conversation matters

Marissa is right: Yahoo just needs the Oscillation Principle

Marissa is right! In order for Yahoo to have a culture of collaboration employees need to be face-to-face with each other to talk about the critical issues they collectively find themselves facing. But it is equally true that we can’t turn back the clock on virtual work nor on the growing distributed workforce that is serving us so well around the world. Virtual is here to stay.

Forcing people back to the workplace is not the solution because too often when they are in the workplace they are either sitting in a meeting listening to endless presentations, or in a cubicle sending emails to each other. Neither of those activities is worth the cost in time or travel. The only reason to come together face-to-face is for people to be in conversation with each other! And real conversation happens all too infrequently in workplaces, as my own research has shown.

The Oscillation Principle
What a distributed workforce needs, in order to work effectively, is a regularly scheduled oscillation between virtual work and collective sensemaking. Collective Sensemaking is an organized conversation, intentionally held to make sense of the circumstances in which organizational members collectively find themselves. Taylor and Van Every (2000) explain, “Sensemaking is a way station on the road to a consensually constructed, coordinated system of action.”

The deep rhythm of oscillation between face-to-face meetings for collective sensemaking and virtual work, addresses one of the greatest deficits of a virtual work force, that is, one part of the organization taking action without reference to how that action may impact other parts of the organization or impact the whole. Through collective sensemaking all perspectives on a topic are given voice so that an understanding of the whole emerges as well as clarity about the relationship between the parts. In such conversations organizational members often discover assets of which they were unaware.

As this diagram (Maznevski & Chudoba 2000) illustrates there are high intensity periods of collective sensemaking oscillating with periods of virtual work in which the group interacts through less rich media, such as, email, phone calls, SMS or teleconference. The periods of collective sensemaking renew the trust and relationships which are a precondition for the collaboration and information exchange that are limited to mediated interaction when organizational members are again at a distance. And understandably, those virtual interactions are more productive because critical relationships have been renewed during collective sensemaking.

The frequency of the oscillation and duration of the periods of collective sensemaking depend on two factors:
1. the interdependencies in the group's task, and
2. the complexity of the issues.
For example, a virtual team that is designing a product for an emerging market might need to come together for 2 days every two months. A team with less complex issues might come together every 3 months for one day. And a division engaged in a change initiative – one that requires employees to take into account the whole system so that changes planned for one part do not conflict with other parts - might bring everyone together to initiate the change and then come together as a whole every six months, with individual departments meeting for a day once a month.

Collective Sensemaking
If you were to observe collective sensemaking in a daylong meeting, you would see posted, a list of work issues that team members have identified for discussion. All day long people would be working in a series of small groups, some times homogenous and some times mixed. And periodically during the day you would see the whole group gathering to exchange the ideas they had been working on. If you listened in on the conversations you would hear people sharing information, asking for help from others, discussing unexpected outcomes, and working through differences. What you would not see would be motivational speeches or PowerPoint presentations.

Collective sensemaking allows a group to build shared understanding of what has happened since the last time they were together and what needs to happen going forward. “Organization members interpret their environment in and through interactions with others, constructing accounts that allow them to comprehend the world and act collectively.” (Maitlis 2005) That is what Marissa wants for Yahoo - employees interacting enough that they can act collectively. Oscillation between virtual work and collective sensemaking would achieve that end without having to eliminate the virtual work that is so productive.

How Knowledge Workers Learn Judgment

In today’s world employees often must deal with tasks and problems that require much more that simply following a predetermined step by step procedure – the problems require the exercise of judgment. Judgment is needed when we are faced with thorny questions about which there are no right or wrong answers. When asked one of those thorny questions we often say, “Well, it’s a matter of judgment.” Soldiers, for example, face many situations in which one correct course in not clear, as in this example from one of the US Army on-line communities, PlatoonLeader.

“We were headed out to a pretty easy mission. My front truck reports that there’s a dead body under a car in the middle of the road. He was on the ground. He had been in his car and he had been shot. At that point, the gunner from my lead truck noticed a double-decker bus that had stopped. And there was a guy up on the top deck who appeared to have a blue video camera, and he was just hanging out the window video-taping us. Our rules of engagement permitted us to engage anybody video-taping an attack. I looked down my sight and noticed the same thing. The gunner looked through binos and noticed the same thing. He asked me, “Hey sir, can I go ahead and shoot him?”

In the above example the Platoon sergeant must figure out if the video-taping implies an ambush or if it is just some guy video taping a strange scene.

Weick provides an example in which a nurse in a neonatal unit must make two judgment calls.

“I took care of a 900-gram baby who was about 26 or 27 weeks many years ago who had been doing well for about two weeks. He had an open ductus that day. The difference between the way he looked at 9 a.m. and the way he looked at 11 a.m. was very dramatic. I was at that point really concerned about what was going to happen next. There are a lot of complications of the patent ductus, not just in itself, but the fact that it causes a lot of other things. I was really concerned that the baby was starting to show symptoms of all of them.”

You look at this kid because you know this kid, and you know what he looked like two hours ago. It is a dramatic difference to you, but it’s hard to describe that to someone in words. You go to the resident and say: “Look, I’m really worried about X, Y, Z,” and they go: “OK.” Then you wait one half hour to 40 minutes, then you go to the Fellow (the teaching physician supervising the resident) and say: “You know, I am really worried about X, Y, Z.” They say: “We’ll talk about it on rounds.”

The nurse faces two situations that require judgment, the first is to recognize that the baby is in trouble and the second is how to convey that information to a physician in a way will cause him to turn his attention to the infant.

Such situations occur more and more frequently, not only in the military and hospitals but in much of the work we think of as knowledge work, everything from an architect thinking about a design for a steeply sloping site, to an intelligence analyst determining whether the troop build up on a border signals a threat, to a manager faced with how to implement a change initiative.

In order to respond to these kinds of situations, employees need more than the skills they learn in training, more than what is provided in a manual of regulations, and even more than what can be picked up through reading the best practice of others. There is no way to anticipate all the possible situations a knowledge worker could face during their daily work, and therefore no way to provide sufficient procedures or directions. Rather knowledge workers need to continuously read the situation in front of them and then, based on that interpretation, determine the appropriate next action to take - in other words, to use their judgment.

In Talking About Machines, Julian Orr describes the lunch meetings that copy repair technicians hold to solve the difficult problems they face fixing copy machines. He notes that much of their talk is telling stories about the machines they have been working on. The stories serve to make sense of diagnoses confronting them, but also to reaffirm what it means to be a “competent” repair technician in terms of work habits, what clothing is worn to a client site, how a repair technician approaches a problem, how one works with colleagues and a host of other values and norms that turns a person into an effective repair technician.

In contrast to these informal lunch meetings, Orr describes the view of the corporation about how repair problems are solved, that is, that problems are solved by using the documentation issued to the repair technicians. “The diagnostic procedures prescribe a series of tests, with each action defined in considerable detail, and each branching condition presented as a simple Yes/No choice. Such documentation is based on the scientific management principle that if instructions are detailed and complete, the organization can hire cheaper employees, with less skill, who can do the job by following the instructions contained in the documentation. However, to the technicians the actual question to which they are asked to respond Yes or No is often extremely convoluted… The technicians are quite philosophical about the shortcomings of the documentation, saying that, ‘the machine is far too complex to anticipate correctly all of the possible failures.’ ... They view the documentation as a useful resource to consult when their own expertise cannot solve the machine’s problem.” But it is in the conversations where they learn to deal with the tricky problems that never show up in the documentation.

The corporate view, as reported by the copy repair technicians, is that knowledge and skill are a matter of individual competence, which is gained by attending training, reading journals, and/or listening to lectures. The underlying assumptions of that view are that, 1) there are individuals with expertise who can provide the knowledge required to be effective, through documents or lecture, and 2) that the required knowledge is relatively stable, it changes little over time.

As more and more of the workforce is populated by knowledge workers our premise about of how people develop the judgment to be effective is changing. The newer view holds that:
1. complex knowledge and skills are distributed across the practitioners who use that skill, with no one individual knowing all that the group knows, and
2. knowledge is continually changing as the group of practitioners learn from the act of practicing their craft. Ideas are not fixed and elements of thought are formed and reformed through experience. Knowledge then is not stable, but is ever changing.

The newer view takes into account the difference between “know what” and “know how.” For example, it is possible, to learn the “know what” of negotiation strategies by reading the books about negotiation. But books cannot make a person a skilled negotiator. To be an effective negotiator, requires “know how” or what I have earlier called judgment.

How then do people learn to make judgments? There are three elements involved in developing judgment:
• The most fundamental element is the individual taking action and observing the results – in other words experience. Experience is gained, not through one occurrence, but over enough occurrences that a pattern begins to emerge across all of the actions taken. This implies the liberty to experiment, to try new things and, of course, to fail. Edmondson calls this “intelligent failures at the frontier.” Judgment cannot be learned in the absence of failure because the breadth of experience would be too narrow. If an organization punishes failure or if employees feel the need to hide failure, there is little opportunity to develop judgment.
• The second element is reflection on those actions and patterns. Reflection requires thinking back on the actions taken, the reasoning behind the choice of action, the context in which the action took place, and the outcomes that resulted from the actions, many of which are unintentional. While experience is inevitable, learning is not. To learn from requires deliberate reflection. Reflection is most effective when it is done in the company of others who are involved in the same kind of work. When we summarize what happened for someone else, we begin to understand it better ourselves. We learn when we talk. Each practitioner functions within a somewhat different context, responding a bit differently. Consequently the learning of each practitioner is unique. When those practitioners reflect together on their actions, “creative abrasion” occurs, which leads to greater understanding in those engaged in the conversation. There are a number of processes to choose from that are both conversational and systematic in nature, for example Action Learning, Knowledge Café, Anecdote circles collective sensemaking, coaching ourselves.
• The third element is associating oneself with a community of practitioners and thereby understanding the work and it’s talk from the inside.” One learns to be an effective nurse, copy repair technician, or soldier by talking with others about their work. Such talk develops not only the necessary understanding of technique, but also of values held, norms of behavior and how to think like a practitioner in that field. In other words, how “to be.”

These elements, to a great or lesser degree, are present in the informal interaction among people doing the same work, as we saw in the copy repair example. But in a world where the community of practitioners is spread across the globe, and many practitioners work at locations out of the office, the development of judgment cannot not be left to chance and proximity. It must be designed and supported by the organization including: 1) experimentation that leads to learning, 2) treating failure as an opportunity for learning, 3) establishing a systematic process through which reflective conversation occurs about both team and individual actions, 4) and promoting communities of practice.

How to Hold a Retreat or Meeting Where New Thinking Emerges

I attended a meeting a number of years ago that has remained in my mind as the ideal meeting where new thinking can emerge. I want to describe that meeting and then tease out the design characteristics that led to such memorable results.

The Monieson Centre at Queen’s School of Business in Ontario Canada hosted an invited meeting held over two days. The invitees were twenty-five recognized thought leaders in the field of knowledge management, both academics and practitioners. The stated goal of the retreat was to “push the boundaries of what we know about creating and managing knowledge-based organizations.” That sounds pretty ordinary so far, but here is where it started to get interesting. The invitation said:

"Attendees will be requested to submit an original “thought-piece” in advance of the retreat to be shared among the group. We are not looking for neatly packaged research articles. Rather, we hope you will share the leading edge of your best thinking on some important aspect of managing knowledge-based organizations. Your thought-piece should be in the form of a graphic poster accompanied by explanatory text, altogether no more than one page. We will use the posters to create an “idea gallery” as the means for exploring and linking ideas during the retreat."

I wrote my thought piece about a topic I was exploring at the time - the relationship between knowledge sharing and democratic organizations. I posed it as a chicken or egg question, "Does knowledge sharing thrive in egalitarian environments OR does knowledge sharing promote egalitarian environments?" The thought pieces were posted on-line and attendees were encouraged to read others' pieces before they came. The authors' names, however, were withheld, which provided the opportunity to consider the ideas without being biased by who wrote them, but which also created a bit of intrigue, prompting almost everyone to read the posted pages before they came to the meeting.

When we arrived on Friday evening each of our thought pieces had been made into large posters that displayed the main ideas of our one-pagers. The posters acted as a valuable reminder of the ideas we had already read on-line. We started with a dinner that first evening and were provided a brief explanation by the organizers James McKeen and Michael Zack, of what we were going to be doing.

The next day was simply a series of conversations. The organizers had grouped the ideas on the posters into themes and we were assigned to small groups of 6-9 that met to talk about that theme. After an hour a second set of themes was announced and we re-grouped and were again back in conversation. And so it went, with time out for snacks and meals.

Each of us carried our poster from room to room. The meeting rooms were cozy, with overstuffed chairs and small tables for a cup of coffee. Each time we entered a room we placed our posters in a circle around the conversation area so the posters were always in view. As interesting ideas sprang up from the discussion, attendees would write the idea on a post-it and stick it on the appropriate poster. By the end of the two days, our posters looked like they had the measles. A couple of the post-its on my poster are still relevant to me:
● Knowledge sharing and egalitarianism is a loop
● We have to be bound by some notion of the common good

We held a full group meeting the last morning in order to discover the themes that had emerged across all the conversations.

The initial papers were interesting but it was, of course, the conversations where the knowledge got exchanged and learning happened. The idea I had come with grew through the discussions as others suggested lines of thought that had not occurred to me. I caught myself frequently thinking, if not saying, “Ah ha!” as insights came together for me. Others offered the names of books and articles that, long after the retreat, have continued to expand my thinking. Recently I have found myself re-visiting the implications of those ideas as a result of work I have been doing for several months in a communist country, China.

