

A working board sets its own agenda, including its learning agenda, with input from senior leaders. It regularly evaluates its own performance to give the public confidence in its oversight on behalf of key stakeholders. Face-to-face board meetings have committee time and plenary time. Because working boards have more responsibilities than consent boards, meetings tend to be longer, with virtual committee meetings in between formal meetings and an annual board retreat. Potential directors need to be aware of the amount of commitment (time, talent, and money) required.

The dangers of remaining a working board include a stagnant organizational identity, weakened senior leadership, and burnout of board members.

Strategic Board. At some point in the evolution of their relationship with senior leaders and of their thinking, the board makes the shift to being a strategic board. Often the shift is prompted when senior leaders ask the board to elevate the level of its deliberations, and board members affirm they have deep confidence in senior leaders to carry on the organization’s day-to-day activities.

Though familiar with operations, board members expect senior leaders to excel at managing the organization with annual and three and five-year plans. At this stage, the board becomes significantly less involved in quarterly operations and performance, focusing instead on five-year and ten-year time horizons and beyond. Boards must focus on the institution’s survivability beyond any chief executive. The members broaden their scope and become genuine stewards of the organization’s tangible and intangible assets for stakeholders, the local communities, the industry, and society at large. The board shifts its main frame of reference from operations to sustainability of the business model.

When a board becomes aware of the organization’s expanded responsibilities to its local communities and society at large, it may choose to move into “mindfulness.”

A strategic board will include many of the same committees as before, with the potential addition of strategic planning, government affairs, and corporate citizenship. Board members tend to be diverse to encompass a variety of perspectives on the organization and its emerging business model. They have a strong sense of team and a passion for the organization. Recruiting new members must be a thoughtful process that takes into account experience, skills, knowledge of the business, ability to work in groups, and learning capacity.

Some dangers of a strategic board include the inability to reach decisions, unanticipated events in the operations, and the possibility that senior leaders might feel disenfranchised from the strategic thinking.

Mindful Board. When a board becomes aware of the organization’s expanded responsibilities to its local communities and society at large, it may choose to move into “mindfulness.” The mindful board knows that it needs to be conscious of more than fiscal realities. It reframes old models and structures and opens itself to new information that it may have previously discounted. Members become conscious of themselves as stewards of the organization’s assets, its culture as a reflection of its values, the quality of relationships with and among key stakeholders, and the expectations of the communities in which the organization is located. They are aware of how the organization interacts with its environment and the impact of the organization’s actions.

Members of a mindful board have a deep sense of purpose beyond providing products or services and jobs, and they have an abiding respect and affection for the institution and its potential. They explore their response to the questions, “Why does this organization deserve to operate for the next century? How will it contribute to the common good? What must we put in place (structure, values, culture, relationships, etc.) to support that purpose?” The conversation about the organization’s purpose and future design principles often occurs at a board retreat.

A board chair can’t choose for her board to move to the next level along the governance continuum.

Board members engage many other groups in a robust visioning process that embraces the creativity needed for designing the future. The mindful board expands its consciousness from the tangible fiscal world to the intangible world of purpose and spirit. At this level, the board is able to employ all four models of governance, based on the type of action needed by the board at any given time.

A New Level of Consciousness

Nonprofit boards evolve with the same expanded responsibilities as corporate boards. When I first met the board of a certain client organization, its members were all male and over 50 years old, though the organization served young women and men. The president and his staff determined the agenda for their one-day board meetings. It consisted of a parade of presentations with lunch. The president once said he never brought anything to the board for a vote that he didn’t know the outcome. This was a perfect consent board. The crisis that awakened them was a near default on their bond covenants. The board was caught totally by surprise.

As board members dug into the financial crisis, they found other surprises and moved quickly to being a working board. Interestingly, a few members resigned, saying they didn’t have time for the work. Those members were replaced by women and people with different cultural backgrounds. Through the diligence of several board committees over four years in partnership with the administration, the institution was stabilized. Recognizing all were in a different environment, the president and the board had a critical conversation about decisions taking too long and senior staff feeling overmanaged, and all agreed the board needed to pull out of operations.

The migration to a strategic board was awkward, because of tension between the board and executive team over who “owned” the strategy. By agreement, the board kept its role in crafting its own agenda, which the president had hoped to take back. The chief officer and the executive committee co-designed board meeting agendas. They successfully negotiated the development of a strategic plan, with the administration crafting and managing the annual and three-year plans, and the board focusing five years into the future and beyond.

Both the board and the executive team were anxious, because the relationship was shifting. Board members had to clarify how their work was changing and what reports they expected from administration. It took a year for both groups to settle into the new model of governance.

