conversation matters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The conversation architect takes into consideration the following design elements:

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connection Before Content: Meetings That Are Knowledge-based

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



• Share their own mistakes when it would benefit the group



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



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


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

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

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

A Rant on “Are There Any Questions?”

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Don’t Worry About People Feeling Involved in Change

We’ve all heard the management adage, “Involvement is the key to implementing change.” When I’m consulting in organizations, too often I hear that adage framed this way, “The Board needs to feel like they’ve participated in this decision,” or “It’s important that the supervisors feel like they have input into what’s happening to them,” or “We need R & D to support this change so we’d better do something that will make them feel involved.”

These statements are made in good faith by managers trying to do the right thing – yet their language reveals an assumption that, not only do I hear, but that the target of the change effort often hears as well. The assumption is that what’s important is that others “feeling like” they’ve been involved, rather than that others actually are involved. If actually being involved was the goal, then I would hear something like, “I don’t see how we can address this change without the input from the front line – they know about issues we’re unaware of.”

The latter statement implies that the manager sees a need to make use of the collective wisdom of those who will be impacted in order to figure out what needs to be done. Knowledge is the end and involvement is a means to that end. “Feel like” implies that managers already have the answer or knowledge, but want those who will be impacted to think they are involved because that will make them more likely to go along with what has already been decided. Involvement has become the end.

That’s the test - if a manager already has an answer, he’s not involving others, no matter how many town halls or fireside chats he holds. He’s only trying to get others’ compliance by acting like he’s involving others – and it rarely fools anyone.

I learned that lesson many years ago while leading a Great Books Discussion Group. These groups meet once a month to discuss a book that all have read. The fundamental idea of Great Books is that the members have the ability to make sense of what the author is saying. Members don’t come to hear lectures; they come to have a discussion about the meaning of what they’ve read. The leader’s responsibility is to frame the discussion with two or three salient questions. One of the rules is that the leader cannot ask the group to discuss any question that the leader already has an answer to in her own mind.

The reasoning behind that very tough rule is quite sensible because it is close to impossible for any leader to ask such a question in an unbiased way. For me it meant I often had to read the book two or three times to formulate good, unbiased questions. If I, as the leader, violated the rule, I would find myself subtlety steering the group’s discussion toward my own bias and of course everyone in the group recognized what was happening. Framing unbiased and useful questions was great training for designing honest involvement in change efforts.

From that seven year experience of leading Great Books Discussion Groups, I also learned about the power of ordinary people to develop insights and understanding that none of us could have developed on our own, no matter how many times we read the book. If I could frame a good, honest questions, the discussion became a place of insight and alive with the pleasure of learning.

If managers bring people together to address the tough issues they face and if they frame honest questions, those discussions will produce insights that make the value of being involved obvious. There will be no need to worry about those impacted “feeling involved.”

Resistance to Change

I don’t believe in the tooth fairy, big foot, or resistance to change. I have no problem with the idea that sometimes people don’t want to make a change we think they should make, and therefore push back against it. The problem I have is the way the term “resistance to change” causes us to act toward the people who are doing the pushing back.

When we say that a person (or a group) is “resistant to change” we speak of resistance as if it were a characteristic of the person. We imply that something is wrong with them, akin to being “lazy” or “arrogant.” That leads us to think it is something we need to help them get over, perhaps by sending them to training or writing “agility” into the competencies they must display in order to be promoted. And if that doesn’t work, we feel free to write them off as just not worth our effort.

I have not met a person who is characteristically resistant to change. I have met many that push back against a specific change, but on other issues in their life and work they seek out change. Resistance to change is situation specific, not an attribute of an individual or group.

Organizations have somehow been drawn into thinking that resistance to change is a human characteristic. Perhaps, we have been oversold by the consulting industry that their help is vital to deal with the pervasive resistance we will surely face as our organizations change and evolve. I even frequently see articles that start with, “As is well known, people resist change.” But I’ve never seen research to support that claim, rather quite the opposite.