I found the topics others brought to the retreat equally stimulating and was able to contribute ideas to their work, which felt very affirming. It was, hands down, the most intellectually stimulating conference I have ever attended.

I have tried to think why this meeting has stayed with me as the ideal of what meetings ought to be. Some of my conclusions are:

• There were no presentations to sit through at this meeting. Often when I attend a conference, less than ten percent of what the presenters offer is either new for me or fits my current needs and interests. I know I am not alone in this regard, because I often overhear others at conferences proclaim that, “If I get one new idea from a conference I’m happy.” But at this meeting I would put my applicability meter at least at 80%. After all, in a small group, the group members influence the direction of the conversation. At Monieson I could delve deeper into areas that peaked my interest by requesting that the speaker elaborate a point or I could get multiple views on what a speaker offered by asking what others in the small group what they thought about that idea. As a group we tailored the conversation to our immediate interests.

• That 80% percentage may also reflect that we were all well versed in the topic. We had the absorptive capacity to learn from each other as we explored innovative ideas that required a thorough understanding of knowledge management as a foundation.

• No one was trying to impress anyone else or sell others on their services as happens all too frequently in conferences. That was refreshing in and of itself, but more importantly it meant attendees were willing to reveal doubts about their own ideas and to test their thinking rather than just making declarative statements about it.

• The conversation groups were the right size for participants to inquire, challenge, elaborate, and clarify - in short, all the indispensable types of interaction that serve to deepen conversations.

• The retreat was built on the idea of reciprocity – Jim and Mike assumed everyone was there both as learner and teacher, so they carefully designed the meeting in a way that both could occur.

• We were asked to write about our new ideas, those that were half formed and not yet ready for prime time. That meant we were still open to others' thinking about what we had written; no one felt a need to defend their current thinking.

• The group was small, twenty-five. That was large enough for there to be cognitive diversity but small enough that we could build connections between our ideas.

• The dinner on the first night provided the opportunity to renew acquaintances before we started the hard work of content - connection before content as Peter Block says.

• The setting was informal with easy chairs, lamps on the small tables where you could also rest a cup of tea. There was no head of the table or podium that drew our eyes away from each other during the conversation.

• The themes that formed the small groups were pertinent to the attendees’ interests, given that they were constructed from the thought pieces attendees had written, rather than being predetermined by a conference agenda.

The Monieson Centre meeting was designed to engender new thinking. Of course, all meetings are designed; it is just that for most meetings we give little thought to our choice of design elements, rather we simply relying on the familiar presentation format. We would be well served if we took the time the Monieson Centre staff did to match the meeting design to the desired outcome. That care would create a great deal of change in how we use space, furniture, the size of groups, who is learning from whom, how we interact, and of course what we are able to learn.

Why Knowledge Management Didn’t Save General Motors: Addressing Complex Issues By Convening Conversation

Starting about 2000 GM put together a vibrant KM program. At one point GM had 138 best practice teams and 33 centers of expertise working with identified subject matter experts. The KM program produced over 5000 best practices that impacted both quality and schedule and led to millions in cost avoidance. In 2008 KM was alive and well at GM. In the summer of 2009 GM filed for bankruptcy. Why didn’t KM save General Motors? GM was brought down by a flawed strategy, but an organization’s strategy is clearly a product of the knowledge that exists within its walls. The knowledge existed within GM to develop a more competitive strategy. But between 2000 and 2008 knowledge management did not help GM bring that organizational knowledge together in a way that could have saved it from bankruptcy.

Knowledge Management has the capability to address an organization’s very difficult and complex issues, for example how to merge two cultures or how to refocus an organization from selling products to selling service. For these, and many other complex issues, no standard operating procedure exists and no history within the organization is available to draw on for guidance. The knowledge to solve complex problems does not reside in individuals nor even in the executive team – but the knowledge does exists in the collective. The knowledge management task is to bring together the collective knowledge of the organization to bear on complex issues.

To date, Knowledge Management has primarily been in the service of cost cutting or its twin, time saving. The GM example illustrates, that as KM professionals we have not garnered the collective knowledge to address the complex problems that our organizations are facing. That has certainly been true of my own work over the past 15 years. My work has primarily been about creating more effective knowledge sharing processes and communities. But in the last couple of years, more and more I find myself being asked to help convene organizations to address the complex issues they are facing. The realization about how my own work is changing has led me to think that the time is ripe to move KM to a new level and has encouraged me to write this post.

James March wrote a much acclaimed article in 1991 called “Exploitation and Exploration in Organizational Learning.” In that article he says that the exploitation of existing knowledge (which is what knowledge management has been doing) must be balanced with the exploration for new knowledge. Both exploration and exploitation are essential for organizations, but they compete for scarce resources. Exploration is more costly because new ideas often don’t work out. Exploitation of existing knowledge is cheaper because existing knowledge has already been tested, so there are fewer failures.

But the downside of exploitation is that it is a closed loop that can sub optimize organizational knowledge. An organization, exclusively relying on exploitation, will not move beyond the best practice that already exists within its walls. For this reason exploitation can produce a valued step change, but cannot produce the kind of discontinuous change that exploration can yield. KM has been focused on exploitation; we need to now balance the KM effort to help organizations explore new knowledge.

Johnsonville Foods an Example of Using Collective Knowledge to Address Complex Issues
Ralph Stayer, the CEO of Johnsonville Foods was faced with a difficult issue that was also an opportunity. Johnsonville Foods was a small, family owned sausage company of 1000 people, well known in Wisconsin for its quality. Stayer had received an offer from a food-processing company to buy large quantities of product on a regular basis.
Stayer saw this as a complex issue because Johnsonville Foods did not have the capacity to handle such a large job, so accepting it would mean everything would have to change, e.g. shipping, purchasing, equipment, production, packaging, new people, and training. To deal with this very complex issue Stayer called a meeting of the whole organization, giving them all of the information he had about the offer.

He asked employees to work in teams to answer three questions: What will it take to make it work? Is it possible to reduce the downside? Do we want to do it? Teams all across the organization struggled with the questions for almost two weeks, holding meeting after meeting to talk through the risks - which were considerable - and figuring out how they would have to operate differently if they were to increase production that much.
When Stayer brought the teams back together, each team laid out what would be needed and what the problems would likely be for the others. In the end there was almost unanimously agreement that they should take on the new business. Reflecting on the process later, Stayer said, "If you issue orders you’re telling people, "Don’t think; just do." But if you’ve got 1000 people, you’ve got 1000 minds. And if you issue orders from the top, you’re using only 3 of them, or 2, or one. That’s stupid.”

Elements Needed to Address Complex Issues
There are three elements that are necessary if organizations are to use all their knowledge to address complex problems. All three elements are present in the story about Johnsonville Food.

1. Convening
• How to convene the organizational conversation in a way that allows new thinking to emerge
• How to frame the question for the conversation
• The types of issues that require leveraging the collective knowledge
2. Transparency
• Making all the knowledge available so that those who have been convened are as well informed as possible
• The willingness of the leader to say, “I don’t know.”
3. Cognitive diversity
• Who needs to be invited to those conversations
• How to obtain cognitive diversity

1- Convening

How to convene
Convening is about designing a meeting in a way that allows new thinking to emerge. That requires reconsidering all elements of a meeting, e.g. the activities participants engage in, how the seating is configured, the nature of the invitation that participants receive, the length of the meeting, and so on. I have written about the task of the leader as “conversation architect” in other posts. Here I want to focus on the importance of small groups as the source of new ideas.

In a small group each participant can not only offer his or her own thinking, each can ask others to clarify their meaning, elaborate on what someone else has said, challenge an idea, and offer data to support his/her own position – in other words, a small group can have a conversation. In a large group participants are limited to declaring their position on an issue. Participants are all aware that "turn taking" is considered courteous and that to take up additional airtime by engaging others in the back and forth of conversation is sure to be viewed by others as discourteous.

Johnson and Johnson, researchers at the University of Minnesota, who study collaboration, say that the synthesis of diverse perspectives comes from being able to hold both one’s own and another’s’ perspective in mind at the same time. Holding both perspectives implies more than having just heard another’s perspective.
It means fully understanding the reasoning behind a perspective as well as the implications that would result from it. That necessarily means there has been enough back and forth between participants for each to gain that level of understanding.

The format for convening is a mix of three elements:

Framing the Conversation
Convening occurs around a question that frames the problem or issue in a way that has relevance to the convened group and that helps to move the group beyond obvious or known positions. One of the difficulties of framing a question is that questions often have an assumption embedded within them. For example, an organization may have a turnover rate of 15% among employees in their first two years of employment. The question, “How do we reduce the turnover rate of employees who have been with the organization less than 2 years?” assumes that a 15% rate of turnover is a problem. The framing of the question prevents participants from thinking about other possibilities such as viewing 15% as a useful weeding out of unsuitable employees, or as a way to bring new ideas into the company. A less biased question might be “What is the optimum rate of new employee turnover for our company and how do we achieve it?” Or even less biased might be, “What experience do we want new employees to have in their first two years, that prepares them and us to make a sound decision about their future with the company?” The task is to frame the question in a way that opens up the space to invite new perspectives on the topic.

Issues that Benefit from Convening
Here I am drawing on the work of Ron Heifitz, who has written a number of books on this issue, particularly “Leadership Without Easy Answers.” Heifetz talks about two kinds of challenges organizations face, adaptive challenges and technical problems.

Adaptive challenges are complex and unpredictable; they have no known answers. People in the organization may even disagree on what the problem really is. To address adaptive challenges organizations must invent their way to a solution. Examples of adaptive challenges are, hospital systems faced with an interminable nursing shortage; the anticipated retirement of thousands of workers in the government sector; the relocation of 45% of an organization’s employees to a new location.” My mentor, Reg Revans use to say, in his rather outdated way, “These are problems about which reasonable men can disagree.”

By contrast, technical problems are predictable and usually solvable by methods and tools that the organization has already developed to address them. If, for example, a well is to be dug in a new oil field, there are standard operating procedures; if a special issue of a journal is to be published, there are steps outlined that will put the issue out on schedule and within budget; if a new cell phone is to be developed, there are well defined phases of the development process. Technical problems do not require a fundamental change in methods or tools. More importantly, the people who solve technical problems can function within a known set of assumptions about how work gets done in the organization, as well as what kind of behaviors are needed to make that work happen.

Where convening brings great value is in addressing adaptive challenges. Heifitz says, “The power of a leader to address adaptive challenges does not lie in inventing solutions; rather it lies in using leadership authority to convene the conversations.”

Johnsonville Foods faced an adaptive challenge and so did Ecopetrol a few years ago.

Ecopetrol a Second Example of Using Collective Knowledge to Address Complex Issues
Five years ago I got a call from Ecopetrol, the National Oil Company of Columbia. The conference organizers said, “We are having a meeting to develop a knowledge strategy. We have not had a knowledge strategy and we think we need one now as we get ready to be publicly traded on the stock market. Could you come to our three day meeting and make a presentation about what makes an effective knowledge management strategy?” “But,” they said, “we only want you to talk for 15 minutes.” Columbia is over 2000 miles from my home in Austin Texas, so my initial reaction was that 15 minutes seemed a very short time for such a long journey. But when I heard what they were trying to do I got very excited. They were convening the top 200 people from across all parts of the company to figure out what they needed to do about knowledge - a complex issue for which there is no “right” answer.

To obtain the diversity of thought they needed at the meeting, they invited representatives from fifteen MAKE winners to speak on the first day of the meeting. And, like my presentation, each of them spoke for only 15 minutes. After each presentation time was set aside for small group discussions – not Q&A - but pairs or trios talking together to make sense of what they had just heard.

The second day was devoted to a Knowledge Café (some times called the world cafe) where the Ecopetrol managers worked in small groups to incorporate what they had heard the first day. The Knowledge Café questions were, “What are the critical areas of knowledge that Ecopetrol needs to manage?” and “What KM processes should we focus on to manage that knowledge?”
Those of us who had made presentations the day before also participated in the knowledge café, moving from table to table along with all the managers. After six rounds of the knowledge café, with managers listening to and building on the ideas of other managers from different parts of Ecopetrol, the group began to coalesce around twelve knowledge areas and had also developed ideas about what KM processes would be most useful.

The third day was Open Space where participants selected which of the twelve topic groups they wanted to join, based on their own expertise and interest. The goal of each group was to set up action plans for that critical knowledge area. By the end of the third day the Open Space groups had a plan to implement each of the initiatives they had agreed upon during the Knowledge Café discussions the day before.

Ecopetrol had a knowledge management strategy after three days of convening and conversation – one that the 200 top managers were committed to.

2 - Transparency
I have noted the way the Ecopetrol meeting involved the elements of convening and cognitive diversity. The meeting also incorporated the third element needed to solve complex issues, transparency. There are two issues connected to transparency, 1) the willingness to say, “I don’t know,” and 2) providing all the knowledge available about the issue under discussion

The willingness to say, "I don't know."
The President of Ecopetrol, Javier Gutiérrez, attended all three days of the meeting. During that time he never made a speech about the outcome he wanted. Rather he listened to the presentations on the first day and on the second day he moved from table to table in the knowledge café with the other 199 managers to think together about how to build a knowledge strategy. What he said through his actions was, ‘I don’t know how to build a knowledge strategy, but I'm confident we can figure it out if we use our collective knowledge.”

Over the last ten years, KM has been able to develop horizontal transparency in organizations through the implementation of communities. In many organizations it is now acceptable for a peer to say to others, “I don’t know how to do this, can anyone help?” However, KM has not addressed the issue of vertical transparency in either direction, neither from frontline to senior leadership, nor from senior leadership to the frontline. Yet, as KM Professionals, we are fully aware that transparency is necessary for leveraging the knowledge of the organization.

