conversation matters

Practices For Building Caring Relationship Among Team Members

This is the second of two posts on this topic. Here is a link to the first post.

In the previous post, I outlined why we need team members to experience more caring relationships, referencing Pfeffer in Dying for a Paycheck and Murthy in the US Surgeon General’s 2022 Report. Both Pfeffer and Murthy explain that stress and lack of social support in the current work environment harms employees’ health and well-being. Murthy suggests, “Organizational leaders, managers, supervisors, and workers alike have an unprecedented opportunity to examine the role of work in our lives and explore ways to better enable all workers to thrive within the workplace and beyond.” This post focuses on the kind of practices that need to be put into place to move from the current harmful culture to a culture of inclusion and belonging.  

An organization's culture is created in the conversations between its members. For that culture to change, those conversations have to change. All conversations contain two messages; one is the content, and the second is the regard in which each speaker holds the other, or in other words, the nature of their relationship, as perceived by each speaker. This second message is revealed through body language, eye contact, gesture, and tone. Although often unintentional, each speaker sends one of many hundreds of messages that may be negative or positive, e.g., feeling superior to the other, enjoyment in the other’s companionship, deference toward the other, viewing the other as a resource or tool rather than a human being, feeling a sense of trust, respect for another’s knowledge, pleasure in seeing the other, and many more. Just reading the list probably recalls your feelings from past conversations. That underlying message is difficult to fake, so regardless of how carefully the words are constructed, we experience the underlying message. I’m not suggesting we be more careful about the messages we inadvertently send; instead, I’m suggesting that if we heal our organizations and create more caring and compassionate relationships, our unintentional messages will be congruent with our spoken words.

Teams are the place to begin to change an organization’s culture because it is where most of our work conversations occur. And teams are the place to start because a team can establish a culture of warmth and acceptance regardless of an organization's overall culture. Even so, team culture is just a start; what is needed is for the culture of the whole organization to move from being transactional to being more relational and for all members of an organization to care for the whole. We will come to that later, but as change begins with teams, we start there.

To change the culture, teams need to design and put into place practices that engender a sense of well-being and belonging among team members. In this post, I describe the practices of two very different teams and, drawing on their examples, suggest the design elements of practices that build team relationships. I focus on the design elements because my intent is not to suggest you copy these specific practices but to provide guidance for creating practices that will work for your team.

Given that you have already met some of the team members of TechnipFMC in an earlier post, I start with some of their practices. Most of the twelve team members are located in Houston, but several are in other countries. The team is divided into three sub-teams, each responsible for one or more specific products. However, each team member is also a member of a second team, creating a complicated matrix of product teams. Being matrixed gives each team insight into what other product teams are doing, increasing the possibility of collaboartion and pollination across teams. Each product team holds weekly meetings to coordinate the projects they’re working on. And they’re intentional about taking the time to catch up on each other’s personal lives at the start of each meeting. A second practice occurs once a month when all twelve members engage in an online “Working Out Loud” session for 24-48 hours. Each team member logs into the WOL session to share what they are currently working on as well as social items for example, who has a new dog, is getting married or has viewed a fascinating new video. And, of course, team members comment on each other’s messages. Another practice the whole team regularly engages in is team development activities, for example, everyone reading the same book and then holding discussions about it or the entire group taking a personality inventory and then talking through the results. Such activities help team members share the same language, learn about each other, and grow their relationships.

The second example from a few years ago is ProQuest, a team whose members were scattered from San Diego to Amsterdam, and all worked remotely. The team of 30 software engineers was comprised of programmers, analysts, product managers, and designers in ProQuest’s research solutions division. The whole group met face-to-face three times a year for a three-day Summit.

Putting together a summit took a lot of planning, most of which fell on the shoulders of Taco Ekkel, the team lead. He explains, “We have learned that it’s important to invest in preparing for the Summit. Before the Summit, the whole team brainstorms, “What do we want to discuss?  What are the larger things that will come up in the next four months? What sessions we should have? What needs to be whiteboarded?”  Most Summits are held either in New York, San Diego, or Amsterdam. On the morning of the first day, the meeting starts with an overview by senior management, providing updates about the business context, finance, sales, and new products.  Then the group breaks out into work teams for the first sessions. Each work team’s task is to create the designs for the new products, which that team will then create over the next four months. At the Summit, each team meets around a whiteboard where members sketch out how a new feature will function. Once an idea is diagrammed on the whiteboard, it belongs to everyone in the room. Anyone is free to jump up, often with an eraser in hand, to make a change – and of course, what is added is just as easily changed again by another. The whole group reconvenes around 4:00. All the whiteboards are rolled into the main room, and each team uses its whiteboard to show what features it worked on and how each was solved. The last item on the daily agenda is Lightening Talks. As Lita, a team member, comments, “Lightening talks are voluntary. Different team members talk about what they think is neat or interesting, for example, ‘I programmed in some different language’ or  ‘I thought of a different kind of identifier for people.’  Each person is given 5 minutes.”  A large clock is displayed with a loud buzzer that sounds when time is up and a lot of laughter when the speaker has to be pulled off with the “hook” when he goes over the allotted time. There are typically five or six Lightening Talks at the end of each day – no more than 30 minutes. Taco notes, “We stop at five and will be at the bar at 5:30 because the work is intense in the sessions, and the energy of everybody is depleted.” The evening social time is as much a part of the Summit as the sessions, strengthening relationships and trust. Team member Jason says, “My favorite part is the time after the meetings over drinks and dinner, a time to be more social. A lot of times, you're not talking about exactly what happened in the meeting, but you get an idea of how people are about different things. You hear about people’s families." Lita adds, “It is easier for me to talk with them about a work issue if I know something about them personally.”

On the two additional days of the Summit, each team continues to design the features they will be working on over the next four months, and in the evening, continues the merriment.  Initially, the group met four times a year, but then realized that often they had not finished what they had discussed in the last Summit. So over time, they moved to three times a year. However, Taco explains, “After four months, we are out of steam and have a loss of shared sense of direction."  So for the ProQuest team coming together for three days, every four months seemed the most effective frequency.

In between Summits, team members constantly communicated with each other using various forms of social media, including chat, Trello, and Flowdock. In addition, each team held a daily 15-minute “stand-up” meeting. 

So what can these two examples tell us about how to go about building relationships within teams? They illustrate that there is no right way to create warmth and caring in a team setting. There are as many variations in how organizations help members care for each other as there are organizations. We can conclude that no set of practices will fit every organization. But what we can take away are some basic rules of thumb.

Work and Social Can Be Intermingled It is unnecessary to draw a sharp line between work and social or try to make sure they are separated. Work and social support each other. For example, at Proquest’s in-person meetings, teams work hard each day creating new software designs, but before they go off to dinner and Karaoke, they hold Lightning Rounds. As Lita wisely notes, “the social makes the work easier, and work gives members something to talk and joke about around the dinner table.” Weekly team meetings at TechnipFMC are about catching up personally and working on organizational issues. These examples show us that the work environment is not lessened by another person being warmed by your smile. Nor is it less productive because a team member, who has a great sense of humor, cracks a joke about the ridiculousness of something the team has been trying and failing to do. There may be no better way to feel connected than laughing together.

Multiple Practices Outside of work, you and your friends have many ways of staying connected - going to dinner, taking walks together, texting, having coffee at Starbucks, watching videos – it’s the same with the members of these teams. It’s not one practice they put into place, but multiple practices, some of which are initiated by the members themselves (that was so with the idea of the project matrix at TechnipFMC). Moreover, once a culture of caring and warmth is built, connection occurs spontaneously, as in TechnipFMC’s response to the death of Chris’s Grandmother, described in the earlier post.

Repeated Interaction The social practices in these organizations are not one-off events; they are activities embedded in how the team operates. Relationships grow through repeated interactions. As Taco said, “After four months, we are out of steam and have a loss of shared sense of direction.”  - there is a need to meet again. Likewise, TechnipFMC’s monthly online “Working Out Loud” sessions build this continuity. If a team meets one time at a yearly retreat, relationships may be formed, but it is unlikely they will be sustained over time. Even pleasant memories fade without a continuing opportunity to check in, offer aid, and share what is happening. Building connections works best if such interactions have a regular schedule.

Naming the Practices Giving a name to a practice, for example, “Working Out Loud,” “Lighting Rounds,” or “Team Check-ins,” is as essential as occurring regularly. A name suggests a deliberate practice the team has put in place for a valued goal: to keep us connected.

Designed but not Facilitated The practices in the examples above were designed; that is, an individual or group thought about how to create a meaningful experience for the team. But notably, none of the practices are facilitated. There is no leader or coordinator of “Working Out Loud” or “Book Discussions.” There is confidence that members know what they need to do to build meaningful relationships. As Pascal so eloquently said, “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by reason, but by the heart.”  

None of the activities cited above are unique to these organizations; many will already be familiar to the reader. What is perhaps worthy of note is the intention in these organizations to frequently and consistently engage in activities that both help team members learn about each other and care about each other.

Teams - Where Organization Members Care for Each Other

We are a specie that, by our nature, cooperate and collaborate - it is built into our genes. Mark Solms, a psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist, explains that, just as we have a fight/flight response in our brains for our protection, our brains also have instinctual dispositions that are pro-social -  there to ensure we build connections with others. Those pro-social instincts include attachment bonding, nurturing, and, perhaps surprisingly, play.

Prosocial instincts are built into our brains because, as human beings, we need the help of others to survive and flourish, not only in childhood but also as adults. We have long known that infants will die if they are not picked up and cuddled, regardless of how well-fed they are. Adults also have a physiological need for caring and compassion. For example, a nurse touching their hand will lower the blood pressure of adults when they are in stressful situations, such as a relative in a hospital waiting room. Likewise, having a colleague or friend express concern when they see we are troubled decreases our release of cortisol, the chemical our adrenal glands produce that increases blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension and slams our digestion to a halt. How amazing that experiencing a heartfelt connection with another reduces the release of harmful cortisol! These pro-social instincts of attachment bonding and nurturing are not just that “I want to be looked after and cared for” but also “I want to look after and care for others.” Our brains are hard-wired for both giving and receiving compassion.

Given that we spend a significant part of our lives within a work environment, it is vitally important that our work environment provides us opportunities for the attachment bonding that Solms tells us we require. Or in layperson's terms, we need to feel valued, cared for, and appreciated in our workplaces, whether that work is online, in an office, a hospital, a call center, or preparing and serving food.   

The US Surgeon General Report, released in 2022, calls attention to the health issues resulting from workplace stress. “Stress can increase one’s vulnerability to infection, the risk for diabetes, and the risk for other chronic health conditions. The report lists five essentials for workplace mental health and well-being, one of which is Connection and Community. It explains the first task for organizations is to create cultures of inclusion and belonging. “Belonging is the feeling of being an accepted member of a group, or of connectedness given one’s interpersonal relationships. Prosocial behavior promotes positive social relationships through welcoming, helping, and reassuring others.”

In his book “Dying for a Paycheck,” written before the pandemic, Pfeffer documents the health consequences of not experiencing attachment bonding in our workplaces.  Among other statistics he reports are that 28,000 deaths yearly are due to stress from overwork, lack of job control, and the absence of social support in the workplace.  He says, “For men, prolonged exposure to work-related stress has been linked to an increased likelihood of lung, colon, rectal, and stomach cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.” “The American Institute of Stress reported that a staggering 80 percent of Americans experience regular stress at work.”

In our attempt to be effective and efficient in organizations, we have bound up our conversation with each other, limited it, and reduced its power. Too often, we exclude expressions of care and welcome from our vocabulary, viewing them as inappropriate to a work environment and leaving us with only formulaic responses that are empty of warmth and caring.

