Organizational change, when all is said and done, is the coordinated shift of many individual mindsets. Some present reality gives way to a desired or needed future reality. My colleague Tom Wadsworth refers to this as “making the future present”. It is well documented that change projects face high hurdles and frequently fail. Generally speaking the failure can be attributed to either an insufficient number of people adopting the future (i.e., “making it present”) or to a decay rate where adopters abandon the effort and prevent the effort from hitting the power curve[1].

In a recent conversation with my colleague Gail Severini she posed the question, “What if we could make people hungry for change?” My initial unspoken response was full of doubt. There are simply too many reasons – a good number of them brain-based – that people would fall short of being “hungry for change.” But, I continued to reflect. And as is often the case in conversations with Gail, her question got under my skin and provoked some reflection and thinking about change.

Change provokes deep responses in people, especially if the change is being imposed from without (real or perceived). The greater the threat against the certainty of the present the greater the doubt and fear people have of the future. (That does not imply that the present is satisfying, but it does satisfy the axiom that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.)

Is it possible, then, for people to become familiar enough with the future state of the organization – before the future is actually made present – that they will find it comfortable territory, if not be hungry for it? And, what means are available for generating that familiarity in a real and concrete way? One possibility is the use of experiential learning.

Experiential Learning

Experiential learning is the process of making meaning from direct experience. It lies at the opposite end of the learning spectrum from didactic learning (teacher tells, student listens). It is, simply, learning from experience.

David Kolb’s work on learning styles[2] is well known and respected. He describes four learning styles based on four elements of learning (one of which is experiential learning). The four elements are described as a sequential process (which can start at any one of the four elements):
1. Concrete Experience (feeling) followed by,
2. Reflective Observation (watching) followed by,
3. Abstract Conceptualization (thinking) followed by,
4. Active Experimentation (doing).

Another framework is the Action-Reflection-Learning cycle, developed at the University of Lund in Sweden in the late 1970s, also built around experiential learning. Action is taken, the action itself and the results are the focus of Reflection, Learning is derived from the Reflection, and is tested in the next Action. Between the Learning and the subsequent Action is a period in which goals and related strategies are taken into account. The cycle repeats itself to derive deeper and deeper Reflections and Learning.

Regardless of the model, experiential learning creates the time and space for people to leverage an experience for their own learning. Such an experience can be intentional and designed, and used as the focal point for strategic attention in the organization.

First, however, we will consider the effect of certainty on change in organizations.

Creating Certainty within Uncertainty

The lack of certainty – be that the anticipated loss of certainty in the face of change or the lack of certainty in the present – is a deep driver of anxiety in the change process.

Certainty, and its absence, can also be understood in the context of a brain-based view of change. When the brain perceives a loss or absence of certainty – meant here to mean certainty in the near term, not an immutable guarantee of future – the amygdala responds as if faced with a physical threat, and the fight or flight response is provoked. Neither flight nor fight are favorable to the process of change in organizations.

Fortunately, the brain also has the prefrontal cortex, the so-called executive function, where rational and thoughtful responses to change are processed. What determines which one prevails? Practice.

The Navy SEALs rely heavily on neuroscience in the design of their training programs. They repeatedly put candidates in situations where they have to rely on their prefrontal cortex to overcome the fear generated by the amygdala. While organizational change is not in the same league as a SEALs mission, the perception of the brain to change is.

All other things equal, successful change efforts are a balanced blend between the work of the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. Thoughtful intention, clear thinking, passion, and motivation are components of a planned and well executed change effort. All of this is favored by certainty.

How is this paradox – certainty during times of change which provoke uncertainty – resolved? Would it be possible to give people the chance to become familiar with the change before the change itself takes place, and in so doing increase the level of certainty, and improve the probability of a thoughtful and rational response to change?

The Future Organization as a Blank Canvass

Can people conceive of and experience the future before it arrives? How can we conceive of change as something that is both familiar and yet to emerge? Can people learn from the future as it emerges?

Consider the painter. She has completed a painting, and it hangs for all to see. This painting is the metaphor for the organization as we know it here in the present. Subsequently she sees, in her artist’s mind’s eye, a future painting, and which would be the metaphor for the future organization.