The research I see says human beings tend to seek out new experiences, that curiosity is the characteristic that got us to the moon and expanded our world through the World Wide Web. We are a specie that looks for the novel, the new, and the interesting. No, resistance to change is not a characteristic of human beings. But we do share the characteristic of pushing back against being required to make a change that takes from us something we value, that we perceive will cause us harm, or that just does not make sense to us. Perhaps “self-determination,” if not an innate characteristic, is a least a part of our national character.

There are two reasons I think the ubiquitous use of the term “resistance to change” is, not just inaccurate, but actually harmful.

First, the term lets us off the hook for the responsibility of attending to the concerns of those we are requiring to make a change. It prevents us from having to look too closely at the inconvenience and sometimes heartbreak felt by those we ask to change. It allows us to just write them off as “resistant” and feel ourselves justified.

Secondly, unless we are willing to look closely at what specific harm or stress those who must change experience, we can’t be helpful to them. The stock justifications we offer, “we must all tighten our belts” or “if we are to achieve our projected goals we must transform the way we deal with our customers,” do not address the issues of identity or values that trouble those who must change. If, for example, I am told that the way I have been doing my job, (a job that I know I’m good at and that has been the source of my success) is wrong, then with the change I may lose my sense of competence, perhaps my sense of identity. Those are not inconsequential losses however necessary the change may be to the organization.

We may be completely justified in the changes we impose upon others, but that does not justify insensitivity to the consequence for those who must change. And to deny the outcome of our actions by assigning the problem to the character of those who are impacted, is to employ a euphemism to easy our own discomfort.

The words we use to talk about people have a powerful influence on how we act toward them. It is easy to use a common phrase like “resistance to change” to reference a difficult situation we are facing, but insensitivity to our choice of words can have the unintended consequence of limiting the possibilities we are able to consider for dealing with the complexity of the situation. That is never more true than when we are dealing with change in organizations.

There is a clever limerick that always comes to mind when I think about the unintended consequence of the words we choose.

When the universe began,
God, they say, created man.
Conversely: dancing around the sod
Man, they say, created God
Watch your words or they may do
Something of the same to you.

The Four Room Apartment: Where the Energy is for Change

There is a model of change offered by a Swedish social psychologist, Claes Janssen*, which has always appealed to me, in part because it’s optimistic about the ability of people to change. It’s a simple model for visualizing where the potential energy is in a person, group, department or company – he calls it the “Four Room Apartment.”

Janssen says that each of us lives in a four-room apartment. We move from room to room depending on perceptions, feelings or aspirations triggered by external events. Someone who occupies a room today may, in a week, a month, or a year, have moved to another room of the apartment.

The four rooms Janssen describes are Contentment, Denial, Confusion and Renewal. Janssen says that as we change and develop as human beings, (and I would add as professionals) we continually circle through these four rooms.

In the Contentment room, we like the status quo. We are seen as and feel satisfied, calm and realistic. We are uninterested in attempting improvements or major changes – “If its not broke, don’t fix it.” But we can’t stay in contentment of course or we would never grow. As Sanford says, “Development occurs primarily in response to the challenges of life.” And no one gets through life without continually being presented with new, and often very difficult, challenges. A significant challenge - a merger, reorganization, new leader, new system, market crisis, job threat – can move us out of the Contentment room into the Denial room.

In a sense, people in the Denial room, already have the facts – that’s what they are in denial about. It’s the parent who finds herself still dealing with an adult son as though he were a teenager. Or the manager who, a year after his promotion to the new job, is fighting what everyone else already recognizes, that he has not made the switch from being an engineer to manager. They are, for their own reasons, not yet ready to deal with those facts. From the outside they are perceived as unaware or afraid of change.

When we are in the Denial room and finally acknowledges what we have been hiding from, that doesn’t solve our problem; it only moves us through the door into the Confusion room. Here we are seen as, and feel different, out of touch, scattered, and unsure. We muck about in the Confusion room, sorting out bits and pieces of our lives. Far from a state to be avoided Confusion signifies a readiness to learn. People in the Confusion room acknowledge they don’t have the answer. They have energy to spare; they just haven’t decided where to invest it.