Teams offer the greatest opportunity for restoring connection in organizations. Teams are small enough that, given the opportunity, members can build warm and loving relationships with each other. But accomplishing that requires setting aside time for team members to learn about each other. The reality is that I can’t support you, or you me, unless we know enough about each other to recognize our mutual needs and gifts. Building relationships requires not just one but repeated interactions between team members. We learn to “know” each other by being in conversation over time. It is, of course, not just the words we say in conversation that builds relationship with another. It is also our tone of voice, our eyes lighting up with warmth, smiles, the level of attention we grant the other, and even the periods of silence while we absorb what another has said rather than rushing to respond with a counter position. We, of course, all know how to do this; it’s just that in too many of our organizations, we think we shouldn’t,

I’ve had the opportunity to work with many organizations where team members visibly care for and support each other. In another post, I might describe many of the “techniques” organizations use to build those relationships among team members. But for now, I just want to illustrate what warm, authentic relationships in a team can look like. The following are quotes from interviews I conducted with the team that Kim Glover leads at TechnipFMC. 

Chris (Scotland) -I lost my grandmother a few weeks ago, and every single person sent me messages and not just a message to say, "I'm sorry to hear,” but "how are you today?" And then after the funeral, "How was the funeral?" "How are you feeling?" "Is there anything I can do?" So we're a very close team, even despite the fact that we're thousands of miles away.

Victor (Brazil) - In a session I was running from Brazil, I forgot to set up a specific access for the session. Tom-Erik in Norway and Taras in Russia always joined early. When Tom-Erik, tried to join, he couldn’t get in. Then Taras saw the problem and helped him get in. When everyone was finally online, Tom-Erik said, ‘I had a problem accessing the session because the different technology access wasn’t working.’ He didn’t say, ‘Victor did this the wrong way.’ No, he just shared what happened. For the team, this way of talking is normal. They didn’t attack me. Here in Brazil, these kinds of things are always personal. They would have said, ‘Victor really messed up!’

Brian (Houston) -One thing that we've done on this team is make it feel like a family. Like friends. Because then you're able to really, really start communicating. 

Stacy  (Houston)- What I really like about this team is we work hard, and we play hard too. We get along with each other. We nurture and support each other. There's a cohesiveness that goes beyond just getting your work done because if you work with someone not knowing anything about them, it's very sterile. When you work with people that you’ve developed a bond with, then when hard issues come up, the communication flows more easily because you have that bond and that relationship.

It’s a strength, not a weakness, to want the teams we work on to express goodwill and support for each other.

I haven’t made any claims in this post that building warm relationships within a team will improve the bottom line. But, I know that’s not the reason for building caring relationships within our teams. The reason is that feeling valued and appreciated helps us all have better lives and live longer.

What would it take for your team to be a place where you feel valued, cared for, appreciated, and cherished?

 

Surprising Changes in Work life from Covid

The Covid worldwide epidemic has caused me to reflect on the societal changes that followed the Black Plague in the 1300s. That plague killed 75—200 million people, a third of Europe’s population. Between the Black Plague and the Great Famine that occurred approximately 20 years earlier, it is estimated that by the 14th century, the world population was reduced from 474 million to 350-375 million. The European social and political system at that time was feudalism, in which the King rewarded nobles and knights for their loyalty by granting them land (fiefs) as well as control over the vassals or serfs who lived on the land.  

The plague, which indiscriminately killed nobles and peasants alike, brought into question the prevailing belief that God had given royalty the right to rule. Following the plague, there were religious, social, and economic upheavals. The plague created vast labor shortages freeing the serfs to leave their Lords' lands to seek wages elsewhere. Land, which had been the primary source of wealth for the noble class, was now worthless without the free labor of serfs to till the land. A middle class of commoners arose, who enjoyed greater freedom than the serfs had experienced. They became craftsmen and merchants, and their travels both spread and grew the existing knowledge. These changes laid the foundations for the fall of feudalism over the subsequent 100 years and the rise of a capitalist market economy.  From this perspective, the Black Plague did not cause subsequent societal changes. Rather, the shift in the foundational beliefs that had held the feudal system in place caused its downfall. It was a change in mindset that led to the Renaissance.  

With this recognition that crises can be a catalyst to reject existing societal ideas, I am reflecting on the possible mindsets that could be altered after Covid. The World Health Organization estimates that Covid has killed 6 million people worldwide and is not yet over. I am particularly interested in changes that may occur in the working life of people. The US has a culture where:

• corporate success is privileged over the rights of employees
• managers have the power to demand long working hours from employees
• employees are regarded as resources that can be eliminated when costs need to be cut
• employees have little voice in the strategic and policy decisions that impact their working life
• employee health and well-being (Pfeffer) are secondary to an organization improving shareholder value.

With the pandemic still active, it is not yet possible to predict what far-reaching societal changes may occur. Still, recent surveys suggest potential changes:  

• Before the pandemic, 5% of US employees worked from home, now, approximately 40% are working from home at least three days a week, and those numbers appear unlikely to change.  
• “Almost two-thirds (65%) of workers surveyed report their approach to wellness has changed over the last two years, and they expect more support from their employers.” 
• “Flexibility and work-life balance trump financial compensation. A whopping 63% of job seekers recently surveyed indicated work-life balance was their top priority when picking a new job, above compensation.” 
• “54% of respondents said that transparency around a company’s record on addressing diversity and inclusion in the workplace is extremely or very important, with a similar share (53%) saying the same about a company’s impact on the environment.” 

With growing new mindsets about work and the advent of technology that opens information to not just a privileged few but to all employees, it is possible to envision more equitable and innovative forms of organizing. We have already seen a rise in organizations that are more decentralized, democratic, networked, and collaborative. Digital platforms such as Airbnb, Uber, and Upwork have allowed a larger pool of workers to be directly matched with consumers. A greater variation in what it means to “work,” manifested in the deconstruction of jobs and a 30% rise in the “gig” or freelance economy, suggests fewer long-term employment ties to organizations.

Is something occurring that is not so much a response to the death and loss we have experienced during this present-day plague but a kind of freedom from expectations we have placed on ourselves and perhaps now begin to recognize as self-deception?

Are we experiencing a release from the ideas that were binding us? Are we beginning to travel electronically, toward a new era, as the serfs of old once did?

Where Is The Only Place Employees Share Their Knowledge?

The Hallways of Learning

Hallways are the places where some of our best conversations occur. Ask any conference attendee and you’re likely to hear the familiar comment, “The sessions were OK but I had some great hallway conversations.”  The analogy of the hallway is a useful way to talk about how learning occurs in organizations.

Learning in organizations can be categorized into three types, only one of which happens in hallways. First, individuals use their experience and training to construct meaning for themselves. When individuals keep this meaning to themselves, rather than making it accessible to others, we can liken their learning to a Private Office. For example, imagine a field representative who installs and repairs the company’s product, and overtime, determines that a given part fails repeatedly under certain identifiable conditions. At this point, the field representative is constructing private meaning.  Unless this private meeting is shared with others, the organization will not learn.

A second category of learning is that which occurs when individuals make their personal meaning available to others in the organization. This category is analogous to the Hallways of the organization where important exchanges take place. Hallways are places where ideas get tested against the thinking of others. As long is meaning is held privately, it is protected from the discovery that it may be wrong or limited in perspective. When it is made accessible to others, the data on which is based can be challenged and the reasoning and logic that led to the conclusions can be examined. Hallways are places were joint meaning is made. In other words, meaning it’s not just exchanged, it is constructed in the dialogue between organizational members.

Collective meaning is the third category of learning. It is the meaning that organizational members hold in common. Collective meaning is like having a Storeroom where the mementos of the past are kept. It is the glue that holds organizational members together and allows them to act in concert with each other.  It provides a sense of belonging and community. Collective meaning saves the organization time. There is no need for lengthy discussions about those issues that organizational members are all in agreement about – time can be spent on more critical issues. The meaning in the Storeroom can, however, have a negative impact on the organization. In a rapidly changing world, collective meaning that was advantageous at one point in time may have become obsolete, yet may prove difficult to change.

Hallways are the only space where it is possible for an organization to learn. It cannot learn in the Private Offices, although individual learning can certainly take place there. It cannot learn in the Storeroom, where it is only possible to affirm what is already known. If organizations are going to learn, they will need to construct Hallways in which the in-depth exploration of meaning can occur. The real hallways of our organizations will not suffice for the level of organizational learning that is necessary. Rather, organizations to need to develop processes that have the positive characteristics of real hallways, yet are more focused and intentional.

Many organizations have developed processes that serve this Hallway function.  Some are Knowledge Management processes,  such as, After Action Reviews, Peer Assists, Communities of Practice, and  Storytelling Circles.  Others are whole system in the room processes such as Open Space Technology, Knowledge Cafes, and Appreciative Inquiry.  Still others  result from the rise of post-bureaucratic organizations that by design create more Hallway structures, for example  self- managed teams,  networked organizations, Holocracy, and Humanocracy  to name a few.  The frequency of such processes in organizations, which has grown rapidly over the last few years, attests to both the need for Hallways and ingenuity of organizations in creating new forms of collective learning.

Based on Dixon.N,Strategy & Leadership; Mar/Apr 1996; 24, 2; ABI/INFORM

Can You Transfer Tacit Knowledge?

In our organizations, there's a lot of hype and confusion about how to access expert tacit knowledge. We want to get hold of that knowledge so we can innovate and solve problems faster and more effectively. Everyone has seen the iceberg image that depicts the vast amount of tacit knowledge below the waterline, and we're hungry to make use of that wealth of knowledge. The iceberg is an accurate image in that it shows a much greater proportion of tacit knowledge than an individual's explicit knowledge. But the appearance is deceptive in that it depicts tacit knowledge as residing in a large storage area, like a structure that's somewhere in our brains. The reality is that our tacit knowledge is more like LEGOS scattered across the living room floor. Our tacit knowledge is made up of many bits and pieces located in different places in our brain - related to different experiences we've had, some of which might have occurred a long time ago. They're not connected to each other and are relatively dormant until they get activated by a problem or idea. That's why experts don't respond very effectively to the request to "Tell me everything you know about X." The expert has no problem to trigger those connections. Nevertheless, we're fascinated when an expert facing a problem reaches deep and pulls out an idea that "just might work" in response to a puzzling situation. We'd like to transfer that deep knowledge to others.  

A second characteristic of tacit knowledge is that there's something very personal about it. We've worked hard to gain the knowledge we have, and it's precious to us - a source of pride and ownership. One study* found that employees distinguish between tangible information such as written documents or computer programs and intangible information embodied in human memory. The former they see as belonging to the company, while the latter they see as part of themselves, directly reflecting on their identity and self-worth. The study showed that we're not likely to share that knowledge unless we know it will be respected and appreciated.

Think about what you know about being a good facilitator or a good leader. Much of that knowledge came from experience. It's not just a list of practices that you've learned; it's something that's now part of you, that resides not only in what you do but in who you are. The Center for Creative Leadership conducted a now-famous study** to determine how outstanding executives gained their knowledge. Not unsurprisingly, only 10% of that knowledge came from training. A larger 20% came from relationships, that is, from working for an outstanding manager, likewise working under a really poor manager. But a whopping 70% came from experience, that is, a start-up for which they were responsible or taking the lead of a challenging project. It came from trying out things, stumbling, succeeding, and sometimes figuring out the hard way what not to do. If you asked one of those executives to say what they knew about being good at their job, they could probably tick off a number of items. And if you said, "Ok, is that it?" It's likely they would say, "No, there's a great deal more, but it's more of an attitude or a way of interacting that I just don't have words to explain" - that's tacit knowledge.

So can you transfer tacit knowledge to others?

Yes! It's possible to transfer some of what a person knows; after all, that's what apprenticeship is all about. Medical students do "rounds" with a senior physician, and student teachers spend a semester with an experienced teacher. The best way to transfer tacit knowledge is to put people together over a period of time, so they can observe, ask questions, try things out and get corrections. (I've written about some systematic ways to do that)  So, yes, you can transfer some of a person's tacit knowledge, but it takes time, not just days, but weeks and months. Can you transfer all of the tacit knowledge an expert has? Sorry, no.