Providing all the knowledge available on the issue
The second part of transparency is providing all the knowledge. And this President Gutierrez did as well. Ecopetrol was considering becoming a publicly traded company and everyone in the room understood the implications of that action for Knowledge Management. There can be no integration of collective knowledge without transparency. Unless everyone who is jointly attempting to make sense of an adaptive challenge has access to all the available data, there is no way to successfully address the problem.

Transparency is two sided, leadership must be willing to reveal what they know that may impact the issue, and likewise, frontline employees must be willing to reveal the difficulties they anticipate facing. One of the benefits of using proven formats for convening, such as Knowledge Cafés, Open Space, Storytelling Circles, and Appreciative Inquiry, to name a few, is that these formats are designed to establish an environment conductive to trust and disclosure. More typical meetings like retreats and townhalls tend to discourage disclosure, because if participants have ideas to offer they must say those ideas in front of a large group. But participants are often unsure about how their ideas will be accepted by a large group. Small groups provide the advantage of, 1) being able to test an idea with peers before offering it more broadly and, 2) having a sense of where others stand on an issue before offering a new perspective.

Ecopetrol successfully implemented the strategy they put together five years ago. The meeting I described was not a one time event. It is the way Ecopetrol continues to manage its knowledge using Communities, Technology Forums, Expert meetings, Knowledge Cafés, Conversation Circles, and Open Space to create new knowledge. In both 2010 and 2011 Ecopetrol was nominated for the MAKE award. I predict in 2012 they will be a MAKE award winner.

3 - Cognitive Diversity
I have spoken about convening and transparency, the third element is cognitive diversity.

How to obtain cognitive diversity
There was a great book published in 2007 by Scott Page called, “The Difference.” Page reminds us that people can be diverse in many ways, race, gender, religion, etc. but Page's research shows that the kind of diversity that makes a difference in solving complex problems is a difference in the way people think, which he calls cognitive diversity. That includes the heuristics they use, their interpretations, problem solving strategies, and their prediction models. A physician thinks in a different way than an engineer and uses different strategies to tackle a problem.
A historian thinks in a different way than a mathematician – their training and experience provide them different approaches. When we convene the members of an organization to address a complex problem, we are not so much drawing on the knowledge they use in their job, as we are seeking the diversity in how they think about issues. Research that Page quotes in his book, shows that bringing diversity into the conversation increases the possibility that a group will generate new and more creative ideas.

A number of organizations have taken this idea of cognitive diversity very seriously. The Intelligence Cells in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, are US joint knowledge production efforts to address a specific intelligence challenge. The makeup of a cell is multi-INT (i.e. SIGINT, HUMINT, IMINT). A cross section of disciplines (e.g. analysis, collection, legal, enterprise architecture, technology development) are also represented in each cell, as well as, government, industry, and academia. To address the very difficult intelligence issues about terrorists, requires more than spies, intercepted signals and picture taking drones, it requires a conversation among people who think in diverse ways.

Who needs to be invited
When I am asked by an organization to convene a meeting to address a complex issue, I bring the whole system into the meeting. That doesn’t mean every employee, but it does mean representatives from every part of the organization as well as from every level. And often it also means involving outsiders, customers or suppliers who bring a different perspective on the issue we are addressing.

Teams, departments and divisions can face complex issues, as well as issues that impact the whole organization. For example, a Director, in a government organization I was working with, came to me with a problem. He said, “My office chiefs don’t collaborate. They don’t think about what is good for the whole organization, they are just each out for themselves.” I had worked with many of his direct reports and I knew them to be well meaning people that did have the good of whole organization in mind. So I knew the answer lay somewhere other than the poor motivations of his direct reports.

I asked if I might observe several of his staff meetings, which he regularly held on Tuesday morning. What I saw happening was a very typical staff meeting - the Director started off with announcements, sometimes followed by a presentation from some part of the organization that wanted to get their ideas in front of the Office Chiefs. The largest part of the meeting involved the Director asking each Office Chief in turn for an update of what was happening in his or her area. There was very little conversation between Office Chiefs. Almost all of the talk was aimed at the Director – he talked to each in turn and each in turn responded to him.

The next time I met with the Director I asked him if there were any complex issues that he was dealing with but had not yet been able to find a solution for. He assured me there were a great many and named several. I suggested that he 1) devote one staff meeting a month to asking the group of Office Chiefs to help him address one of those issues, 2) that he think carefully about how to frame the question for them so as not to bias the answers they might come up with, 3) that he provide them with all the information he had on the issue, preferably ahead of time so they would be prepared, 4) that he have them work on the issues in small groups for an hour, and 5) that for the last hour he bring them together to have a large group discussion about their ideas.

Some times we held those small group conversations in a knowledge café format, sometimes in an interview format, sometimes we invited in someone who had a particular expertise. After about six months the group had begun to learn how each other thought. They had started talking with each other outside the meetings on other issues, and they had produced thinking on several issues that the Director could not have come up with by himself. The Director was pleased with what he saw as the Office Chiefs collaborating. For me the most significant move toward collaboration was on the part of the Director himself, he was willing to say, ”I don’t know,” and to draw on the collective knowledge of his very diverse and very capable team to address some very complex issues.

Conclusion
It is possible to think about convening conversations as an event – something to do once in a while to change things up. But from my perspective convening conversations to address complex issues is a new way of thinking about knowledge. KM professionals experienced a shift in how they thought about knowledge around 2005 when they expanded their definition of knowledge from explicit knowledge in a repository, to the realization that much of the important knowledge was in people’s heads and could not be captured. To make that shift a reality KM Professionals had to put new processes into play, like communities and peer assists that supported knowledge flow. As KM professionals we are again on the cusp of broadening how we think about knowledge. The shift is from limiting ourselves to drawing on the knowledge that organizational members possess, to also drawing on their sensemaking capability – their ability to bring heuristics, interpretation and perspectives to critical organizational challenges.

Are On-line Discussion Forums Conversations?

Conversation is a topic I often present about. On those occasions I am frequently asked, “Do you consider on-line discussion forums conversation?” I usually fumble and hedge my answer. But now, thanks to a study done by Yongsuk Kim, when he was a doctoral student at the University of Texas, I have at least a partial answer. Before I get to Kim’s study let me explain both my experience and my concerns about on-line forums that cause me to hedge my answer to that frequently asked question.

First, I fully support on-line forums. I have had the opportunity to set up on-line forums in many organizations; I co-authored a book about CompanyCommand which is one of the best on-line forums around; and I encourage organizations to make use of on-line forums every chance I get. In my opinion on-line forums are the gold standard of knowledge sharing.

My concerns are related to what I observe happening in many on-line discussion forums. I observe that a member asks a question and then various other members provide an answer. But there is little back and forth among the members. Rather, each responder simply makes a declarative statement that represents his or her own position. Responders may not have even read others’ answers before stating their own position.

Of course, back and forth exchanges are not necessary if the question is just asking for factual information, for example, “How much pressure should valve 25 hold?” A clear response from a knowledgeable peer is all that is needed. But too often I observe the ask/answer format occurring even when the asker is seeking the lessons of experience from other members. And I am hard pressed to call those exchanges a conversation.

I recognize there are many ways to define the term “conversation.” The way I am using it here is: “One or more persons actively working to understand the meaning another is trying to convey.” There is tremendous value gained, both in terms of learning and development, from an exchange that meets that definition. Through conversation with knowledgeable peers, a member is able to gain a different perspective on an issue or a broader way to think about a problem. It is possible to develop one’s judgment through such conversation.

Johnson and Johnson, researchers at the University of Minnesota, who study collaboration, say that the synthesis of diverse perspectives comes from being able to hold both one’s own and another’s perspective in mind at the same time. Holding two perspectives in mind necessarily means there has been enough conversation for each person to thoroughly understand the perspective of the other - not only the conclusions, but to fully comprehend the thinking behind those conclusions. And, having both perspectives in mind, they are able to then hold an intelligent dialogue that explores different interpretations of the problem. And that exploration even has the potential to create new knowledge.

For an on-line exchange to meet my definition of a conversation, much more interaction between parties would have to occur than the ask/answer format that is typical of many on-line exchanges. For example some of the following actions would need to take place:
• The question asker would reply to an answer that he or she receives by,
o Asking for an example,
o Asking for the data that supports the responder’s conclusion,
o Inquiring why that member’s response is better than an earlier response,
o Challenging the answer,
o Or explaining why the answer made sense from the asker’s perspective.
• Responders would have similar interactions with each other by,
o Referencing what another member said,
o Elaborating on another member’s answer,
o Posing a question to another member,
o Suggesting conditions under which another member’s answer is accurate,
o Asking for clarification of another member’s response

In his study Yongsuk Kim referenced this type of interaction as “collective elaboration.”

Kim analyzed 190 discussion threads that involved 1,200 participants in ConocoPhillips’ Networks of Excellence. He surveyed the members who had posted the questions that started each discussion thread, asking them to rate their learning from high to low and to specify the performance that resulted from the answers they received.

Kim found two factors in the discussion threads that were correlated with both learning and performance for the askers:
1) how much collective elaboration occurred in the discussion thread
2) how diverse the responders were.

In terms of the second factor, research has shown that diverse groups are often more creative, innovative, and productive than homogenous groups. Based on this understanding, ConocoPhillips Network leaders frequently post questions to a number of networks rather keeping the question within a single network. And ConocoPhillips’ network structure has made it relatively simple for a network facilitator to post a question in related networks.

This following graph displays the relationships Kim found in his study.(click to enlarge)

As the chart on the left shows, Kim found the most learning occurs when responses have high levels of collective elaboration and when members of other networks join in the discussion. Interestingly, there is less learning when members of other networks provide answers but there is little or no collective elaboration. The same pattern occurs in terms of performance shown in the right hand chart, collective elaboration increases the value. Likewise diversity without discussion is less helpful.

I would add to Kim's findings a lesson I learned working with CompanyCommand; when the facilitator models collective elaboration by his or her own questions, others will follow suit. I would also note that since most organizations track metrics for their forums, e.g. number of questions, or the number of responses to a question, it would be useful to add a metric related the amount of collective elaboration that occurs in the forums.

I started with the question, “Are on-line discussion forums conversations?” My conclusions are that:
1. It is possible to have conversations in on-line forums.
2. But many on-line exchanges are not conversations, they are just declarations of each responder’s position
3. When conversations do occur in on-line forums the learning and performance results go up.

I have a great deal of interest in the topic of how to encourage greater collective elaboration in on-line discussion forums. I would be very interested in hearing from organizations that have found ways to increase conversation with their on-line forums.

Tips for Making Virtual Meetings Effective

Before the Meeting

• Keep virtual meetings small; no more than twelve, even if that means you have to hold five different virtual meetings. You can hold a discussion with a small group but that is not possible if there are thirty or more people on line.

• If you hold a series of virtual meetings keep the same small groups together each time. After several virtual meetings twelve people can begin to feel like a community, recognizing each other’s voices, remembering what each person sounds like, what ideas are important to him or her. In other words members get to know each other, which in turn makes them more willing to offer their ideas and thinking on the call.

• Contact people personally before the meeting to build rapport. Reach out to participants whose participation is particularly important.

• Create a picture collage of people who will be on the call. Pictures help make the others on the call real to us. We have a much better memory for faces than for names. We have a sense that we “know” another person if we can recall how they look. If a few people don’t send a picture, you can still include their names in the circle.

If pictures are not possible use a clock face to help yourself and others know who is on the call.

At the Beginning of a Virtual Meeting
• Have the pictures of the people on the call up on the webinar screen. If it is a teleconference, send an email of the collage ahead of time and ask people on the call to have it up on their screen.

• Ask people to always say their name before they speak. The format is: “This is Joe Fitz, I agree that ………” If someone forgets, ask them to say their name after they have finished. “That was very helpful, who was just speaking?” The facilitator should also say his/her name each time he/she speaks to help to set the norm.

• Provide time at the beginning for a check in. Get each person’s voice in the room at the beginning. Checking in creates a friendly atmosphere. People need an example to know how long they should talk. As the facilitator, provide your answer first so others will have a model for how detailed they should be. But before you provide your example, give everyone a moment to think about what they want to say. Here are some possible check in questions:
o What is something about (x) you’ve learned in the last week?
o What do we need to be working on together?
o What was the highlight of your month?
o What have you learned from others that you have tried?
o What is the most interesting thing that happened in your shop this week?
o What are you most grateful for this morning?
o What has inspired you this week?

• Call on people individually early in a meeting which sets the expectation that you might call on them at anytime.

During a Virtual Meeting
• Many virtual meetings are scheduled as presentations by either faculty or members. However virtual meetings can have a broader range of goals than just informing. Virtual meetings can also:
o Problem solve
o Make decisions about how or what work will be done
o Generate ideas

• In actuality, virtual meetings are a poor medium for presentations. As listeners, we simply don’t experience enough cognitive stimulation to keep our attention on an audio presentation. However, there are alternatives to having a speaker present for an hour.

o Send an article or report out ahead of time so the call can be a discussion of the content. When you send out content put it in a separate email and put in the subject line, “Action required.” Send the content out about 3 working days before the call. Let members know, “You will need about 20 minutes to read this.”

o Send an article or report out ahead of time and ask participants to prepare questions for the presenter. Then during the virtual meeting call on each member to ask his or her question. Because questions are often based in a specific context, give the question asker time to provide enough context for the speaker to develop a useful and thoughtful response. Some questions may even become more of a dialogue as the speaker asks other members for their response to that question.

o If you must have on-line presentations keep them to no more than 15 minutes before giving the group an opportunity to interact for at least 10 minutes. Group interaction does no mean asking the presenter questions. Rather the facilitator asks the group a question (see attached questions) that gives them space to offer their thinking about what the speaker has said. Then the presenter might continue again for 15 minutes, then again group discussion. "Ted Talks" must surely have convinced us all that 15 minutes is adequate to present even the most complex of ideas.

o Keep a list of participants in front of you and check names off each time someone speaks. That way you will know who you might need to call on to get their thinking.