We stay in Confusion until we own up to whatever fear or anxiety is keeping us from committing to the new. That moves us through the door to the Renewal room, and now we are perceived as, and feel, sincere, open, willing to risk. People in Renewal are trying out new practices and ideas. They are open to site visits to see what others have done and looking for articles about the latest innovation. The Renewal room feels like a place full of new converts, ready to put energy into a new path and wanting to convert others to the answer they’ve found.

But of course, over time Renewal subsides. We get comfortable with the new program, lifestyle, or relationship and we find ourselves back in the Contentment room. We have it “all worked out,” we have answers and we function comfortably within them; life is good.

Residing in any room is not a characteristic of a person’s personality; it is rather where they are at this time and in regard to this particular change. In time they will move because we all live in all four rooms.

As leaders or change agents, whose task it is to mobilize energy for a change, we need to work with people in the Confusion or Renewal rooms. In every Confusion room there are people already taking constructive action. They would welcome help to obtain needed resources or to coordinate activities with others. It is they who will carry the initiative forward – if they can be brought together to learn how their initiatives integrate with the whole. The seeds of success are sown in the Confusion room and sprout in the Renewal room.

The people in the Contentment or Denial rooms are not frozen, events will move them soon enough. But to mobilize change people in the Contentment or Denial rooms are not an effective place to spend a lot of energy or time. We need to continue to involve them in meetings with their colleagues, provide them information, but not to make them the focus of our efforts.

All of us need some part of our lives to remain stable especially when other parts feel
like they are in confusion. When professionals are dealing with personal problems like a divorce, birth of a new child, adjusting to a child leaving for college – or when they are dealing with work issues that are disorienting, being passed over for promotion, or failure of a project, they need stability in the other parts of their lives. And sometimes that stability is bought with denial. But when those troubling issues get resolved, then they have the energy to attend to what they had not seen before.

Weisbord writes about Janssen’ theory in Productive Workplaces. Jossey-Bass 1987

Crossing Boundaries - The Un-Town Hall

Crossing Boundaries is a change program at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). At first glance it looks like a typical town hall, but is remarkably different and a hundred times more effective at making change.

The program started when LTG Maples came to the Agency three years ago. In reviewing the latest human capital survey he learned that employees felt they had no ability to provide input into issues, they couldn’t push things up. With the help of the Knowledge Lab (the part of the organization I contract with) he created Crossing Boundaries to address that issue.

Crossing Boundaries takes place in the largest auditorium at DIA, and in typical fashion, LTG Maples is up in front – and there the resemblance to a town hall ends. The meeting starts with Adrian (Zeke) Wolfberg, who heads the Knowledge Lab, putting up a chart to show how many ideas have been offered and how many have resulted in change. By the November 2008 meeting there had been 352 total ideas submitted, 167 ideas had resulted in change (47%); 59 ideas were in progress (17%) and 54 ideas have been withdrawn (15%). A remarkable achievement!

As soon as the accounting is over, employees from across DIA stand up, one at a time, and offer LTG Maples solutions, not problems. And they only offer solutions THEY are willing to take personal responsibility for implementing. LTG Maples listens to the ideas, responds to each one, sometimes with questions, sometimes with comments. There are from 5 – 20 solutions offered at each monthly meeting.

Immediately following the meeting, a group of Knowledge Lab coaches gets in touch with each of the idea submitters to assist them, that is, to help write a business case, open doors, connect to others with a similar idea.

There have been remarkable ideas submitted and equally remarkable changes made by the idea submitters. Many of course are classified, but here are a few of the unclassified examples:

• One idea submitter created a new civilian intelligence reserve where former employees could volunteer to return in support of high priority, ad hoc missions (e.g. crisis response).




• Another employee created a regular communication of “News You Can Use” to the broad agency via an internal Web page that would publicize new analytical tools available to analysts. He gathered a number of volunteers to serve on an editorial board and assess the tools.




• Yet a third employee created a tool linked to badge readers to accurately account for employees known to be in the facility during emergence evacuations.