In that moment, she stands before a blank canvass. The entire painting is still in the future. The ideas and colors and shapes are in the painter’s mind’s eye, but the canvass is blank. It is only as brush is put to paint and paint put to canvass that the painting emerges, making the future present.

What is the organizational change equivalent of the blank canvass? And how can brush be put to paint and paint to canvass in a way that engages the imagination of people in the organization?

Serious Games and Organizational Change

Think of the blank canvass as a game. It is a serious game, insofar as it portrays a specific future with serious consequences. This game has been carefully designed, and engages people in exploring the knowledge, skills, thinking, and behaviors that will make the future organization possible, to make the future present.

The serious game is, above all, a means to an end, not the end itself. Its design is carefully planned, and winning the game requires strategic thinking and new mindsets. A good deal of preparation goes into defining and describing the future dynamics of the industry, the business environment in which the organization will compete, the knowledge, skills, thinking, and behaviors that will be required, and the business processes and rules that have to be in place for the organization to survive and prosper, all of which define the learning objectives of the game.

Most importantly, it is the tool for practicing. As with the Navy SEALs, the more people practice for the future, the better they will perform in the future.

The Implementation of Serious Games for Organizational Change

The role and purpose of a serious game exist in a context. The context is introduced by senior leaders as a part of beginning the organizational conversation on change. It is open and transparent, part of the larger preparation for a change effort. Its introduction might sound like this:

Making the Future Present

Three months hence, nothing officially has changed – no announcements about specifics, no consultants, no “sell the future” meetings, no training, no status meetings, no GANTT charts, no Lean initiatives. The status quo has been officially left alone.

Yet, something is changing. New knowledge, skills, thinking, and behaviors are emerging. The status quo is subtly shifting. Through repeated plays of the game, a gap is opening, a feeling of dissonance between the present and the future. People are beginning to explore and experiment. The game has facilitated people moving through the cycle of change before the change has actually taken place.

There are a number of models that describe how people move through change. I favor Scott and Jaffe’s model insofar as it describes the cycle in terms of the past and the future, and in terms of how we interpret the external world and how we think and feel internally.

Serious games invite people to explore. In a game designed to be the future organization, the only thing to explore is the future. The game shepherds people through Denial and Resistance into Exploration. As the future becomes more familiar, a sense of certainty grows.

The Change Effort Itself

Serious games are not a panacea for organizational change. They can serve a necessary lever of change but it is unlikely they are in and of themselves sufficient for the change process. Serious games are a means to an end, not the end themselves.

By the time senior leaders introduce the actual change effort – the end itself – the details are not foreign nor are there unexpected surprises. The serious game serves as a ready made template for change, where the initiatives rolled out in the organization mimic the elements of the game people have been playing for some time.

Rather than having to convince people of the need for change, leaders skip the consumerism approach (gaining “buy in”) and switch to the building block approach, leveraging what people already know about the future into the real changes that make the future present.

The dominant response becomes, “I’ve been here before” rather than being suddenly thrust upon the change cycle, experiencing the acute feeling of uncertainty, and digging into denial.

You Expect People To Play Games Rather Than Work?

A common response to the suggestion of experiential learning is to protest the idea of playing games rather than working. Productivity is a powerful (and important) metric in a lot of organizations, and it takes a direct hit from time spent playing games (and then talking about the results, and what they mean).

But all change efforts have a cost to the organization. No matter what activities people engage in, change always has cash costs (checks written paying for goods and services associated with managing change) and opportunity costs (time spent on acclimating to change rather than on direct labor). If there is an inevitable cost associated with change, direct or indirect, it seems fair to ask, what type of activities produce a favorable response to change?

Future Possibilities

This article concerned itself with the process of change, not its content, nor how that content came to be (an article for another day). It posed the possibility that serious games have a powerful role in organizational change efforts. Senior leaders collaborate with serious game designers to produce a game that embodies the future organization. The game elicits the knowledge, skills, thinking, and behaviors that will be required of people if the desired and needed future is made present.

As people play the game, the future becomes a familiar place. The organizational canvass is still blank, but the lines and colors and shapes of the future painting are emerging in people’s minds, and are positioned to become new mind-sets. When the actual change effort begins, people have a sense of certainty – familiar ground where the new rules are known, and a certain amount of knowledge, skill, thinking, and behaviors required of people are already in place (or at least the foundation has been cast).

