Teams, too, face similar challenges. While team members often understand the need to gather for the purpose of creative dialogue, learning, and engagement, day-to-day demands often lead them to resort to counterproductive behaviors. For instance,

rather than getting together to expand our knowledge and understanding of an issue, we often turn meetings into a war zone, in which each participant tries to push his or her own agenda. In this context, managing knowledge within teams becomes a formidable task, indeed.

Maya provides a beautiful framework for surfacing common barriers to the effective flow of knowledge.

Nevertheless, the effective generation and flow of knowledge is so important that leaders must make a deliberate effort to understand and address the barriers that exist. One approach is based on an aspect of Vedanta philosophy. Called maya, this concept provides a beautiful framework for surfacing common barriers to the effective flow of knowledge within organizations. This article seeks to explore these hurdles, develop a shared understanding of maya, and spell out the implications of this framework for leaders. At the end of the article, a series of practices based on these concepts will contribute dramatically to leaders’ own effectiveness and that of the teams they lead.

Common Barriers in Managing Knowledge

Here’s a recurring scenario common in today’s organizations: A team meets so that members can make a critical decision. The gathering is carefully structured as a series of presentations, after which participants are given the opportunity to debate various plans of action. Others may present differing opinions and concerns, but the role of individual team members is to convince their coworkers that their approach will have the greatest impact. After all, because they are “in the trenches,” the members of this team believe they have the most important knowledge for developing solutions. Team members hope that, through such debate, the prevailing view will lead to the most successful course of action over the long run.

In the end, though, collaborative problem solving and true learning become extremely difficult. According to the current thinking in organizational development, this all-too-common norm for teams may not lead to the most desirable results, because it creates a number of barriers to organizational learning:

• The unchecked assumption that an individual’s level of understanding reflects a singular “true” reality.
• The failure to understand that individuals may interpret the same event or observation differently and that perceptions of reality are dependent on the individual making the observation (“the observer”).
• The assumption that the most accurate understanding of the realities faced by an organization can be attained through debate and “winning over” those with opposing viewpoints.
• The assumption that the individual, the advocate, the orator, and the great debater possess supreme value through their ability to convince others to abandon their perceptions of reality.
• Finally, and perhaps most tragically, the underlying assumption that the most complete understanding of the complex problems facing organizations today can be achieved through an analysis of the problems facing each of its individual parts, independent of the environment and relationships affecting those parts.

Given the prevalence of this scenario, it should come as no surprise that most organizations struggle to address complex problems that require creativity and an unrestricted flow of ideas.

Vedanta philosophy, central to Hindu thought, provides an elegant perspective for those who feel stuck in such dilemmas. An understanding of the concept of maya provides organizations with one way to grow beyond their current limitations in addressing complexity, fostering creativity, and increasing effectiveness. In the following sections, we seek to gain wisdom and insight from the idea of maya and use this understanding to enhance our effectiveness as leaders.

Vedanta Philosophy

First, some background describing the worldview inherent in the Vedanta philosophy is necessary. The core teachings of Vedanta revolve around three areas:

• The true nature of the universe
• The true nature of the individual
• The interrelationships that exist within the universe

According to this philosophy, the true nature of the universe is that all things, living and inanimate, are interconnected in some fashion. As quantum physicists have learned, each action has an effect on other aspects of the universe, and nothing is really separate from anything else. The belief that a particular event or outcome can result from the actions of one person, independent of all of the other factors in the universe, is a distinctly human flaw. Furthermore, energy is the true essence of material existence, not matter, and it is through this energy that all things are interconnected. This all-pervasive field of energy, referred to as Brahma, exists in all things.

The true nature of the individual exists as energy that is part of a greater whole and not as individual minds or bodies. In fact, the Hindu greeting “Namaste” alludes to this worldview, as its meaning can be translated to “I worship the divine within you.”

The interrelationships that exist among all individuals and among elements of the universe are integral to the true nature of the universe. According to the Vedanta worldview, no individual element can be truly understood independent from its surroundings.

A Definition of Maya

Maya is the illusion, based on our false perceptions, that the true nature of the universe is rooted in the material reality we observe through our senses rather than in energy. It refers to the misconception that events and observations are independent from one another and that the problems of the whole can be understood by analyzing the problems of the parts.

Within the world of Vedanta, maya implies that humans are vulnerable to the illusion that events and objects are not only real in a singular context but exist distinctly and independently from one another. In addition, maya leads humans to rely on ego and thus to see themselves as distinct and independent entities. As a result of this mindset, the teachings of Vedanta view human suffering and dysfunction as having their origins in maya.

How, exactly, is maya the cause of human suffering? For one thing, Hindus see it as the root of human attachment to objects and possessions that our senses perceive as real when, in fact, those objects are transitory. Second, individuals who fail to understand the interconnectedness of all end up acting in ways that promote personal gain at the expense of others and of the environment; foster competition and antagonism as opposed to collaboration and symbiotic growth; and steer others astray from a desire to seek true inquiry and dialogue. Finally, maya results in the illusion that there is, indeed, a single perspective or view that is “right.”

