As we began to unpack her frustration, I discovered that she was finding it easier to make difficult strategic decisions alone, without formal input from her senior team. When quizzed about making such decisions in isolation, she replied that involving others usually resulted in stubborn arguments that divided her team with clear winners and losers. She felt that winning the argument had actually become more important to some than doing what was best for the company.

Because of her engaging personality, she found it easier to make the rounds of her executive team, explaining and justifying her decisions to get everyone on board, rather than deal with the personal, confrontational battles that had previously erupted among her senior team. However, she had lost perspective on the fact that often the best decisions are made when all points of view can be engaged, examined, and discussed in an environment that removes fear and anger from the conversation and replaces them with curiosity and empathy—two of the building blocks of real dialogue.

The Debating Game

In a healthy environment, arguments are very helpful; they serve to pull people together and get them moving in the same direction. The key is having an argument that everyone can win. For this CEO, we staged a debate around a particular strategic decision that she was about to make; one that she was prepared to make alone. But we threw in a few twists that kept the discussions lively, productive, and fun.

I remembered reading how President Ronald Reagan handled debates at the White House. In many cases, he would assign those most passionate about one side of the issue to actually argue the opposite viewpoint.

So, we staged a debate around the specifics of the decision. And, like President Reagan, we assigned executives to each side of the issue, based upon their knowledge and passion for the opposing argument. It turned out brilliantly.

As the debate unfolded, we found that the negative emotions and personal attacks that usually characterize passionate arguments didn’t materialize, but in their place was humor, creativity, and most important of all, some really great thinking on both sides as the participants worked to understand, adopt, and defend a new position.

Because participants viewed the debate as more of a game than a formal presentation (of the kind they were accustomed to making to defend their view of an issue), they approached it on a more objective level. The result was that each side of the issue had a voice that provided thoughtful examination and advocacy.

This exercise was so thought provoking and useful that the CEO surprised everyone by calling for a straw vote at the conclusion of the debate and making the decision on the spot.

Afterward, several members of the executive team told me that the debate had helped them see a side of the issue that they had not considered before, which influenced their vote. The CEO was able to get the best thinking and perspective from her executive team, while also making them comfortable with all of the issues involved. Then, when the decision was made, there was both intellectual understanding and emotional belief in the reasoning behind the decision.

Empathy: Holding Another’s View as Your Own

Because the exercise required people to adopt the contrary viewpoint, they were free to bring their intelligence—both cognitive and emotional—to the table, resulting in an environment where all sides of the issue could be weighed and examined, without the fear of being wrong that causes discomfort in so many leaders.

It is this ability to hold someone else’s viewpoint as your own that fosters real conversation and breakthrough thinking. Whereas previously the CEO would have made the decision in isolation or after talking with a few members of the team, and later would have spent an enormous amount of time explaining her decision and coercing others to implement it, the lasting empathy this exercise developed ensured that her senior team was in alignment, making execution that much faster and more effective.

The next time you face a strategic decision, try staging a debate to release new energy, creativity, and excitement around the decision and speed up its adoption and ultimate success.

Dr. Michael O’Brien (michael@obriengroup.us) is the founder of O’Brien Group (www.obriengroup.us) and has been a pioneer in the field of Executive Coaching. He is the author of the book Profit From Experience (O’Brien Group, 2003) and has written numerous articles on the role of executive development and organizational change. Michael also developed the Learning Organization Practices Profile (Pfeiffer and Co., 1994), a survey that assesses an organization’s learning and change ability. This article originally appeared in The Leading Question.

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They’ve failed to make the mark, no doubt, but even after this discussion, the reason for their shortfall is still unclear. That’s because despite all the questioning, the boss hasn’t gotten to the real issue. He’s failed to ask the most important question: “Why didn’t you achieve the goal?”

This scenario plays out all the time in companies, fostering a never-ending cycle where people are stuck in a place of great misunderstanding. Asking situation-type questions prevents the boss from understanding the real issue. It also keeps employees from doing the necessary brainwork required to uncover it. The results are answers that amount to fluff. Problems aren’t identified, and the proper corrective actions are not developed.

Leaders should focus on “why” people do what they do versus “what” they do. Asking the powerful question “why” forces people to think deeply. They can then peel back the layers of excuses and get to the root cause of the problem. For example, if employees have failed to meet a goal and are asked “why” questions rather than “what” or “how” questions,

they might give responses like, “I didn’t prioritize my time.” So the boss must then go farther and ask, “Why didn’t you prioritize your time?” When the employees say they have too much on their plate, the boss, once again, must ask “Why?” The final answer: These employees are given many tasks from their boss and cannot distinguish between what is and what isn’t a priority. With the real problem revealed, the boss can now take appropriate action, perhaps setting up time to help them prioritize their many tasks.