But, it's important to remember that someone doesn't have to learn all of the knowledge that an expert has because it's quite likely that many employees, within a given practice or subject area, already know 80-90% of what the expert knows. What they're after is that last small percent. In that sense, if an organization wants to "transfer" the knowledge of an expert that is leaving the organization, it's best to partner the expert with someone that already has a great deal of knowledge, a "nextpert," and to do so well before the expert is going to leave. That doesn't mean the "nextpert" has to be with the expert every moment; the "nextpert" can plan to join the expert when he or she is working on particularly challenging problems. 

Another way to think about using tacit knowledge, and perhaps a more realistic way in the long term, is lateral transfer. It's not just experts that have tacit knowledge; all of us have a great deal of unique tacit knowledge born out of our life and work experience. The question is how to trigger that knowledge for innovation and problem solving. One of the most effective ways is to create diverse teams; members from different cultures, disciplines, and work experiences. As they work together to find solutions, one team member may say something that triggers a piece of tacit knowledge I have, and I may be able to put those pieces together to come up with a novel idea. In other words, to make use of the tacit knowledge in an organization, create an environment where there is a rich and diverse supply of ideas within teams AND where the team members have enough time together to puzzle over the problem. The possibility of triggering tacit knowledge is significantly increased in a diverse group over a homogeneous group. That's probably why studies show that diverse teams are more innovative.*** Both time and diversity are critical components in making use of tacit knowledge across an organization.

One of my favorite examples of making use of cognitive diversity and time to solve problems was told to me by my mentor, Reg Revans. In the 1930's Reg was a doctoral student at the Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge. There he rubbed shoulders with the greatest scientific minds of the age. He studied under Rutherford and JJ Thomas, both considered fathers of nuclear physics. There were five Nobel prize winners (or physicists that would later become winners) at the Laboratory while Revans was a student there. John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton were working on the first nuclear particle accelerator, which allowed them to split the atom. Appleton was working to demonstrate the existence of a layer of the ionosphere that could reliably transmit radio waves. Sir Mark Oliphant pioneered the development of microwave radar and, of course, Rutherford himself, who would discover the structure of the atom.

Every Wednesday, there was an afternoon tea attended by the five Nobel Prize winners and a few lucky doctoral students. Rutherford had one rule for the afternoon tea, no one could speak about their successes. But they could raise issues about tricky problems they faced in their research, puzzles they had not been able to solve. The others would listen, ask questions and offer perspectives that the problem owner could not have thought of on his own. One afternoon, following a particularly long and difficult discussion, Reg recalled Rutherford remarking, "Well, gentlemen, what has impressed me most these last few hours is the extent of my own ignorance... What does yours look like to you?" 

There are several important lessons I learned from hearing Revans tell that story many times:

1. The cleverness of Rutherford to know he needed to design a way to put the scientist together to take the time to learn from each other (with the small inducement of iced cakes and tea).
2. His recognition that each had a different base of knowledge, with a different set of problem-solving skills and different heuristics that could be useful to others.  
3. The third lesson was humility – the willingness of these great men to acknowledge a problem and to seek help from others.

Out of that experience, Revans developed a process much like what he had participated in at Cambridge. He called it Action Learning, where small groups of employees/managers from across an organization met every few weeks to help each other with problems they were facing. And it works, just as it did for the Nobel prize winners. If you want to know more about Action Learning or the other processes that make use of tacit knowledge, give me a shout at nancydixon@commonknowledge.org.

 References

*Constant, D., Kiesler, S., and Sproull, L. 1994. 'What's mine is ours, or is it? A study of attitudes about information sharing'. Information Systems Research, 5:4, 400−421.

**McCall, M. Lombardo, M. et al.  1988. Lessons of Experience: How Successful Executives Develop on the Job, Center for Creative Leadership. 

 ***Rock, D., Grant, H.  2016 "Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter." HBR November 04, 2016

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

Yes to Hybrid, But No to "Working in the Office Any Two or Three Days a Week"

As we return to normal, there seems to be general agreement that organizations need to take a hybrid approach to work. But how that hybrid is designed can make all the difference. In planning how to return to work, leaders are faced with balancing issues related to: 1) employee preference for managing their work life balance, 2) the potential of reducing the cost of office space, 3) concerns about what increased commuting will do to the environment, and 4) the need to rebuild a sense of belonging among team members.

The first three issues can be addressed by implementing a policy that requires employees to be in the office only a couple of days each week, and giving them the choice of which days. But addressing the fourth issue, rebuilding a sense of belonging within teams, requires that all the members of a team periodically come together face-to-face. That coming together might occur every other week, once a month, or even once a quarter, depending on the level of the team's task interdependence. The face-to-face time might be for three days or for the whole week, but as we have learned through conducting retreats and other meaningful group interactions, three days is the minimum needed to build and renew relationships after a period of being apart.  

Rebuilding a sense of belonging, involves the careful design of the activities that occur when the team is together. While working from home, all of us have missed the feeling of connection and friendship that is so difficult to maintain when we are limited to a technology connection. As good as our technology is, we find ourselves anxious to get off the computer at the end of a virtual meeting, rather than staying on to catch up, as we would at a face-to-face meeting. In the workplace, it is the hallway conversations that sustain our relationships as we talk with each other about family, vacations, sports, and all the other commonalities that unite us. It is noticing others in the lunchroom, on the staircase, passing by an office, and stopping for a brief chat - all those chance meetings that keep us feeling like we are part of a team.

Hallowell names these encounters human moments, "an authentic psychological encounter that can happen only when two people share the same physical space." A human moment requires both physical presence and emotional and intellectual attention. 

Equally important, we need time to think together about the work we are doing, to tell each other what happened at the last client meeting or why we believe the new policy is too limiting. We need time to correct minor misunderstandings between team members, so they don't grow into big ones. We've all experienced the mix-ups that are so ubiquitous to email, as well as how easily those mix-ups are dispelled when we see the other coming down the hall with a big smile on their face, clearly pleased to see us. High tech requires high touch! The deeper we move into the use of technology, the more we need to be intentional about designing ways to retain touch that comes from human moments.  Weick explains that an organization's culture is formed in the everyday conversations we have. We need face-to-face time to engage in those conversations, which are the rock bed of a culture.  

When we are together that "week" in the office, we need to set aside time to have pizza lunches with the whole team, to celebrate accomplishments, to express appreciation for each other. We also need that time to plan together and to jointly solve problems that the team is facing. Google’s Project Aristotle found personalized relationships were the most salient characteristic of its highest-performing teams. Co-location, even temporary co-location, makes personalized relationships possible. 

The task of renewing relationship during our time together is facilitated by modifying the design of our work spaces. It makes no sense for workers to come together only to have them sitting in a cubicle in front of their computers – they could have just as easily done that remotely. Instead, team members need welcoming, informal spaces where small groupings can think together and larger spaces where the whole team can circle their chairs to address a difficult issue, where food and drink are readily at hand, and where both serious and playful activities can take place.  

If we think carefully about what we want to accomplish when we bring people back to the office, we can design 21st-century work and workplaces that take advantage of what we have learned about getting work done virtually and what we know about what teams need to be successful.

What Needs to Be In Place For An Organization to Be Dialogic

This blog post is the fourth in a series of posts on dialogue. In the first, “The Most Important Knowledge KM is Ignoring,” I explain that the way we talk in organizations too often prevents us from solving the most challenging problems we face. In the second, “An Organization That Changed Its Culture by Implementing Dialogue,” I offer a brief case study of an organization, The Virginia Department of Corrections, that has implemented dialogue at every level. In the third post, "The Promise of Dialogue" I spell out the promise that dialogue holds and list the attributes of dialogue. In this post, I define the underlying beliefs and structures/processes that need to be in place to bring about that promise.  

It is not difficult to bring a group of people together to hold a dialogue. If skillfully facilitated, such a convening will significantly benefit individuals by providing them with a way to examine and perhaps challenge their assumptions, including their beliefs about individuals or groups they have previously defined as "other." ("Others" are people whose belief systems are viewed as incomprehensible, and thus individuals within that group are likely to be labeled as ignorant or self-serving.) A modification in beliefs about "others" may not happen in one meeting. However, through a series of such meetings, participants can quiet their inner voice enough to hear others, to acknowledge the truth in what others are saying and feeling, even when they disagree, and to listen to the questions that arise in their minds in response to what others are saying (Bohm).

It is also not difficult to bring a group together in dialogue, whether a training class or an organizational unit. Dialogue can help the group uncover assumptions they make about their own unit and those who work in different parts of the organization (e.g., management, engineering, finance) and strengthen the relationships between the parts that meet together. Over time, dialogue can become the way that members of a unit or group interact with each other, that is, listening to each other, speaking their own truth, and examining their own thinking process. However, even this will have a negligible impact on the organization as a whole.

Transforming a whole organization's culture to be dialogic is difficult because an organization's culture is created through the ongoing exchange of ideas and beliefs that occurs daily among all of its members. Although managers might like to think it is they that shape the culture, it is the everyday conversations that establish the culture and, therefore, would need to evolve for an organization to be dialogic. "An organization's results are determined through webs of human commitments, born in webs of human conversation." (Flores) Changing those everyday conversations necessitates that both those in leadership positions and employees 1) hold a set of underlying beliefs congruent with dialogue and 2) that they put in place structures and practices that support dialogue.

Underlying Beliefs.

As we do not have a term in English that means both workers and management, I use the term "members" in the following list to connote both. The underlying beliefs that support a dialogic organization include:

• Members have the knowledge and wisdom to jointly address an organization's adaptive challenges (Edmondson 2012 , Heifetz 2012).
• Members have the will to act for the good of the whole.
• Everyone has a truth that has been developed through their life experience, which should be respected, even if not agreed with.
• Everyone deserves to be spoken to with respect.
• All voices are equal; none are privileged by rank, level of expertise, gender, or race.
• It is a part of the human condition to make mistakes (Lewis Thomas), and it is through openly speaking about mistakes that organizations learn from them.
• The purpose of an organization includes a moral goal related to the well-being of the members, as well as people within society at large and the environment in which all people function. (Isaacs)
• Organizational change is continuous rather than being a one-time event. Therefore an organization needs structures in place that allow it to sense the environment and to continually adapt. (Ackoff 1994, Dixon, 2019)
• Knowledge workers do not function well in hierarchical environments. (Kessels 2001, Bohm,1990)
• The knowledge /information within an organization is transparent to all members. (Case,1998)

All members may not hold such beliefs initially, but as the beliefs are lived out through an organization's dialogic processes, they are confirmed in members' minds.  Likewise, changing the beliefs of members can alter an organization's processes and structures.

Organizational structures/processes that facilitate dialogue:

The following structures/processes support the underlying beliefs that members hold in a dialogic organization. See the chart below to connect each of the structures to the corresponding belief.

• Time is set aside regularly for teams, units, and the whole of an organization to think/reflect together about how the organization is functioning. (Edmondson 2012; Schein and Schein 2018, Dixon 2019).
• The design of convened meetings supports the equality of voices, with no one's ideas privileged above others, for example, holding meetings in a circle, all meetings open to anyone interested, whole organization meetings designed to alternate between small groups and the large group where the learning is integrated.
• The design of physical space, online gatherings, and organizational norms promote chance meetings with members of other units/teams that allow them to interact with each other informally, for example, places to meet for coffee, wide hallways, and stairs, atriums, online social hours, scheduled retreats. (Pentland, 2012)
• An organization's strategy is developed through dialogic interactions where the whole organization is represented, for example, Future Search, Appreciative Inquiry Summits, Open Space Technology.
• Work processes are designed to encourage positive interdependence; that is, for individuals to succeed, the whole unit must succeed, e.g., individuals facilitating each other's efforts to complete tasks to reach the group's goals. (Johnson and Johnson 1999)
• Joint goal setting occurs at the team, unit, and organization levels.
• Processes are in place to regularly gather information/knowledge from client-facing units and those on the periphery of an organization, to jointly reflect and act on that information. (Ackoff 1994)
• Shared decision making occurs across an organization.
• Opportunities are available for continual learning both about task and about self (e.g., training, team coaching, action learning, coaching ourselves).
• Hierarchy is minimized or when necessary absent by having meetings convened by a facilitator who subsequently reports outcomes to management.(Bohm, Kessels 2001)
• Processes are in place to reflect on and learn from mistakes at the individual, team, and organizational levels. (Coaching, Action Learning, Coaching Ourselves, Working Out Loud Circles, After Action Reviews)
• Open books, including access to salaries, investments, and anticipated internal and external actions, is available to all members, and members have access to training about how the organization makes, invests, and spends its money.