This mindset leads to the need to win, convince others, debate, and resort to violence.

Interestingly, a similar concept can be found in Christianity. Although most Christians may not see it in this context, Hindus interpret the story of Adam and Eve’s bite out of the apple in the Garden of Eden as a metaphor for human vulnerability and overreliance on our senses. In this metaphor, the apple represents maya and thus the origins of human suffering. Similarly, many Hindus choose to see this event as one that leads humans to consider God to be a separate being that can be perceived by the human senses rather than as an all pervasive field of energy in the universe, present in all things.

Maya and Quantum Mechanics

Beyond the spiritual and philosophical origins of maya, many Westerners find it helpful to understand more concrete examples of how the teachings of Vedanta may have validity. The fields of quantum mechanics and subatomic theory provide substantial support for the concept of maya. The following scientific principles, in particular, are helpful:

• The true nature of the universe is not matter but rather energy.
• The true nature of the subatomic world involves probabilities rather than certainties.
• Particles arise from energy.
• A particle’s formation and nature occurs when an attempt is made to observe it.
• Particles do not exist independent of other particles and especially of the observer.

This “new” physics has demonstrated clearly that there is no objective reality “out there,” independent of its relationship with and perception by observers. The field reveals that we cannot understand the whole merely by understanding its parts; we must consider the relationships and interactions between the parts, the observer, and the rest of the universe. In this world, there truly are no independent things.

The interconnectedness of the universe can also be demonstrated from experiments involving subatomic particles. As an example, consider two paired particles with opposite spins (, “spin” is one property of subatomic particles). Physicists have demonstrated that, when a pair of particles is separated by a great distance, they maintain their opposite spins. Even more compelling is the finding that when the spin of one of the separated particles is changed, the other particle somehow alters its spin so that it remains the opposite of its pair. In essence, their relationship and interconnectedness is maintained despite their physical separation.

David Bohm, the well-known physicist and philosopher, described how fragmentation — or focusing on the parts to the exclusion of the whole — results in a sort of “pathology of thought.” He understood that humans tend to divide things that, on a more fundamental level, are actually connected. This mindset has led to flawed thinking in the field of quantum physics and in our perception of the world in which we exist. By advocating for a change in how we view the world, Bohm led to breakthroughs in both physics and the field of dialogue.

Maya, too, refers to this fundamental flaw in human understanding and, as we shall see, in organizational thought. It reminds us of our fallibilities as leaders, as well as those of our organizations and communities. So how can we break free from this trap? Below, we’ll examine the power of dialogue and systems thinking for helping us see through the net of illusions cast by maya.

Perspectives from Dialogue

Leaders who want to achieve a true understanding of reality in the context of the challenges they face should turn to dialogue, not debate or discussion. Because individuals possess different interpretations of what they observe and because there is no reality independent of the observer, the ability to elicit the mental models and perceptions of others is crucial. Dialogue offers a set of tools for surfacing the multiplicity of perspectives that add to a more complete picture of reality.

In particular, four specific dialogue skills, as defined by William Isaacs, can assist those who seek to generate a shared understanding of the true essence of any given situation: listening, respecting, suspending, and voicing.

Listening is more than hearing, as it involves not only the perception of words, but also the attachment of meaning to those words.

Listening

In our over-stimulated lives, we seldom notice the ways in which we listen. Listening is more than hearing, as it involves not only the perception of words, but also the attachment of meaning to those words. The meaning that we attach is often biased by our projection of our own biases, assumptions, interpretations, inferences, and history our mental models. In fact, failing to objectively examine our own interpretations while listening can distort our perceptions of reality.

Maya, as an illusion, refers to this distortion of reality and makes true listening ever so critical to enhancing our own understanding of reality. Given this fallibility, we must understand the mental models within which we operate and learn how to circumvent the automatic projection of these models on the things we hear.

The mastery of inner silence through meditation can dramatically enhance the ability to listen. Vedanta philosophy states that the true essence of reality can only be experienced in, “the space that exists between thoughts.” It is in this space that true mental silence exists and in which mental models disappear. The same principle can be applied to the skill of listening. The greater the degree of inner silence that we are able to achieve, the more effective our listening skills become.

Respecting

When we listen with the goal of understanding others, we are able to achieve greater levels of mutual respect than when we try to push our own agendas. Such listening is made more imperative by, but also facilitated through, the understanding that we are interconnected with and do not exist separate from others. Through mutual respect and listening, we learn about the thinking of others and, more importantly, about our own thinking. In the words of William Isaacs, we can see that “I am in the world, and the world is in me.” Likewise, our ability to say “That, too, is in me” is an extremely useful tool for building respect and understanding with one another. By making efforts to control our tendency to fall for the illusions of maya and separateness, we can build a practice of respectful listening.