I asked LTG Maples what makes Crossing Boundaries work as a change program and he suggested three elements (his words in quotes):

• “First we make the results from Crossing Boundaries visible” That happens not only by the tally each meeting starts with, but by employees periodically standing up in the meeting and talking about a project they have completed. Some of the successes are written up for the DIA internal publication. In other words, this is not a suggestion program where ideas disappear into a void never to be heard of again.



• “The Knowledge Lab coaches that provide the help the idea submitter needs.” Idea submitters are not on their own, rather the program builds a support system around them and the coaches track the ideas so they don’t fall off the radar.


Third is the leadership piece, LTG Maples says, “I always try to be there. I see it as my program - a way for me to demonstrate my personal involvement.”
I would add two more to his list of what makes it work:
• LTG Maples’ himself has a remarkable ability to hear the kernel of the idea in what is sometimes a disorganized statement of the solution being offered. Often he paraphrases the idea to check if he has understood - demonstrating greater interest in clearly understanding the employee, than in his own response. The message this sends is subtle but vital to producing the change DIA is trying to achieve. LTG Maples typically expresses appreciation for the idea being offered and for the willingness to help the agency, even when the idea being offered necessarily has harsh criticisms embedded in it. His appreciative language sets a tone in the meeting that encourages a kind of honesty and frankness rarely seen in organizations.


• The insistence that employees only offer solutions that they are willing to make happen themselves. It is this that sends the critical change message - that YOU can change what happens at DIA.

Crossing Boundaries has indeed brought change to DIA, not only the 150 some ideas that have been implemented, but more importantly, the growing belief among employee ranks that it is possible for them to change the agency – that DIA is open to change.

Read more in Crossing Boundaries to Build Change and Crossing Boundaries in Government Executive

Assessments and Lessons Learned

• Assessment of Knowledge Management Programs The critical difference that Common Knowledge Associates brings to KM assessment is the involvement of an internal team as joint researchers. This means the assessment knowledge remains in the organization after the consulting engagement is over, not just in a report, but in the minds of organizational members. Download KM assessment conducted using KM principles

• Assessment of KM initiatives (Communities of Practice, Wikis, Social Networking sites, etc.) to determine the impact those initiatives on the productive work of the organization. See examples of impact assessments conducted by Common Knowledge Associates at the Defense Intelligence Agency Download Intellipedia_Study.pdf (185.4K) and Download A_Space_Study.pdf (276.4K)

• Qualitative Research Studies of Organizational Issues Common Knowledge Associates conducts rigorous studies that provide in-depth understanding of complex organizational issues. See a description of how we conduct Participatory Action Research.

• Lesson Learned Studies Common Knowledge Associates conducts studies of both organizational successes (so the success can be repeated) and organizational failures or missteps. See Learning from Failure

• Harvesting the organization’s knowledge with techniques that guarantee re-use (see article) Faciliated Knowledge Harvesting

View more presentations from nancydixon.

Public Speaking and Conference Planning

I am available for keynotes at public and in-house conferences

My practice with presentations is to talk for a short while and then pose a question to the audience to discuss in small groups, giving them the time to connect what I’ve been talking about to their own knowledge. I then continue the presentation, adding a few more ideas and again provide a question. The average attention span for an adult is 20 minutes. Anything a presenter says after that is lost to memory unless the presenter provides an opportunity for listeners to process the information. Using the talk-then-discuss format, members of the audience retain what they’ve heard because they’ve had the opportunity to put it into their own words in the discussion segments. (See We Learn When We Talk) They also share their own knowledge with others in the audience in a way that coffee breaks just can match. A typical talk with the discussion sections takes about an hour and a half.

Examples of presentations topics:

• KM: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going There is a way that most organizations start up their KM efforts and then a next step they usually take, and so on. This presentation lays out that trajectory but most importantly looks at how leading edge organizations are thinking about knowledge management – “where we are going.” I first made this presentation at the Army KM Conference and then revised it for KM Asia and then again for other smaller venues. It's a helpful way for an organization to think about where they currently are and what next steps they want to take. To get an overview of the presentation read these three blog posts:

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

• How to Learn From Failure – It’s Possible A number of industries have found the secrets of learning from failure, but it takes a great deal more than building a lessons learned database. One of those secrets is to focus on learning from small failures to prevent large catastrophes. That however requires a systematic way to identify small failures. I provide organizational examples for each of the three critical elements. To preview the other elements read Learning from Failure.