Relationship of Beliefs to Structures/Processes

Underlying Beliefs	Organizational Structures/Processes
Workforce members have the knowledge and wisdom to address an organization's adaptive challenges jointly	Time set aside regularly for teams units and the whole of an organization to think/reflect together about how the organization is functioning An organization's strategy is developed through dialogic interactions where the whole organization is represented Joint goal setting occurs at the team, unit, and organization levels The design of physical space, online gatherings, and organizational norms promote chance meetings with members of other units/team that allow them to interact with each other informally Shared decision making occurs across an organization
Members have the will to act for the good of the whole	Work processes are designed to encourage positive interdependence
All voices are equal; none are privileged by rank, level of expertise, gender, or race Everyone deserves to be spoken to with respect Everyone has a truth that has been developed through their life experience that should be respected, even if not agreed with	The design of convened meetings supports the equality of voices, with no one's ideas privileged above others
It is a part of the human condition to make mistakes, and it is through openly speaking about mistakes that organizations learn from them	Processes are in place to reflect on and learn from mistakes at the individual, team, and organizational levels
The knowledge /information  within an organization is transparent to all members	Processes are in place to reflect on and learn from mistakes at the individual, team, and organizational levels Open books, including access to salaries, investments, anticipated internal and external actions, is available to all members Members have access to training about how the organization makes, invests, and  spends its money
The purpose of an organization includes a moral goal related to the well-being of members as well people within society at large and the environment in which all people function	The organization's strategy is developed through dialogic interactions where the whole is represented
Organizational change is continuous rather than being a one-time event. Therefore an organization needs structures in place that allow it to sense the environment and to adapt continually	Processes are in place to regularly gather information/knowledge from client-facing units and those on the periphery of the organization, to jointly reflect and act on that information. Opportunities for continual learning about the task and about self
Knowledge workers do not function well in hierarchical environments	Hierarchy is minimized or when necessary made absent by having meetings convened by a facilitator who subsequently reports those outcomes to management

The Promise of Dialogue

This blog post is the third in a series of three. In the first, “The Most Important Knowledge KM is Ignoring,” I explain that the way we talk in organizations prevents us from solving the most challenging problems we face. In the second, “An Organization That Changed Its Culture by Implementing Dialogue,” I offer a brief case study of an organization that has implemented dialogue at every level. In this third post, I spell out the promise that dialogue holds.

In a world of increasing complexity, where there are no simple or obvious answers, dialogue brings a ray of hope to address the many troubling issues we face that do not lend themselves to resolution through scientific study or big data. In this post I am primarily focused on how dialogue can address our organizations’ adaptive issues, whether those organizations are for-profit, non-profit or governmental. Most of us spend as much as one-third of our lives inside an organization, so organizations must be places that promote well-being, including autonomy, mastery and purpose (Daniel Pink) of both employees and managers. Dialogue offers a pathway for organizations to achieve that goal by drawing on the understanding of all of its members to address the adaptive issues the organization faces.

The promise of dialogue is that if we can jointly make sense of the issues we face, we can find a way forward. Too often, when we come together to talk, we each arrive with our own ideas about how to address an issue, and much of our taking together is about convincing others that our view should prevail. Of course, the problem is that each of us has a limited perspective on any issue – limited to our own experience and knowledge base. When we can collectively make sense, new possibilities that no one could have conceived of on their own, emerge. Karl Weick once said “Small improvements in seeing can occur when individuals enlarge their personal repertoires of what they can do. But larger improvements in seeing should occur when people with more diverse skills, experience, and perspectives think together in a context of respectful interaction.” 

Coming together in dialogue involves:

• a respectful relationship with those with whom we are talking
• acknowledgement that each person has a right to their own truth and has the intellectual capacity to make sense of their world
• a willingness to examine our own thinking process to understand how we have reached the assumptions we hold
• a willingness to hold our assumptions lightly
• the courage and humility to speak our own truth
• the acknowledgement that there can be no predetermined outcome of a dialogue
• the recognition that our talking together must support a moral purpose, as well as a practical one.

The list of attributes reveals that dialogue is about how we relate to others and our willingness to acknowledge our own limitations, including our blindness to our own assumptions and our unawareness of our implicit basis. I suggest that dialogue is not so much a difference in technique or skills as it is a difference in relationship and humility. I seriously question whether more technique is necessary. There is already a great deal of technique that relates to giving clear feedback, asking clarifying questions, sharing airtime, paraphrasing to check out what is understood, and so on. That is not to say that people always make use of the techniques that are available to them. But it is to say, that even when they do, using a technique may not change their intent to manipulate or control. People may have altered their words but not the nature of their relationship with others.

I acknowledge these seven attributes are a “big ask” of any group. They require each of us to take responsibility for how our organizations function. We accept that responsibility by creating opportunities for, and participating in dialogue, not just with those with whom we agree, but also with those with whom we disagree.

An Organization That Changed Its Culture By Implementing Dialogue

In a previous post, The Most Important Knowledge KM is Ignoring, I suggested that implementing dialogue throughout an organization could change the culture to one where staff and management have more open and honest conversations with each other. In this post, I describe an organization, the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC), that has accomplished that goal.

VADOC has responsibility for 32,000 inmates and another 30,000 individuals that are in the parole and probation system. A staff of 12,000 work for VADOC in 46 facilities across Virginia.

Starting in 2012, a new Director of VADOC, Harold Clarke, was appointed. Over the next eight years, he implemented dialogue practices across all the facilities and at every level. 

Being a dialogic organization has resulted in VADOC achieving the lowest recidivism rate in the United States at 23.4%. Recidivism is calculated as the percent of inmates that are reincarcerated within three years of their release. The average recidivism rate in the US is 42% and the highest over 60%.

In describing their work, VADOC staff often contrast how they work now, with before dialogue was implemented:

I’m one of old heads, I’ve been around a long time. Life in the department has completely changed since Director Clark came on. It’s hard to say this, but I feel safer going to work each day. I really appreciate dialogue.  James Sayer, Corrections Sergeant

 

Not only has dialogue changed the way I work with my co-workers and with the folks I supervise, but also just learning dialogue skills has changed the way I associate with my family. I’m also a small business owner and through that, it is helping to change my community. I’m proud to be a part of this organization. Venus Laney, probation officer

 

I’ve been around corrections for 25 years, and I have embraced all the initiatives that Director Clarke has brought to the Department of Corrections. I have grown professionally by buying into those initiatives. And it has made me a better clinician and a better colleague working with others. I feel that it is helping the returning citizens (inmates) that I work with. Jennie Amison, Offender Workforce Development  Specialist  at the Community Corrections Alternative Program  

Harold Clarke served as Director of the Corrections in Massachusetts, Washington, and Nebraska before being appointed as Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Corrections. In each state, he had experimented with implementing dialogue. By the time he came to Virginia, he had some very clear ideas about how to make dialogue work within an organization.

First, he recognized that dialogue had to start at the top, so he began by training the 28 members of his executive team in dialogue skills and then consistently using dialogue in his team’s monthly meetings. Over the next few years, he cascaded dialogue down through the layers of the organization, to unit heads, wardens, shift commanders, etc. until all staff at every level had been trained and, like the executive team, had processes in place to continue learning and practicing dialogue.

The major dialogue skills and actions that VADOC has implemented are the four dialogic practices that Bill Isaac’s identifies in his book Dialogue:  

• Voice – The practice of being authentic
• Listening – The practice of giving attention to others and what they mean
• Respect – The practice of taking another person and their views seriously
• Suspension – The practice of enquiring into the assumptions and implications of your views

And the four Kantor conversation actions:

• Move – a move takes the form of a proposal of some kind, such as, “I would like to talk about next week.” Without Moves, there is no direction, and the conversation goes nowhere.
• Follow – means the speaker would like to go along with the proposal, for example, “I wrote down the ideas we discussed for next week, so let’s take a look at my list.” Without Follows, there is no completion and decisions are not made.
• Oppose – Oppose disagrees with the Move proposed, such as, “I would rather think about what we still have to get done this week.” Without Oppose, there is no correction, and things feel untested.
• Bystand - is an observation about the way the conversation is proceeding, or getting stuck, for example, “Bill, you seem to be living in the future, while Jim seems pre-occupied with the here-and-now.” Without Bystands, there is no perspective, and the sequences of actions get stuck.

I have described these skills and actions simplistically here, but the dialogue training involves a much richer discussion of them as well as extended practice using them. VADOC has appointed 265 Dialogue Practitioners, who, in addition to their regular duties, take on this role. As a Dialogue Practitioner, their task is to continue the on-going learning of current staff as well as training new staff. Carrie West, who was recently appointed to a new role as VADOC Statewide Dialogue Coordinator, explains the benefits of dialogue from her perspective.

Having dialogue in the department has changed how people communicate with one  another and how they handle situations. Once offenders understand that you’re listening to them, you give them the opportunity to voice or be a participant in our dialogue. It was eye-opening, especially to see dialogue come to fruition in the female facilities - listening to them participate and giving us their concerns. I’ve been in the department for a long period of time. Before we implemented dialogue, you were kind of, like the old saying goes, “Children are to be seen but not heard." I've seen that change. I’m appreciative of dialogue being incorporated into the department, and I’m glad to be a part of it.  

Beyond the actions and practices listed above, several other concepts are taught, as are numerous processes that use dialogue. Harold Clarke explains “I see dialogue as a vessel into which we can place all of our challenges and thoughts, make sense of them and be able to communicate them to others effectively." Harold recognized that any new habits require practice to become ingrained, and any new process that isn’t reinforced will be lost. Two of the many dialogue processes put into place are Learning Teams and Working Dialogues, both regularly reinforce the skills and practices.

Learning teams – Every member of VADOC is assigned to a learning team, a small group of 10-15 employees from different units, that meet for an hour monthly to use real-life situations to practice dialogue. Staff concerns and any new policies from administration are discussed in these meetings. Concerns and suggested changes developed in Learning Teams flow back up the chain of command through the Dialogue Practitioners, who play in a role in facilitating learning teams, and supporting Working Dialogues.

Working Dialogues – Every unit holds two Working Dialogues a month to address issues and problems specific to that unit. There are three phases of a Working Dialogue:

Phase  1  - Dialogue to build a joint understanding of the Current Situation

• All participants share their thoughts about the issue, speaking to the center. The facilitator notes all ideas on a flipchart.
• The end of phase one has a “Gate” that requires participants to respond to three questions:
  • Has anyone who is impacted by these issues been left out of this meeting?
  • Have we heard everyone’s perspective?
  • Do we have an agreed understanding?

Each participant answers each of the three questions on a scale of 1-10. If the combined score is below 8, the group examines the issue further or invites in missing voices.

Phase 2 – Dialogue to jointly create Desired Outcomes.

• Phase two is a visioning session to think through what the facility or unit would look like if the problem was resolved. It is not a time to offer solutions rather to articulate what is desired.
• Again there is a Gate to ask the questions listed above and vote before re-thinking or moving to Phase 3.

Phase 3 – Identify the changes required to get from the current situation to the desired outcome.

• Phases three is the opportunity to suggest what actions could be taken to reach the desired outcome.
• Again there is a Gate to ask the questions listed above and vote, this time before agreeing to actions.

There are many other dialogue processes in place at VADOC, such as the Offenders Resettlement Journey, Threshold Meetings, Future Search, Check-ins, Dialogue Coaching for supervisors to ensure accountability, Leading Energies, in fact, too many to describe in this post. But all bring staff and sometimes offenders together in dialogue. 