Suspending

Suspending involves sharing and putting aside our own mental models. In essence, by suspending, we are making visible our own perspectives of reality. In so doing, we put forth the possibility that our own perspective may be flawed, that certainty may be in question. As we both suspend and seek to understand the perspectives of others, we must inquire effectively from a place of genuine curiosity. In addition, true inquiry involves being aware that our own perspective maybe flawed. The key in the act of suspending involves both surfacing and exploring the relationship between separate interpretations of reality.

Voicing

Often, because of the “pathologies of thought” that are so prevalent in our society, we learn to fear expressing our own interpretation of reality. Taking the leap requires the courage to share a view that may differ from that of others. To combat these fears, we must cultivate the skill of self-awareness, along with that of trusting our own thinking as a valid glimpse of reality.

Understanding that every element of the universe arises from the same underlying energy and reality can help us develop trust in our own voices. By becoming aware that only different perspectives of “the truth” exist, we can muster the courage necessary to effectively voice our opinions. The concept of maya provides us with an awareness of our own vulnerability to forgetting that we are in touch with this reality.

Perspectives from Systems Thinking

Just as dialogue provides us with tools to cultivate perspectives that contribute to a more complete understanding of reality, so does systems thinking. By offering tools that lead us to examine the interrelationships and dynamics that exist among elements of our world, systems thinking creates a framework for moving beyond the limitations that maya imposes on our thinking.

Fragmentation

Our tendency to see things as separate parts whether they are processes, departments, positions, or individuals can severely limit our ability to understand the myriad of systems within which we exist and participate. Leaders in organizations that succumb to maya may ultimately find that they deal with unintended consequences, “fixes that fail,” and processes that deplete rather than renew and invigorate.

Taking time for both reflection and dialogue at meetings and in groups permits teams to explore critical questions such as, “How might this impact other departments with which we interact?” and “How will this approach help to renew the environment and the partners with which we operate?” Eliciting, through generative dialogue, the full nature of interconnectedness is a powerful experience for a team and has the potential to create new perspectives and revolutionary approaches. Such regular dialogue is essential for groups as they evolve beyond the limitations of maya and is a critical competency for leaders to develop.

Even more enlightening is dialogue that elicits connections and relationships to enhance an understanding of the whole. Effective dialogue must be based on the premise that there is not one true perspective of reality, independent of the observer, and that many voices must be engaged to expand our understanding of the whole. In the end, greater insight into the connections and relationships between processes and structures leads to a greater level of group intelligence and more effective and fulfilling work.

The symbol for Om, representing all existence

Individuals and organizations tend to view assets human, financial, or intellectual as their own. In reality, however, when we cease to exist, the things we have in our possession will “flow” elsewhere. In essence, assets flow through the universe and pass through us (or our organizations) temporarily, so that we can utilize them to enhance the greater well-being and harmony of that with which we are interconnected: our partners, our environment, our customers, and our owners.

In the context of Vedanta philosophy, the resources in our possession at any particular moment are available to us for the purpose of fulfilling our mission. But when we fall prey to maya, we fail to experience this interconnectedness as it relates to our true mission and purpose. Individuals and organizations that hoard resources in a miserly fashion are at risk for failing to accomplish their true mission and intent.

Resources for Leaders

In order to master the skills necessary to function beyond the limitations and vulnerabilities described by maya, leaders can adopt a number of practices:

1. Meditate. Time for daily reflection is essential for effective leaders to bring about a greater awareness of their own “center,” their interconnectedness with all that surrounds them, and their own limitations in seeing only a glimpse of reality. Such reflection, though humbling, also instills a sense of calm. Indeed, avoiding the illusion of maya is difficult, and daily reflection can help us to develop this practice.

To that end, devote time each day for silence. Inevitably, when beginning, you will notice thoughts entering your mind. Observe the internal dialogue, label it with what you feel, and release it to return to experience the silence. This observation will uncover aspects of your own mental models that influence thought. To overcome the illusion of maya, it is imperative to develop the ability to master silence and to realize that the essence of true reality is in the space between thoughts, not in the actual thoughts.

2. Become Aware of Ego. Ego, defined as a perception that we are solely responsible for our own success, that our perceptions of reality are indeed the most accurate representations of reality, and that our identity is based in the greatness of our own accomplishments, is a tragic human vulnerability. Leaders must become aware of this flaw in themselves and in those they lead. More importantly, they must foster the conditions that make it safe for individuals to relinquish their attachment to an identity based in ego.

3. Engage Others in Dialogue. Leaders must reflect upon and engage others in dialogue around maya and how it may exist in your own views and perceptions. Explore how opportunities may be missed and dysfunctions created through this vulnerability. In asking questions such as, “How do we create fragmentation in our organization?” leaders trigger others to reveal aspects of their mental models and create a more complete view of the situation.

4. Understand the Interconnectedness of All Things. Encourage those whom you lead to reflect each day on your interconnectedness and on, “That, too, is in me” in the context of thinking about the behaviors and perceptions of others in your organizations and communities. Understand how processes and objects do not exist independent of their surrounding, and explore the relationships that exist between processes and objects, in the context of systems thinking. Work with others to surface these unseen connections.