• Five Actions Organizations Can Take to Increase Knowledge Sharing This presentation focuses on different ways for enterprises to address knowledge sharing, including building relationships, designing spaces (physical and virtual) that encourage conversation, developing and practicing conversation skills, building knowledge sharing into the workflow, and leadership support of the knowledge sharing message. I first made this presentation at a KM World conference, and it has become my most asked for presentation. You can see some of the ideas at Five Actions Organizations Can Take to Increase Knowledge Sharing.

I assist conference planners to making conferences and retreats more interactive.

It is something of a paradox that most conferences put on to promote knowledge management in an organization provide little opportunity for participants to share or exchange their own knowledge.

Common Knowledge Associates designs meetings, retreats and conferences that facilitate knowledge sharing. I draw on techniques from large group processes including, Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space Technology, Knowledge Café, and Future Search to tailor a design to purpose. Learn more about how I think about assisting conference planners Download Conference planning

Learning in Public

A wonderful thing has been happening in organizations about learning - the idea of learning is shifting from the tradition of “learning in private” to “learning in pubic”. Learning in private was what we all did in school; remember “don’t look at your neighbor’s paper, write your own essay, and no whispering during test taking.” Learning was seen as an individual pursuit, and that attitude carried over to how we thought about learning in the workplace. When employees are rewarded for their expertise there is some need to keep private those things that they do not know.

However that traditional idea is giving way to “learning in public.” In part, we can credit Web 2.0 and the general increase in transparency that it has engendered through social media like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.

But learning in public is also coming about because of the work KM professionals have done in organizations. As KM professionals we have enabled transparency by implementing knowledge sharing processes like peer assist, collaborative workspaces, communities of practice, blogs and wikis. These have made it acceptable to say, “I don’t know” about an issue or problem and to ask others for help. When professionals acknowledge not knowing and reach out to a colleague, it not only opens the requester to learning, it signals to others that they can acknowledge that there are things they don’t know - it begins to change the culture. We see a willingness to “learn in public” among professionals, be they scientists, engineers, analysts, or physicians. We see teams and projects learning in public through AARS and Retrospects. We see whole systems learning in public through practices like appreciative inquiry, knowledge cafes and a host of other whole system processes.

We are also learning in pubic when we engage in in-depth conversation. Elsewhere I’ve defined conversation as: when each person is actively working to understand the meaning the other is trying to convey. To understand another’s meaning often requires us to ask questions about the other’s reasoning, ask for examples, and paraphrase what was said to check if we now “have it.” All of which takes time. So part of learning in public through conversation is a group’s willingness to make a time commitment in the interest of learning and understanding. That’s a change for many groups where the norm has been - when hearing an idea from a colleague, but not quite clear about what he/she is trying to say, just let it go and move on to the next statement. Increasingly I see a willingness to engage in the in-depth exchange that is necessary if we are to create new knowledge together. Conversation is a “learning in public” tool – maybe one of the best.

Thank You for Sharing Your Knowledge

One of the things that has always drawn me to Knowledge Management is that knowledge sharing is essentially an act of giving. And in that sense it brings a bit of humanity and warmth to an organizational setting.

We use the term “share” in two senses, one is to give a part of what I have to you, as in, “let me give you half of my brownie.” The other meaning of share refers not to a possession but to a part of my thinking, as when I share my thoughts, disappointments, or joy. And that too is a gift.

Dave Snowden is fond of saying that “all knowledge sharing is voluntary” and I’m very much in agreement. Even when my organization requires me to share my knowledge by writing it into my performance plan or counting the number of contributions I make to a community, it would be easy for me to run up the count with superficial knowledge. But to take the time to engage with another person in order to understand their need and then respond to it, that is a choice I make - a gift, no matter what the organizational requirement.