Serious games are emerging as a powerful tool in corporate settings. Fast Company’s article on serious games[2] cited applications in healthcare, education, and the military industries, and mentioned companies such as Hilton Hotels, Cisco, and Alcoa. They are an emergent innovation in change management that leverage all of the same important attributes as simulation with the powerful added dimension of making it fun and social.

Visit Basic Business Simulations designers and developers of Serious Games for Learning.

NOTES
[1] The power curve occurs when the growth curve of adoption becomes exponential and gains the power and the momentum to pass through the point where more than half of the people have made the future present. Thereafter the curve seeks out an implicit goal of the last person who will adopt, making the future fully present.
[2] Image from Clara Davies, http://www.ldu.leeds.ac.uk/ldu/sddu_multimedia/kolb/static_version.php
[3] http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2008/07/serious-games.html

Related post: Thinking from the future as it emerges

Some of the best conversations we experience seem to emerge spontaneously, focus on a theme or topic that quickly captures our interest and resonates with our minds and our hearts. The experience can be soulful, a sense of spiritual joining of people on a plane not commonly accessed.

Is it possible to have those conversations and access that spiritual joining by intention and through practice? What are conditions that make such dialogues possible? Are there practices or approaches that can reliably draw people into heart-full and mind-full speaking and listening? Can such a conversation be scheduled for Thursday morning at 10 AM?

What Is Really Happening During Deep Conversations?

The questions I am sure have many possible answers. One – which may be a distillation of several possible answers – is a cycle of deep listening, reflection, and speaking, where each person is primarily interested in listening to the thoughts and feelings of others and secondarily interested in speaking their own thoughts and feelings. When they do speak from their own thoughts and feelings they are offering a reflection on what they have heard and felt rather than starting from their own world view that they habitually download.

In my own experience the chatter of self talk quiets or even ceases. So intense is the attention paid to others that I lose the need and the desire to give voice to my own thoughts. Not only am I content to listen, I can feel a palpable excitement around the possibility that I am about to gain access to an insight that might not have otherwise come along.

Conversations By Design

The challenge it seems to me is to create the cycle of deep listening, reflection, and speaking as a matter of intentional design. I refer to this as a dialogue protocol. They are conversational “rules of engagement”. A protocol is in simple terms a set of rules that guide the conversation.

As an example, a protocol for a conversation that hopes to reveal some creative ideas might be Once Around, Uninterruptible followed by Open Conversation. Each person in the conversation offers comments which cannot be interrupted by anyone else. After each person has spoken the conversation is open and it will flow to wherever it flows.

At a minimum it delays one common enemy of creative thinking, the tendency to jump in and judge the merit of an idea before it has been explored, before idea scaffolding has been given a chance, where each idea is used as a stepping stone to the next.

Brief History of Protocols

My colleague Cheryl Barker and I attended the NeuroLeadership Conference in 2008 in New York. Upon her return she began to explore how meeting agendas might be improved. She and her colleagues at Neundorfer (a pollution control company in Northeast Ohio) developed the concept over a period of months. Included for each of the agenda items was a protocol. In simple terms it laid out the expected unfolding of conversation for that agenda item.

For sharing information the protocol was Presentation. For converging on a decision the protocol was Preference or Acclimation. The intent of the protocols was to ensure all voices were heard (that wished to be heard; anyone could say “pass”).

Can Rules Lead to Freedom?

Such was my introduction to dialogue protocols. Their appeal to me personally centered on their ability to slow my thinking down and delay my tendency to draw conclusions about the thoughts of others before I have given them their just due.

Is bringing orderliness to a conversation a real and feasible stepping stone to the conversations I described above? While the protocols measurably improved the quality and the productivity of meetings, they did not seem to reliably lead to that deeper exchange that signals the joining of minds, hearts, and souls. (The agenda item itself was a factor; a final decision is more analytical than it is creative.)

Was the failure an indicator that protocols (rules) were not the way in, or could it be that the protocols needed to be developed to a greater degree?

A Dive Into Synergy and Collaboration

Cheryl Barker introduced me to Nancy Klein’s book, “Time to Think.” It is an excellent read; I recommend it to everyone. At the heart of the book is the question, can we get people to do better thinking if we fail to make the time and the space for thinking?