5. Examine the Relationship That You and Your Organization Have with the External Environment.How do your actions affect the world around you? What systems exist that you have not yet explored or surfaced? In order to be sustainable and healthy, organizations must renew and invigorate their surroundings and environment, not deplete them.

6. Realize That Assets Are Not to Be Hoarded, but Rather to Be Used to Fulfill Your Purpose in Life.Organizations and individuals must realize that assets are part of the universal flow of resources and that, when these resources flow through you or your organization, they do so for the purpose of fulfilling a mission. Hoarding such resources is based on maya, the illusion that it is truly possible to, “own” things.

By comprehending maya as a source of limitation and mastering the true nature of existence, we can begin to successfully manage knowledge in our organizations and support individuals in becoming thoughtful and fulfilled contributors. Likewise, by developing a more complete shared understanding of maya among members of their organizations, as well as within themselves, leaders will develop the skills necessary to excel in the turbulent environments that we face now and that we shall surely face in the future.

The post Becoming Unstuck: Leadership Lessons from Hindu Philosophy appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Organizations can use this framework to create a personal development path an employee might pursue using the five disciplines, as described by Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline(click here for “Shifting from Knowing to Learning”). With this framework, employees will be able to understand what progress feels like moving from reacting toward creating, from protection toward reflection, from “my part” toward “the whole,” and so on.

At Gerber Memorial Health Services (GMHS), we have invested heavily in organizational learning, providing training and support to our leaders, along with implementing some structural changes that ensure that we use these ideas in cross-departmental teams. But until we incorporated the “knower to learner framework,” we only had vague expectation for leaders to improve their skills by practicing the five disciplines. Now, we are clear on what successful development along the continuums looks like, and we are holding leaders accountable for that development.

But there is still another problem. Even if our leaders successfully developed themselves in the use of the five disciplines, they still sometimes achieved mediocre results. Through the use of a framework called “the Learner’s Path,” we have found a way for people to ensure that they tie their learning to actual results.

The Five Learner’s Path Questions

The Learner’s Path utilizes a five-question framework that leads the learner toward increased responsibility, ownership, and self-reflection. The five questions are: (1) Are you producing desired results? (2) Is this issue yours to address? (3) Is it necessary to use alternative action strategies? (4) Is it necessary to use action strategies that are beyond your current action repertoire? and (5) Are you open to renewal and correction?

The individual or group answers the five questions in succession. If they answer each question successfully, they increase the likelihood that learning will occur (by “learning,” I mean “increasing one’s ability to achieve desired results through effective action” and not simply the accumulation of more information in one’s head). When you answer the first three questions successfully, you can say that you have become a learner, and not before. Affirmatively answering questions four and five will, thereafter, deepen your learning.

The Anvil of Learning

We might think of these five questions as the “anvil” against which we shape and form our knowledge. Imagine a blacksmith trying to shape a piece of metal into something valuable and useful without the use of an anvil. He holds the metal to be shaped in one hand while holding the sledgehammer in the other. With no base on which to rest the metal piece, he grips it as tightly as he can while clanging the hammer against it with the other hand. The blows fall at odd angles and have little impact on the piece of metal. But when the blacksmith rests his piece of metal on an anvil, it gives him the stability and leverage he needs to form and change the metal into something useful and valuable.

This same principle is true of any learning effort: When you attempt to learn without the support and testing of the anvil of learning, you are unlikely to transform your learning into something useful and valuable namely, an ability to achieve the results you couldn’t achieve before. Just as the anvil significantly leverages the blacksmith’s effectiveness, so the Learner’s Path leverages the learner’s effectiveness.

Walking Along the Learner’s Path

Let me illustrate how to use this framework with a story. I facilitated a meeting of a group of leaders, who were discussing the possibility of implementing a large-scale customer service improvement strategy. Customer service scores had been flat for two years, and some people advocated for doing something new to improve the scores.

I started out by explaining that I would be walking them through the Learner’s Path/Five Questions framework, which would help them determine what level of learning would be necessary for the initiative. Then, I led them through a progression of the five questions, as follows.

1st Question: “Are you producing desired results?”

After reviewing the trends of flat scores (although at a very high level) over the past two years, they concluded that these scores were not good enough. They wanted to be known for something better than “customer satisfaction” they wanted to give their customers “profound experiences.” Had they said that they were satisfied with the current results, there would be no point for them to continue the conversation. The rest of the five questions would be a waste of time unless they felt some aspiration to improve current results.

2nd Question: “Is it yours to address?”

In other words, they had to decide if they, as leaders, ought to take some responsibility for addressing this issue. They said, “If we don’t take responsibility, who will? What is the alternative?” Again, had they said that they did not want to assume responsibility, the conversation would have stopped, and the group would have had to be content with some wishful thinking that someone else would do something about improving the customer scores.

THE LEARNER'S LOOP

The purpose of The Learner’s Loop is to articulate what capacities a person must develop in order to increase their chances for successfully answering each of the five questions. Progressing along the Learner’s Path is not a linear process; it is a closed loop, an engine of growth, around which a learner circuits, seeking continuous development.