Near the Meeting End
• During the meeting create a list of “to dos” and list them verbally at the end of the call.

• One of the most effective ways to end a meeting is to ‘check-out’ with each member to gain closure.
- Name one take away from this meeting
- Give a number from 1 to 5 that represents your confidence with this solution
- Say one thing you are going to do about this issue before our next meeting

After the Meeting
• Summarize the call and send the notes to everyone. If the chat function is used clean it up (clean up names, correct spelling, remove small talk) and send the script.

• Send the to-do list to everyone on the call.

Questions to ask during a Webinar or teleconference to get a discussion started after a presentation or after another member’s comment.

• “John has just raised an interesting issue. I’d like to hear other’s thinking about that issue.”

• “Mary has told a story about a frustrating experience. I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences. I’d like to hear a couple more examples.”
• Jack has explained how his team does “X.” What are other ways you have accomplished “X?”
• What are the 3 most important things to consider when doing “X?”
• “Fred has given us a very interesting presentation. What did you hear that really stuck with you?”
• “How would you complete this sentence? ‘The greatest difficulty we face with XXX is _________________.”
• “Sue has told us about an improvement in a rural hospital.
o What did you hear that would work in your setting?
o What did you hear that would need to change because your setting is so different?”
• “What did you hear in Joanna’s presentation that you could put into practice next week?”
• “We’ve heard three examples, what did you hear that was similar in all three examples?”
• “What possibilities come to mind based on what you've heard?”

These questions maybe equally useful in a face-to-face format.

Methods to Use to Ask the Questions
• Ask one of the questions above, and then say, “Let me give you a minute to write a few notes to yourself before people start to answer. (then count to 60 before opening the microphone or calling on people)
• Poll the group – If the group is under 10, call on each person in turn. Then summarize what you heard in the poll. “It sounds like we are divided between (X) and (Y).” or “I’m hearing general agreement about XX.”
• Poll in a random fashion if the group is large – “I’m going to call on a few people to get a sense of the reaction to (Bill’s) idea.” Then call on 5 people. Then ask, “Who else has an idea to offer?” And wait at least 20 second before moving on.
• If all the responses to a poll are similar ask, “I’d like to hear from anyone with a different view. Who sees it differently?” Then give it 20 seconds.
• Present a simple scenario and ask each participant to share how they would respond in that situation
• Use the chat function to get responses to a question on a 1-5 scale. “Just type a number from 1 to 5 into the chat area.” Then ask, “Most of you put in a 4 or 5 but there are a few people who were at a 1 or 2. I’d like to hear your thinking”
• Use the voting function on a webinar with pre-designed questions based on the presentation.
• Pause to have a paired conversation. Say, “If there is someone else at your site, talk with them for a few minutes before we call on people for their response. If you are by yourself then make some notes.”
• In the chat function, ask participants to write in brief notes during the presentation about what they agree and disagree with, for example, “X’ was a good point.” Or “I agree with “XX.” These notes are not for the presenter to read, but for others on line to see the reaction of their colleagues. It also is useful for starting the discussion after the presentation. “Many of you agreed with “XX,” Bella, what was your thinking that caused you to agree?”
• Don’t feel you have to answer every question asked of you. It is often useful to ask the group members what their thinking is on a question addressed to you.

Conversational Patterns That Support Telling Truth to Power

The Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) Knowledge Lab faced the challenge of how to move accurate intelligence up the chain of command. Too frequently the intelligence analysis, painstakingly generated by front line analysts, was delayed and often severely modified by a chain of superiors before it reached policy makers who could act upon it.

Zeke Wolfberg, the Director of the Knowledge Lab and I, as the knowledge management consultant to the Knowledge Lab, recently published an article about how we addressed that problem at DIA. The article appeared in Reflections, the SOL Journal on Knowledge, Learning and Change (Vol. 10, 4). I provide a summary of the article in this post. The full article can be downloaded under My Publications on the left.

DIA provides military intelligence to prevent strategic surprise and deliver a decision advantage to warfighters, defense planners, and policymakers. The analysts who develop intelligence assessments are divided into teams of 30 plus with each team focused on a different region (e.g. South East Asia) or a different functional area (e.g. missiles), as well as task forces that are periodically assembled to address crises (e.g. the Mumbai terrorist attack).

The intervention we undertook to enable telling truth to power, was called “Critical Discourse.” The format was to bring together a team of analysts along with their supervisor, to jointly analyze the actual conversations that occurred between members of the team and between team members and their supervisor. The conversation analysis was based on the work Chris Argyris, using his left and right hand case format to create scripts of difficult past conversations. Each analyst and supervisor selected and wrote out the dialogue that occurred in three difficult conversations they had engaged in. Each team met over a period of three months to analyze each other’s cases and to practice Argyris’ Model II skill set with the goal of reducing the misunderstandings occurring in their conversations. Each team member also received individual coaching between group meetings.

Model II is a way of interacting that results in knowledge and learning for everyone who is engaged in the conversation. The goal of Model II interaction is not to win an argument, but to create a space for joint learning. A person using the Model II skill set holds in their mind the underlying assumption that, “I have part of the information and others have other parts that I may not be aware of.” The skills are used to get all the information that is available and pertinent into the conversation. The Model II skills that produce full and accurate knowledge are:
 Advocate your own position and share all relevant information related to the issue, not just the data that supports your view
 Encourage others to question your position so if your reasoning is faulty or if there is information you have missed you will discover it
 Ask questions about the position of others, not to find where you might “catch them” in a mistake, but to fully understand their reasoning and data.

The Argyris Model II skills are simple to state, but take a great deal of practice to put into place in a real conversation. The difficulty occurs because the default way of interacting in difficult situations in nearly every organization is Model I, which defeats gaining learning through conversation. Model I skills are:
 Advocate my position in a way that discourages inquiry into it
 Keep my reasoning private so others cannot challenge it
 Don’t ask others about their reasoning
 Assume I understand the situation and anyone who sees it differently does not

A team using Model I skills in a contentious or potentially embarrassing situation would exhibit interactions that are familiar to all of us. For example, 1) a team leader states his opinion on an issue in such a way that it is clear he doesn’t want to be challenged; or 2) a team member offers an idea that no one understands, but other team members don’t ask him the questions that would make his thinking available to them - his idea just dies on the table, or 3) a team member offers a solution, providing convincing evidence about why it would work, but doesn’t reveal the very real risks he knows are involved.

Using Model I interaction teams make poor decisions because all of the available data about the issue does not get into the discussion. Team members are more interested in winning their point than in learning. Yet Model I interaction is so ubiquitous that team members are largely unaware they are employing it in a conversation. To use Model II interaction skills, team members first have to become aware of their Model I interactions. Fortunately, others can see what we cannot see in ourselves. So a team’s joint analysis of their cases allows members to help each other become aware of and then unlearn Model I skills. And provides them a safe place to practice using Model II skills.

Over a two year period, I worked with 15 DIA teams using the Critical Discourse intervention, including teams at the highest executive level. During that time team members wrote hundreds of conversational cases. The analysis of those cases resulted in two outcomes that shifted the culture of DIA; 1) both seniors and analysts developed the skills to challenge each other effectively – to tell truth to power, 2) dysfunctional patterns that were preventing accurate information from being exchanged across the whole of DIA were identified. These patterns, that Argyris calls defensive routines, had become embedded in the fabric of the culture in such a way that made it unlikely any that any individual, on his or her own initiative, would be able to act in a manner other than Model I.

To illustrate the process through which the culture changed I will focus on one of the teams that was set up to look at an emerging intelligence issue. The code name for this team was “Fresh Look.” Fresh Look is discussed in the article but in less detail than I write about it here.

The Situation
Fresh Look was given the task of finding a solution to a long-standing problem that many other teams had been unable to resolve. The team was to report their findings to a high level executive team – tell truth to power.

Previous DIA teams that had struggled to find a solution to this issue had worked virtually, dividing the work up so that people could function as individual contributors with minimal interaction. Fresh Look, however, was co-located to give them the advantage of bringing together their collective knowledge to solve this difficult problem. But co-location meant that to be successful in using all the team’s knowledge, the team would have to interact in a Model II manner to jointly address content issues. To assist the team, early in their time together, the Knowledge Lab provided the Critical Discourse intervention described above.

Using the Critical Discourse format, each team member wrote three cases about their interactions with other Fresh Look team members. By reading and discussing each other’s cases, team members were able to see, laid out in black and white, the negative impact of their actions. With practice they began to recognize the conversational tactics that were in the cases being exhibited in their real time conversations and begin to call each other on it when they recognized Model I tactics. With further practice of the Model II skills, they began to be able to share their knowledge more fully and to speak openly about their concerns related to the problem they were addressing.

A turning point in terms of new thinking for the Fresh Look team came about six weeks into the project. For some time the team had been struggling with how to organize themselves to deal with the central issue of their analysis. This issue was not only at the heart of the Fresh Look topic, but was an issue that touched on the very nature of how DIA does analysis – so how the team structured themselves and their work was a very relevant topic for the team.

At a Friday meeting, with two of the team members absent, the team finally made a decision to organize into several smaller teams, each devoted to a piece of the larger question. The norm within the intelligence community is that when a meeting is convened and decisions are made, those who were absent are expected to accept the decision and support it. The rationale being that there is not enough time to rehash decisions. There is also an implied perception that if the team member had really wanted to be present at the decision meeting, they would have attended.

On the following Monday the absent team members were back in place for the morning meeting. The absent team members respectfully challenged the decision-making norm by asking the rest of the team to go over their logic for reaching the decision of dividing into several smaller teams. Instead of rebuking the two, the team not only discussed their logic of the previous Friday, but the entire topic of methodological pursuit was reopened for debate: should the team employ the status quo method of structuring itself or should they behave differently? During that discussion, the team members who were present on Friday acknowledged that their decision was likely driven by being tired at the end of the week and wanting to end the day to start the weekend. The willingness to challenge and be challenged that had begun to develop within the team during the previous weeks of practice using Model II was for the first time being fully exercised.

Encouraged by the group’s response to this initial challenge, a few days later another team member was willing to raise a much more critical issue that had been troubling her - how the team had framed the analysis question. Her position was that the team was restricting the analysis by unthinkingly accepting as their starting point the assumption currently held among subject matter experts. The team took her concern seriously and was able to hold an honest and open interaction that resulted in significantly broadening the scope of their analysis. The reframing of the question eventually led the team to discover a remarkable finding - that the intelligence community had ignored a plausible counter-assumption without ever collecting data to prove or disprove it! Essentially leaving the intelligence community blind on a critical issue.

The on-going practice the Fresh Look team had in using their inquiry skills to elicit knowledge from each other and to respectfully challenging each other prepared them to speak truth to power when their scheduled briefing with high level DIA seniors occurred at the end of the project. By the time of the executive briefing, team members had grown confident in using the Model II skills in increasingly challenging situations.

The following are two descriptions of that meeting, first from the perspective of a senior executive who was in attendance. The second from the perspective of one of the Fresh Look team members who engaged the seniors in conversation.

Senior Executive Perspective

"I was one of five senior executives attending the debrief of Fresh Look. When I walked into the meeting room I could see that the physical arrangement of the seating area was very different than what I was used to. Normally, seats were arranged in rows facing a podium. On this day the seats were arranged around a set of tables so that everyone sitting at the table could see each other. During the team’s introductory remarks they mentioned how they intentionally designed the physical space to promote mutual learning between the seniors and themselves rather than the typical transmit then respond mode of communication.

The Fresh Look team explained that their briefing content would be different from the usual format as well. The team said that the goal they had in mind was that everyone around the table would learn with and from each other. I felt okay with this approach but wondered if they could pull it off. They started with brief presentations of their findings during which several members of team offered their own perspective, providing a variety of views, again not a typical debrief. Instead of just saying, “Here are our findings.” the team spoke about the challenges they had faced and how they had navigated those challenges, providing context for how their conclusions had been reached. Having laid out their findings, the team indicated they were ready to open the floor for dialogue.

I noticed that during the give and take of the conversation the team members were able to strongly advocate the findings they had developed as well as demonstrate their openness to our (the executive team) views. However, one of the team members, Carrie (not her real name), said something that really bothered me. She made a claim that a certain piece of information was non-existent. Now, I was aware that she was wrong, that piece of information was available. I said just that, perhaps a bit more forcefully than I intended. And I said that if the team had been thorough enough in their search they would have found it. However, rather than becoming defensive, Carrie said she found my comment interesting, because even the senior member of their team who had full clearance to look at all the available data did not come across it. She began a discussion among us all about the availability of information across silos. Out of that discussion I gained a new understanding about the issue of information availability from the perspective of analysts doing a search. It was a very stimulating conversation."

The Fresh Look Team
"The meeting with the executives was even more successful than we had thought it would be. The executives were impressed with the quality of our findings. And we were pleased with the skills we were able to exhibit in being able to respectfully detect and overcome the “old guard” approach.