A fund-raising campaign ultimately awakened a deep sense of stewardship and purpose for the board. On retreat, members talked about their long-term vision for the organization. They noticed a different quality in their conversation from what they had previously experienced. In small groups, they told stories of when this board had made decisions that were based on a shared spirit and purpose. Board members talked about the crisis years as well as the last couple of years when they renegotiated their work and relationship with the organization’s administration. With a deep respect for their organization’s contribution to clients and the community, they acknowledged that the vision went well beyond 10 years and involved the sustainability of the organization’s mission beyond their lifetime. Their consciousness was engaged by service to a higher purpose – the hallmark of a mindful board. Months later, members would tell the story of that transformative retreat and why board service is a privilege at this institution. Their shift in consciousness strengthened their relationship with senior leaders from “presenting to the bosses” to “thinking about the long-term viability of the institution.” Board members and administrators expanded their perceived scope of influence. The organization has embarked on a green strategy for their buildings and are finding donors who are willing to participate financially. Together they have begun innovating on delivery of their services as they expand their relationships in the community.

A Shared Model

A board chair can’t choose for her board to move to the next level along the governance continuum. The challenge becomes surfacing the current prevailing model and identifying its impact and limitations. With a vision for the institution as well as their ideal board as a context, the members can explore what is required of them in thinking and acting as stewards for the organization. Over some period of time and conversation, the board’s collective mind begins to evolve to a new level of consciousness that incorporates the experiences from the past with the desires of the future.

While our ability to communicate may still fall short of a Vulcan mind meld, working from a shared model can help a group move faster and make the contributions it wants to make. It’s hard work to build that shared mental model. Having several options in some progression makes it easier for a group to discuss and decide on a model. Group members may choose one of the models or create their own unique model after considering the implications of the options before them.

Through their conversations, the members strengthen their capacity and weave strong connections in their relationships. It is satisfying and fulfilling work that can take the organization to a new level of stewardship and contribution.

Charlotte Roberts, PhD, is co-author of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization and The Dance of Change: The Challenges of Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations. She will be a keynote speaker at the 2011 Systems Thinking in Action® Conference.

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The moment of conflict holds such promise — the opportunity to approach life creatively, make a different choice, visit another planet — opportunities we would not otherwise be offered if it weren’t for the conflict. Conflict is one way in which we come to know the world and understand each other. Conflict offers an opening to our most powerful selves. It also offers the opposite. Like two roads diverging, one leads toward connection, the other toward separation. Our habitual patterns of reaction leave us thinking we have no choice but to do what we’ve always done. Then, when the conflict is over, we look back, asking “why did I do that, what was I thinking?” having once again missed the opportunity to take a different path.

Making Choices

Conflict too often provides the bricks and mortar for walls that keep out the world and those we love. Constructed of fear, judgment, defensiveness, and misunderstanding, our walls are meant to keep us safe and maintain the rightness of our opinions. The problem is that walls work two ways. Our carefully assembled grudges, justifications, and attitudes are, at the same time, barriers to what we desire most — connection to our wisdom, to our humanity, and to the source of universal intelligence that supports us all. Our real safety lies in connection, but because we are more practiced at building walls, we create a prison for ourselves, keeping out the very things we hoped the walls would enclose.

What walls have you constructed that no longer serve a useful purpose? Do reactive habits keep you from finding a new path? In what ways are you resisting connection? What is conflict and how can you safely change yourself in order to change your situation?

A New Way to Manage Conflict

Luckily, I’ve discovered a tool that helps me remember that I have alternatives even in the most difficult situations. A couple of decades ago, I fell in love with a martial art called aikido and began to see the world through its lens. From the beginning, aikido’s fluid, spiraling, and powerful movements seemed to suggest possibility — a new way to manage physical conflict. I found aikido’s principles of centered response, utilization of energy, and nonresistant leading to be equally applicable in nonphysical conflict — what we might call life’s “attacks” — such as arguments, everyday hassles, and the more serious problems we all face at some point in our lives.

When you watch aikidoists practicing, you don’t see a typical adversarial battle between aggressor and defender. You see what looks like a physical exchange between two people giving and receiving energy, more like a powerful dance than combat.

As an attack comes toward her, a receiver does not strike back or otherwise block the force of the attack. Instead, she moves toward the incoming energy (shifting slightly off the line of attack) and physically unites with the attacker’s power. Once she makes this connection, she controls the direction and momentum of the attack by pinning or throwing her opponent. This is the most basic principle of aikido: do not resist an attack. Instead, the aikidoist learns to blend, control, and redirect.

Utilization of Energy

Life could be a lot easier than I make it, was my first thought upon seeing the art of aikido. Having lived the life of a perfectionist for so many years, I was accustomed to struggling with life events, putting pressure on myself at every turn. But as an aikidoist I asked, How might I use what comes at me instead of fighting or wishing it away? It made so much sense, and I loved the inclusive view it offered. I guessed correctly that it would take some undoing of old, ingrained habits of resistance before I could acquire this new way of being, and I began to look with new eyes at what I had previously thought of as negative events in my life. What does it mean to use energy?

I began to teach the aikido metaphor as a way of transforming conflict and to share the view the aikido lens offers, both to demonstrate for others and to clarify for myself how life, work, and relationships might benefit from this model. At the same time I began practicing the martial art, reasoning that integrating aikido “on the mat” would help me teach and apply its concepts “off the mat.” Every moment on the mat reinforces my belief.