In his book, Dialogue, Isaacs suggests that dialogue should promote the True, the Good and the Beautiful. In introducing dialogue, Harold Clarke has held those ideals, if not the specific terms, in mind. A set of deeply held beliefs guide his use of dialogue:

• the purpose of a prison is not to punish, but to keep the public safe from those incarcerated, while they learn how to function as good citizens
• prisons should be a place of healing - a healing environment for the prisoners and also for the staff who come to work each day, often with baggage of their own
• everyone deserves a second chance
• everyone should be held accountable for their actions
• people, whatever they have done, should be treated with dignity and respect
• all voices deserve to be heard

Given his beliefs and long history of work in prison systems, Harold concluded that the staff, practicing dialogue regularly, could create a healing environment that would also provide staff and inmates with a way to hold each other accountable. That is, a way that staff could interact without having to hide mistakes or withhold information - where they could freely ask each other for help when they needed it, and where they could use all the knowledge of a team or unit to solve the many difficult problems that arise in a prison setting.

The words of Sergio Escobar, who is both a Records Manager and a Dialogic Practitioner, provide a strong validation that Harold is succeeding.

 

It’s funny how being a Dialogue Practitioner has opened so many doors within the institution. It is amazing that we have become not just Dialogue Practitioners but ambassadors of a safe container. People have come to me with things they don’t want everybody to know. In a safe container you are able to gather the information and pass it to where it needs to be passed on. It’s made VADOC a better place to work.

 

The Most Important Knowledge KM is Ignoring

David is a new member of a team of analysts in an intelligence agency. The team has been discussing the build-up of soldiers and weapons on the Southern border of an important country. The team is getting ready to send a report to the Pentagon about the build-up which will influence the decisions that Generals at the Pentagon might make. David has intelligence, from sources he used before joining the new team. His sources indicate that although there has been troop movement, it is not specific to the Southern border. The other team members are in agreement about the danger and are discussing the wording of the report. David says to himself, “I think they are wrong.” But being new, he feels he needs to be seen as a “team player.” So he keeps this contrary knowledge to himself. 

The problem in this incident is that the team decides without all the available information. Another problem is that David feels uncomfortable about betraying himself by withholding what may be pertinent knowledge.

Melissa is a member of the HR team in a large organization.  She has just received a memo from her boss, Sara, that asks Melissa to immediately initiate a recruitment process because of a new initiative that is being planned. After reading the memo, Melissa calls Sara to explain that there are already adequate names in the pipeline to draw from for the upcoming initiative without starting another costly recruitment drive. But Sara responds, “We can’t tell the big boss that he’s wrong, so go ahead and start the new recruitment process.” 

The problem in this incident is that management does not get all the knowledge needed to make a decision that will cost the organization a considerable amount of money. It is also problematic because Melissa finds herself laboring over a task that she knows is not useful, which results in feelings of frustration and helplessness.

Such incidents may seem trivial, but my research shows that such actions are ubiquitous across all levels of organizations. They result in poor decision making due to the lack of accurate and full knowledge. The players in these incidents are, however, not intentionally being obstructive; instead, their behavior is the way that staff, and management alike, protect themselves and others from embarrassment and conflict and ensure that they are viewed favorably in the eyes of others. Argyris called such incidences "defensive routines". They are routines or patterns embedded in the culture of the organization. They are so much a part of the culture that employees lose the recognition and significance of their actions, writing them off as “just the way it is around here.” For example:

• employees and managers frequently modify information that they send up the organization so that it appears to be more favorable than it is
• subordinates often agree to carry out tasks or processes that they believe will not work
• when a colleague wants something from another colleague, they often act like it would be in the other’s best interest, while hiding their own interest
• team members repeatedly withhold information (about mistakes, or misjudgments they have made) that would make them look bad in the eyes of other team members or their manager
• both employees and managers periodically say something publicly that they realize they do not really believe, it is said “for just for show”
• team members fail to ask for help from other team members, even when they recognize that others in the group have insights or knowledge they need, resulting in slower team learning and a great deal of re-inventing the wheel 

Defensive routines work, in the sense that they prevent embarrassment and conflict but in so doing they also prevent the organization from learning about challenges, which if faced directly, could lead to needed correction or new ways of thinking that could generate useful development.

Similarly, top management hides knowledge from staff. The recent revelation that the Pharma industry has been incentivizing doctors and pharmacist to promote opioids which they knew were addictive, and which resulted in thousands of deaths is an example. The VW emissions scandal is another example. It is hard to imagine that such actions, if openly discussed with staff, would not have been reconsidered. And there are undoubtedly many more such instances that are not so public.

Over the last 20 plus years, KM has been primarily concerned with the creation, maintenance, distribution, and access to organizational knowledge. KM has been much less concerned with the most critical knowledge problem organizations face, which is that at all levels, staff hide and distort knowledge from each other.

KM should also take responsibility for the quality and accuracy of the knowledge in the organizations they serve or at the least, for the reduction in behaviors that distort or hide knowledge.  How to accomplish that is known, but not easy.

Just conducting training programs is not the answer because defensive routines are embedded in the culture, as evidenced by similar routines found at all levels of an organization. Those routines are so ubiquitous that they are largely invisible. Moreover, the problem is not a lack of skill; everyone knows how to say clearly what they mean and how to acknowledge their own mistakes.  Rather, it is the culture of fear, protection, the competition to get ahead, game playing, and fragmentation that prevents accurate and full knowledge from reaching those who need it.  

What KM needs to take responsibility for is changing the way people talk with each other. Organizations need to engage in two types of talking. The first is dialogue, a kind of talk where all the organizational members related to a specific organizational issue, think together about how they understand a problem and offer their different perspectives that bring fresh insights to the topic. The second is discussion, where those impacted by the issue make decisions about what actions to take based on their joint understanding. However, as noted in the incidents described above, discussion is often fraught with members withholding knowledge from each other and attempting to get their way by not fully saying what they mean.

Dialogue, where members do not try to solve a problem, rather work to understand the problem they are jointly facing, is a necessary precursor to discussion. Dialogue requires us to listen respectfully to others, cultivate and speak in our own voice, and suspend our opinions about others and their ideas. It is the precursor because until all members come to a common understanding of a problem, any discussion just becomes a power struggle. Dialogue is the precursor because it develops the needed relationships and trust between those who are talking together. And most importantly, it is the precursor because, over time, holding dialogues changes the culture of an organization to one in which, even when in discussion, it is possible to maintain trust and relationship with others.

For dialogue to change the way organizational members routinely talk to each other, it has to become the expected mindset at every level of the organization, e.g. "the way we do things around here".  

There are organizations that have accomplished this, for example, The Decurion Corporation, a developer of theatre chains,  Bill Isaacs’ work in South Asia, Harold Clarke’s work leading the Virginia Department of Corrections and my work with the Defense Intelligence Agency. 

Implementing dialogue across an organization is a big task, but one where KM could make a profound difference in the quality of knowledge in organizations. 

How to Increase the Flow of Knowledge Across an Organization

The most effective way you can increase the flow of knowledge across an organization is to connect  organizational members to each other.

By connect I mean, “I know what you are currently working on and what problems you are facing” and you know that about me. It means, if I need help, I know what questions I might be able to ask you about. I also know how I might be able to help you, for example, when I come across something I know you are interested in. 

I’ll give you a personal example. I have a good friend - we both like reading mysteries. I recently came across a great site. Here is how it works, if I type in the name of an author I like, the app generates a map of other authors that people, who also like that author I typed in, regularly read! I quickly sent my friend a link to the map.

You have to know what another person is interested in, to know what to share with them.

Connected also means there is a sense of trust between us, so that I know you will respond if I ask for help and that you won’t think less of me for not knowing the answer. The two main reasons employees give for not asking for help is 1) they don't want to bother the other, imagining they are too busy and will be irritated by the request, or 2) they don't want others to think they are not competent! Both reasons are less relevant when employees are connected because asking and sharing are ways to maintain the connection between people. It signals, I am aware of you and am interested in your success. 

The short way to think of the strategy I am suggesting is, Connection before Content, that is, before you can exchange content productively, you need to have built a connection.

That is true at several levels in an organization. For example, at the level of a project team.  Hackman, who is probably our greatest authority on teamwork, explains that before a project begins, the leader needs to bring the team members together – in person, when that is again possible. Hackman suggests pairing up team members and asking each to write out what they think the goal of the project is and then discuss what they wrote with each other, in order to come to some kind of agreement. Secondly, he has each one of the pair interview the other about what experience they bring to the project that will help the team reach their agreed upon goal. And finally he has each person introduce their partner to the rest of the team, explaining what skills and experience their partner brings. Team members need to know who has what knowledge if they are going to to make the best use of the team’s resources to solve problems.  Connection before content.

It is equally true at the department level, where again each member needs to know both the tasks and the experience of their colleagues to work most effectively. One way department members can gain that knowledge is to start department meetings with a "check in" during which each members reports on what they are currently working on. That allows others to offer help, as well as, to coordinate. You may recognize this as an Agile practice of holding 15 minute morning meetings. Connection before content.

And it is true for a community, where there are lots of ways to build connections, e.g. “working out loud circles,” Communities of Practice, having robust profiles up, brown bag lunches, your department offering fresh coffee and donuts at 10 each morning for any department they need to stay connected with.  Connection before content.

As we all know, relationships deteriorate over time if they are not renewed. So even if a group has met before, taking a few minutes before a meeting to reconnect reestablishes the relationships and trust that increases knowledge flow.

I realize that these examples raise the concern that one-to-one is a slow way to proceed and that we should be thinking about how to scale knowledge. But if every employee is engaged in one-to-one exchanges, then the whole organization is learning. Moreover, they are getting knowledge that pertains directly to their work, not something that they might possibly need to know sometime in the future.

The idea that you can scale knowledge sharing by posting something that everyone in the organization will learn from is a bit of an illusion, as The World Bank found out when they studied readership in 2014. The published report examined how frequently posted policy reports were downloaded or cited - not just by the 10,000 bank employees, but by everyone. About 13 percent of policy reports were downloaded at least 250 times while more than 31 percent of policy reports were never downloaded and almost 87 percent of policy reports were never cited. (Which World Bank Reports are Widely Read, Doerte Doemeland and James Trevino, 2014)  Those numbers suggest that we should question the value of relying solely on publishing to share the organization's knowledge.

That said, every company needs to publish explicit knowledge like policies, SoPs, processes, etc. But if a company wants knowledge to reach employees when they need it, they need to focus on Connection before Content.  

Polarization: The Power of Dialogue and the Problem of Implicit Bias

We all decry the polarization that we currently observe on many issues, race, politics, guns, healthcare, climate, immigration. Columnists and scholars have produced reams of arguments intended to change the opinions of those on the opposing side. However, it is difficult not to conclude that rational argument, as important as it is, does not reduce polarization.  

Both the failure and a possible solution lie in our understanding of implicit bias. Dewey names three core beliefs that result in polarization:

• The other is not a Thou, deserving of equal treatment.
• The other is irrational, not fit to make sound judgements.
• There is no good reason to cooperate with the other.

Kahneman (2011) explains two types of thinking our brain does. “System 1 is the brain's fast, emotional, unconscious thinking mode. This type of thinking requires little effort, but it is often error prone. Most everyday activities (like driving, talking, cleaning, etc.) make heavy use of the type 1 system. Type 2 system is slow, logical, effortful, conscious thought, where reason dominates.”

Implicit bias is based in System 1 thinking. Implicit refers to attitudes or stereotypes that impact our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious way, making them difficult to control. For example, I cannot choose to no longer associate penguins and ice in my mind. None of us intentionally built that association, but there it is. When you say “penguin,”  I see a fat little upright black and white bird standing on ice, and no amount of telling me not to associate the two is going to work.

We all have implicit biases, many of which we are unaware. Those biases are different for each of us based on the part of the country we live in, family influences, peer associations, media influences, etc.  We may hold biases related to any of a number of human characteristics, race, people in poverty, rich people, overweight people, short people, disabled, and so on. If you doubt that you are subject to implicit bias, go to implicit.harvard.edu and take the free tests to see how you score on any of those topics, and more.