3rd Question: “Is it necessary to use alternative action strategies?” This question forced the group to struggle with some dilemmas. If they said, “No, we can keep using the current strategy,” then I would have had to ask why they hadn’t actually produced profound customer experiences all along. Alternatively, if they believed they should use some type of alternative action strategy, they would have to admit that their current strategy hadn’t worked, which could be threatening or embarrassing to them. In this case, the leadership group decided that they needed to try an alternative action strategy. Again, had they said “no,” there would have been no point in continuing the conversation because they would not be convinced that they actually had anything to learn.

4th Question: “Is it necessary to use action strategies that are beyond your current action repertoire?” At this point, the group answered “yes.” They felt that, if they were to achieve profound customer experiences, they would have to implement an action strategy that they did not yet know how to implement. In other words, they would have to expand their current action repertoire (by “action repertoire,” I mean action strategies they could reliably use to achieve desired results). Had they said “no” to this fourth question, the group would have assembled another action strategy from their current repertoire and, in the process, would be less likely to succeed.

5th Question: “Are you open to renewal and correction?” Without hesitation, the group said “yes” to this question. Because I doubted whether they really understood the implications of this answer, I clarified that this meant they would have to look closely and deeply at themselves regarding how they think, interact, and/or contribute to the current situation. They still said “yes.” They understood that they would be required to examine how their leadership had contributed to the flat scores.

As a result of walking along the Learner’s Path together, the leaders knew that, in order to achieve profound customer experiences, they would have to dramatically change the way they led the organization. They knew that it would not be enough just to do more of the same thing or to do the same thing better than before. They would have to learn to do new things and that this approach would require an openness to renewal and correction. The group used the five questions as an anvil against which they changed and formed their idea of the kind of results they wanted and the kind of learning that would be required of them in order to achieve those results.

Smoothing Out the Path

These five questions are deep and challenging when they are taken seriously. They are particularly difficult, and often threatening, to someone operating from a knower stance. How can knowers be helped to overcome their fear and sense of threat about answering these questions? The Learner’s Loop can help (see “The Learner’s Loop”).

The purpose of The Learner’s Loop is to articulate what capacities a person must develop in order to increase their chances for successfully answering each of the five questions. These capacities are described as a matter of “willingness” is the person willing to take the necessary action to increase the likelihood of answering one of the questions successfully?

Progressing along the Learner’s Path is not a linear process; it is a closed loop, an engine of growth, around which a learner circuits, seeking continuous development. You will notice that there is a suggested order for the first rotation, and then the loop feeds on itself thereafter.

At GMHS, we have designed a curriculum geared toward helping individuals increase their willingness to take the necessary actions and, thereby, increase the likelihood that they will successfully answer the Learner’s Path questions. I will describe below why these “willingnesses” are important and suggest some organizational learning tools, techniques, and frameworks that can be used to increase them.

1. Willing to Acquire a Desire We are more likely to aspire for better-than-current results (successfully answer question #1) when we are willing to acquire a desire to improve current results. If we are totally content with our level of current results, we will feel no prompting to seek new learning at all. Sometimes, people truly are achieving all that they could imagine in a certain area, and, in that case, they should move on to other issues. At other times, people delude themselves into thinking that current results are acceptable, when everything and everyone around them is screaming for better performance. The disciplines of personal mastery and shared vision are key in stoking the fires of desire for improved results.

Organizations investing in their capacity for organizational learning should design their curriculum so that learners:

• Increase their self-awareness (e.g., Myers/Briggs, DiSC, etc.).
• Uncover their personal values and vision (e.g., personal mission statements).
• Work from a creative, not a reactive, orientation (e.g., The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz).
• Empower their actions with creative tension (e.g., The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz).
• Co-create collective aspiration (e.g., shared visioning).

2. Willing to See Your Role in the Whole

We are more likely to own and pursue better-than-current results (affirmatively answer question #2) if we are willing to take some responsibility for seeing our role in the whole scheme of things. Systems thinking is most often thought of as a discipline for analyzing and solving difficult problems and it is useful for these things. It is also helpful for changing our perspective about who should be responsible for addressing problems in the first place.

Those organizations investing in their capacity for organizational learning should design their curriculum so that learners:

• Understand how structure influences behavior (e.g., the Iceberg diagram).
• See life as dynamic, complex, and interdependent (e.g., the concepts and tools of systems thinking).
• No longer see problems as “out there” (e.g., causal loop diagrams).

3. Willing to Resist the Lure of “Sure”

We are more likely to implement alternative action strategies (affirmatively answer question #3) if we are willing to examine the effectiveness of our current action strategies and resist the lure of being sure that we have the right strategy. Knowers are particularly resistant to this examination, for fear that it will be revealed that they didn’t actually know the best action strategy after all. If we are open to considering multiple perspectives, being unsure, or admitting our knowledge is less-than-complete, then we will be more willing to experiment with alternative action strategies and learn how to effectively improve current results.