I believe we could incrementally increase the amount of knowledge sharing in organizations if we were to be more mindful of saying “thank you” for these gifts. Actually, it would require a bit more than a perfunctory “thank you.” Genuine appreciation would involve letting the person who offered their knowledge know how it had been used and what was achieved because of their insight.

That was brought home to me when I interviewed one of the company commanders for my book, CompanyCommand. I asked Jay Miseli, a tank commander, what caused him to take such an active role in that community. He said that in the past he had used the CompanyCommand website off and on, but did not really consider himself a member of that community. He had, for example, sent in his AAR after being deployed to Iraq and a couple of times had pulled an item off the website that would save him some time. Tony, one of the founders, had been after him to take a more active role in the CompanyCommand community, but Jay had responded to Tony that he was just too busy. He explains,

“Then I got an email from a headquarters Company Commander of a tank battalion in Korea—someone I didn’t know—thanking me. He had downloaded my AAR, and he had used it, not only to influence his organization, but through the chain of command, to influence how the brigade executed their logistics. Then it hit me… “a tank brigade in Korea is going to be better equipped to fight if they’re called—wow!’ I was just floored that a document I wrote had this influence well outside of what I thought of as my relatively small sphere of influence. So, when I got back to the States and Tony hit me again ….I’m like, ‘Yea, I’m on board.”

It has always struck me that what drew Jay in was not the benefit he received from the website, rather it was his realization that what he had contributed made a difference. But how would he have known that without the tank commander in Korea taking the time to let him know?

Often when we have responded to a request in a colleague’s email, we get back a quick, “thanks,” but we seldom learn if it made a difference. Likewise, when we answer a question on a community forum we rarely hear whether the ten minutes we took to write out our response was useful to the question asker.

For most of us our knowledge is an important part of our identity. We highly value the knowledge we have gained through the trial and error of our experience. Too often we treat knowledge sharing as a transaction, when actually it is the much more personal giving of self. A “thanks” is adequate for a transaction, but inadequate for sharing a part of self.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if, rather than encouraging more knowledge sharing, we were deliberate about encouraging more appreciation.

Workshops

• Productive Conversations that change the conversation in the organization resulting in improved knowledge flow between peers and between subordinates and superiors. Download Productive Conversation desc

• Creating a "Speaking Up" Culture - workshop/intervention that shows managers how to develop a culture in which their subordinates willingly and openly offer their ideas, concerns, and challenges – and as willing accept responsibility for moving their unit forward- where they are willing and able to tell truth to power. Download Creating a %22Speaking Up%22 Culture

• Learning Strategies Workshop that train in-house facilitators to implement Peer Assists, After Action Reviews, and Retrospects

• Developing inquiry skills that draw out deep knowledge

A Challenge to KM Professionals to Address Strategic Organizational Issues

As KM practitioners our focus has been on using our skills and techniques to accomplish our organization’s strategic plan or stated objectives. We take our direction from top management and apply our techniques to implement senior management’s objectives.

To date, most of the work we, as KM professionals, have done to meet these goals has been focused on the lateral movement of knowledge. The outcome of the lateral movement of knowledge is performance improvement – often sorely needed improvement. But lateral movement cannot help the organization address its most complex and difficult issues.

The strategic plan and stated objectives of our organizations are themselves a product of knowledge – but knowledge that we, as KM professionals, have not addressed. Until KM professionals address how to use the knowledge of the whole system to influence the direction the whole system should move toward, we are just fooling ourselves about using collective intelligence. We are not using KM to address the most important issues our organizations face.

Recently the question, “Could KM have saved General Motors?” was asked on the SIKM list serve. General Motors had, until a few weeks ago, an outstanding KM program, with a very experienced and skillful person leading it. This program, which made many innovative improvements in how knowledge was shared horizontally and without question saved GM money, did not apply knowledge management to the most serious issues that GM faced and that ultimately brought GM to the brink of bankruptcy.