The Way of Harmony

Developed in the twentieth century, aikido is the invention of a highly skilled and spiritual Japanese warrior, Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969). Those of us who practice aikido call him O Sensei (, “Great Teacher”). A master of sword and open-hand combat, O Sensei held that the true martial art was one of harmony. Making subtle changes in the combative arts he had mastered, he conceived a martial art that could disarm an attack without doing harm in the process. He called it aikido — the art of peace. Translated as “the way of blending or harmonizing with universal energy,” the aim of aikido is not merely self-defense, but a new way to reconcile differences.

The power and art of aikido are in the joining — in moving toward an attack and becoming one with the attacker. It takes presence of mind and a strong center of gravity not to be swept up in the energy of an attack but instead to enter into its chaos, understand its core, and direct it toward resolution. Since she flows with the river instead of pushing against it, the aikidoist’s movements are quick and powerful. Before an attack can do harm, the attacker is engaged and guided to a place where the energy can play out safely.

How might I use what comes at me instead of fighting or wishing it away?

In life, the aikido metaphor is realized when you transform challenges into opportunities and adapt to new circumstances with ease, moving with life’s flow, instead of struggling against it. You are practicing aikido whenever you listen with curiosity to an opposing view or search for mutual understanding, respect, and purpose. Aikido happens any time you stop, take a breath, and choose a more felicitous state of being. No matter how you approach it, whether physically or conceptually, aikido offers a unique blend of power and grace.

Aikido and Conflict — The Metaphor

There are six facets of the aikido-conflict metaphor as it has evolved and crystallized for me:

• Resistance. My initial reaction to adversity is to resist it. In a physical assault, I want to keep the attacker away from me. Similarly, I would rather not have to deal with a workplace conflict, a difficult person, or a frightening illness.
• Connection. At some point, however, I must connect with the conflict if there is any hope of resolving it. In aikido, I connect by moving toward the attacker and joining my energy with his. In life, I connect when I accept that the problem exists. Connection is the first step toward resolution.
• Practice. As I acknowledge the conflict, I begin to take action. At first my action is unskilled. I make mistakes, and I practice and refine my approach. Aikido practitioners refer to this refinement process as “getting on the mat.” The mat is the place where we meet to learn and hone our technique and practice confidence and presence.
• Discovery. Through steady practice, I gradually find myself in new territory, where the realization of how little I know catapults me into a land of discovery. Whether on the aikido mat or on the mat of life, I become a learner. As I move from resistance to curiosity and wonder, my practice becomes fun.
• Power. Discovery brings a new kind of power because it is aligned with energy. I learn that power does not equal force or coercion. Rather, this new power increases in direct relationship to flexibility and empathy.
• Teachers. Finally, I notice that conflict has become my teacher. My difficult relationships have taught me flexibility and assertiveness. Through adversity, I have discovered new perspectives and insights. In aikido we say, “The attack is a gift of energy.” I bow with gratitude.

Centered Response

Underlying and connecting the six facets of the aikido-conflict metaphor is my ability to direct my life energy in a conscious and purposeful way. Call it what you will — self-control, emotion management — my awareness of and ability to manage me is where each story begins. On the aikido mat, when the attack comes, we learn to “center and extend ki.” To be “centered” in this sense means to be balanced, calm, and connected to an inner source of power. In life as in aikido, when you’re centered, you are more effective, capable, and in control.

Ki (pronounced “key”) is Japanese for energy or universal life force. It is the ch’i in tai ch’i or qi in qi gong. When you center and extend ki, you increase your ability to influence your environment and your relationships.

Keeping Conflict in Perspective

Here’s an example of the power of regaining balance in the face of an unexpected conflict. A friend told me about a conflict she was having with her next-door neighbor. Because of a misunderstanding, the neighbor was pretty upset, so much so that when they passed on the street and my friend said hello and reached out to shake hands, he withdrew his. He avoided eye contact, muttered a monotone “hi,” and quickly walked past her.

She felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. Stunned, she walked back to her house wondering what had just happened. It was even more upsetting because she had communicated with this man about the confusion that had initially caused the conflict, and she thought he understood her point of view. She wanted to find out what went wrong, but he clearly didn’t want to discuss it. We talked about the incident for a while, brainstorming strategies that would help her deal with this unexpected blow, but eventually I left her to think it over on her own.

Surprise Attack

A surprise attack is one of the hardest conflicts to handle. It’s a shock to the system. Often the first reaction (after your heartbeat returns to normal) is to blame the other person or yourself and to get caught in endless internal dialogue about who’s at fault and what to do next.

Regardless of the cause, a troubling conflict may take time to resolve and can disrupt life while it’s going on. In the confusion, we lose our center and often operate on half-power, the other half working non-stop to figure out where to assign blame and (as much as possible) to justify our actions. It can be so disturbing that we lose focus, have difficulty making even routine decisions, and spend wakeful nights deliberating over the best way to solve the problem. It’s hard to do anything wholeheartedly until the conflict is resolved.