The practices of the discipline of mental models are especially helpful at this point along the Learner’s Path, and a curriculum designed to teach skills in this area should enable learners to:

• Consider multiple perspectives (e.g.,the story of the blind men and the elephant).
• Examine their thinking and assumptions (e.g., the Ladder of Inference and Left-hand Column).
• Pursue mutual understanding using “reflection mode” rather than “protection mode” conversations (e.g., AND Stance, 3rd Story, “Be in control” vs. “Mutual learning” model).
• Realize that “me” and “my view” are not the same thing (e.g., “I Am Not My Hat”).

4. Willing to Raise the Bar of Your Action Repertoire

We are more likely to consider new action strategies beyond that which we currently know how to implement (affirmatively answer question #4) if we admit we have come to the end of our current action repertoire and want to expand it. Up to this point, as learners, we have used “what we know” to achieve “what we can.” This incremental type of learning is called single-loop learning, and it will only bring us so far — never producing breakthrough results. To expand our action repertoire, we need to examine and challenge the mental framework under which we are doing our learning. This kind of deep learning is called double-loop learning (see “Double-Loop Learning Cycle”).

The group-oriented discipline of team learning is particularly helpful here. We need the help of others to confirm that we have, indeed, reached the end of our capabilities and to have frame-breaking conversations. A curriculum teaching this capacity should enable learners to:

• Implement double-loop learning (see “Double-Loop Learning Cycle”).
• Create the conditions for effective group learning (e.g., Four-Player Model, ground rules from The Skilled Facilitator by Roger Schwarz).
• Generate new insights (e.g. productive conversations, dialogue).

5. Willing to Invite Insight We are more likely to be open to renewal and correction (affirmatively answer question #5) if we are willing to invite insight into how we think, interact, and contribute to problems. Doing new things in new ways and getting better results is an exhilarating and challenging learning experience. But we may still find ourselves reacting to problems rather than creating fundamental solutions; trying to get compliance from others rather than commitment; protecting ourselves during conversations rather than reflecting on our conversational habits; focusing on “my part” rather than on “the whole”; and getting into debates rather than engaging in mutual learning. Advanced learners are continually seeking deep change in themselves as they move along the continuums of the five disciplines toward the learner stance.

Again, this is where team learning is particularly helpful, along with a renewed emphasis on personal mastery. A curriculum teaching this capacity should, additionally, enable learners to:

• Integrate all five disciplines into everyday practice (e.g., action learning projects).

Pursuing the “Trade” of Learning

Blacksmithing is a learned trade. No one could ever attend a three-day workshop and return as a master blacksmith. It takes years of apprenticeship and continual practice. It is not glamorous work, but consider the impact the blacksmith has had on the world. “When the first blacksmith began hammering on a hot piece of iron, little did he know how he was shaping the future. He forged the tools that made the machines that produce everything mankind has today. The blacksmith was the pioneer of the technology that carried mankind from the iron age to the space age. It can truly be said that the first rocket to the moon was virtually launched from the face of the anvil” (Bill Miller, theforgeworks.com).

Just as a blacksmith forms and shapes his metal objects using a hammer supported and leveraged by an anvil, let us shape and form our knowledge using the hammer of the Knower-to-Learner framework and the anvil of the Learner’s Path. By doing so, we develop our capacity for learning and tie our knowledge to actual results.

Like blacksmithing, the “trade of learning” cannot be learned quickly and is not always glamorous. Nevertheless, consider the impact that it can have on our world. Responding to a changing world without deep, intentional learning is a risky proposition. Will it truly be said that the future we created together was formed on the face of the anvil of learning?

The post The Learner’s Path appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Likewise, in a time when the global system is spiraling toward unprecedented change, those of us who want to make a difference must jump into a rabbit’s hole in order to understand and change our reality. The other option is to remain standing at the edge, looking down, and endlessly treating the symptoms of much deeper problems, both out of sight and out of control.

Changing the Paradigm

The late Donella Meadows, a renowned systems thinker, converted the metaphor of the hole into systems language in her essay, “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in the System” (Sustainability Institute paper, 1999). She described 12 leverage points for effecting change, found deeper and deeper in a system, each with greater power than the last. At the top of this rabbit’s hole, we use linear thinking to tinker with parameters, numbers, and constants, such as taxes and subsidies, as mechanisms of social change. But as we descend deeper into the hole, we reach other, harder-to-see but more powerful leverage points, such as managing feedback processes, information flows, rules, and goals. At the bottom of the hole, in the darkness, lurks the ultimate payoff — a system’s paradigms. Meadows wrote, “People who manage to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm hit a leverage point that totally transforms systems.”

In a time when the global system is spiraling toward unprecedented change, those of us who want to make a difference must jump into a rabbit’s hole in order to understand and change our reality.

In her writing over the years, Meadows regularly sought to undermine many conventional paradigms, including:

• One cause produces one effect.
• Improvements come through better technology, not better humanity.
• Economics is the measure of feasibility.
• Possession of things is the source of happiness.
• The rational powers of human beings are superior to their intuitive or moral powers.
• We know what we are doing.
• Growth at any cost is good.

