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Posts tagged ‘Organization Development’

Feb 6

Strong opinions, weakly held

This is a cross-post from the Friesen Group Kansas EMS Transition project blog. It is a topic of interest to everyone who engages in organizations.

As dialogue, debate, and discussion continue around various EMS Transition questions, I was thinking about a post on Bob Sutton’s blog where he talks about the need for strong opinions, weakly held. The argument originated with persons from the Institute for the Future.

It starts by stating that we each need to have strong opinions. When we care passionately about something, we are willing to put our energy and time into learning about it, understanding it, and defending it. But the argument doesn’t stop there. The rest of the argument is that we need to hold our strong opinions loosely. If we’re too attached to our opinions, we lose the ability to hear and see other evidence and alternative ideas.

I close this post with a quote from Sutton, “Wisdom is the courage to act on your knowledge and the humility to doubt what you know.”

Feb 5

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passion AND indifference

In the interest of looking at all perspectives, I have been reflecting on the need for balance between passion and indifference. In organizations, managers spend time and energy seeking to motivate people to passion for their work. But, with too much passion managers can roll over people and miss important cues indicating risk or simply other options – including better ones. With too much indifference managers can become lethargic and stagnate.

There is balance in the world: a time for reflection and stepping back to see more clearly, and a time for passionate engagement.

If you’re interested in thinking further about this dichotomy, check out Bob Sutton’s post on 10 things he believes about the workplace or David Maister’s post on Passion, People, and Principles.

Feb 4

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Thinking by design

This quote from by Diego Rodriguez from IDEO stimulated my thinking today:

Whether or not you call yourself a designer, when you work to relate people’s needs to broader webs of individual, social, and economic factors, and pour your energy into creating better outcomes via an evidence-driven process, you’re using design thinking to increase your odds of success in the world. (From Business Week)

How do we begin relating needs to webs of factors to create better outcomes? Design thinking and critical thinking pull together two worlds that can bring out the best in organizations by using both our left-brain and right-brain to brainstorm, problem solve, and crack cognitive eggs. In Business by Design, Roger Martin writes that organizations of the future “will balance analytical mastery and intuitive originality in a dynamic interplay.” He predicts an “. . . unwavering focus on the creative design of systems, will eventually extend to the wider world. From these firms will emerge the breakthroughs that move the world forward.”

Careful observation is a method of relating needs to webs of factors. When I perform a routine process or engage in conversation, I can ask myself questions to promote observation and reflection, “Why did I do/say that? What was I thinking about when I did/said that? How did it make me feel? What do I believe is important here?” I want to emphasize that it can be just as revealing to ask these questions about routine tasks like using a cell phone or having a weekly team meeting as asking them about more strategic issues.

Another method is integrative thinking. Integrative thinking looks at situations from different perspectives. It does not shrink from contradictions, complex dilemmas, or wicked problems.  It asks questions like: “How does this impact each person in the organization? What would it be like to experience this from their desk? What experiments could be tried to test our ideas? What are ways we could quickly prototype this idea?”

As Tim Brown says in Change by Design,

You have to start with observation because it’s the only way to illuminate the subtle nuances about how people actually get things done (or don’t get things done), and it’s these deep insights that lead to powerful new ideas. Intellectual experimentation is equally critical because there’s no way to generate real breakthroughs unless people are willing to explore a lot of options in a divergent way. Finally, rapid and inexpensive prototyping is the most efficient way to move an idea from concept to reality. By ‘building to think’ instead of ‘thinking about what to build,’ an organization can dramatically accelerate its pace of innovation.

The challenge for organizations is to ‘build to think’ and thereby increase the potential for success.

Feb 2

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Brain – Mind – Body

I read an interesting article today that summarizes several research studies about how our brain, mind, and body are connected. Cognitive and neuroscience are beginning to provide insights into our brain, mind, and body that will have real world applications. Researchers from the Institute for the Future imagine that a growing understanding of neuroscience and behavior will impact training programs as we learn how to influence students focus, accuracy, and efficiency.