So what to do?

The answer, according to Lauren Barthold, is dialogue. But for dialogue to address implicit bias takes several steps and only happens over time. The first step is a dialogue in which partners hear each other's first-person narratives, that is, listens to someone, who is on the opposite side of an issue, talk about their life and experiences, however, without talking about experiences that are associated with the issue on which they conflict. What hearing another person’s experiences does is humanize them, that is, we begin to see them as someone who is capable of reasoning, and who is even well-meaning. We can see similarities between ourselves and the other, for example, concern about children or care for the disabled. Kahneman explains that it is stories, not argument, that lie at the basis of our beliefs. He claims arguments are constructed “ex post facto” to support a belief that already exists.

Hearing another’s story allows us to see the other as more than a stereotype. Still, hearing first-person narratives alone will not remove implicit bias. But it is possible for those stories to result in smaller changes in our thinking. For example, one possible outcome is that the listener decides to be more aware of when “others” are not represented in a conversation or a meeting, and to act on that awareness. Another outcome might be the willingness to engage the "other" in a joint project, which provides the opportunity to get to know them more fully. Such actions, over time, can start to replace implicit associations with more recent and positive associations. 

Another possible outcome of hearing first-person stories is an awareness that encourages us to modify the language we use in talking about “others.”  Such a change might include using labels that would be preferred by the other, rather than terms they might find derogatory and that serve to perpetuate stereotypes in our own mind as well as in their minds. The example Leslie provides is that instead of labeling the other with nouns such as “a Muslim,” we might instead use adjectives or descriptive phrases as in, “a person who follows Islam.” In this way, the description depicts one aspect of the individual, not their whole identity. Such a language change is subtle, yet reflects a broader perspective on the other; that is, they are more than their view on a particular issue. Changing to labels preferred by the other could impact the way we speak about the other as well as to the other.

Barthold explains, “The claim is not that dialogue will immediately eliminate implicit bias.  Rather, the claim is a dialogue can motivate an individual to explicitly choose an egalitarian goal (such as inclusion or the use of more neutral language) which, over time, can be habituated to replace the nonegalitarian implicit association.”

How A Few Simple Ground Rules Can Help Polarized Groups Hold Civil Conversations With Each Other

In our country we are having great difficult talking with those who are on the other side of an issue, whether that issue is about politics, climate change, abortion, race or policing. We don’t have difficulty talking about the other side, it is talking to the other side that causes us problems.

There are a few simple ground rules that prevent such conversations from becoming acrimonious. The ground rules are not new, in fact, they have been around a long time.

The oldest set of ground rules I am aware of came from the Public Conversations Project that started in 1989. The staff of the Public Conversations Project believed a healthier civic life was possible—one in which people could speak truthfully and compassionately without letting their differences tear their communities apart. The ideas for the guidelines were borrowed from family therapy practices. Understandably the initial pilot dialogues were focused on abortion. In 2010 the Public Conversations Projects became “Essential Partners” and broadened their scope to facilitate a wide range of issues with communities around the globe.

Ground Rules for The Public Conversations Project (now Essential Partners):

• Respect time limits and share speaking time;
• Speak for yourself (not on behalf of or in defense of a whole group) and let others do the same;
• Speak thoughtfully, holding back the urge to criticize and persuade;
• Keep listening even when it’s hard, and don’t interrupt others;
• Hold back from debating or trying to persuade;
• Notice the assumptions you are making and ask genuine questions to find out whether they’re accurate;
• Honor the confidentiality requested by others (usually this means not revealing what particular people have said within the dialogue without permission);
• Allow people to “pass” (not speak) without having to explain.

The group I do volunteer work for, is Braver Angels (formerly Better Angels). This national non-profit was formed in 2016 to reduce with the political polarization in the US. Braver Angels holds workshops across the United States that bring together Reds and Blues to understand, not change, the other side. Across the country over a thousand workshops have been held.  Here are the Ground Rules for Braver Angels, which are remarkably similar to Essential Partner’s list.

Braver Angels:

• We’re here to understand others and to explain our views, not to convince anyone to change their mind.
• Let’s each speak for ourselves and not try to speak for or represent any outside
  group.
• Let’s stick to the spirit of the activities designed for each stage of the meeting. Example: if the topic is what we each learned from listening to others, that’s all we do then even if it means resisting the urge to explain our own political view point.
• Otherwise, it’s standard stuff we all know: taking turns, not interrupting others, listen to everyone and opening space for quieter group members, being respectful (as in no eye rolling or loud sighs when someone is speaking) etc. In other words, bringing our best selves to a difficult conversation.
• Enforcing the ground rules: Do the facilitators have permission to gently help people make course corrections when they inadvertently veer off one of these ground rules?

There are, in fact, now quite a number of organizations that are working toward similar goals and that have remarkably similar guidelines. In her book “Overcoming Polarization in the Public Square” Lauren Barthold names some of these, Ben Franklin Circles, Colossian Forum, Heterodox Academy, Living Room Conversations, Open Minds Platform, Story Corps, and the Zeidler Center for Public Discussion. And summarizes their ground rules which are, again, similar to the two lists above:

In order to have a constructive conversation where people speak thoughtfully and listen respectively, we will:

• Speak for ourselves and from our own point of view, and experiences, using “I” (not we or “they”).
• Listen to understand and speak to be understood – not to persuade others.
• Speak one at a time and not interrupt.
• Share air time and make sure everyone’s had a chance to speak once before speaking a second time.
• Listen with curiosity and resilience.
• Feel free to “pass”/“pass for now” if we are not ready or do not wish to respond.
• Respect confidentiality: what’s said in this space stays in this space.

I have been pondering why such simple guidelines work. None of these organizations suggest that participants need extensive training to talk in a civil manner to each other - the guidelines themselves seem sufficient. The conclusions I’ve come to are that the guidelines work because:

1. they are simple, not difficult to understand or with ambiguous terms
2. they are few in number, 8-10 usually, so possible to keep in mind
3. meetings are facilitated, and the facilitator is neutral
4. the ground rules are phrased not as “you will” but as “we will,” signifying an agreement between both sides that they will abide by the rules in the interest of having a civil conversation
5. the facilitator asks for and receives permission from the group members to gently remind them if they forget or get carried away (in my experience as a moderator, catching the first instance of rule breaking, helps everyone remember for the rest of the meeting)
6. we all have a deep desire to heal the divide among us and are grateful for ground rules that make conversation possible

What following such ground rules does, is begin to humanize the other side. Participants learn that the other side has reasons for their positions, that it is not that they are just stupid, unfeeling or out of touch.

Clearly such simple ground rules do not resolve the issues between polarized groups. But it does create the empathy and respect for others, that then allows people to think together in more substantive conversations. But a more substantive conversation is not possible without first having a conversation that lays the foundation of respect and empathy for the other side.

Ten Big Ideas of Knowledge Management

 

1. Connection before Content

People are more willing to share their knowledge and expose their
thinking when they have built a trust relationship with others. If a group is going to concentrate on a difficult issue, they first need to learn who others are, the skills they bring, the experience they represent, and the values they hold.

So we start meetings with “small talk,” that is, getting to know more about one another, not just the
weather, but what is important in their work right now, or what they have done recently that they are most proud of. “Small talk” is not really small at all, it is how we acknowledge the value of our relationship to the other. When a group has come together many times, the period of connecting can be brief, but not neglected altogether.

 

2. Circles Connect (applicable when the virus is over and we are again able to meet in person)

Circles represent unity. They help individuals in the group view themselves as part of the whole. For example, the United Nations meeting hall is designed in concentric circles to provide a visual representation of what the UN stands for – unity among nations. A circle represents equality - there is no “head of the table.” The circle shows that all voices are equally valued. A circle is also a clear indication to those in the room that they will be expected to actively participate.

It is a useful symbolism to begin and end a meeting with chairs in a circle. It can be a big circle of up to 35, or many small circles of 5. Ideally it is a circle of just chairs, without a table. Participants have a profoundly different experience when they converse in a group without a table. Tables put us across from each other in a position reminiscent of negotiation. Conveners and even some participants will feel a bit awkward for the first few minutes without a table, but that feeling goes away quickly as people get connected. Circles also allow everyone to see everyone else’s eyes. It is difficult to have a conversation with someone whose eyes you cannot see.

When a group is too large to have everyone in one circle, I often make concentric circles and have even made a circle three and four layers deep. Although concentric circles limit seeing those sitting directly behind, they still have symbolic value and provide the best compromise between having too large a circle where it is difficult to hear others.

In many meetings a U shape is set up to enable seeing a screen placed at the opening of the U. But a large U has a very different feel, because the focus is on the screen rather than on each other. And of course a U is open, which loses the sense of boundary that a circle provides. The straight sides of a U make it difficult to see those that are on the same side. Even if there is to be a PowerPoint presentation at some point in a meeting, it is better to start with a circle and then open it to a U during the time the group is viewing the slides.

3. Knowledge is Both Created and Shared in Conversation

Knowledge is created when diverse perspectives are brought together in conversation - when people are able to build on each other’s ideas. Dividing members into small mixed groups that are made up of multiple levels, different disciplines, or mixing customers with employees, legitimizes having different views and makes possible giving voice to a diversity of views.

Learning from others is also best done in conversation. If you need help from others about a problem you are facing, you get the best help if you pick up the phone so you can explain your situation and they can respond, not in generalities, but to your specific situation. You might start with an email, but if it is a difficult situation, it probably needs to move to a phone or Zoom call.

Conversation is not so necessary if the knowledge you are seeking is about a technical problem, for example, “What software do your use for tracking donors?” But if it is a more complex issue you need to be able to ask questions of the other and to share your context.

4. Asking Opens the Door to Knowledge

Whether it is through an email or in person, asking is a little risky;  we are often fearful that others will think we are less competent or will be offended. That is the reason for “connection before content” – so that others build enough trust know how we will react and to use and our competence.  

Asking also means when someone says something we don’t agree with, rather than explain why they’re wrong, we ask what their reasoning is. We seek to understand their thinking. Stephen Covey famously said, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

When we are offering our knowledge to others, we first ask about their context, so we can provide answers that are specific to their situation, not generalized information. And the person seeking answers might  explain, “In your situation you have five doctors and it’s an urban area, but I’m work with only two doctors and most of the patients live miles away. So how could I could apply your process in my context?”

5. Small Groups as the Unit of Learning

Small groups produce the richest and most in-depth thinking – they are the unit of learning in organizations. When I say small group, I mean a group of four to seven people. The group needs to be large enough to contain diverse views, yet small enough for members to engage each other. Engaging each other implies that members have time to fully state their ideas and the reasoning behind them. And then time enough for others to ask questions that will gain them a deeper understanding of what has been 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 his or her own perspective to the others.

Moreover in groups with more than  seven, members become concerned about “air time,” that is, thinking they should not talk too long or too often in order to give everyone a chance to offer their views. Although concern about air time is well meant, it prevents members from engaging each other. For example, what too often happens in a larger group, is that when a member hears something he or she disagrees with, rather than inquiring into the other’s reason or asking how the other came to that idea, the member simply offers his or her own contradicting view. That response tends to polarize positions rather than moving the group toward the integration of ideas.

6. Learn in Small Groups – Integrate Knowledge in Large Groups

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. There are lots of ways to do this:

• Write in a shared Google Doc
• Popcorn (request that anyone that has an idea to speak)
• Report outs (my least favorite)
• 1-2-4-all, a Liberating Structures process
• Go arounds (asking every member to speak in turn)

In a lengthy meeting, small and large group discussions regularly alternate.

7. We Learn When We Talk

This is an interesting phenomena. We usually think of learning as a  listening activity.  But two researchers at the University of Minnesota have done research that shows that we organize information differently when we talk, than when those ideas are just swimming around in our heads.  And by mentally organizing the information in preparation for speaking, we create greater understanding for ourselves. It’s the old adage about teaching a subject if you want to really understand it.  I do a lot of interviewing in my consulting practice and consistently, at the end of an interview, the interviewee remarks that the interview was helpful to clarify some of the issues they had been thinking about.