As a team we were particularly proud of our interaction with Sam, the senior executive who reacted critically when he realized that the team did not know about the existence of a critical piece of information, saying, “Everyone knows it exists.” We were able to recognize the role-based behavioral pattern in Sam’s remark and were able to avoid the emotional trap that could have deflated and sidetracked us away from the issues. We were able to detail the process we went through to find the data, what was made available to us, and what had been hidden from even the most senior analyst member of our team who specialized in the issue. This detailed explanation led to a more general discussion of how information is shared and accessed which brought new insights both to us and to the high level executives present. Through using the critical discourse skills, our goal of using review meetings to jointly develop knowledge was realized.

The Director of DIA attended the debrief and told us later that what he witnessed was the embodiment of team behavior - the kind of team behavior DIA needs for detecting new threats. He said the discussion with the team was cathartic for him."

Fresh Look is one of many examples of changes in the ability to speak truth to power at DIA. To do so analysts and seniors first needed to recognize their own contribution to the dysfunctional patterns that existed inside DIA. Secondly, they needed to learn a new way of interacting and practice those new skills in a relatively safe environment. Finally, they needed to use the skills to interact in real world situations to gain confidence in their own ability to interact more openly and honestly. Through this slow developmental progression they were able to bring knowledge into a conversation that otherwise would have been hidden and they were able to speak truth to power.

Guidelines for Leveraging Collective Knowledge and Insight

Knowledge workers in any organization have a wealth of insights that are available to their organization to address the difficult issues the organization is facing. Drawing out those insights requires bringing knowledge workers together in meetings that are expressly designed to take advantage of collective knowledge. Over the years, as I have designed such meetings, I have come to rely on seven principles that work together to make the most of collective knowledge in conference settings as well as in-house meetings. The principles have been assembled from the work of many researchers and thought leaders. Where possible I have identified the sources.

1. Connection before content
Knowledge workers attending a meeting or conference need to get connected to each other before they try to construct new ideas together (Peter Block). In order to work effectively with others, they need to know:
a. who is in the room
b. what knowledge others have
c. how others think about the issue of the meeting, and
d. the group’s strengths and weaknesses

In a business context, connecting is best accomplished by engaging knowledge workers in small group conversations about strategic organizational issues. To build connections, those conversations have to be structured in a way that allows knowledge workers to frame themselves in a positive light, relative to their experience and successes. Icebreaker type exercises are less useful when the intent is to leverage collective knowledge because they do not provide adequate understanding of others’ knowledge and experience.

When a group has come together many times, the period of connecting can be brief, but not neglected altogether. Just as two friends typically engage in “small talk” for a few minutes each time they meet, any group that comes together regularly also needs a brief period of re-connecting before turning to content. In both situations the “small talk” affirms the relationship and the readiness to engage the topic.

2. Circles connect
Circles represent unity. They help individuals in the group view themselves as part of the whole. For example, the UN meeting hall is designed in concentric circles to provide a visual representation of what the UN stands for – unity among nations.

I was reminded of the benefits of seeing oneself, and being seen, as a part of a whole, when I conducted an exit interview with Lieutenant General Maples, then Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He told me that one of his first actions as Director had been to remove the large rectangular conference table in his office and have it replaced with a round table. He very clearly understood the difference a circle would make to the many, very difficult conversations he would have in the coming years.

It is a useful symbolism to begin and end meetings with chairs in a circle. It can be a big circle of 30+ or many small circles of 5. Ideally it is a circle of just chairs, without a table. Knowledge workers have a profoundly different experience when they converse in a group, absent a table.

3. Learn in small groups – integrate knowledge in large groups
We learn and create new ideas through our conversation with others in small groups. A small group is 3-5 members. This is the size that produces the richest and most in-depth thinking. It is large enough to contain diverse views yet small enough for members to engage each other.

Engaging each other means asking questions to clarify the meaning another has expressed and it means challenging as well as building on others’ ideas. The give and take of the small group serves to exchange existing knowledge as well as generate new knowledge.

In meetings designed to draw on the organization’s collective knowledge, after small groups have been in conversation, their ideas are brought together in a large group setting to integrate their insights into the thinking of the whole. In a lengthy meeting, small and large group discussions regularly alternate.

4. Diverge then converge
Any meeting that is focused on collective knowledge must first diverge in order to draw new ideas out and to stimulate thinking. “Knowledge diversity facilitates the innovative process by enabling the individual to make novel associations and linkages” (Cohen and Levinthal). Meeting leaders who want to leverage collective knowledge, intentionally invite people from other disciplines, stakeholder groups, and outside experts to introduce that diversity.

Without time for divergence the many differences within a group are not expressed and without their expression they cannot be made use of by the group. It is in the critical space that lies between divergent ideas that innovation often emerges (Scott Page).

Knowledge workers are reluctant to turn their thinking to what they have in common until they have had an opportunity to give voice to their differences (Marvin Weisbord). The way the human brain works is to first recognize differences and only after those are clarified to focus on similarities.

The first part of a meeting, whether it is half a day or 3 days, is dedicated to divergence. The second part of a meeting converges to put those divergent ideas to work in terms of a complex issue that needs to be addressed.

5. Outside experts inform the thinking of others, not provide them answers
Bringing outside experts into a meeting can provide much needed cognitive diversity, but experts cannot provide solutions. It is the knowledge workers of an organization, who function within its context and who together understand the complexity of its issues, who are uniquely capable of developing workable solutions.

Experts can stimulate the thinking of knowledge workers by talking about what others have done in similar situations. But any practice from another organization or team always has to be adapted, not adopted. Even the best of examples have to be modified to fit a new context.

Fifteen minutes is adequate time for an expert to stimulate a group’s thinking. A presentation by an expert needs to be immediately followed by a period of time dedicated to participants connecting what the expert has said to their own knowledge and to thinking with others about how that knowledge can be used. Without committed time for processing, an expert’s ideas are forgotten within a couple of hours. Unfortunately, the ubiquitous Q&A does not provide the needed processing time; rather what is needed is time for colleagues to talk with each other in small groups.

6. Connect new ideas to what knowledge workers already know
Processing is about moving new ideas from short term to long-term memory by connecting the new ideas to knowledge worker’s existing knowledge. The term, absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal), references the ability of knowledge workers to recognize the value of new, external information, assimilate it, and apply it to their organization’s issues. An individual’s or an organization’s absorptive capacity, is a function of their prior knowledge. That means that without related knowledge to connect new ideas to, new knowledge will not be absorbed.

In meetings designed to exploit collective knowledge, a more robust environment for knowledge linkages to be made is provided when knowledge workers from varying disciplines are present. A knowledge worker from engineering, for example, will have different prior knowledge than one from R&D, and different yet from a knowledge worker from legal. The greater the cognitive diversity of prior knowledge in the room the more likely that new knowledge, from outside or internally, will be connected to prior knowledge which will spur insight. To process new knowledge, group discussion, made up diverse participants, is most effective. If the group is small (3-5 participants) each knowledge worker has enough airtime to put their ideas into words – which leads to the last principle.

7. We learn when we talk
This principle is central to leveraging the collective knowledge of a group. Listening provides us new ideas but as long as those ideas are just swimming around in our heads, they are neither fully formed nor implementable. It is only when a knowledge worker puts an idea together in a way that allows him or her to explain the idea to others, that the idea takes shape for the knowledge worker, as well as for the person the knowledge worker is talking with.

Johnson and Johnson, researchers at the University of Minnesota, have shown that we organize information in a different way when we are preparing to explain our thinking to others. The information not only becomes more logically organized, but new connections are made, often in the act of speaking. It is fair to say, “We don’t learn when we listen, we learn when we speak,” or write, or even create a visual representation of our understanding. Giving knowledge workers the time needed to put their thinking into words, not only shares the organization’s knowledge, but creates it.

Implementing these seven principles requires considerable change in how we design meetings and conferences - but then the idea of leveraging collective knowledge itself requires considerable change. More expansive thinking about who within the organization has valuable knowledge with which to address organizational issues, necessitates new approaches to how we meet and work together. These seven principles, tested through research and practice, provide a way to design those new approaches.

How to Make Use of Your Organization’s Collective Knowledge – Accessing the Knowledge of the Whole Organization - Part I

Collective knowledge is the next step beyond knowledge sharing for organizations. More than just making use of the existing knowledge employees have, collective knowledge makes use of the sensemaking capabilities of employees.

Sensemaking is the very human act of creating meaning out of the incredible amount of data and input that continuously surrounds everyone within an organization. Sensemaking is a creative act, not an act of discovering or uncovering what is already there. The meaning created through sensemaking did not exist before the conversation that created it. In conversation the meaning that is created alters as new data and new patterns in the data emerge. The understanding that results from sensemaking is not a definitive answer, rather it is an understanding that is adequate for the organization to plan and take its next action.

The need for leveraging collective knowledge arises when organizations face difficult, complex issues – the kind of situations that are marked by disagreement on what the problem even is and certainly disagreement on what would constitute an acceptable solution. I have written a number of blog posts about organizations that have faced such issues, e.g. the US Army facing the issue of changing how doctrine is produced, the World Health Organization’s eradication of smallpox, the cancelation of NASA’s Constellation program.

Understandably most leaders see it as their responsibility to come up with answers for the complex issues their organizations face, ascribing to the manager-as-problem-solver model of leadership. That has certainly been the predominant model for thirty years - taught by most (but not all) business schools, management development programs and propounded by best-selling management books. However, over the last few years a new way of thinking about leadership has been gradually emerging. The leaders of the organizations I have written about in this blog are people who have come to understand that no one person has the sensemaking capacity needed to deal with truly complex issues, no matter how highly placed the leader is. These leaders have redefined their role from problem solver to conversational architect, designing ways to leverage the knowledge of the whole organization when faced with complex issues.

Collective Knowledge can be accessed at different levels within an organization, that is, the whole organization, divisions, teams/groups, or even between two individuals. Here I am focusing on accessing the knowledge of the whole organization.

I told the first story about a leader recognizing that he needed the sensemaking capability of the whole organization in a book I published in 1994, The Organizational Learning Cycle. It was the story of Ralph Stayer, the CEO of Johnsonville Foods. Johnsonville Foods was faced with a complex issue in the form of an opportunity. It was a small, family owned sausage company known in Minnesota for its quality. The issue the company faced was whether to “accept an offer from a food-processing company to buy large quantities of product on a regular basis. It was a complex issue because Johnsonville did not have the capacity to handle the job so accepting it would mean everything would have to change.

Stayer called a meeting of the whole organization, giving them all of the information he had and asking them to work in teams to answer three questions: What will it take to make it work? Is it possible to reduce the downside? Do we want to do it? The teams struggled with the questions for almost two weeks, wrestling with the risks, which were considerable, and figuring out how they would have to operate to accomplish that much increase in production. In the end the teams almost unanimously recommended taking on the new business. Reflecting on the process, Stayer said, ‘If you issue orders you’re telling people, don’t think; just do. But if you’ve got 1000 people, you’ve got a 1000 minds. And if you issue orders from the top, you’re using only 3 of them, or 2, or one. That’s stupid.’”

The second story is one that Ron Heifetz wrote about in Leadership Without Easy Answers. I’ve summarized it here but the full story is woven throughout his book and he uses it to build the case for leaders moving from the role of problem solver to convener of the conversation.

William Ruckelshaus was the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1983 when he dealt with a case involving a copper plant near Tacoma Washington. The Asarco plant was the only one in the nation to use copper ore with a high content of arsenic. Ruckelshaus was expected to decide what to do about the plant; in particular, he was expected to determine what constituted an "ample margin of safety" in the plant's operation to protect public health.

The plant had spent 40 million dollars on equipment to reduce emissions even before the EPA got involved. They were ready to install new converters at a cost of four million dollars that would reduce deaths from cancer from four persons a year to one. But there was no technology available to reduce the emissions further.

If Asarco were to close the plant it would be a devastating economic blow to the region. The former mayor of near-by Ruston, told reporters, "I've worked in the plant all my life. So have my brothers, and so have my neighbors. We're not sick. This town was built around that plant. People came here looking for fire and smoke in the 1900's to find work. Now the government's complaining about that same smoke and trying to take our children's livelihood away."

Ruckelshaus refused publicly to decide on his own. He said, "For me to sit here in Washington and tell the people of Tacoma what is an acceptable risk would be at best arrogant and at worst inexcusable." He wanted to solicit the views of those that would be most affected by the EPA ruling. He decided the usual public hearings would be preceded by public workshops. The three public workshops held that August were controversial and packed with people, including a large number of smelter workers, union representatives, local citizen organizations, and environmental groups. After a formal presentation by EPA, the audience was divided into small groups to discuss the issues while the EPA staff circulated to answer questions.

The workshops and hearings surprised the EPA staff. As Ruckelshaus put it, local citizens had shown that they were "capable of understanding [the problem of the smelter] in its complexities and dealing with it and coming back to us with rather sensible suggestions." After the three EPA sponsored workshops, local groups began holding their own workshops.

It was not easy for Ruckelhaus to take such a radical position. Throughout the months of discussion Ruckelhaus was frequently vilified in the press. He was likened to Caesar who was asking the crowd to signal thumbs up or down on whether a defeated gladiator should die. The Sierra Club said it was the EPA’s job to protect the public health not to ask them how many people should die from cancer.

Through the EPA workshops and the community’s own workshops, local people began to see the situation in a new light. Rather than view it solely as a conflict between jobs and health, many people began to see a new possibility, the diversification of the local economy. That idea was obvious in retrospect, but at the time no one had seen it. By the time the plant closed in 1985, (due to falling copper prices) Ruckelhaus had still not made a decision, but Tacoma and Ruston had already begun the task of diversifying its economy. People had come to the early workshops displaying buttons labeled either "Jobs" or "Health." By the final workshops, people were sporting buttons that said "BOTH."