I felt a lot of empathy for my friend with the disgruntled neighbor. I’ve been there, and it’s no fun. One of the ways I tried to help was to listen when she needed to talk. I also suggested she take care of herself while trying to untangle this knotty situation. Conflict is hard on the body, on the mind, and on the spirit, especially when it catches you by surprise. In his book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Robert Sapolsky gives clear evidence and many examples of the effects of stress on the cardiovascular, digestive, and immune systems, as well as its connection with depression, personality, and temperament. Activation of the stress response releases numerous hormones that affect our ability to eat, sleep, think, speak, work, rest, and suppress disease.

How can you prepare when you don’t know the conflict is coming? And how can you regain your inner and outer balance?

Now What?

As you go through your daily activities, employ these mental and physical strategies to help restore perspective, reduce your body’s stress response, and move the conflict toward a positive resolution.

• Breathe and Center. Often. A conflict can unbalance us with strong emotions and feelings of unworthiness, anger, sadness, and frustration. Don’t avoid your emotions, but treat them as guides. Appreciate and observe them as you might observe a play. There is a lot of power in this emotional energy, and as you breathe, center, and watch, you’ll discover how to use your emotions in a way that is in line with your highest purpose.
• Take the Long View. It’s so easy to get caught in the turmoil of the conflict that we forget there will be a tomorrow. Take some quiet moments to close your eyes and see yourself in the future with the conflict resolved. Imagine how you’ll feel with the problem behind you. What would you like the relationship to look like a month from now? A year from now? Meanwhile, eat well, go to bed at regular hours, laugh, and allow yourself to forget the problem occasionally. This may not be easy, but it’s effective. Allow your inner wisdom to work silently while you continue to engage in life.
• Reframe. Step outside the conflict momentarily and look at it through a more objective lens. Instead of resisting, ask yourself if there is a gift here — an invitation to look at things differently or to try a new behavior. Acknowledge the other person by standing in his shoes. Why is he behaving this way? What does he want? How would you feel in his position?
• Experiment. Brainstorm all possible responses to this situation and try them on for size. Ask a friend to role-play alternatives you think you’d never choose because they’re so unlike your usual persona. Have fun exercising unexplored selves.
• Practice. Choose one new behavior that will make a positive difference in your attitude toward life and make a commitment to practice that behavior every day.
• Count Your Blessings. Notice the good things in your life. Cultivate gratitude and wonder.

Conflict can cause us to lose sight of the big picture — of what we really want in life, why we’re here, and what is important in a particular relationship — or to see it more clearly. Get on the mat and engage the conflict energy. Work with it and move it in a positive, useful direction. Meeting life in this way is the key to finding your true power.

After brainstorming many options, my friend decided to write a letter to her neighbor. She refrained from justifying her own actions. Instead, she acknowledged his feelings and offered to talk with him about the situation. Her letter opened a renewed conversation and, over time, they came to be good neighbors again.

Judy Ringer is the author of Unlikely Teachers: Finding the Hidden Gifts in Daily Conflict (OnePoint Press, 2006). She provides conflict and communication training internationally with unique workshops based on mind/body principles from the martial art aikido, in which she holds a second-degree black belt. Judy brings to life concepts such as self-management under pressure and appreciation of other viewpoints. This article is adapted with permission from Unlikely Teachers. Quotation from Technical Aikido used with permission of the Kanai family.

The post Finding Balance: What Aikido Can Teach Us About Conflict appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

For consultants, trainers, community activists, communicators, and people with the need to get things done quickly and efficiently, the art of online hosting offers a way to transform the dry, predictable events we have all experienced into engaging interactions. We contend that anyone can improve the effectiveness and value of their online seminars or events by using one key hosting skill and challenging five common assumptions about meetings and online learning. Follow these guidelines to explore new choices and reveal a different online experience from what most people have come to expect.

Not a Substitute, but Something Different!

Web conferencing is often seen as a poor substitute for the richness of a classroom session or face-to-face event. The comments usually go something like, “You could never experience the power of a class on a screen” and “How can you compare being in the same room with being on the same screen?” But online engagement is not a substitute for face-to-face interaction; it’s something entirely different. Can you imagine the loss to our communication system if someone discouraged Alexander Graham Bell from inventing the telephone by insisting that just hearing someone is no substitute for seeing them?

As we get more comfortable with technology, we learn that each kind of event, executed well, has its place. We are not on a mission to create converts for online engagement; our intention is merely to demystify this powerful way to meet, learn, and collaborate so that you can view it as an opportunity that you can use to your advantage.

We further contend that the online space is sometimes actually a better — and on occasion the only — option for learning or gathering collaboratively. This is especially true when your audience is:

1. Geographically dispersed. For example, gathering groups of people for meetings can be impractical for companies that have corporate offices with branches all over the world or large national and multi-national organizations.
2. Interested in germinating ideas collectively, over time. Today’s technology allows learning to be scheduled both synchronously and asynchronously, letting ideas continue to germinate and develop between online meetings.
3. Resource-conscious and focused on convenience. Some groups are simply unable to make the necessary investment in time and money to travel to a common location, or members may need to gather quickly, efficiently, and often.
4. Made up of mainly introverts. The virtual environment can feel less threatening for this learning group, as it offers a level of protective anonymity and ample time for reflection before speaking.
5. Concerned with environmental conservation. It’s much less energy and resource intensive to meet online than to use limited resources for travel.