As I imagine what the research data means for organizations. I can imagine tools that will allow organizations to use the research to select the best persons for each team as they configure project teams. I envision tools for educators and trainers to improve transfer of information in classrooms. I can imagine managers using it to create tools to optimize workflow.

We continue to live in a world where there are as many problems with solutions as there are dilemmas without clear solutions. Bringing together disciplines like neurobiology, sociology, psychology, and organization development may help organizations and the individuals in them to live with uncertainty and continue to be successful.

“Yesterday is regrettable, tomorrow still hypothetical. But you can always listen to your body, and seize today with both hands.” – Susan Goldin-Meadow, University of Chicago

Jan 31

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Unfinished business

At the end of each day, I contemplate my to-do list. I have never had a day when everything is checked off of the list. And yet, on the next day I’m often starting new tasks and engaging in activities that weren’t even on the list from the day before. From time-to-time, I reflect on the list and delete things for my “stop doing list“. I have books stacked by my chair, always several in progress. I have far away friends and family that I’d like to go and spend a week visiting. I have places I dream of going and others I long to return to for further adventures.

Today I’m reflecting and reminding myself that life is a process, not an accomplishment – a journey, not a destination. Work, chores, and activities are better represented by a tapestry that each of us is weaving. The threads are our work, hobbies, friendships, travels, and families. While checking off tasks – finishing part of the design  – is a good thing, beginning new relationships and activities – discovering new threads – is just as important. Weaving the varied threads together and adding new ones are the stuff of life.

Unfinished business is part of who we are. We each weave, rest, and weave throughout the times and seasons of our lives. None of us will complete our tapestries. When I’m gone, perhaps someone will pick up some of my threads and begin weaving them into their own tapestry. In the meanwhile, I don’t have to get everything done perfectly. I need to keep weaving and discovering threads, flowing through the seasons of life. A life well-lived will leave a lot of hanging threads – a lot of unfinished business.

Jan 24

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Staying out of both ditches

Last Sunday, Jon and I went for a drive to Marion Reservoir. We saw three bald eagles in the area of the north cove. And for the first time since I’ve lived in Kansas, I saw the reservoir frozen from shore-to-shore. The pink clouds on the horizon were lingering fog. It was a beautiful afternoon. 

January Afternoon at Marion Reservoir

The Sunday afternoon drive turned adventurous when we decided to take a shortcut to Pilsen to investigate the church steeple we saw peeking over the horizon. We chose one of the many gravelled township roads to travel north. After about a half mile of gravel, we were confronted with an unmaintained road, which in winter – translated for non-Kansans  – means mud over flint rock and limestone. No problem! We have 4-wheel drive. So, onward we charged. The silence in the truck grew tangible as we slid first into the ditch on the passenger side, crossed a small bridge, then slid across into the ditch on the driver side (which was feet from a creek), and back into the ditch on the passenger side as we climbed to the stop sign. When the “mudball” that we were now riding in came to a stop, Jon said, “Let’s not do that again!” 

As I continue, a week later, to process that experience, I think about how much time our organizations spend in ditches. On one side of the road is rapid growth, change, and unpredictability. On the other side of the road is the status quo, rigid thinking, and control. Too much time in the ditch with uncontrolled growth and change will cause the organization to explode as the bubble bursts. Too much time in the ditch with the status quo leads to a slow organizational death from irrelevance and attrition. The challenge is to find ways of being that are neither reactive or rigid. To find ways of creating a road between the ditches. A road that is filled with energy for being flexible and adaptable while being coherent and stable. 

So let the road building begin. Let us find ways of improving organizational roads to support the middle way of “yes” and “and“. Let us find ways to stay out of both ditches and reach the destination.

Jan 20

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Using questions to create doorways

I continue to consider what it means to crack the cognitive egg. Critical thinking is essential to creating new neural pathways. Questions are a tool to stimulate critical thinking. Questions can be trivial or complex.

In an organization, trivial questions may sound like:

  • Who is in charge?
  • How many departments do you have?
  • How often do you have an all-hands meeting?
  • What is your mission statement?