As with GM, in most organizations, a very small percentage of the collective intelligence is applied against this most critical knowledge task. The small group at the top may be very smart people, but even very smart people have blind spots, biases they are unaware of, and are sometimes tempted to build self-serving strategies - as the many recent organizational failures have taught us. As KM professionals, we are ignoring the people at the top of our organizations and the processes they use to create the strategic knowledge they employ.

We have viewed the top primarily as a source of funding and support – not as a part of the organization that has a critical need to deal with knowledge more effectively. We have not asked, “Where is the top getting the knowledge they use to make strategic decisions? How are they exploring and accessing diverse views? What processes do they use to make sense of the knowledge they acquire? How do they insure that the knowledge that filters up from the bottom is not distorted or diluted?” We need to turn some of our attention to this part of the organization and use our professional knowledge to build practices that use the collective intelligence to create more effective strategies.

There is no lack of knowledge about how to involve the system in collective sensemaking; Future Search, Conference Model, Whole System Change, Open Space Technology, Appreciative Inquiry, etc. all provide proven methodology. But as KM practitioners we have done little to make this happen.

Regardless of whether senior management requests our assistance, KM professionals have the capability to convene the conversation around the complex issues our organizations are facing. We could call for an open space technology meeting on “Our Greatest Strategic Need” or hold a Future Search Conference on “Lesson from our Competitors.” We could copy IBM with an Innovation Jazz on-line forum. We could do a benchmaking study with our most successful competitors. Why do we need top management to demand this or tell us this is what we should do? We are the ones who have read the literature, looked at the case studies, know the examples. We could be the source of the need for change. We could be proactive, not reactive.

I fear we have stayed where it is safe, not where we are needed. We have been good employees, but perhaps not good organizational citizens.

Bio

Dr. Dixon is a researcher and consultant working with clients to understand the impact of change initiatives they have employed. She conducts qualitative studies using in-depth interviews and ethnographic tools. She is the author of eight books as well as over 50 articles that focus on how organizations learn. Books include, CompanyCommand: Unleashing the Power of the Army Profession (with Burgess, Allen, Kilner and Schweitzer), Common Knowledge: How Companies Thrive by Sharing What They Know, HBSP and Perspectives on Dialogue, Center for Creative Leadership.

Dr. Dixon’s consulting company conducts in-depth assessments of knowledge sharing efforts within organizations, e.g. how people are collaborating, sharing knowledge, and making use of lessons learned. She brings extensive research skills to her work from her years as a Professor of Administrative Sciences at The George Washington University in Washington DC.

Recent studies include, Intellipedia, an intelligence Wiki, and A-Space, a Facebook implementation, both studies conducted for the Defense Intelligence Agency. These social media initiatives span the 16 intelligence communities and have had a positive impact on their ability to collaborate with each other.

Dr. Dixon has a comprehensive knowledge of the Intelligence Community and has worked extensively in the Health Care Industry. Recent government clients include The Defense Intelligence Agency, US Army, The Agency for HealthCare Research and Quality, and The Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Corporate clients include, Raytheon, ConocoPhillips, Towers Perrin, Deloitte, British Petroleum, Haliburton and the American Medical Association.

Dr. Dixon is a former tenured Professor of Administrative Sciences at The George Washington University, and served on The University of Texas Human Resource Development Graduate Faculty. Dr. Dixon serves as an Editorial Reviewer for the Human Resource Development Quarterly and as a Member of the Editorial Board for Management Learning and for Action Learning: Research & Practice. She is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Workplace Learning. She serves on the Advisory Panel for Battle Command Knowledge Systems. Her book Common Knowledge was recently selected as one of the best 100 business books.

Conducting a Knowledge Management Assessment

The goal of a Knowledge Management Assessment is to:

1. Assess where the organization is in terms of leveraging explicit and tacit knowledge, collaboration, and the development of new knowledge for innovation
2. Assist the organization in developing a vision of where they need to be, taking into account 1) the strategy of the organization, and 2) the best practice within their industry
3. Work with the organization to develop a road map of strategies to get from where they are to their vision

The critical difference that Common Knowledge Associates brings to a KM assessment is the involvement of an internal team as joint researchers, rather than bringing in an external team to conduct the assessment. The internal team is composed of those whose work and behavior is expected to change – that often means those on the frontline.