Concurrent with this I was exploring the possibility of a major writing project with two colleagues. We had a number of discussions around synergy and collaboration, more at the level of responding to the spirit and energy of the words than taking the time to actually answer the question, What does that really mean for each of individually and all of us together?

As we discussed the words, I repeatedly referred to thinking, as in synergistic thinking, collaborative thinking. I had it in my mind that what I sought was at a deep level, where thoughts are formed, memories were accessed and recombined into new thoughts and ideas. But, I never really found the words to paint the picture I had in mind, that intimate weaving of thoughts and ideas, and it proved to be a frustrating experience for all of us.

Having failed to reach some meeting of the minds on the meaning of synergy and collaboration, it is no surprise that we had very divergent opinions on the practice of synergy and collaboration. For one of us it was presenting a reasonably well formed idea to the other two and soliciting responses. While that was certainly more collaborative then simply embarking on a solo effort, it struck me as more of a negotiation than collaboration and synergy. It was also far from the partially formed, ill-described idea of synergy and collaboration with which I was struggling.

The Place of Synergy and Collaboration: Dialogue versus Thinking

I started to have doubts about my own assumptions. I started to lean into the possibility that it might be more a question of dialogue than thinking. Since we each had our own separate brain, failing a Klingon mind-meld it was unlikely that our neuronal thinking processes could be physically combined.

Dialogue on the other hand (the outward and audible manifestation of thinking) was something that took place in common space and time, and could be joined through listening and thinking. And that returned me to the idea of a protocol as a means to an end. If we could have a conversation that sounded like the one in my head, even if we had to hammer it into place, I thought my colleagues could experience what I was failing to verbally communicate, and the way forward would be a bit more accessible to all of us.

The Challenge of Dialogue

At the same time I was seeking a concrete entry point into synergistic and collaborative dialogue, one of us, Gail Severini, had been doing thinking around openness in organizations. She was (and is) very interested in understanding what conditions were necessary for this to happen, and what type of dialogue might be possible if and when it was achieved. This struck me as a framework highly compatible with synergy and collaboration.

It seemed to me that the primary challenge was decreasing the time that each of us spends with our own thoughts and increasing the time we are fully present to the thoughts of others. To that end I proposed a dialogue protocol to my colleagues for an upcoming conference call scheduled to discuss an article that John Barbuto (the third colleague) had written. We were at a crossroads, where we had to declare the path we intended to follow for thinking and writing. (This was not a rigid decision, more akin to saying, from here forward we are headed roughly east, at least making clear that north, south, and west were no longer on the table of possibilities.) They agreed with some hesitation and doubt.

Digging Deeper into Dialogue Protocols

The dialogue protocol unfolded this way.

1. Time to Think
This did not assume that no one had done any thinking prior to the call and needed a few minutes to catch up. Rather, it was explicit time to synchronize the prefrontal cortex with the amygdala. So, facts were synchronized with feelings. There was actual silence during the call.

2. Possibilities, Once Around, Uninterrupted, No Discussion
Each in turn briefly shared her/his view of the future possibilities that s/he had derived from John’s article. Brief meant brief, favored by having taken time to think. Each of us was expected to distill everything down to as few words as possible. This was discipline as well as creativity.

3. Time to Think
Time for each of us to think about the possibilities others had contributed. This was a reflection. There was actual silence during the call.

4. What I Find Interesting, Once Around, Uninterrupted, No Discussion
This was a “shift” exercise. As an example, I spoke to John about what I found interesting in his possibilities, John spoke to Gail about what he found interesting in her possibilities, and Gail spoke to me about what she found interesting in my possibilities. The protocol prevented me (as an example) from speaking my own thoughts without continuing to be present to the thinking and feelings of John (and the same for each in turn).

5. Time to Think
Another reflection. Each reflected on what her/his dialogue partner found interesting. This was not a compare and contract with one’s own original possibilities. It was thinking centered completely on what her/his dialogue partner found interesting. There was actual silence during the call. (While a reflection is obviously our own thoughts, the intent was to push each of us to center our thinking on what someone else had contributed to the dialogue, as opposed to our own default position on the idea.)