But these paradigms aren’t separate and unique, littering the bottom of the hole like autumn leaves lying on the ground. They fit together into a larger, cohesive structure. Some call this structure “mythology” or “cosmology.” Others call it “worldview.” Although we popularly equate the word “worldview” with “mindset,” scholars define it as a story that answers the big questions of existence: Who are we? What is our significance? What are the laws of the universe? How was the universe created?

At the root of every system, every set of paradigms, beats a story so deep that most people are born into it and then die without ever knowing that a different way of viewing the world might exist. Our worldview operates like a cosmic screenplay that we enact each moment of our lives, guiding our actions and, ultimately, creating our reality. When we don’t realize it exists, our worldview manipulates us like a disembodied puppeteer, guiding our actions and thoughts.

Daniel Quinn traced the origins of civilization’s current worldview in his famed book, Ishmael. He writes that, 10,000 years ago, one culture among thousands that populated the earth took up intensive agriculture. As a result of food surpluses, its population exploded, requiring more land to accommodate its new numbers. With more land, its population grew again and annexed still more land. Quinn calls these people “Takers.” Their culture spread across the planet, assimilating other cultures, taking land, and converting wild lands to agricultural fields.

To justify this unprecedented activity, the Takers separated humanity, nature, and spirituality. In the new paradigm, nature was merely a resource, not a source of sacredness. Productivity became the measure of progress. The Takers believed there was just one right way to live and crushed all those who lived differently. These deep beliefs survived the rise and fall of many civilizations. Now every country in the world and 99.9 percent of the human population participates in this system. The few remaining indigenous cultures (, “Leavers,” according to Quinn) exist on the margins of civilization, often exiled in poverty and isolation.

Critics often rebut the assertion that there is just one dominant worldview, citing the many distinct cultures and worldviews that coexist today — East and West, for example. But, in the grand scheme of Takers and Leavers, the difference between most cultures that participate in the global economy is minor, a question of degree rather than of basic view of the cosmos. To see a truly different paradigm requires studying an indigenous culture, looking back 10,000 years to the birth of civilization, or looking forward to the new spiritual stories that are trying to supplant the dominant mindset.

Most social and environmental change programs deal only with symptoms: erosion mitigation, alternative energies, poverty reduction, and pollution control. They never reach the level of changing the underlying paradigm. At best, these efforts can only slow the degradation. As Quinn says, “Vision is the flowing river. Programs are sticks set in the riverbed to impede the flow.” Only a change of vision, a new story, can redirect the flow away from catastrophe and toward sustainability.

An Emotional Shift

Thus, systems thinkers must go after worldviews. Many social change advocates generate data and arguments about why we need to alter our global behavior to avoid terrible consequences. But as Thomas Kuhn wrote in his classic Structure of Scientific Revolutions (from which Meadows adopted the term “paradigm”), when scientists ultimately change from one paradigm to another, they don’t do so because they have proven the new one to be true; they do so because they experience an emotional shift or awakening. Stories can reach these deeper affective levels and, as such, are an intrinsic part of every systemic change process. Changing people’s stories re-orders their relationships with others and the world around them, and thus the system structure in which they live.

Some people have targeted our shared worldview head-on, identifying the assumptions that anchor people’s cosmic story. Physicists Albert Einstein and David Bohm did it; philosopher Ken Wilber and many in the spiritual evolution camp do it. But suddenly seeking to alter a worldview can provoke a maelstrom of resistance. Meadows took on the challenge willingly, illuminating hundreds of murky, deep-seated social beliefs. And she memorably experienced the force of resistance after she, Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William Behrens published their world-shaking book, Limits to Growth, in 1972. Donella wrote, “We could not understand the intensity of the reaction our book provoked. It seemed to us far out of proportion to our simple statement that the earth is finite and cannot support exponential physical growth for very long. We wouldn’t have guessed that that idea could generate so much surprise, emotion, complication, and denial.”

As most systems thinkers know, treating symptoms at the mouth of the rabbit’s hole usually generates policy resistance because it leads to unintended and unforeseen consequences. Working at the bottom, too, provokes a different kind of visceral reaction, one that Meadows herself learned could actually be seen as a positive sign. No one can change their view of the universe without significant experiential shaking. Resistance may indicate the labored thinking of changing views.

We don’t yet understand what it takes to change the worldview of the earth’s population. Very likely, when enough individuals set off on their own change journeys, their numbers will reach a certain threshold or tipping point, allowing the rest of us to make the transition more quickly. Wilber says this positive feedback loop creates a structure — a field — that drives exponential change. He calls it a “Kosmic habit”:, “And the more people [that] have that [spiritual] experience, the more it becomes a Kosmic habit available to other human beings.”

I took up non-fiction writing at Dartmouth College, where I studied environmental journalism under Professor Meadows, and have been in the field for the past 15 years. Now I write fiction as well, so I can illustrate system dynamics in action. By doing so, I hope to help people see their worldview from the outside and envision a different future through the less-threatening medium of stories.