On the other hand, complex questions are meant to create dialogue and discussion. They provoke people to search for the answer and learn along the way. They stimulate other important questions. They can’t be answered once-and-for-all, but keep showing up over and over again. They require re-thinking assumptions and prior lessons.

Here are the above questions revised to increase their complexity and stimulate critical thinking:

  • How does your organization define leadership? Who in your organization demonstrates those leadership characteristics?
  • If you could draw a picture of how your organization divides up and shares responsibilities, what would it look like? Do you see any patterns? How has this picture changed over time?
  • What are the formal and informal ways communication happens in your organization? What are the benefits and weaknesses of the formal and informal communication methods?
  • How does your definition of leadership, the way you manage responsibilities, and communicate say about the core values of your organization? What is significant about the values of your organization?

A final question: How do the answers to these questions fit with what you thought the answers were yesterday?

I close with a quote:

It is easy to ask trivial questions . . . . It is also easy to ask impossibly difficult questions. The trick is to find the medium questions that can be answered and that take you somewhere. – Jerome Bruner in Understanding by Design, 2005, p. 105.

Jan 19

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Colors of winter and a reflection tripod

Prairie Colors of Winter

In the long days of winter, I encountered the beautiful golds of the prairie on my walk through the woods. I continue considering the importance of being present and reflecting. I recently read a good definition of what it means for us to reflect written by Dr. Daniel Siegel of UCLA in Mindsight. He says that the fundamental components of reflection are a tripod: openness, observation, and objectivity. Here is a summary of his definitions:     

Openness is the willingness to accept things as they are, without expectations and preconceived ideas about how we think things “should be”.     

Observation is our ability to watch our roles in events and our reactions to them; we are able to see how we fit into the context of life as we experience it.     

Objectivity allows us to have thoughts or feelings and not be had by them; we are able to see that our thoughts, feelings, beliefs are temporary.     

I like this analogy on many levels. In photography a tripod stabilizes a shot, giving it more clarity, detail, color, and shadow. In reflection, we can choose to be open, observant, and objective about ourselves, others, and our context. With the reflection tripod, we gain clarity, detail, color, and shadow about events around us and our role and reactions to these events. Reflection can give us distance and freedom to choose our actions and reactions. We can turn off our internal autopilot and change our behaviors, which leads to the possibility of change in our organizations and relationships.

Action precedes transformation; take time to reflect.   

Sand Creek Reflection

Jan 16

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Things we don’t see

Prairie Hoar Frost II

This past week I took a number of photos when a hoar frost settled on the Kansas prairie. Since then I’ve been reflecting on this photo:

Prairie Hoar Frost III

In the photo is a beautiful red farmstead. I drive past this scene several times each week, but I have never noticed it before. The fact is that I have seen it, I just haven’t noted the obvious.

Whether driving in the car, walking in the woods, drinking tea with friends, or leading an organization development project, I continue to challenge myself to be present and aware – to see things I don’t see.

Jan 15

Why we’re happier on Saturday

I was intrigued to see research stating that we are happier on the weekends. This seems intuitive to me. But the research is instructive. We’re happier because we spend our time doing things that we are internally motivated to do, setting our own schedules, and relating with people we feel connected to.

For those of us who are interested in improving organizations, this relates back to my post about ending management as we know it. Research continues to challenge us to create workplaces that support autonomy and control over what, where, when, and how we do our tasks. When people are motivated to work because they want to contribute and increase their mastery of the task, effectiveness and efficiency increase.

Some would argue that their workplace can’t permit autonomy and allow people choice over what, when, how, and with whom they work. I will concede this point. But I will continue to argue that even if a given workplace requires stringent quality controls, opportunity remains.

In those cases (hospitals and air traffic control come to mind), the opportunity for management is to support employees in gaining mastery – to get better and better at what they do. The other opportunity is to clearly and regularly communicate why what employees are doing matters – that the purpose is in service of the larger common good.

As our organizations continue to wrestle with constructive ways of changing management practices toward evidence-based practices, let us all enjoy the weekends ahead!

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