6. The Gift Received, Once Around, Uninterrupted, No Discussion
Each of us in turn shared the gift they received in what her/his dialogue partner found interesting. (The order was the reverse of #4; John shared the gift he received from me, Gail from John, and I from Gail.) This was also designed to keep each of us centered in the thoughts of another person. (Similar to above, while any articulation of a gift received was obviously our own thoughts, this protocol also kept each of us anchored in the thoughts of the other. In order to complete this protocol, each of us had to remain present to our dialogue partner.)

7. Time to Think
Another reflection, on the gift received. This was actual silence during the call.

8. Open Discussion

The Outcome

I think everyone found a rule based conversation odd to some degree. It was considerably different from a free flow conversation where anyone can express any idea in any order that seems logical to that person. There were murmurs of approval mixed with hesitation. It seemed to approach a new dialogue without actually arriving.

For me, it at least allowed a glimmer of what I had in mind to show through.

Was the Dialogue Protocol Effective?

Short-term, it is likely that dialogue protocols can feel confining, even counter productive. Having spent a good deal of time designing and imagining this protocol inside my head, the periods of silence seemed very long to me. The lack of familiarity with the protocol likely dampened dialogue to some degree.

Long-term, it seems to me that the promise of dialogue protocols is when written rules are internalized as habit, when taking time to think and being fully present to another person become normal and routine ways of having dialogues and being in conversation with each other. The overt sense of “rules of engagement” gives way to the normal and routine manner in which people engage each other’s feelings and thoughts.

Future Possibilities

The future possibility, for me, is a reliable way to have conversations that matter on a routine basis. This doesn’t mean that every dialogue has to be structured; there is much to be said for completely spontaneous conversations that flow where they flow and the point of departure and the destination take on less importance than the journey.

Notwithstanding, in the course of work we have to eventually be about the business of the business, and to make forward progress on that front in a more productive and meaningful way is very attractive to me.

I invite others to develop and try dialogue protocols, experiment with them, share their experience, and work toward enriching dialogue (by this or any other approach).

I started using this phrase, “thinking from the future as it emerges”, in conversation with colleagues. Recently one of them said that while she had an inkling of what it might mean, she did not really know, describing herself as sitting back, waiting for the meaning to take shape for her. Her comment set me to explore what the phrase really means, why I am using it, and what I mean to communicate.

Otto Scharmer

I lifted the phrase from Otto Scharmer. In his book, “Theory U”, he refers to “leading from the future as it emerges”. I had substituted thinking for leading, and left the rest of the phrase in tact.

Scharmer’s book is about transformational change in leaders (as persons) that will enable and ready them to meet their existing challenges. In order to do that, Scharmer writes, leaders have to learn how to operate from the highest possible future rather than being stuck in the patterns of past experiences.

He describes this as operating from a deeper state, a deeper process, and being pulled into an emerging possibility and operating from that altered state rather then simply reflecting on and reacting to past experiences (which he refers to elsewhere as “downloading”).

The key element in being able to do this (here he uses the word able in its meaning of “ability or capacity to”) is to become aware of a profound blind spot in leadership and in every day lives.

The blind spot for Scharmer is the place within or around us where our attention and intention originates. It is the place from where we operate when we do something, what Bill O’Brien, the former CEO of Hanover Insurance, calls the “interior condition”. The reason it is blind, Scharmer writes, is because it is an invisible dimension of our everyday experience in social interactions. (I might paraphrase this as finding nothing interesting about normal and as a result, spending very little time reflecting on normal.)

He uses the example of an artist, offering three perspectives:

• We can look at the painting after it has been created (the thing).
• We can look at the painting during its creation (the process).
• We can look at the painting before its creation (the blank canvass or source dimension).

The blank canvass or source is the future (i.e., the painting) emerging in the mind’s eye of the artist.

Extrapolating from the example, Scharmer notes that we can look at what leaders do, we can look at how leaders do what they do (processes), or we can look at the leader’s work from the blank canvass point of view.

Shifting From Painting to Thinking

We leave Scharmer here, reluctantly, for having opened his book after some time I am reminded of the mastery and majesty of his work. With the above as a working analogy, what is “thinking from the future as it emerges”?