It’s Just a Space!

People tend to assume that the online experience is somehow less real or less valuable than a bricks-and-mortar classroom or other face-to-face engagement. To combat that mental model, the art of online hosting places special attention on creating an environment that is personal, warm, and conducive to human relationship. We see a seminar or meeting primarily as a space for learning and a field of collaboration, where the principles of hospitality, clarity, focus, and intention apply, regardless of the technology being used. A good host intentionally creates what World Café co-founders Juanita Brown and David Isaacs call a “hospitable space.” Hospitality here means extending a sense of welcome, a kind of gracious generosity, to your participants — honoring their presence and inviting their participation exactly as you would if they were guests in your home.

We subscribe to a theory of learning that assumes, with Etienne Wenger, “that engagement in social practice is the fundamental process by which we learn.” Because learning happens socially, it flourishes in a context where we can apply our skills and competence, have the opportunity to achieve results, and engage with others in meaningful ways. Whether we are working online or face-to-face, we encounter similar choices: we can learn or not; we can reach a group decision or not; we can build relationships and communicate freely or not. Good preparation can create the conditions for participants to respond in the affirmative to each of these choices.

To take advantage of the power of online space, we must shift from presentation strategies to engagement strategies. According to Brown and Isaacs, “The setup of most meetings actually subverts collaborative efforts by focusing on deadening one-way presentations.” Their statement rings true nowhere more clearly than in many of today’s dull webinars and online presentations. You may have attended some online seminars and virtual meetings of this nature: one-way communication, unengaged participants, awkward moments . . . the result of which is a failure to learn and continued lowering of expectations for online learning/meetings as a genre.

If few of us learn just by listening to presenters and seeing their slides, why are we put on mute with limited chances to participate and interact with each other when we are online? Successful online hosts ask themselves: “What if my job is to design online conversations rather than be the focal point for the session? What if my job is creating personal connections and a hospitable space in the online meeting room?” One key skill can make all the difference.

One Key Skill

“True conversation requires us to treat the world as if it were alive and everything in it a revelation.”

—David Whyte

The key to online hosting is simple — deep listening. When it comes to using online tools, people are often distracted by technology, and distracted people don’t listen well. But we know that the best teachers in the world hear, support, challenge, and engage learners’ thinking.

Here’s the challenge: Listening online has a different quality than listening in a classroom. There are no visual clues to guide us: no eager eyes, no furrowed brows, no yawns, no raised hands. Because you can’t see participants in a virtual setting, it requires an almost Zen capacity to “lean in” to what would otherwise appear to be silence.

Deep listening in an online environment comes from a stance of deep caring. You have to give a damn. Unless you nurture a true connection with other human beings, no matter how proficient you are with the technology, your online sessions will hardly shine. Using a whimsical comparison, online hosts are like Luke Skywalker of Star Wars: with all the technology at their disposal, they still trust the “force” of their trained intuition to make things happen.

As an experiment, when you start your next online session, take a few moments to create an environment that is hospitable to the kinds of results you want to achieve. If you want your group to be relaxed, open, and engaged, first and most important, you yourself must be relaxed. Otherwise, you’ll find it hard to listen. Log on to the session 15 minutes early and engage in casual, friendly conversation with whoever shows up. This is a simple and effective way to model the informal, relaxed atmosphere you want to create. The pressure to appear intelligent can be oppressive for both host and participants. Sometimes we jokingly tell people “don’t do your best,” just to help them relax and be themselves.

Make peace with silence. Don’t rush to fill a break in the conversation with your own interpretations. Give time for people to think and for engagement to emerge. Silence is a necessary ingredient in a successful online interaction, because it allows people to collect their thoughts, work through a question that is not obvious, or wait for the time to be right to contribute to the conversation. Being comfortable with silence — your own and from your group — is not always as easy as it sounds. For instance, before hosting a session with 1,200 people, one of the authors spent a few quiet minutes composing her thoughts and attending to the space she was about to create. Those minutes of silence were invaluable preparation for the times in the session when patience and listening were most needed.

Five Online Hosting KDPs

In aviation, a KDP (key decision point) is a critical decision made in a few moments, based on the pilot’s judgment and assessment of external conditions. Examples include the “takeoff/no takeoff” or “landing/no landing” decisions. Those fateful choices are made by the pilot on every flight, and they largely determine its success or failure. Similarly, the decisions made by online hosts at key moments determine the results of their session.

We present five online hosting KDPs that simplify your work, whether you are planning a virtual meeting, developing materials, or delivering an online session (see “Keys to Successful Online Events”). Each KDP is also meant to explore a limiting belief and challenge a commonly held assumption with the purpose of pushing online hosts to go beyond previous limitations and access their best thinking. Whether you use all of our recommendations or only a few, we hope that you will make more conscious decisions at critical junctures and bring your full awareness to bear in truly exploring all the options you have available.

KDP 1: What do we do in the session? Will we create a flashy presentation with special effects, or will we invite real engagement and design questions that matter to this group of trainees? Will we find busywork for them, or will we create hands-on tasks that they can perform and practice through interaction and conversation? Successful online hosts go from PowerPoint to powerful.