What a conversational architect does, as illustrated in these two stories, is to convene a conversation about the tough issues that the organization needs to face. The leader brings together those who are impacted by the issue and creates a setting in which he/she can draw on the collective knowledge to arrive at a workable solution.

In the post The Power of the Conversation Architect I discuss the critical tasks of the leader/convener in detail:
• Frame the conversation
• Identify who needs to be in the conversation
• Design highly interactive activities to fuel the conversation
• Use small groups as the unit of conversation
• Forge connections before discussing content
• Configure the physical space to serve the conversation

In Part II I will describe some of the conversational processes (e.g. Future Search, Appreciative Inquiry, Knowledge Café, etc.) that organizations have found useful in leveraging the collective knowledge of the whole system.

A-Space (Facebook-like) Is Making a Difference Across the U.S. Intelligence Community

I'm posting the Executive Summary of a study I conducted with the Defense Intelligence Agency. You can read the full study - all 30 fascinating pages here.

Executive Summary of How A-Space is Shaping Analysts' Work

This report provides an overview of an exploratory scientific, qualitative study conducted by the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) Knowledge Laboratory in April- June of 2009. The ethnographic study based on twenty in-depth interviews with analysts identifies how analysts are using A-Space and what impact that use is having on their analytic work within DIA’s Directorate for Analysis (DI).

The primary benefit that A-Space brings to analytic work is a venue for seamlessly incorporating cognitive diversity to address complex analytic issues. Research indicates that cognitive diversity, (e.g. different perspectives, interpretations, heuristics, and predictive models) when applied to complex problems, consistently results in more and better solutions.

• A-Space is an environment in which analysts collaboratively create new meaning out of the diverse ideas and perspectives they collectively bring to an issue. Through this collaboration, analysts have the potential to break through long held assumptions to provide new ways of thinking about complex problems.

Analysts talk about A-Space as a setting where they are able to test out ideas and theories. Analysts, faced with a stream of data from a multitude of sources have the task of finding patterns in that data that will be useful to decision makers. Sensemaking is the term used for that human ability to make meaning out of a stream of seemingly unrelated information. It requires creating hypotheses and testing them against the data and interpretations of others. And conversation, with analysts who have diverse perspectives, is the most effective means to engage in the testing and revision of hypotheses. The peer-to-peer environment of A-Space provides a conversational format to engage in joint sensemaking, which may be the most significant function of A-Space in terms of being a human intellectual force multiplier. As analysts experience the benefits of on-line sensemaking conversations, over time, such conversations could become more prominent in the everyday discourse of analysts.

• Networked relationships on A-Space provide a stream of cognitively diverse information without the costly time investment that maintaining strong ties requires

Networking is highly valued by analysts because it provides access to new ideas and diverse perspectives. However maintaining networked relationships is a time consuming activity. The time cost limits the number of relationships an analyst can invest in. The most productive network relationships for gaining unique or novel ideas are not the close relationships among an analyst’s teammates (what sociologists call strong ties) because team/division members tend to have redundant knowledge. Rather the best source of new perspectives and ideas are colleagues in other directorates or agencies who have access to information from totally different sources or provide unique perspectives or interpretation of the existing data. But these more distant relationships (called weak ties) are the most costly to maintain because they require a planned interaction by phone/email/in-person. A-Space, however, reduces the time-cost of maintaining weak ties by providing analysts a way to establish and maintain relationships through frequent on-line interaction in an informal, peer-to-peer culture of mutual trust. A-Space also greatly increases the number of distant network members an analyst can interact with, again without increasing the time cost.

• A-Space is reinforcing the value of asking questions of colleagues, providing analysts the means to uncover flaws in their own data and reasoning

When analysts ask a question on A-Space they are making a tacit acknowledgement that, even if considered the expert on their topic, other analysts have perspectives and data that can add to their line of reasoning or uncover faults in that reasoning. This willingness to be shown to be wrong – to overcome the natural tendency to only seek confirmation - is facilitated by a culture of openness that analysts themselves have developed on A-Space. Through the on-line interaction, counterparts within and between agencies are coming to know each other as valued colleagues. There is a growing sense of trust and a willingness both to help and to receive help from each other.

• A-Space is providing analysts a set of new practices to: 1) build cross agency networks, 2) gain situational awareness, and 3) hold discussions of interpretation, that operate in parallel with the normal production process. These new practices constitute an emerging model that provides a level of cognitive diversity not previously available.

Analysts appear to be making use of A-Space for practices that were either not available or were very difficult to accomplish before A-Space was accessible – practices such as cross agency networking, situational awareness, discussions, and making available highly classified team products. However, practices like co-authoring and coordinating products, which are part of the normal production process are only rarely conducted through A-Space, even though the functionality is available to do so. Thus two models, operating in parallel, appear to be emerging. The challenge for analysts will be to merge these two models over time - bringing greater cognitive diversity into the normal production process and moving co-authoring and coordination more fully into A-Space.

• The non-hierarchal nature of A-Space, results in analysts feeling that it is okay to offer their thinking even if it is not completely formed or thought through, increasing the speed of product development by eliminating faulty hypotheses early on and quickly settling on those that are viable.

A-Space provides the means to test ideas and theories against knowledgeable others and to do so early in the formulation process. Early testing saves both time and effort that would have been spent on those ideas that do not measure up, and it lends support and expanded rationale for those that do. As valuable as offering thinking early on in the process is, it requires a safe environment in which to risk that thinking. A-Space provides such an environment by being peer- to-peer rather than hierarchal. Research indicates that peer-to-peer conversations are consistently more open and trusting than those that involve hierarchy. Discussions on A-Space can be vigorous and critical without being judgmental in tone. The informality of the language and the friendly banter create the feel of a conversation among equals.

Bringing the Flow of Knowledge to a Standstill by Speaking with Conviction

One type of work I do with organizations is to analyze how organizational members talk to each other in ways that encourage or prevent knowledge from flowing between them.

One way of talking that inhibits the exchange of knowledge is speaking with conviction. That may seem contrary to what we’ve all learned in communication and leadership workshops, where one of the lessons often taught is to speak with confidence- “sound like you mean it”. Yet, as I examine conversations in the work setting, stating an idea with conviction tends to send a signal to others that the speaker is closed to new ideas. When speaking with conviction people sound as though no other idea is possible, as though the answer is, or should be, obvious. For example:

“Look I’ve spent years studying Iran and I know that they will not be a threat to our military efforts in Iraq.”

This statement came from a “case”* written by the listener, not the speaker. When the listener heard this remark, his immediate reaction was, “He’s closed to any other point of view, I may as well save my breath.” and so gave up without further explaining his own perspective on the Iran/Iraq issue. Although a great deal of the meaning in this speaker’s remark came from the tone of voice used, even without hearing that tone, the choice of words and the format of the sentence effectively carry the message that he is uninterested in any other perspective than his own. For example, he started the sentence with “Look” which we tend to use to express exasperation; his claim that, “I’ve spent years studying Iran” is a jab at the listener’s lesser experience; the term, “I know” signals that this topic is not up for question.

When we’re in the midst of a conversation we can’t stop to examine every word, as I just did, to think about whether it sends the right signal. So trying to change the words people choose is not a good place to start if we want to help people bring more knowledge into their conversations. Rather, the place for the change to start is with the thinking behind the language. The words we choose are, after all, a reflection of how we think about an issue. The thinking behind the brief statement the speaker makes about Iran is that, “This is truth.”

David Bohm*, the great physicist and proponent of dialogue says,
“We have to have enough faith in our world-view to work from it, but not that much faith that we think it’s the final answer.” P. 4*

That would have been great advice for the speaker in the example. Neither people in general, nor this speaker in particular, can function effectively without reaching conclusions and using those conclusions to guide our actions – to do otherwise would leave us immobilized by indecision. But it is also true that we are unable to learn unless we stay open to the possibility that a conclusion we’ve drawn may not be correct or that circumstances may have changed.

What our speaker needs is to change his thinking from certainty to a willingness to entertain other possibilities - a change that is necessary if any conversation is to produce new thinking and learning. Bohm puts it this way, “Ideas must be vulnerable.”

If we were to put the speaker on the spot and ask him if there was even the remotest possibility that he could be wrong about Iran or that some data might be available to the listener of which he was unaware, the speaker would undoubtedly acknowledge that there is always room for doubt. Yet in the midst of a discussion, especially when trying to “win a point”, there is a great inclination to make categorical statements and then, having made them, feel obliged to defend them.

If our speaker could agree, at least in principle, that “there is always a possibility” then he would be able to act his way into a change in thinking – to “act as if.” William James said, “If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.”

So the question is, if I am really certain about something, how do I act as if I’m open to other possibilities, that is, without coming off as phony?

One of the very useful ways of acting out that belief of possibility is “perspective taking.” Perspective taking, according to researchers Johnson and Johnson* is “An active and non-evaluative attempt to understand the perspective and information of another person.” But it involves more than just carefully listening to another person’s explanation, perspective taking requires giving voice to the other’s perspective - articulating both the conclusions and the reasoning of the other person. (This is related to the idea that We Learn When We Talk)

To take another’s perspective does not imply agreement with it, but rather it's like trying the idea on for size. When I put on the “coat” how does it feel? What do I understand from this perspective that I could not see from my own?

Perspective taking is an action that produces some remarkable conversational results. That is particularly true when a team is working together on a problem. The value add of a team, over individual problem solving, is the variety of perspectives from which a problem may be approached. The conversational goal then, is to make sure all of those perspectives are not only heard, but also fully comprehended by the group.

Johnson and Johnson say, “In order to create a synthesis based on the best reasoning and information by everyone involved, individuals must, a) actively attempt to understand both the content and the information being presented and the cognitive and affective frames–of-reference of the person presenting the information and b) be able to hold both their own and other people’s perspectives in mind at the same time.” Being able to hold two disparate ideas in mind at the same time enables synthesis and can even engender an altogether new way of thinking about an issue.

Johnson and Johnson’s research shows that when individuals are competent in taking others’ perspective:
• more information is disclosed than occurs when each person simply makes a case for his or her own perspective
• communication is facilitated because the re-statement of others’ perspectives tends to make a complex idea more easily understood
• the information and reasoning of others are retained longer
• the results are more creative and higher quality solutions and more accurate problem solving.

Perspective taking does not require a person, like the speaker in our earlier example, to stop doing something; rather it asks the speaker to do something different – always an easier task. Moreover, perspective taking is not something that has to be learned. Children start to be able to put themselves in another’s shoes around five years of age. Before that, of course, they are amazingly egocentric. To take another's perspective does not take extensive training; it has only to be exercised.

So here’s the challenge, the next time someone suggests an idea that seems utterly preposterous to you, try perspective taking. Then see what results you get. What ever the results, you are likely to come away with new knowledge.

• Cases of actual conversations using Argyris’ right and left hand column format
• Bohm, D. in (1985). Unfolding meaning: A weekend of dialogue with David Bohm. Ark Paperbacks. P. 4.
• Johnson, DW and Johnson, RT, 1989 Cooperation and Competition, Theory and Research. Interaction Book Company

What Do We Get From Conversation That We Can't Get Any Other Way?

This is an intriguing question because each time we think about contacting someone for help on an issue we face a choice; Do I email, phone, walk down the hall, twitter, text message, post on the community website?

This post is about the benefits of choosing to have a conversation* through what ever medium we select.

The greatest benefit is that with conversation we get “more than an answer.” That’s the title of a great article by Rob Cross and Lee Sproull. They did a study in 2004 that looked at the benefits that accrued to people who had a conversation with a colleague about a relatively ambiguous issue each was facing. These seekers were project managers in a large consulting firm. They had access to first-rate company repositories of best practices, case examples, reusable work products, methodologies and tools, discussion forums and expertise databases. In spite of such tools, overwhelmingly they preferred to take the issue they were wrestling with to a colleague.

Cross and Sproull conducted in-depth interviews with each of these project managers to explore what they learned through the conversations they chose to have. Then they sorted the responses into five categories, which I outline here. I’ve also embedded my own thinking related to the categories- so they are not pure Cross and Sproull.

Answers: Not surprisingly the seekers got answers to the questions they asked. Some of the answers were factual in nature. But more often what was asked for and received was procedural or methodology based. The seekers were looking for the application of facts or principles in order to develop a solution.

Meta Knowledge: This category was about where to go to get more information on the issue, or conversely where not to go because a certain report was out-dated, or superficial. Also in this category was the identification of specific work products and the names of other people who could be helpful, along with an introduction.

Meta knowledge is incredibly useful, but only if the source knows enough about the issues the seeker is facing to sort through possibilities based on 1) the seeker’s level of expertise (absorpative capacity) and 2) the applicability of the meta knowledge to the seeker’s specific situation.

Problem Reformulation: This occurred when the source suggested a different way to look at the problem or issue, a way that might even invalidate the original question. It tended to broaden the thinking of the seeker or approach it from an entirely different angle. Also in this category was helping the seeker become aware of potential unforeseen consequences of specific actions as well as increasing awareness of issues that were likely to be particularly sensitive.

To gain meta-knowledge and/or problem-reformulation requires the source to be willing “to understand the problem as experienced by the seeker and then shape her/his knowledge to the evolving definition of the problem” and is best served by the give and take of conversation. And as Cross and Sproull point out, to provide meta knowledge also demands a strong enough tie with the source so that he or she is willing to invest the necessary time in the seeker’s issue.

Validation: This is assurance that the approach the seeker is taking is on course. And it is the expression of appreciation for the seeker’s thinking behind his or her planning. Validation builds seekers confidence and allows them to move forward with greater certainty and perhaps even be more self-assured when approaching a client. Validation also provides seekers the certainty that they have done enough background work, saving the seeker the time it would take to gather further data.