If we replace painting with thinking, thoughts after they have been created (the thing) reside in our brains as memories and may be communicated to others. Thinking during creation (the process) is a complex neurological process. For now, I’ll describe it in limited fashion as the recombination or reordering of information stored in memory and/or learning (as in something new). These thoughts are written to the brain as memories or rewritten in the case of memories that already exist. That cycle repeats itself hundreds if not thousands of times a day.

I am most interested in the third, the blank canvass. What is thinking before its creation? What is the mind’s eye of the thinker? What is the blank canvass of our brain? What is the source we are tapping into when we are in a state of “no thinking” (when the canvass is blank). What gives us access to the blank canvass of thought, and what do we do with it once we get there? Most importantly, how do we identify our blind spot?

In seeking to understand “thinking from future as it emerges”, I am most drawn to the idea of “operating from the highest possible future” in the sense of operating from a deeper state, a deeper process. Being pulled into an emerging possibility and operating from that altered state rather then simply reflecting on and reacting to past experiences resonates with me as a seminal insight, what the Quakers might refer to as “opening way”.

Some Guiding Questions (taken from Scharmer)

1.What is thinking before its creation, the mind’s eye of the thinker, the blank canvass of the brain?

It occurred to me that there is a common term for this – zoning out. What is the neuroscience of zoning out?

A group of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the University of California Santa Barbara, led by Jonathan Smallwood and Kevin Brown, describe zoning out as the brain’s “offline mode”. Their “decoupling hypothesis” posits that the brain decides that nothing too interesting or too threatening is happening near by and cuts the connection between our inner and outer worlds[1]. They conclude that the decoupling hypothesis “suggests that the capacity for spontaneous cognitive activity depends upon minimizing disruptions from the external world”.

Could this be the blank canvass? I do not know, and I suspect a lot more research is needed to draw that conclusion. But it does open the door to a feasible way of understanding thinking before its creation and the mind’s eye of the thinker.

2. What is the source we are tapping into when we are in a state of “no thinking”?

One read of Smallwood and Brown suggests that creativity and imagination may be enhanced. When external stimuli are shut out, and the brain does not have to concern itself with safety, we are free to follow our thoughts where they go, float along, with no care for point of departure, destination, direction, or speed.

Does this lead to what we know as the “eureka moment”, the insight or creation or innovation that seemingly appears from nowhere? As above, I do not know, but it seems to be at least a plausible, working conjecture.

3. What gives us access to that source?

Smallwood and Brown (above) described the brain going into “offline mode” spontaneously. Can it planned? Can we schedule a time to go offline? Can we create the conditions in which the brain concludes it need not be present to the external world?

Well, we know zoning out happens, we know the circumstances, and we know the neurological mechanism.

In my own personal experience (n=1 for all you statisticians and scientists) powerful questions give me access to my source. Powerful questions can open way into parts of my source I had not yet unpacked. As I have written before, powerful questions are personal, ambiguous, and anxiety provoking. (Read Article on Powerful Questions) I have experienced very brief moments of zoning out in the immediate response to a powerful question.

Can those moments be extended? Can zoning out and being present to a group of colleagues thinking together be combined? It appears on the surface to be self-contradictory. I do not know, but I am struck by the possibility.

4. What is thinking from the highest possible future?

I often complain that bench marking is the guarantee of mediocrity. It dulls the mind and consigns the questions “why?” and “what if?” to the compost pile. Once a benchmark is declared, everyone in the industry aims to operate at the benchmark. Assuming they are all successful, when every company arrives to the benchmark, they are all operating at the same level, which by definition is the mean, which by definition is average.

And what of the company that was marked as the holder of the benchmark in the first place? Do you think they are still operating at that level?

I have always been far more interested in the thinking that created the breakthrough for the company that became the benchmark than in the benchmark itself. I have always wanted to know, how did they approach thinking in such manner that they were able to breakthrough established ways of doing things, and leapfrog into very different futures?

In the realm of thinking, proceeding forward from what is known strikes me a form of bench marking. When viewed from the vantage point of time, the results are actually a regression to a past point that once was a good idea. By the time the inquiry is done, the idea that was good is older yet, and its relevancy is at risk. It completely fails to point into a desired or possible future. It serves to anchor us in the past.