Conducting the assessment through an internal team begins the important process of leveraging the organization’s collective knowledge. The benefits to the organization in conducting the knowledge management assessment with an internal team are:

• The knowledge does not leave when the researcher leaves - in-depth understanding continues to resides in the organization
• The internal team conducts 70% of the interview/observations, significantly reducing the cost of assessment for the client
• A greater number of organizational members can be interviewed/observed
• Members of the internal team gain an understanding of the reasoning behind the change effort and are therefore able to influence change from the bottom up
• Suggested changes are more useful and realistic because they are developed by those who do the work

Assessing The “As Is”
The internal team, acting in their role as joint researchers, is involved in data collection, analysis, and the development of findings. This team has wide representation from across the organization, touching all units and levels that are anticipated to be involved in the changes. Dr. Dixon acts as principal researcher, using skills and knowledge developed through her many years as Professor of Administrative Science at the George Washington University. Depending upon the nature of the work, the “as is” assessment may involve interviews, observation, surveys, review of documents and review of intranet sites including content management sites, communities, and social media. In her role as principal researcher, Dr. Dixon designs the assessment so that validity and reliability are preserved. Among these design tasks are:

• Selecting the methodology(s)
• Designing the interview/survey questions and then testing them for ambiguity and clarity
• Constructing an interview/observation protocol to ensure consistency across multiple interviewers
• Training the interviewers/observers in semi-structured interviewing techniques
• Selecting a representative sample of the population
• Conducting a minimum of 30% of the interviews/observations
• Employing qualitative analysis software to analyze the data
• Facilitating joint analysis sessions with the internal team, and
• Developing a report of findings

Because of the involvement of the internal team, by the time the assessment is completed, change has already started to happen. There is a buzz in the organization about the issues and people are trying out changes. For a detailed example of how this works see the post Participatory Action Research.

Constructing the “To Be” - Visioning
Common Knowledge Associates understands that real change, rather than compliance, occurs when employees, whose practices will have to change, are themselves involved in thinking through those changes. Therefore constructing the “to be” picture is again a joint effort that consists of uncovering what knowledge efforts would support the organization’s strategy, but also what is leading edge. Those whose work and behavior will necessarily change participate in exploring “best practices” of other organizations. Common Knowledge Associates selects from a set of collaborative strategies (Peer Assist, Field Trips, Kaizen Blitz, Future Search) to use in developing the “To Be” vision. See an example of Peer Assist at http://commonknowledge.org/page.asp?id=30 and an example of Kaizen Blitz at http://www.nancydixonblog.com/2009/09/if-the-army-can-put-its-doctrine-up-on-a-wiki-youve-got-no-excuse.html

Moving from “As Is” to “To Be” - Roadmap
Once the organization’s knowledge gaps are identified the task is to build a road map from here to there. Identifying the practices, strategies and process that can be put into place to achieve the vision. Many of these will have been identified in the process of developing the “To Be.”

In the experience of Common Knowledge Associates the “To Be” already resides in the organization in bits and pieces – at the fringe, in the cracks, and parasitic on old practices. Using appreciative processes it is possible to locate where the future is already happening within the organization and to build upon those “found pilots.” They offer a great advantage for early successes and quick wins.

The internal team that has collected and analyzed the data now turns their focus to bringing about change in their own units/departments. By this point in the study several people from each of the units/departments have been involved in one or more of the activities of the study and they form an internal group to advocate for change and to be the first implementers of that change. The internal team becomes a valuable source of influence within the organization.

The internal team working with senior management prioritizes the identified strategies for the road map in terms of 1) greatest need, 2) cost, and 3) ease of implementation.

Summary
All three steps of the knowledge management assessment described above make use of the collective knowledge of the organization. Each step involves organizational members, not as subjects to be studied, but as joint researchers and innovators. A basic assumption of knowledge management is that much of the organization’s knowledge resides in the minds of those who are currently engaged in the work. That assumption is evident in the knowledge management assessment process designed by Common Knowledge Associates -it’s a matter of “walking the talk.”