Validation has an emotive content that comes across most fully through the facial and tonal cues we pick up in face-to-face conversations. Like most feedback, validation provides greater assurance when it references specifics rather than generalities. For example, “Great plan” is less validating than is, “The logic of your argument is well sequenced which adds to its face validity”. But to offer that level of specificity takes in-depth understanding on the part of the source.

Legitimizing: Legitimizing is the expression of approval by a person in authority or with known expertise, which the seeker can then use to influence others. As with validation, legitimizing can save the seeker time by reducing the amount of proof or data that may need to be collected before the client is willing to act. It also serves to head off arguments others might raise.

The greatest benefit of conversation is that it produces five categories of responses, not just the answer. We get so much more from conversation, e.g. an unexpected insight, a sense of affirmation that inspires us to new heights or, equally useful, having to confront a realization that we've been trying to avoid; deepening the relationship with a colleague or the introduction to a collaborator we would never have discovered on our own; and on and on.

The multiplicity of benefits addresses the very real problem of not knowing what we don’t know. A problem that is so frequent when the issues we are addressing are ambiguous and complex.

I don’t think we enter into conversations expecting so many outcomes. Rather I think we come with a goal or question in mind and the rest emerges out of the interaction of the conversation. And that interaction is impacted by the nature of the relationship between the seeker and source. The source has to be willing to engage with the seeker to understand the issues; the seeker has to put him or herself in the vulnerable position of asking for help. On both parts that willingness requires a relationship of trust and respect. Paradoxically, in-depth conversations also serve to strengthen just that kind of relationship.

Imagine how much knowledge we would gain if we did enter every conversation anticipating that we would gain "more than an answer."

The published version is at: Cross, R. & Sproull, L. (2004). More Than an Answer: Information Relationships for Actionable Knowledge. Organization Science. 15(4): pp. 446-462. Click here for an earlier draft

* Conversation being defined as: the interaction that occurs when each person is actively working to understand the meaning the other is trying to convey.

Four Conversations to Address Adaptive Challenges

Trish Silber coauthored this post with me

When organizations face adaptive challenges that are complex and unpredictable, the people who have ideas vital to dealing with the issues are those whose work is impacted by the challenge. They know the subtleties of the process and hold the tacit knowledge of how it works and therefore how it will have to be adapted or reinvented to meet the new realities. The leader’s task, when faced with such a challenge, is not to make sense of it for that group, rather it’s to create a forum where it’s possible for those involved in the work to do the sensemaking for themselves. No one can make sense for someone else.

There are four types of conversations that are broadly applicable to any situation, and that are especially necessary for harnessing a group’s thinking during adaptive challenges: 1) conversations for relationship-building, 2) conversations for mutual understanding, 3) conversations for possibilities, and 4) conversations for action.

We are using the term “conversation” to mean,

the interaction that occurs when each person is actively working to understand the meaning the other is trying to convey.

Although each of us can recall times when we’ve engaged in that kind of mutual and authentic exchange, it only rarely happens inside of organizations. Organizational meetings too often seem to be opportunities for each person to make declarative and politic statements about their own position, with little interest in trying to understand the meaning others intend to convey. To convene a conversation rather than the typical meeting requires that the leader act as a conversation architect. The first task of the leader/architect is to determine which type of conversation is required at any particular juncture.

Conversations for Relationship-Building

Until those invited into the conversation have built a sense of psychological safety with each other, serious work on the issue will not take place. Rather people will tend to speak in general terms, rely on clichés, give voice only to what it seems safe to say and withhold any information that might possibly embarrass themselves or others. In other words, only a small part of the knowledge available in the room will be spoken. To break through that caution, the leader/convener has to create the opportunity for people to learn about each other – a relationship-building conversation.

In this context, a relationship-building conversation is often a conversation about the meaning of the task or work for those brought together in conversation. The question the leader poses to the group to initiate such a conversation, draws on the adaptive challenge, rather than being in the nature of an icebreaker. For example, if the challenge is about the difficulty of teams working virtually, each person might be asked to describe a time when they felt most effective as a part of a team. Such a question allows others to hear about what is valued or important to that individual. Through these conversations, held as a series of small groups, members discover their mutual interests and identify areas of expertise and experience. In this way a relationship of trust and mutual respect is built, and the group establishes a sound understanding of the assets and resources it brings the adaptive challenge.

Conversations for Mutual Understanding

Conversations for Mutual Understanding are the conversations we hold to make sense of what we know – to create meaning out of a mess of unstructured data and information. That involves exploring and uncovering each other’s perspectives, reasoning, and ideas about the topic. Weick* says

“...the same event means different things to different people, and more information will not help them. What will help them is a setting where they can argue, using rich data pulled from a variety of media, to construct fresh frameworks of action-outcome linkages that include their multiple interpretations. The variety of data needed to pull off this difficult task are most available in variants of the face to face meeting.”

The Conversation for Mutual Understanding is required before individuals can align, decide, and coordinate effectively. COL Lee Shiang Long, Head of Joint Communication and Information Systems Department (JCISD) for the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), describes a practice that senior leadership use consistently. Two conversations are held, often in two different settings. The first of the two is held in the form of planning seminars and workshops for mutual understanding. Here the officers are trying to understand the situation, not to persuade others to their point of view. Everyone in this conversation speaks as an equal in trying to make sense of he complexity. Subsequently, a second meeting is held in the form of decision forums, where decisions are made about the issue under discussion. The physical separation of the two meetings ensures that one does not spill over into the other. Without such separation it is all too easy for a group to move towards a decision before all the valid information is considered.

As Abigail Adams said long ago, “Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended with diligence.”

Conversations for Possibilities

By their very nature, adaptive challenges require learning and innovation for resolution. Conversations for Possibilities are those conversations in which we release ourselves to create and innovate, opening up pathways to a future beyond what already exists, rather than a perpetuation of the past. These are forward-focused, transformational conversations that must eventually root themselves in reality, but not before we’ve entertained scenarios unfettered by our current assumptions. At the essence of these conversations is the belief that creativity is a conversational phenomenon, not dependent upon a few inherently creative individuals.

The best Conversations for Possibilities are those in which the group:

- has a common understanding of a minimal set of givens and non-negotiables so that their conversation has necessary boundaries;

- entertains ideas of various scale, allowing the possibility of small moves creating big impacts;

- has enough time to conduct multiple rounds of idea generation, which creates richer ground for true assumption-busting, innovation, and learning. Mark Twain had it right when he said, “If you want to have a good idea, have a lot of them.”

Conversations for possibilities require deliberate pre-planning that prepares people to step out of their current interpretations, constraints, and bias for action. That pre-planning may include an ethnographic look at the present reality, scanning the external environment for trends and new ideas, or posing powerful questions of participants for reflection. Goldberg* suggests that “a paradigm shift occurs when a question is asked inside the current paradigm that can only be answered from outside it.”

Conversations for Action

Conversations for Action generate decisions, commitments, and coordinated actions with others. They are the most frequent conversations held in organizations. In fact they are often the only type of conversation held - the default conversation.

Conversations for Action may include discussions of feasibility; establishment of deadlines; requests and offers between individuals or groups; specific commitments; decisions and measures of success; and how fine-tuning a decision will happen. The wealth of action planning and decision making tools available speaks to our struggle to be as explicit and structured as this conversation usually requires.

In fact these conversations often fall short because the commitment or decision is not clear or publicly owned by a group or individual. A nod of the head in agreement is one thing, but publicly acknowledging the actions each member will take to support the group decision helps to move the group from lip service that too often occurs, to considered thinking about what it will take to make it happen.

• Goldberg, M. The Art of the Question, 1998, Wiley.
• Weick, K. Sensemaking in Organizations 1995, Sage.
• The title headings of “Conversations for Possibilities” and “Conversations for Action” are reflective of Fernando Flores work

A Rant on Report Outs

In the entire world, there is nothing so boring as a report out at the end of a small group discussion. Now, I’m all for small group discussions. They are both necessary and useful - we need more small group discussions. But report outs should be abolished.

The value of a small group discussion is in the discussion. It gives the members of the group an opportunity to hear other view points, to learn from the articulation of one’s own view (see We Learn When We Talk) and to build or deepen relationships with others. None of those reasons require a report out.

As far back as I can remember, I’ve never learned anything useful from a report out. Here’s a typical one – see if it’s familiar. When it’s his turn, the self-appointed reporter of the small group starts,

“In our group we talked about maturity, growth, and development. We all agreed that you need to define a clear goal to work toward, but you also need to stay flexible so that you can adapt to changes in the environment. Without a clear goal you can’t measure progress and without measures you don’t know if you are reaching the goal. Measuring is critically important. In my company we use a dashboard, red, yellow and green. The green means you are on target, everything is fine and there is no need for action. Yellow means ….(you can guess the rest as the reporter continues). 


Let’s examine what is learned from that report out. First, we learn what topics were covered. That would be helpful if we learned anything about the thinking behind these topics, but the typical cryptic phrase or single word does little to inform us. Take “Growth” for example, Growth at the expense of quality? How much growth? Are their limits to growth? We learn nothing from a list of topics or cryptic phrases.

Secondly, the one topic that is elaborated, clear goals, is so couched in generalities that it is useless. None of us would question that having a clear goal to work toward is helpful. But is this comment insightful? Is it news to anyone? No! How is it helpful to report out generalities that everyone already knows?

I’ve sat through so many report outs that I consider myself something of a connoisseur. (I was once in a meeting in which 20 groups reported out, one after the other – it was deadly. We were cautioned to keep it to no more than 5 minutes - but that is an hour and a half! We reported out longer than the small group discussion!). That aside, based on years of experience I’ve been able to classify all small group reporters into two broad categories, The Cataloger and the Ego Centric.

The cataloger feels duty bound to report out every idea that any one raised during the small group discussion, no matter how mundane. The cataloger usually ends this recitation by turning to the group and asking, “Did I leave anything out?” Which unfortunately, opens the gate for yet more trivial items. 


The Ego Centric, on the other hand, reports out on his own ideas disregarding anything the group said. Group members listen in puzzlement to this recitation thinking, “I don’t remember discussing that!” My example above tends toward the Ego Centric with the reporter’s speech on what the dashboards they use in his company. 


There is, however, an option to report outs – POPCORN! Here’s how it works. When the small group discussion time is over the facilitator gets the group’s attention. Then she says, “Let me give you a minute to reflect on the discussion you’ve just had. Think about what stood out for you.” And then the facilitator actually quits talking for a whole minute! Then the facilitator says, “I’m interested in hearing a few comments. What stuck with you?” Then the popcorn begins. Not right away of course, you have to wait a bit before the corn begins to pop. But within a minute someone raises their hand and the popping begins.

There are several valuable learning outcomes that are achieved when you do POPCORN, that just don’t happen with report outs.

1) The facilitator asks for what was learned not what was said – and actually gives the participants time to reflect on that. What I learned is so much more insightful than what was said. There are a dozen questions that could be asked, “What stood out for you?”; “What was new for you in the discussion?”; “What did you learn that you didn’t know before? – all focus on what was unique or significant to you personally.


2) Participants are responsible only for speaking their own thoughts. Participants can be a great deal more accurate, not to mention shorter, when articulating their own learning, than when trying to be fair to everyone’s comments.


3) The facilitator asks for “a few comments,” signaling to the group that not everyone needs to speak. But the few you get, are often choice! It’s amazing what participants will say if you ask them to think rather than recite. And those thoughtful insights inform the thinking of the other participants and add to the collective understanding by providing new perspectives. 


4) Even with only a few comments, the facilitator is able to gain a “sense of the room” in terms of their understanding and she often learns something as well. 


* Trish Silber gave me the wonderfully descriptive term, Popcorn

The Power of the Conversation Architect to Address Complex, Adaptive Challenges

One of the most powerful tools a leader has is the power to convene the tough conversations that need to happen in an organization – to focus a group of people on an issue that matters. To convene that kind of meeting, the leader needs to be a conversation architect.

We all know that to have an effective meeting we need to have an agenda, keep things moving, and track action items. That is excellent advice when the purpose of the meeting is to work on everyday, routine issues. But much more is necessary if the group is to deal with what Heifetz* calls “adaptive” challenges.

Adaptive challenges are complex and unpredictable; they have no known answers. To address them organizations must invent their way to solutions. Examples of adaptive challenges are, organizations that have merged and now must create a new and joint culture; hospital systems faced with an interminable nursing shortage; the anticipated retirement of thousands of workers in the government sector; or companies that, in order to survive, must change from selling products to service.

By contrast, technical problems are predictable and solvable. There are methods and tools that the organization has already developed to address them. If, for example, a well is to be dug in a new oil field, there are established procedures; if a special issue of a journal is to be published, there are steps outlined that will put the issue out on schedule and within budget; if a new cell phone is to be developed, there are well defined phases of the development process. Technical problems do not require a fundamental change in methods or tools. More importantly, the people who solve technical problems can function within a known set of assumptions about how work gets done in the organization, as well as what kind of behaviors are needed to make that work happen.

It is a different story with adaptive challenges. Existing assumptions, methods, and tools are useless in the face of complex challenges. They may even get in the way. Dealing with complex challenges requires altered assumptions, different methods, and yet to be invented tools. And beyond that, adaptive challenges often necessitate that employees learn and practice new behaviors. Because they are so difficult, many adaptive challenges remain unresolved for years. In some organizations each successive senior management team repeatedly invents solutions for the challenge – solutions that the rest of the organization is unable to implement.