Learning happens when people join in conversation on questions where they do not already know the answer. If you want your webinars to become occasions for collective learning, you need to master the art of asking questions that stir things up and reveal an opportunity for real exploration. As World Café practitioners, our hosting skills were born in an environment that recognizes the efficacy of powerful questions. What makes a question powerful? It has to be of real value to your group. It has to be phrased in such a way that the responses are generative and instructive, and not just a litany of complaints or an abstract mental exercise.

Before each online event, we spend time identifying questions that will shake up what the group thinks it knows and open them up to their potential for curiosity and their excitement for learning. We always prepare at least three powerful questions that address something of personal importance for the participants, touch on key parts of the content, and build interest for the session. For example, in a session about organizational change, we might start with the question, “What is one of your most successful experiences with organizational change at work?”

KDP 2: What technology will we use? Will we use the latest state-of-the-art technology or the simplest, most appropriate tool? Successful online hosts keep IT simple.

The best online events are the ones in which the technology “disappears.” We want to keep the focus on people’s engagement with each other and not on the technology. In addition, people’s fear of technology or “something new” can be a real deterrent to their willingness to participate. This is especially true for otherwise highly skilled people who are in positions of authority and anxious not to appear foolish trying to learn a new system.

One way to address this challenge is to choose technology that has little or no learning curve, like the telephone-based conferencing technology we’ve found effective. When using more complex technology, give ample time before the event for practice and provide one-on-one training if needed to allow everyone to feel comfortable in the medium.

If you are interested in robust web-conferencing platforms, go with the big names. Most are easy for participants to use. It might take you a while to become fully confident in employing all the bells and whistles, but plenty of tutorials are available. Whatever your choices, we find the ability to support breakout rooms especially helpful to a conversation-based approach.

To make people comfortable with the interface, consider fun ways to engage them; for example, at the beginning of a session, use the status icon to have participants agree or disagree with statements like “I wish I were fishing” or “I’d rather be dancing.” This practice serves at least two purposes: breaking the ice and helping participants become familiar with the technology.

KDP 3: What activities should we have in the agenda? Will we talk over a presentation, or will we invite participation? Successful online hosts talk as little as possible.

To make acquiring new knowledge interesting and engaging, turn your teaching materials from “things learners need to know” into “things learners need to do.” By doing so, you act as a resource rather than a talking head, and let the trainees dig in and have the experience themselves. Experiential activities might include:

1. Present information with a slideshow
2. Invite a guest to join the conference call
3. Air an audio/video segment
4. Engage group dialogue with an online blackboard or collaborative drawing tool
5. Call on participants with a question
6. Ask participants to answer a quick poll or submit comments through the chat function
7. Divide participants into virtual breakout rooms for small-group work

This interactive design recognizes and taps the rich well of intelligence, experience, and wisdom that exists in the audience. Everyone benefits when we invite audience participation into our events. In one session about negotiation, for example, we invited participants to share the deals they found during their Memorial Day weekend shopping excursions as a way to introduce a segment about successful negotiation.

KDP 4: How do we manage people’s input on the conference call? Will we command the communication, or do we allow conversation to flow organically by unmuting the lines and letting people join in? Successful online hosts unmute the line.

Learning happens in conversation, and if we do not allow people to engage with each other, an online session will have limited impact. You can always mute the lines if the background noise becomes too distracting. Until then, the first step toward a rich, social, learning-full experience online is allowing people to speak.

When you are working with more than about 40 people, rather than leave the audio lines unmuted, look for other methods to connect people. What’s most important is that each person has the opportunity to be heard and feel part of the conversation. If at all possible, encourage participants to speak to the whole group. In any case, always make sure they have an opportunity to express themselves in a small-group breakout.

Sometimes other modalities can be useful. For example, invite everyone to write an insight or make a drawing of something they’ve gleaned from what they are hearing. In a recent online World Café, we asked the participants to take a minute to think and then write one or two insights or ideas that they could take with them from the conversation so far. They then shared these “seeds” with the larger group as part of the event harvest. This moment of collective introspection helped everyone get present and connect with themselves and each other.

KDP 5: What happens after the session is over? Will the work end, or will we make a point to document and share the results of learning through graphic recordings, questionnaires, post-session surveys, online evaluations, and invitations to join an online learning community or working group? Successful online hosts know that when the session is over, the work is not done.

Collect feedback immediately. At the end of each online session, we ask people to rate us from 1 to 5, with 1 “waste of time” and 5 “I learned a lot.” Take time to analyze those valuable results, and call participants to request additional feedback if needed. For online seminars, meeting face-to-face is an excellent follow-up; so is joining a discussion board or sharing resources online.

Conclusions and What’s More to Learn?

As online hosts, we continually strive to increase our capacity to listen deeply. We consciously use the five KDPs to create safety in the virtual room and engage our participants. We anticipate potential roadblocks to participation and come to the session prepared with ways to avoid them. We create the conditions for full participation — with our voices, our ability to listen, the design of the session, and our willingness to engage our own and the participants’ imaginations.