This principle is also central to transferring knowledge. Listening to an expert provides us    new ideas; but as long as those ideas are just in our heads, they are neither fully formed nor implementable. It is only when the listener puts an idea together in a way that allows them to explain that idea to others, that the idea takes shape. Keep group small enough so that everyone has an opportunity to put their thinking into words.

8. Learning From Experience Requires Deliberate Reflection

Reflection is an invitation to think deeply about our actions so that we are able to act with more insight and effectiveness in the future. Reflection is useful at 4 levels: 1) Individuals: evaluating or processing one’s experiences in the interest of self-development.  2) A team or community: reflecting together to improve the work of the team and improve the way  team members work together. 3) An organization: reflecting to  consider the organization’s strategy and it’s culture, and 4) intra-organizational: focusing on enhancing the  organization’s relationship with partners and clients  and with equally with the community in which it is located and natural environment.

Characteristically, reflecting is more effective if it is done with others.

9. Different Types of Knowledge Needs to Be Shared in Different Ways

Explicit knowledge is “know what,” the facts and algorithms that can be written down so others can both understand and make use of the knowledge. Examples are SOPs, job aids, and well-documented process steps.

Implicit knowledge  is ‘know how” that is, knowledge gained through experience, e.g. the rules of thumb a person uses in designing a meeting or insights about how to approach a difficult client. Implicit knowledge is most effectively shared through conversation. We tend to call on our implicit knowledge when we are faced with a problem or when asked a question by another.

Tacit knowledge is deep knowledge, what a person knows, but often cannot articulate; it is what is often referred to as  judgment. Tacit knowledge can only be learned through observation of a master or being coached by a master. Examples of tacit knowledge are, what makes one speaker more engaging than another, how a conductor acts to get the best from an orchestra, what a skilled facilitator does to help a group reach agreement, or how an experienced physician makes a diagnosis. Perhaps as much as 90% of the critical knowledge in an organization is either implicit or tacit. 

10. Knowledge Sharing is Sustained by Reciprocity

The basic idea of community is reciprocity. That is, if I help others, then when I need help, they will help me. It is of course not a one to one reciprocity, but a generalized reciprocity – meaning that I may not receive help from the specific person I helped, but I will from someone in the community.

Receiving help from others also requires expressing appreciation for their help; and with more than a simple “thanks” in an email. Real appreciation includes acknowledgement of the helper’s extra effort, their kindness, and even how what they offered was of use to us. The three actions of knowledge sharing  are Share, Ask and Appreciate.

 .

 

 

 

Responsibilities of Organizational Members

In my last post, I wrote about the problems that hierarchical organizations cause employees, including depression, anxiety and heart attacks, as well as being subjected to the inequality of privilege and income disparity. I also suggested that society, as a whole, is impacted when the executive suite engages in illegal or immoral actions (e.g. The VW emissions scandal) that are covered up by controlling the information flow. That post was focused on management hierarchy and suggested that many organizations have found it possible to function effectively with reduced hierarchy.

In this post I introduce an article, “The Responsibilities of Members in an Organization That Is Learning” that speaks to the responsibilities of all employees related to those same issues. I use the term “organizational members” in this article because we have no term in English that refers to people at all levels of an organization. The term employee, in its common usage, references only those not in management positions, although we would all readily acknowledge that managers are also employees of organizations. This article addresses the responsibilities of all “organizational members” irrespective of level. It is noteworthy to recognize that people, like myself, who study and consult with organizations, direct our insights and advice to managers, and only rarely to all organizational members, as I do in this article. In the linked article I elaborate on six responsibilities of members:

1. Actively engage in organizational dialogue that continually examines the worth of the organization’s purpose.
2. Bring the best available knowledge to bear on organizational issues.
3. Function as a co-participant in the creation, maintenance, and transformation of organizational
   realities.
4. Willingly share what each knows with colleagues and create forums and systems by which that can be accomplished.
5. Actively learn from experience every day to develop as a responsible, participating member of the organization.
6. Share in the responsibility for the governance of the organization.

I use the word responsibilities, rather than possibilities or actions in the title, to underscore the idea that by doing nothing, organizational members collude in holding the problems mentioned above in place.   

Download Responsibilities of members in an Organization that is learning

 

Can Democracy Survive in America Without Organizations Becoming Democratic?

“Democracy is a tough way to live. With all its flaws, I think it beats the alternatives. I do not wish to have someone else, no matter how educated, well intentioned, wealthy, or wise, decide unilaterally what is best for me. Unless we are deeply involved in our work, we cannot feel good about ourselves. Unless we work with others toward valued goals, we cannot infuse hope and aspiration into our lives. Unless we treat one another as equals, we cannot find dignity, meaning, and community in work. Unless we make our own mistakes, and learn to forgive ourselves, we cannot learn at all. Unless we cooperate we cannot survive.” Marvin Weisbord, 1996                                           

 

Each time I read Weisbord’s quote, it brings to mind a question, “How can we have a democratic society, when most of our working lives are spent within organizations that are far from being democratic?” Even within western cultures, which have overturned monarchies and reduced the impact of class, organizations remain places where hierarchy and privilege closely resemble the monarchies or class-based societies of the past. Consider that most organizations are places where:

• organizational policy and strategy decisions are made by CEOs, whose actions have too often revealed that their primary interest is in lining their own pockets and that of their shareholders, with little concern for the environment, the well being of employees or the communities in which those organizations function. (Buybacks of  company stock rather than increasing employee salary from the tax cuts; inappropriate use of Covid 19 emergency fund)
• the disparity of income between those at the top of organizations and workers is excessive and unconscionable. (The average S&P 500 CEO earned $14 million in 2017, 361 times the average worker’s salary; compared to a ratio of only 42 in 1980.  From 1979 to 2018, net productivity rose 69.6 percent, while the hourly pay of typical workers increased only 11.6 during that same 39 year period.)
• employees frequently find themselves in an adult/child relationship with their managers, reducing their ability to make use of the knowledge and insight they have gained to address the work problems they face. Rather they are told what to focus on, how to do it, and how long it should take.
• employees suffer from a competitive culture that too often results in depression, heart attack and disengagement. (The health website WebMD reported that work was the number one source of stress. The American Psychological Association’s 2015 report Stress in America noted that the top two sources of stress were money and work, with almost one-quarter of all adults reporting extreme levels of stress. Sixty-one percent said that workplace stress had made them physically sick, and 7 percent said they had been hospitalized because of workplace stress and its physiological effects. The prevalence of heart attacks on Monday morning has caused hospitals to staff emergency rooms to correspond to the increased risk.)
• those at the top control information. The resulting secrecy leads to damaging and even illegal organizational behavior, which if employees had full awareness, they would not support, indeed would feel ashamed. (VW emission control scandal, the Wells Fargo Bank customer deceptions.) 

No citizens of a democracy would allow their government such control over their lives in the way organizations exert control over their employees. Mary Parker Follett* once said, she could not understand how people could complain about small freedoms taken away, like helmet laws or seat belts, yet were willing to function as surfs within the walls of an organization. I echo that sentiment. In answer to my own question, “How can we have a democratic society, when most of our working lives are spent within organizations that are far from being democratic?” I believe we cannot have a democratic society unless we rethink the governance of our organizations.  

Writing as early as 1989, in “Reassessing the Divine Rights of Managers,” Edgar Schein said, “soon we will need to develop a new picture of what a manager should be. Hierarchical authority will probably play a much small role in that picture, while coordination skills will play a much larger role.” But he cautioned “Our thinking about these matters is hampered by one major, deeply embedded cultural assumption so taken for granted that it is difficult even to articulate. This is the assumption that all organizations are fundamentally hierarchical in nature, and that the management process is fundamentally hierarchical.” He said, “We need models, but we may have difficulty inventing them because of the automatic tendency to think hierarchically.”

The first step, in bringing about this much needed change is the recognition, as Schein reminds us, that the items in the above list are not “givens.” We now have the models that Schein said we were in needed of. There are now numerous organizations that have developed new approaches to organizational governance, although few would use the term democracy. Instead they are called, Deliberately Developmental Organizations (Kegan), Self Designed, Learning Organizations (Dixon), Holocracy (Robertson), Teal Organizations (Laloux), Conversational Firms (Turco) as well as a host of other terms. Whatever the label, they are organizations with little, if any hierarchy, in which employees make the decisions about what work they do and how they do that work, and in which employees influence the overall strategic direction. And there are many more organizations that are moving in that direction, as seen by the increase in self-directed teams and Agile teams.

I have many ideas about what is propelling this change, as well as, specific examples of how governance is being implemented in different organizations because indeed, these examples differ by size and context. But those topics are for other posts. In this post, I only wanted to lay out my concerns about the problems that result from our current model of governance and acknowledge the growing movement toward a revisioning of how organizations might governing themselves in a way that acknowledges respect for employees, community and the environment. I would be very appreciative to hear from you either in the comment section or through email,(nancydixon@commonknowledge.org) about what thoughts this post as sparked in you?

 

*Mary Parker Follett, was denied a Doctorate  at Harvard on the grounds that she was woman. She was one of the first women ever invited to address the London school of economics, where she was invited to address the London school of economics, she distinguished herself in the field of management by being sought by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt as his personal consultant, on managing not-for-profit, non-governmental and voluntary organizations. Peter Drucker identified her as his guru.

Police and Black Men Minneapolis- an Innovation

As many of you know, for several years I have been a volunteer facilitator for Better Angels, a citizen's organization uniting red and blue Americans in a working alliance to depolarize America.

Better Angels meetings were designed by Bill Doherty, a professor in the Dept of Family and Social Science at the University of Minnesota.  He has been doing another project, in his home town of Minneapolis, since 2017. You can read about it here. But here is a brief overview.  

The project's goal is to forge connections between police officers and African American men that can lead to better partnerships for community safety and law enforcement. It grew out of concern following the high-profile police shootings of Black men in 2015-16. Initially the meetings involved five Minneapolis police officers (three White and two Black) and six Black men from the community,  and was facilitated by Bill Doherty.

"The Minneapolis Police Department approved the project. All group members come as individuals speaking for themselves and not as representatives of an organization. Beginning in January 2017, they agreed to meet every other week for a year or more to build relationships based on honest communication, and then decide on action steps. Meeting places alternate between a community setting and a police setting.

The first set of meetings focused on relationship building: storytelling to understand one another’s backgrounds and experiences.  Over time the group got into more and more difficult conversation including negative personal experiences, the history of policing in Black communities, sources of current mistrust, and different perspectives on recent police-involved shootings.  The group kept returning to the table, forming close personal bonds, coming to understand each other’s perspectives, and evolving a common vision for change.

Clearly this project's work did not prevent the death of George Floyd, even after almost two years of meetings. Yet, I believe police and citizens talking together, as they do in this project, is vital. Of course, talk has to lead to changes in policy and laws, but laws and policy alone will not change people's hearts and minds - that only happens person through person to person conversation.

I have learned through the many Better Angels meetings that I have led, that when people come together in facilitated and well designed conversations, they leave with greater respect for each other and a willingness to "seek to understand" each other. I support the Black Lives Matter protests. I support the much needed legislative changes. I support changes to the role of police in communities. But most wholeheartedly, I support bringing together the police and the black community to hear each other's stories, fears and hopes.  How else do we change hearts and minds on both sides? 

An Organization That Is Serious About Lessons Learned:The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center

The Wildland Fire lessons learned are posted weekly by email to over 7000 readers. They are the way the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center (LLC) does rapid lesson sharing. They are also a place for users to submit their own stories about fire-related accidents, close calls, successes, or a way of doing things more efficiently or safely.

Click on the images to read short lessons and learn why they are so impactful. You might be able to use the one about cell phones yourself!