The Challenge Behind Asking “Why?”

Asking “why” seems easy enough. It’s just a little word, after all. So “why” don’t company leaders ask this powerful question more often? Probing deep can be scary for a boss. It smells of confrontation and hints of accusation. Yet asking “why” doesn’t have to be confrontational or insinuate blame, depending on how the question is asked, the tone of voice used, the way it’s introduced, and so on.

Many bosses are also accustomed to being the go-to person for answers. They’re used to giving direction and opinion. It makes them feel valued and important, and reinforces their position of authority. Also, some bosses prefer to deliver the answers because they think it will save precious time. Unfortunately, when bosses routinely dish out the answers, they become enablers of that dysfunctional cycle, which is actually a huge time-waster. Employees regularly seek out the boss for the solution rather than being problem-solvers. This prevents the ability to develop real solutions, stifles employee growth, and ultimately limits company productivity.

The best bosses and company leaders are those who understand that asking “why” is a highly productive teaching method. And teaching—rather than preaching—and challenging people to think is what stimulates discovery, solutions, and growth. So the goal of any leader is to become a great teacher and develop the necessary skills. This includes not only asking “why” but then also giving employees an appropriate amount of time to determine the real answer. That could be as simple as waiting a few minutes for a response in a meeting, or perhaps sending everyone off to think about the issue, research the reason for the problem, and return at a later time with an answer.

Great bosses also teach by holding their employees accountable for not just the problem’s answer but also its solution. When the employees are used to going to the boss for answers and direction, they actually transfer the ownership of the problem from themselves to the boss. Consequently, they can then blame the boss for the goal’s shortcomings and failure. It’s no longer their fault because they didn’t provide the solution—the boss did. Assigning employees with the task of uncovering the reason for their missed goal or creating a viable solution to a problem or challenge puts the responsibility back where it ultimately belongs.

Think back to your favorite teacher, someone who really made a difference in your life. Did he or she give you all the answers? (No!) Did he or she make you look for the answers? (Yes!) Did this teacher hold you accountable? (Absolutely!) These are the ways great leaders help people learn, cultivate the potential of those around them, and enable growth.

Becoming the Great Teacher

So when it comes to teaching, how do bosses start? They must ask more questions in general. To get people to open up, it’s O. K. to lead with a few situational questions, such as, “What was the biggest challenge?” But don’t spend a lot of time here; quickly move on to the meatier “why” questions and get to the root of the problem. Once the issue is clear, employees commonly ask bosses for the solution, and this is the opportunity for leaders to push back and pose that same question to the ones who are asking it. It’s the employees who need to find the solution, articulate how it will be done, spell out why it’s the remedy of choice, and list the appropriate new goals that must be set to reach it.

Finally, great bosses realize that quick reactions and easy answers typically don’t produce the right solution. That’s where digging deep, allotting appropriate time for understanding, and empowering employees to think hard come into play. The teaching process is a challenging one if it’s going to be effective. But for great bosses and leaders, every day provides an opportunity to create the lesson plan that will develop employees. Their ownership in mining the solutions to challenges is what ultimately leads to growth and success.

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• An epidemic accelerates in proportion to the number of people exposed, which in turn increases the likelihood that the epidemic will spread even further.
• Downsizing is likely to reduce an executive’s ability to generate revenue (not just costs), which in turn decreases profits and increases pressure to downsize yet again.
• Acts of violence perpetrated by one party in a war stimulate acts of revenge by the other party, which in turn lead to violent retaliation by the first party and an ongoing escalation by both sides.

Although people are easily caught in vicious cycles, they often do not see these cycles as endless spirals and do not know how to escape the dynamic.

This article:

• Describes an easy way to identify vicious cycles that people are caught in;
• Explains a four-step process to transform this dynamic into an engine of success instead of failure;
• Will expand your thinking beyond simple vicious cycles to enrich your understanding of common problems and identify specific interventions for complex systems.

Doom Looping

One easy way to identify vicious cycles we are caught in is called “doom looping,” originally developed by Jennifer Kemeny. Doom looping has four steps:

1. Identify a problem symptom that concerns you because it seems to get worse and worse over time. For example, your symptom might be morale problems.
2. Identify three immediate and independent causes of the problem symptom. For example, three immediate causes of morale problems might be a difficult manager, lack of career opportunities, and job pressures and stress.
3. Clarify three immediate and independent consequences of the growing problem symptom. For example, three immediate consequences of morale problems are turnover, quality problems, and performance issues.
4. Finally, show how at least one of the consequences exacerbates at least one of the causes. The connection might be direct or indirect. For example, the consequence of turnover is that it increases workload for key personnel, which in turn increases job pressures and stress, thereby increasing morale problems and turnover even further (see “Vicious Cycles”). This dynamic is a vicious cycle or, in systems thinking parlance, a reinforcing feedback loop.