“By trying to solve adaptive challenges for people, at best you will reconfigure it as a technical problem and create some short-term relief. But the issue will not have gone away. It will surface again.” Heifetz

The power of a leader to address adaptive challenges does not lie in inventing solutions; rather it lies in using leadership authority to convene the conversations. And the task of the leader is to design those conversations in a way that learning and knowledge result – to be a conversation architect.

The conversation architect takes into consideration the following design elements:

1. Framing the conversation: The first leadership task is to recognize the adaptive challenges the organization or unit is facing. That can be difficult, because some adaptive challenges have become so much a part of the organizational culture that leaders and employees alike have resigned themselves to, “that’s just the way it is.” The task is to see with fresh eyes, the issues the organization is facing. 


Framing the conversation also involves posing the question in a way that gets to the heart of the issue, not just a symptom. Without care, the question can limit the scope of possibilities that could be discovered.


2. Identifying who needs to be in the conversation: Those that do the work and those that are impacted by the work have insights and knowledge to bring to bear on the challenge. It may be that customers or stakeholders can also provide a necessary perspective. Our inclination is to think too narrowly about inclusion so it is useful to ask what voices haven’t been heard.


3. High interaction activities: The goal is to design for conversation rather than for presentations or speeches. Our predisposition is to assume we need someone to speak to legitimize the meeting or give direction - a speech from the president to confirm the meeting as important. The conversation architect designs the meeting on the 80-20 rule so that 80% of the meeting time, participants are in conversation with each other. 


4.The small group as the unit of conversation: The small group, (trios, quartets or pairs) is the unit of conversation that is most effective for addressing difficult issues. The group needs to be small enough that members can fully state their ideas and the reasoning behind them, can query each other and probe for understanding of what others have said. If a group exceeds seven, it tends to no longer be in conversation; rather the exchange becomes more like turn taking, with each member declaring their perspective to the others. 


Periodically the small groups need to reconvene as a whole to get a sense, (not report outs) of what is being learned in the small groups.


5. Role of the leader in the conversation: There are two roles the leader plays in the conversation. The first is the convener role. The second is as participant in the conversation. The conventional wisdom is that a leader should withhold his/her own ideas out of concern that it will bias subordinates. That is a useful strategy when the format is such that each subordinate is speaking in turn to the leader. But when the meeting is formatted as small group conversations, the manager’s participation in one small group does not inhibit the forthrightness of those in other small groups. And as important, participating in the small groups gives the manager a voice in the conversation. 


6. Physical space to serve the conversation: The physical space in which we talk has a greater impact on conversation, than most of us credit. The most ideal configuration for a conversation is chairs drawn together without a table to separate those participating. That is why the conversation with a senior is so different when it takes place at the couch and easy chair off to the side, than when the senior is behind his/her desk. Space matters. Round tables elicit more collaboration (King Arthur’s round table) than do square tables which suggest a contest (opponents in a negotiation). The more the space welcomes participants as human beings responsive to their needs for light, nature, food, and beauty, the more they are able to function as human beings in the conversation, rather than as roles in the organization.


7. Connection before content;*** One of the important benefits that small groups engender is that they connect people more effectively than any ice breaker or round robin introduction could possible do. If a group is going to work on difficult issues, they first need to gain a sense of who others are, the skills they bring, the experience they represent, and the hopes they have. A sense of relationship needs to be built before people can address difficult issues together. The leader’s task is to ask questions of the small groups that will provide them the opportunity to make themselves known to others, e.g. talking about experiences they have had relevant to the adaptive challenge; discussing what importance the challenge has for them and their work. 

“Leaders have the power to focus attention and define the conversations for people whan they gather. We might say that leadership is the capacity to name the debate and design gatherings.” Block

Increasingly it is adaptive challenges that organizations face. As the pace of technological, scientific and global change increases, organizations face issues that they have not had to deal with before. The law of requisite variety, which originates in the field of cybernetics, states that the variety in the control system must be equal to or larger than the variety of the perturbations in order to achieve control.

Leaders that find their organizations facing adaptive challenges can no longer rely the method they have used in the past - the senior leadership team meeting to develop the organizational response. However intelligent and experienced seniors are, they lack the requisite variety that can be found in the organization. The task of the leader is to be conversation architect to convene the conversations out of which new thinking can emerge.

*Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers. Harvard University Press. 1994

** Drath, “Leading Together: Complex Challenges Require a New Approach, LIA, Volume 23, Number 1, March/April 2003

*** Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging. Jossey-Bass. 2008

Connection Before Content: Meetings That Are Knowledge-based

Peter Block has a rule of thumb that is very useful if you want a group to apply its collective knowledge to address a difficult issue, Connection before Content. Before a group attempts to use its collective knowledge to deal with serious issues it has to build the relationships that will allow the group to hold an open conversation.

However connection does not mean just going around the room and having everyone say their name and organization – that’s useful, but it doesn’t build connections. We build connections in pairs or trios - groupings that are small enough for each person to gain a sense of who the others are as human beings. For example individuals need to understand, How are these other people like or different from me? Are they open to hearing an idea if it contradicts their own? What shared experiences have we had? Building that level of awareness about others in the group provides the confidence that this is a safe place to say openly what each individual is really thinking about the issues they are facing together. It is a way to create the psychological safety that Edmondson talks about.

When a group has not had the opportunity to build those connections, members so consistently act in ways that reduce the knowledge available to the group. that it is almost as if they were follow a set of unspoken rules. For example:

• Members tend not to share any “unique” knowledge they hold, so group discussions tend to focus only on information that is jointly held. The result is that little that the group does not already know is discussed.
• Members don’t admit implementation mistakes they or their group have made, even when doing so would benefit the whole group. So the group is likely to repeat mistakes that could have been avoided.
• Junior members tend wait until they have the “lay of the land” to speak, leaving those who are in acknowledged positions of power to do most of the talking. That means a diversity of ideas and opinions is lost to the group.
• Members don’t ask for help from the group, even when they recognize that others in the group have the insights or knowledge they need. So everyone learns slower than necessary and a great deal of re-inventing the wheel occurs.

A couple of days ago I sat in on a meeting in an organization that is facing a difficult challenge. A number of their offices are going to move to another city – one several hundred miles away in a different state. The employees that work in those offices will either have to find a new job or move when the job moves. The group that was meeting has been tasked with setting the policies and dealing with the logistics for the move. They hope to make the move go as smoothly as possible, even given that it is going to be traumatic for hundreds of employees.

This was the second of what will probably be months and months of weekly meetings. Twenty-some team members were seated around a long conference table. Those that came late sat in a second tier of chairs placed against the walls. A few people in the room knew others, but most did not.

The leader of the group, not wanting to waste anyone’s time, got the group’s attention and started to work down the agenda. Four or five of the people in the room did most of the talking during the hour and a half meeting, primarily directing their comments to the leader. A few others answered questions when the leader called on them, but otherwise just listened.

The meeting produced little in the way of knowledge exchange or learning. These were well meaning people, wanting to do a good job, but if I were guessing, I’d say this won’t be an effective team. They’ll get their task done, but they won't be able to make use of the knowledge of those in the room.

To build a group that could learn from and with each other under these circumstances, the leader would have had to get the group connected before dealing with such difficult content. For example, they might have spent the first two meetings working in trios rather than the full group, learning about the issues and each other at the same timel. At the first meeting each trio might have identified the key issues the group must address. Perhaps at the second a different set of trios might have talked about the difficult issues they’ve had to face so far in dealing with the move. Such topics would have allowed them to test out their own views and get the reactions of others to them. It might have taken more than two meetings, but having built a level of connection and trust, they might have been ready to talk in ways that would create learning in the group, that is,

• Offer new ideas even when those ideas were not yet fully formed



• Challenge each other’s tacit assumptions which would have allowed them to generate fresh ideas



• Share their own mistakes when it would benefit the group



• Take the risk of saying something they were aware the group would not want to hear 



• Ask each other for help when that help would speed up the process in their own units


That people need to feel some relationship to each other in order to be open is not news to any leader that has had Team Building 101. So sitting in on this meeting raised a question for me, “Why don’t leaders put into practice what they know will help teams and task forces be more effective?”

One answer that comes to mind, is that we’re often hesitant to do anything that smells of relationship building for fear it will be perceived as a waste of time - playing games when we have too much to get done. I share that worry every time I’m asked to help a leader with a new group. As I start to put people in pairs or trios, I wonder if this time they will all rebel and just say they don’t have time for “exercises.” But they never have (yet) and in the subsequent days and weeks I hear from this one and that one, that it was important that they took the time at the beginning - that it made the difference.

There is another reason we might hesitate to use the tools for learning that we know about. I wonder if many of us have been in so many meetings that were a waste of time that we’ve lost faith in meetings as having any value. Maybe we feel there is nothing to be done but to tolerate what we cannot change. The meeting I described earlier would confirm that view. My hope in writing this blog is to encourage leaders to renew their faith in the power of conversation in groups and more over to do the simple things that make those conversations more learningful like Connection before Content.

A Rant on “Are There Any Questions?”

Every good speaker knows that at the end of a presentation, you have to leave time for questions. Hogwash! Leaving time for questions is the worse learning process we could have invented. We’ve all been brainwashed into the pseudo learning theory that asking for questions at the end of a presentation makes it a better learning experience for the audience. Wrong!

You know what typically happens; you’ve seen it a hundred times:

The speaker gives his talk, of course going on longer than he was supposed to, leaving a slim five minutes for Q&A. But being thoroughly conditioned he asks, “Are there any questions?” An uncomfortable silence ensues. The speaker looks around anxiously, standing it as long as he can - usually about 10 seconds - then starts to make an embarrassed exit comment. Just then a member of the audience takes pity on him. The audience member, not being able to conjure up a real question within the short 10 seconds, asks an inconsequential one. Nevertheless, everyone breathes a sigh of relief because the speaker is saved from the worst of embarrassments –that there was so little interest in what he had to say that no one even had any questions!! He gratefully elaborates on the same points he has already made twice, going on as long as he can so there won’t be any more uncomfortable silences. By the time he stops someone in the audience has actually had time to come up with a reasonably pertinent question, but alas the conference timekeeper says, “Sorry I’m afraid we’re all out of time for questions. The next speaker is …..” 


“So what’s wrong with that”, you ask with considerable indignation, “surely you’re not suggesting that presenters should NOT leave time for the audience to ask questions?”

Yes, that is exactly what I am saying – because having a handful of people out of a large audience ask 2 or 3 questions does little or nothing to enhance the learning experience of the audience. In fact the whole charade is about as anti-learning as you could get. Take a hard look at it:

• For starters look at the meaning of that ubiquitous phase, “Are their any questions?” The speaker is not asking for comments, different views on the topic, or reactions, any of which might produce some learning. No, the speaker in effect is asking, “What did I say that you did not understand or that you would like me to elaborate on because it was unclear?” That puts the audience in a bit of a pickle. If they have understood, maybe even agreed with the speaker, what are they going to ask? 

• On the other hand, if someone in the audience did disagree with the speaker, they will now have to cleverly disguise their disagreement in a question. This is accomplished by starting with a lengthy statement of one’s own views then tagging on a non-question like, “So, I’m wondering if you’ve given that possibility any thought?” Of course the audience knows what is happening and is reasonably tolerant of this ruse – but only up to a point. If the phony question asker goes on too long with his introductory statement, he will suffer glares and frowns from the rest of the audience who after all came to hear the speaker – not some nobody in the audience. It’s a charade and the whole audience is in on the game. 

• The “Are their any Questions” question loudly proclaims, “The only person in the room that has useful ideas on this topic is the speaker!” We even listen to speakers in rooms where we can look only in one direction, at the speaker in the front of the room – a clear message about who in the room is expected to have anything important to say. Never mind the reality that many audience members have in-depth experiences and deep knowledge that, could they be heard, might even enrich the understanding of the speaker. Surely, in this age of Wikis and Del.ici.ous, we are years beyond the idea that a single expert has “answers.” The lone expert in the front of the room, telling a naive audience what they do not know, is out of sync with our more sophisticated understanding of how knowledge is created and shared. 

• And then there is the notion that we learn by listening; the research is very clear that listening, no matter how long the speaker goes on, is not enough to learn. Rather we learn when we take the time to connect new information to the store of knowledge that is already in our heads and making those connections takes time. Without processing time, what has been heard goes in one ear and out the other. We forget what was said almost as soon as we hear it. 

• Moreover, as listeners, we require a way to process what we are hearing. There are lots of ways of doing that, we can talk to someone about it, write out the logic of it, draw a map, make a chart – but all of them require the active involvement of the listener– not just passive listening. 


Okay, so we’ve got it all wrong: all those endless speeches punctuated by a few audience questions are a poor excuse for learning. Got it! What do we do about it?

Obvious, have the audience talk (or write or draw or chart). Now clearly there is not time for every member of the audience to stand up and express his or her thinking on the speaker’s topic. But there is a much better way for audience members to talk at a presentation. Talk to each other!

There are lots of ways to make that happen. An easy way is, after talking for 15 or 20 minutes the speaker asks the audience a question and then puts them in small groups or pairs so they can talk to each other about what they have just heard. The more talking they do the more learning they do. Then the speaker makes a few more comments and the small groups talk about the second question.

But you say, “That takes time away from the speaker.” Yes, it does. I know you paid a lot for the speaker to come and you want to get your money’s worth. But remember, the goal is for audience members to go away with some new ideas – and that won’t happen unless they take the time to build their own connections. Think about it this way; the speaker is not there to provide answers, rather to stimulate the thinking of the participants – and that doesn’t take up the whole hour.

So if you change your habits and give the audience the time to process what you have said, then will they remember your golden words? Probably not, but they will certainly remember what they said, and after all, that is what they learned!