Making the right choices during the five key decision points will help you build an environment that communicates support for your participants and shows that you value their experience and input. In the course you choose, you are clearly defining your role as a host, creating a hospitable space, setting up your virtual room for success and high engagement, and encouraging real conversation and exchange.

We are currently exploring three other areas of online hosting:

• What are the limits of this new technology? We’ve been working with the assumption that the less technology the better, but as new technology evolves, so does our curiosity about what might be possible. What’s the point where the advantages outweigh the difficulties and the rewards are so great that even the most reluctant are willing to take the risks and learn new skills to be part of these opportunities?
• We are also interested in how to be more effective in inviting and bridging the digital divide, asking ourselves, who else needs to be part of the online conversation? If you believe, like we do, that we need everyone’s voice to provide the diversity of perspective that can best address today’s important issues, then how do we invite more underrepresented populations to participate?
• Finally, what would be the most effective ways to host really large groups — two thousand and upwards — online and still maintain a sense of intimacy and the “hands-on” care and hospitality that we believe characterizes good hosting?

We hope you have found the ideas in this article interesting and nourishing food for thought. Whether you are stimulated or challenged by what what you have read here, we invite you to share your feedback and thoughts with us, along with your own experiences and ideas about online hosting, either via email or in the World Café online community.

Let the conversations begin!

Sources Cited:

Brown, Juanita, David Isaacs, and the World Café Community. The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter (Berrett-Koehler, 2005)

Wenger, Etienne. Communities of Practice. Learning as a Social System (Cambridge University Press, 1998)

Adriano Pianesi (a@pactionc.com) is principal of ParticipAction Consulting, Inc. He brings 15 years of rich experience in the nonprofit, government, and private sectors to his work in adult education, course development, facilitation, and e-learning. Adriano is an innovator and practitioner in dialogue education and conversational learning, and has been facilitating effective online seminars since 2002. His clients include NASA, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the National Labor Relations Board, the Environmental Protection Agency, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organization of American States.

Amy Lenzo (amy@theworldcafe.com) is a pioneer in the art of online hosting. She has been creating “hospitable space” online with her consulting and design work since the late 1990s as Clear Light Communications. Currently the director of communications at the World Café Community Foundation, she hosts large-scale online conversations through weDialogue, including the free public Conversations for the 21st Century online series. Equally passionate about the natural world, her MacBook Pro, and the viewfinder of her Canon 5D, Amy blogs about what she finds beautiful at beautydialogues.com.

The post The Art of Online Hosting: From PowerPoint to Powerful appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

To feel secure in their actions, many leaders continue to look to the past for the solutions they need for current and future problems. In The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (2004), Stephen Covey speaks about how today’s solutions do not meet tomorrow’s challenges because they are based on yesterday’s facts. The impact of globalization and the speed of change cause a widening disconnect with the past while bringing the future closer and closer (see Otto Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future As It Emerges, 2007, p. 60). At the same time, leaders feel they are too busy to stop and reflect because of the hectic, competitive pace of global business.

As yesterday’s solutions increasingly fail to meet tomorrow’s challenges, the need for a new problem-solving model becomes evident. Theory U, a change management methodology developed by Otto Scharmer, offers that model. It invites leaders to transform their thinking process from one based on isolated datasets, facts, and observations into a more holistic approach that is fundamentally intuitive. Rather than trying to add A + B to come up with C, it invites the leader to step back and see patterns in the alphabet and reflect on how such patterns can reveal the future.

In this article, we will explore how, based on their personality and behavior, many successful experts and junior leaders have come to rely on what Myers and Briggs refer to as a sensing rather than an intuitive methodology of taking in information. (Note: What Myers & Briggs refer to as sensing — paying attention to information that comes in through your senses — is actually quite opposite from sensing as it appears in Theory U — the process of connecting to the driving forces of change. Myers and Briggs would see the latter as intuition.) We have analyzed change processes as well as managers’ learning patterns and have found that, when leaders take on increased responsibility, they benefit from shifting from a sensing methodology to an intuitive one. This jibes with Scharmer’s work on Theory U.

We will show a connection between the Myers Briggs concept of intuition and that inherent to Theory U, and explore how to effectively use this concept to coach leaders who are moving into more senior positions.

Challenges for Evolving Leaders

Three main factors drive the need for evolving leaders to become more intuitive and rely on their inner voices:

• The differing responsibilities associated with their rise up the career ladder
• The accelerating rate of change in the world
• The fact that, the higher the emerging complexity, the more beneficial a whole-systems and multi-stakeholder approach, guided by a leader, can be

This process can be illustrated by examples of companies like the electronics giant Siemens, which employs many engineers who ascend into management during the course of their careers. Some of them struggle to become effective leaders because they apply a sensing approach to leading. They focus on flaws and apply the “stick” (punishment for failure to meet goals). Through intensive coaching, some of them learn to think “big picture,” see possibilities, and apply the “carrot,” which has enormous potential for enlivening creativity and producing highly motivated people.