VICIOUS CYCLES

One easy way to identify vicious cycles we are caught in is called “Doom Looping.”

Transforming Vicious Cycles

Once you have identified a vicious cycle, you can look for where to break the cycle and ideally transform it into a positive engine of growth. This involves four steps:

1. Identify at least one link in the vicious cycle that is governed by people’s beliefs or assumptions instead of hard-wired into the system. This is a link that can be broken. To clarify this link, ask, “Is this cause-effect link inevitable, or can it be influenced by changing how people think and behave?”

   Example: “Do morale problems necessarily have to lead to high turnover?” Here the answer is “No,” because the existence of morale problems could just as well stimulate the active engagement of your best people—the ones most likely to leave first when things get bad—in turning around the organization. By contrast, once turnover occurs (especially of good people), the workload of key personnel is likely to increase and, as a result, so will job pressures and stress, and then morale problems. These links are more hardwired into the vicious cycle.

2. Redirect the causal factor in the weak link by creating a new goal. Ask, “What do we want to accomplish when this causal factor appears?”

   Example: “We want to establish a highly effective organization led by our best people at all levels.”

3. Clarify the corrective actions required to bridge the gap between where you are and the new goal.

   Example: “In order to increase morale and achieve the goal of an effective organization led by our best people at all levels, we will ask these people to reassess the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities and lead task forces to capitalize on the most critical areas.

4. Implement reinforcing actions that sustain the new momentum. Because managers tend to be pulled by multiple demands, they often take their attention off of a new initiative once it appears to be moving forward. In order to ensure that the change in direction is sustained, it is important to implement actions that reinforce this direction over time.

   Example: The task force leaders can benefit from individual coaching and team learning meetings that enable them to overcome organizational resistance, deal with surprises, and increase each others’ effectiveness. This process should be followed by timely implementation of their recommendations and adjustments in the organizational infrastructure to support new ways of working.

Addressing More Complex Dynamics

Because vicious cycles are relatively easy to identify when things go wrong, we are tempted to see them everywhere we look. However, focusing on many vicious cycles tends to confuse people and limit their ability to identify effective interventions. There are two ways to make sense of multiple vicious cycles and key in on high-leverage interventions:

• The first is to simplify multiple vicious cycles by identifying the four to seven variables that people believe are most critical to the problem. Next, depict how these variables interact with each other by drawing no more than two or three loops. Once you have simplified the number of loops, use the above method for breaking and transforming vicious cycles to develop an intervention strategy.
• The second approach is to recognize that vicious cycles tend to disguise and dominate more complex dynamics. These dynamics can often be depicted initially as systems archetypes. Archetypes provide a rich, comprehensive explanation of what is happening while still being easy to understand. In addition to providing clarity that is both sophisticated and accessible, systems archetypes enable people to target more specific high-leverage interventions.

Example: If a vicious cycle is created when people use a quick fix to reduce a problem symptom, draw the “Fixes That Backfire” (also known as the “Fixes That Fail”) archetype, and apply interventions for producing a sustainable solution (see, for example, Systems Archetypes Basics: From Story to Structure by Daniel H. Kim andVirginia Anderson, Pegasus Communications, 1998). If one or more vicious cycles increase dependence on a quick fix and undermine your ability to implement a more fundamental long-term solution, show the “Shifting the Burden” archetype and use interventions designed to support this solution.

Other dynamics where vicious cycles tend to dominate include:

• Success to the Successful—one part of the system performs better and better over time at the expense of decreasing success of another part;
• Accidental Adversaries—the unintended consequences of actions taken by two potential collaborators undermine each other’s effectiveness;
• Competing Goals—efforts to achieve too many goals for too many different parties reduce their ability to accomplish any goal satisfactorily;
• Escalation—two parties continuously amplify their activities to defeat the other without ever achieving a sustainable advantage.

In sum: Identifying vicious cycles is often a great place to start applying systems thinking to chronic, complex problems. At the same time, people can often gain richer insight and even greater leverage by testing for and depicting the systems archetypes that produce these cycles.

David Peter Stroh is a principal of Applied Systems Thinking and founder and principal of www.bridgewaypartners.com. David is an expert in applying systems thinking to organizational and social change. You can contact him at dstroh@appliedsystemsthinking.com.

This article is adapted with permission from the Applied Systems Thinking Library. © Applied Systems Thinking 2006

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