                                     
Research on the transfer of knowledge (Szulanski and Lee 2020) describe common barriers to transfer, which the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center has found a way to overcome. Here are some of those barriers (in bold) and my take on how the LLC has addressed them (in italics):

Common Barriers

• The effort required of the source to share lessons – a firefighter can click on the button at the end of each lesson and fill out a quick electronic form to share their story with the Lessons Learned Center who then does the formatting, write up, and adds the pictures of the lessons for publication and distribution.
• Lack of motivation of the source to provide enough detail for the recipient to implement the lesson – firefighters are willing to provide enough detail to keep their colleagues out of life-threatening  situations and the recognition from having their name and often their picture as well is an added incentive.
• Causal ambiguity – the lack of understanding about how a suggested lesson will change the outcome – the lesson writers make the benefit clear, often through the images, as well as restating the benefit again at the end as a recommendation or caution
• Lack of absorptive capacity of the recipient to understand the what the source is talking about- the use of common firefighter jargon (e.g. “faller,” “sawyer,” “geysering”) in the lessons aids in the understanding of other firefighters. Colleagues are doing the same work and have many of the same experiences as the source.

Likewise, Szulanksi and Lee suggest what encourages the production and improves the receptivity of lessons learned.

Encourage Lessons Learned

• Gatekeepers that can absorb knowledge from a source and interpret it for the recipient – the Lessons Learned Center writers, who are firefighters themselves, know what to ask the firefighters to get all the necessary details for their stories.
• A shared superordinate social identity between the source and the recipient - firefighters have a shared identity born out of their commitment to the mission and the genuine threat of danger with which they live on a daily basis.
• The credibility of the source   – that the lessons come from other firefighters, not from an unnamed source or HR lends credibility.
• Observability – the vivid pictures in the Lessons help the receiver both see and remember the lessons.
• Provenness of knowledge – real firefighters telling their stories about their own accidents and recovery, is verification that the lessons work.

The Wildland Lessons Learned Center was created after the 1994 South Canyon Fire that killed 14 wildland firefighters. This tragedy triggered the interagency TriData Firefighter Safety Awareness Study that recommended a permanent “lessons learned” program be established for wildland firefighters. Karl Weick, one of my heroes, from my faculty days at the University of Texas, worked with Wildland Fire to figure out how it could learn as an organization. That is what Lessons Learned should be – a way for organizations to learn.   

In 2002 the interagency Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center (LLC) was created to focus on  improving safe work performance and organizational learning for all Wildland firefighters. The website declares, “The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center is the single most important step forward for wildland fire agencies in becoming “learning organizations.” The LLC facilitates the documentation of lessons in a variety of formats to make them accessible. In addition to the weekly emails, the LLC produces a compellation of incidents that have occurred over the past year, for example, trees falling on firefighters, chainsaws accidents, or heavily loaded vehicles that have rolled. Check out one the annual reports - you will be amazed at what firefighters deal with daily. 

The LLC also provides  a  1) quarterly magazine called Two More Chains; 2) a popular website for wildland firefighters, 3) a YouTube channel as well as 4) training, meetings, conferences, workshops, seminars, and wildfire academies throughout the United States.

The website notes, “The LLC is particularly important at this time when a large cohort of senior wildland fire managers are retiring within the next 4-5 years. The LLC offers an opportunity for those highly experienced firefighters to provide the next generation with well-learned lessons in fire behavior, safe practices, wildfire management, prescribed fire, and all other aspects of wildland fire management.”    

That is taking Lessons Learned seriously.  It takes a lot of effort and focus for an organization to become a learning organization!

 

 

 

Collective Sensemaking -The Democratization of Organizations

There is an encouraging shift happening - organizations are becoming flatter and more self-governing. Over the last ten years, I have had the opportunity to work with and write about a number of such organizations¹. Fredrick Laloux’s book, Reinventing Organizations², describes over fifteen self-governing organizations across the world (Gore, FAVI, Buurtzorg, Sun Hydraulics) where employees make the decisions about what work they do and how they do that work. And numerous books have been written about individual companies that are self-governing³. This change is driven by the increasing complexity of issues organizations face, for which there are no known answers and the recognition that those who are impacted by an issue, often the frontline workers, are also the people who have the knowledge and perception to develop an in-depth understanding of that issue. The shift is also influenced by the desire of workers to be associated with organizations where they can co-create what the enterprise stands for. To be flatter and self-governing requires organization leaders to turn to and believe in the knowledge and wisdom that is embedded in the workforce.

Such organizations establish new norms, not only about who makes the decisions but, equally about who is called upon to make sense of what is happening; and the practices of bringing groups together to enable collective sensemaking.  Taylor & Emery explain, “Sensemaking is a way station on the road to a consensually constructed, coordinated system of action.” Thus, sensemaking is the necessary step before coordinated action can take place. In organizations made up of specialized domains, sensemaking requires bringing those domains together in conversation to develop as complete an understanding as possible of the current situation the organization is facing. Thus, collective sensemaking is a conversational event where people intentionally come together for the purpose of using their varied perspectives and cognitive abilities to make sense of an issue or problem they are mutually facing, that will allow them to act collectively.

Weick, in describing a high-performing crews on carrier decks says, “when they interrelated their separate activities, they did so heedfully, taking special care to enact their actions as contributions to a system rather than as simply a task in their autonomous individual jobs. Their heedful interrelating also was reflected in the care they directed toward accurate representation of other players and their contributions. And heedful interrelating was evident in the care they directed toward subordinating their idiosyncratic intentions to the effective functioning of the system.”

An organization cannot follow Weick advice to “enact their actions as contributions to a system” unless members are able to hold a mental representation of that system in their minds. Sensemaking conversations provide the opportunity to build such representations.

Following is an example of collective sensemaking in a hospital setting that I had the privilege to work with. This Patient Safety Learning Pilot (PSLP) was conducted with microsystems in six hospitals and involved using MERS-TH (an error reporting system) and the development of causal trees based on the Eindhoven classification system for errors. The following description is of a sensemaking conversation that was convened by the Director of Patient Safety, at St Anthony’s in Crown Point, Indiana. In the Director’s words:

“We held a sensemaking session on a medication error that originated in the pharmacy. A patient was given a blood pressure medication that the physician had put on hold. The patient had come from the regular floor to our rehab unit. No harm occurred as a result of this error; however, we were interested in this particular error because we were in the process of implementing barcoding throughout the hospital. The unit where the error occurred was trialling the barcoding system so both the pharmacy and the rehab unit had put in new processes for these orders.

Before the sensemaking session occurred, I, as the Director of Patient Safety, and the Director of Pharmacy conducted a root cause analysis on the error and based on that developed a causal tree using the MERS framework. The causal tree had the consequent event as: “Norvasc 10mg administered to patient when order was written to hold – no harm to patient” followed by eleven antecedent events.

The sensemaking meeting brought together ten people, including the Director of Pharmacy, two pharmacy technicians and two pharmacists, one of whom had been involved in the error. We also had the nursing unit director from the floor where the error occurred, the VP of administration, the management engineer and the nursing informaticist who had expertise in barcoding. In addition, two nurses from the floor had agreed to come, but at the last minute were not able to do so. The meeting lasted about an hour and a half and was held toward the end of the shift to allow some people to come in early and others to stay after their shift.

I facilitated the sensemaking session, having participated in the earlier training given by Dr. Dixon. At the beginning of the meeting, I attempted to set a tone of openness. I explained that the intent of the sensemaking session was to educate ourselves on how we do things and more specifically how this error had occurred and I acknowledged that we all make errors including myself. I recalled an error I had made and asked if the others, whom we had arranged in a circle, would be willing to share a personal experience they had with an error and to say something about what it meant to them. Nearly everyone in the circle did so and this beginning proved valuable in demonstrating to everyone present that we were all on equal footing. The beginning also served to introduce those present to each other, which was important because one of our barriers to fixing medication errors has been that people from the floor don’t know many of the people from pharmacy.

I had printed the antecedent events from the causal tree on individual sheets of paper and these were placed one at a time on a wall chart. I explained to the group that this was just our rendition of what had occurred and that what I was looking for was input from them as to the correctness of the items or the sequence. As I placed each component on the tree, the group talked about that item, providing feedback, correcting, and adding new items. I used post-it notes to write additional information or steps. Having the items on individual sheets to be posted and changed proved much less threatening than using PowerPoint. It emphasized the tentativeness of what we had already produced illustrating that it was changeable.

The discussion evolved slowly as the group began to open up. As the meeting continued it became clear to me that the members were really trying to make sense of each other’s reasoning and contributions. Rather than all the questions coming from me, they began to ask questions of each other. For example, one pharmacist asked, “How do you know what medication you’ve put in?” The other pharmacist responded, “I check them off.” The first pharmacist was surprised because he had not been checking them off. Moreover, one of the techs explained that he thought the check meant that the pharmacist had already done a double check, so had not been re-checking those items.

As another example of the openness of the discussion, when I put up the antecedent event that read, “Must first reactivate transfer meds to rehab in computer,” which I had developed from my discussion with one of the pharmacist, the other pharmacist said, “I don’t just reactivate the screen, somebody else enters them all in manually.” So even the pharmacists were discovering differences in how they did things and that often lead to a discussion about which practice was safer.

One of the ways this meeting seemed different from a typical Root Cause Analysis that I have conducted was that the sensemaking meeting had a tone of curiosity, rather than the urgency to get the form completed and the meeting over with. I found myself exploring more in this meeting, trying to get at the staff’s understanding rather than just get the facts. I found myself honestly curious about what happened and did not feel compelled to make judgments. In this meeting, we primarily tried to understand what had happened and to reflect those changes on the causal tree. In the end, I felt great satisfaction knowing that the discussion did indeed go beyond the surface of the event. The casual tree we ended up with added several items including the recovery and in addition, added the causal codes that were useful when we were ready to create our action plans.

In two subsequent meetings, we created an action plan to address the issues we had uncovered in the sensemaking meeting and based on the same incident we conducted four subsequent FMEA meetings. So the sensemaking meeting proved a rich source of understanding for our continuing improvement work. The safety culture re-survey conducted in the pharmacy showed a positive change which, in part, was as a result of the conversation we had in the sensemaking meeting.”

This healthcare example illustrates only one of numerous possible formats for collective sensemaking, but it is illustrative of the role of the convener, how trust is built, the use of drawings or objects, the difference between a sensemaking conversation and a decision making conversation, and of the positive outcomes that can occur.  I describe other examples from organizations focused on technology, finance, oil and NASA in other blog posts:

• Using Collective Sensemaking to Put Caring Back in Healthcare https://www.nancydixonblog.com/2015/05/using-collective-sensemaking-to-put-caring-back-in-health-care.html
• Leveraging Collective Knowledge: NASA’s Constellation Program https://www.nancydixonblog.com/2010/07/leveraging-collective-knowledge-nasas-constellation-program.html
• How to Make Use of Your Organization’s Collective Knowledge – Part 1 https://www.nancydixonblog.com/2011/01/how-to-make-use-of-your-organizations-collective-knowledge-accessing-the-knowledge-of-the-whole-orga.html
• A Book That Will Blow Your Mind About How to Make Use of The Knowledge In Organizations: A Review of An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization
• https://www.nancydixonblog.com/2017/08/a-book-that-will-blow-your-mind-about-how-to-make-use-of-the-knowledge-in-organizations-a-review-of-.html

References

1. Dixon, N. M. Glimpses of Organizations in the Act of Learning. In The Oxford Handbook of the Learning Organization.
2. Laloux, F. (2014). Reinventing organizations: A guide to creating organizations inspired by the next stage in human consciousness. Nelson Parker.
3. Robertson, B. J. (2015). Holacracy: The new management system for a rapidly changing world. Henry Holt and Company.; Sheridan, R. (2015). Joy, Inc.: How we built a workplace people love. Portfolio; Kegan, R., & Lahey, L. L. (2016). An everyone culture: Becoming a deliberately developmental organization. Harvard Business Review Press.; Turco, C. J. (2016). The conversational firm: Rethinking bureaucracy in the age of social media. Columbia University Press.
4. Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations (Vol. 3). Sage.