Venture capital companies provide another example. We might be inclined to assume that these companies, which provide the initial funding for new businesses, would take a fiscally conservative risk-management (sensing) approach to their decisions about which companies will receive money. This assumption is almost universally false, as we have personally witnessed in the American firm Signature Capital as well as in the Siemens new business incubator initiatives. Instead, following a first round to weed out obviously underdeveloped ideas, venture capitalists focus on the vision, enthusiasm, and commitment of the people driving the idea. Their capacity to connect the dots in order to see the big picture is more valuable than the ability of literal-minded analysts and controllers to weigh risks by applying past formulas to tomorrow’s world.

The most successful companies in today’s marketplace are led by visionary, intuitive risk-takers. A great example is the recently deceased Steve Jobs.

A Coaching Approach Inspired by Theory U

Within Theory U, we find a model that can help evolving leaders modify the way they process information and make decisions that meet the challenges of our current world and the leaders’ new spheres of responsibility. Training programs often focus on teaching tools (leadership styles, project management methodologies, etc.), while coaching helps the client solve a specific problem. We advocate training and coaching that addresses a fundamental change in how leaders make decisions. This change can be illustrated by one index of the Myers-Briggs instrument for understanding personality and human behavior.

Isabel Briggs Myers and Katherine C. Briggs developed the most widely used instrument for understanding personality and human behavior: the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). It is based on the ground-breaking work of Carl Jung. It includes four dichotomies:

Extraversion (E) (I) Introversion

Sensing (S) (N) Intuition

Thinking (T) (F) Feeling

Judgment (J) (P) Perception

One of the four indices describes differences in how we take in information. At one end is sensing, described in the context of the MBTI as a reliance primarily on observable facts, and a focus on past and present as well as the known and familiar. People who prefer the sensing type like to take in information that is real and tangible — that which is actually happening. They are observant about the details of what is going on around them and are especially attuned to practical realities. At the other end of the continuum is intuition, a holistic approach that focuses on the future as well as on the new and different; this approach leads to a reliance on one’s inner voice. People with a preference for intuition like to take in information by seeing the big picture, and focusing on relationships and connections between facts. They want to grasp patterns and are especially attuned to seeing possibilities.

Myers and Briggs have pointed out that most people have a preference for one or the other of these two styles to a greater or lesser extent, but they also strongly make the case that people can learn to develop and effectively use their less dominant style. As pointed out earlier, our current environment requires leaders, especially those at more senior levels, to have a well-developed ability to utilize their intuition, regardless of their underlying preference.

Uncharted Water

Leadership training and one-to-one coaching programs can offer opportunities to increase leaders’ awareness about the implications of using sensing versus intuition in the information-gathering steps of the decision-making process. These programs can also enhance leaders’ ability to shift styles toward intuition where appropriate. This is uncharted water. From our coaching experience, we learned that it is often frightening for people who have successfully used one style and are now confronted with the challenge of adopting a different style, especially one based on making decisions by a method other than repeating past successes.

Making this kind of shift is difficult. In 1899, the then-commissioner of the US Office of Patents Charles Duell famously stated “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” In underestimating opportunities, he has been in good company over the years, as shown by the following quotes:

“I think there is a world market for about five computers.” — Thomas Watson, founder of IBM

“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.”

— Albert Einstein

“The phonograph is not of any commercial value.”

— Thomas Edison

“Man will not fly for 50 years.” — Wilbur Wright, 1903

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”

— Bill Gates

“With over 50 foreign cars on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn’t likely to carve out a big slice of the U. S. market for itself.” — BusinessWeek, 1968, just before Honda and Toyota nearly ruined the US automobile manufacturing industry

To be more accurate in their assessment, these individuals would have had to activate their intuitive processes and see into the future rather than constantly look in the rear-view mirror. The good news is that some institutions are making this shift. For instance, the five largest patent offices in the world are the European Patent Office (currently supporting 38 nations), US Patent Office, and those of Japan, China, and India. In a rare show of support for true, forward-thinking innovation, these patent offices are increasingly looking for opportunities to grant new patents rather than reject them. They recognize that creativity requires dreamers, not gatekeepers.

Currently, leadership training and coaching often centers on developing tools and misses the opportunity to explore inner processes and behavioral change in the individual as a key factor for success.

The Need for Additional Research

This article makes the case for developing and training intuition in evolving leaders. Although we and others are using these techniques now, we would like to see organizational and behavioral researchers discuss, test, and evaluate personal coaching and training processes inspired by Theory U. These approaches should be the object of a scientific debate based on positive experiences in practice.

Herbert Nestler held senior management positions in several organizations, including Rotary International, before moving to Munich Germany in 1988. As a partner in Graf & Nestler GbR, he conducts coaching, training, and facilitation in leadership and communications issues for companies including Siemens, Bosch, Airbus, and the European Patent Office. Herbert holds an M. A. in Communications from Northwestern University.

Andrea Reupold Szameitat held research positions in Munich and Melbourne, and was a research network manager at the Munich Center of the Learning Sciences. She teaches in psychology master’s programs, supervising master’s and PhD students, and working freelance in coaching, training, and facilitation. Andrea holds a PhD in Education and an M. A. in Education, Psychology, and Intercultural Communications from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich.

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