In the process, I’ve come to believe that, as systems thinkers, we must grit our teeth and jump down the rabbit’s hole, no matter the risk. The farther we fall, the more impact we are likely to have. As Meadows wrote, “It is in the space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.”

Jon Kohl is a writer and consultant working to combine systems thinking, spiritual evolution, and global change in his projects, prose, and fiction. For more information about his work or to contact him, visit www.jonkohl.com.

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Kegan, a professor of education, and Lahey, a psychologist specializing in adult development, refer to our powerful inclinations not to change as “dynamic equilibrium,” which they define as “a system of countervailing motions that maintains a remarkably hearty balance, an equilibrating process continuously manufacturing immunity to change.” (Those of us steeped in the language of systems thinking will recognize this description as a balancing process.) According to the authors, much as we might protest to the contrary, the status quo fills some hidden need that ultimately takes precedence over our impulse to change.

Surfacing the inner contradiction between the desire to change and the need to maintain things as they are is difficult, because a web of tightly held assumptions keeps us from seeing this gap. But studying the factors that contribute to our “immunity to change” can serve as a rich source of transformational learning and ultimately lead to lasting results. To facilitate the process, the authors spell out what they call a “new technology for personal learning” built around different ways of talking to ourselves and others (see “A ‘Technology’ for Personal Learning” on page 9).

New Ways of Talking

These seven novel “languages” are tools that “gradually introduce you to your own immune system, your own dynamic equilibrium, the forces that keep the immune system in place, and the possibilities of transcending it.” The first four languages work on the internal or personal level; the final three operate on an interpersonal or organizational level. According to Kegan and Lahey, “The forms of speaking we have available to us regulate the forms of thinking, feeling, and meaning making to which we have access, which in turn constrain how we see the world and act in it.” By moving through a series of inquiries, the reader begins to shift from “NBC (nagging, bitching, and whining) talk” to possibilities for transformational change.

In contrast to other approaches that focus on the positive, the authors believe that it’s important to start by paying attention to people’s complaints, because they represent untapped potential and energy. The first step (which corresponds to the first “language”) is to reframe “what we can’t stand” to “what we stand for.” Readers record these commitments and other responses on a chart, which forms a map of each person’s “immune system.” The second step involves reflecting on what we’re doing that prevents us from fully realizing our commitments. Doing so is more than just accepting blame or fixing a problem; it involves learning from the issue in order to truly change the way we think, so that over time the problem “solves us.”

In the third step, readers identify the deep-seated, unspoken commitments we hold that conflict with our stated goal. For example, someone who articulates a commitment to communicating more openly and directly at work may also be tacitly committed to not being seen as the “Brave Crusader” or “Miss Holier-Than-Thou.” Kegan and Lahey emphasize that the self-protective impulse embodied by the competing commitment is a normal, powerful human motive, and not a symptom of weakness or ineffectiveness. But unless we bring it to light,

Unless we have the courage to examine and update our veiled assumptions, we’ll be trapped in a cycle of déjà vu all over again and again and again.

our efforts to change will be futile, and we will remain in the thrall of the dynamic equilibrium that keeps the status quo in place.

The fourth step is to explore the “Big Assumptions” embedded in the competing commitment. Most professional development activities are corrective rather than transformative, because they don’t help us to explore and dispel the fears and myths that we accept as truths. These “truths” are often assumptions consisting of dire consequences that might result if we take actions to forward our goal; for example, “I assume that if people did see me as a Brave Crusader . . . then I would eventually be completely shunned, have no real connections in my office other than the most formal and functional, and actually I’d find work a nightmare . . .” With the dread of this kind of outcome, no wonder most of us have a hard time adopting different behaviors.

Once we articulate these assumptions, we can then begin to dismantle them by looking for experiences that cast doubt on them, exploring how we came to hold them, and testing them in safe settings. These incremental changes in our thinking can ultimately lead to large shifts in our sense of the possibilities available to us and the actions we can consider taking. As Kegan and Lahey state, “Even small changes in our Big Assumptions can have big implications for permanently altering our once-captivating equilibrium.”

“Language Communities”

After introducing the steps outlined above, the authors offer three additional languages for improving how we interact with others. Through these novel ways of talking, interpersonal problems and conflicts become a curriculum for transformational learning on an individual and group level. By identifying a collective problem, creating an agreement about how to handle it in the future, monitoring when the agreement is kept and when it is violated, and exploring these violations in the spirit of learning, teams can create lasting changes in the ways in which they think and work together.

Throughout this book, Kegan and Lahey emphasize the importance of engaging in this work with a partner or through building a “language community” in order to inform and sustain the change process. They also forward the notion that effective leaders at all levels of an organization must recognize that supporting the transformational learning of others is a key part of their jobs. But perhaps the most important idea that permeates the authors’ work is that, in order to combat and overcome chronic problems, people must change not just what they do, but what they believe. As difficult as that may sound, unless we have the courage to examine and update our veiled assumptions, we’ll be trapped in a cycle of déjà vu all over again and again and again.

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