What is the highest possible future? That is a very personal question. The answer for one may be the “unanswer” for another. It does suggest that risk is involved. There is nothing safe about aiming for the highest point imaginable. Such effort, if successful, invites scrutiny, and possibly lots of it. It risks upsetting the status quo. The messenger might be confused with the message and find her or himself shipped off to Coventry.

One’s highest possible future requires a declaration of possibility. It requires putting a stake in the ground, aiming high, and pressing hard. If such action earns one the enmity of others, hurdles have to be overcome and prices paid to stay the course. It is a matter of settling for nothing less that one’s personal best. Every time. There is no rest.

5. What is the deeper state of emerging thought?

Daryl Conner speaks about what really matters. That is also a very personal place to go. To do so we have to take inventory. Who am I? What is my purpose? With what resolution will I make my mark upon the planet? We have to face the question, “Why bother in the first place?” as a matter of assessing its deep meaning to us. Are we marking time and following, or cutting trails into future possibilities?

This is heavy lifting. We have to do what we have to do to get there, continuously find ways to improve our tools for breaking through, and we have to help each other.

That, for me, is the deeper state.

6. What does it mean to operate from that altered state?

Jeffery Shwartz and Henry Stapp describe “attention density”, where intention and attention are so intensely applied that we hold onto questions and explore their meaning for long periods of time. It includes exercises such as asking a question, answering it, then asking it again, and repeating that cycle many times. Each cycle takes us deeper into our source and creates an altered state, where we are willing to stick with “why?” and “what if?” for extended periods of time, deferring “how?” for another day.

Future Possibilities

A number of the above questions ended with other questions. So a lot more thinking and inquiry around “thinking from the future as it emerges” is needed. I welcome other people’s thinking on this, whether their knowledge supports or refutes the thinking I have done thus far.

[1] Described in detail in Pupillometric Evidence for the Decoupling of Attention from Perceptual Input during Offline Thought by Smallwood, Brown, et al., retrieved 2011.10.09 at URL: http://tinyurl.com/3t57ufu.

My thinking in the last several years has focused on how the routine and ordinary conversations in organization affect their willingness and ability to see the future different from the past. These conversations are based on recurring themes (frequently repeated conversations or stories that reinforce “this is the way we do things around here”) and common vocabulary (words or phrases that occur frequently and which have a strong and pointed meaning in the organization).

One such phrase, “resistance to change”, is well-established in the lexicon of managers, leaders, and consultants. (Google Scholar returned 82,700 results, 7,500 in the last year alone.) It typically refers to followers who fail to readily adopt new ways of thinking or doing. It strikes me that labeling people who are slow to adopt a new idea as resistant is to cast them as a force to be overcome, as if they were the enemy or villains.

Enemies and villains are people to be conquered and subjugated. They are expected to pay a price for their opposition. After they have been subdued they are regarded with a wary eye. Trust is out of the question. Constant supervision and vigilance is required. Their good will is always suspect.

Is this healthy, to see followers as the enemy for no other reason than that they have a different opinion or preference or belief, or questions about what change means to them? If so, how do leaders simultaneously think of followers as allies in producing goods and services for customers and as a cohort that must be conquered or overcome in some way? So which is it – friends, or foes?

My Opinion, Your Attitude

Resistance to change is often associated with another phrase, a somewhat damning one, where resisters are accused of having a “bad attitude”. The phrase can be understood on many levels but its connection to “resistance to change” further deepens the divide between leaders and followers.

In order to name an attitude, it is the world view of the leader (not that of the follower about to be labeled) that is hard at work. It requires the leader to process spoken words or observable behaviors and interpret them in some way.

It is the interpretation to which the leader gives voice but without any corresponding sense of ownership or accountability. Rather, the leader’s opinion is assigned to the follower in the form of an attitude. This is an action of a weak leader who lacks any sense of the difference between thinking “I am cause” and thinking, “This is what happened to me.”

Such thinking is injurious to leaders, followers, and to the organization as a whole.

(Claiming a follower has a “good attitude” is the same process – it is still the leader’s opinion projected on the follower as fact without any sense of ownership or accountability.)

Unpacking Resistance

Dictionaries are useful for clarifying meaning. Looking up “resistance” reveals the following that are related to social systems:

Definitions [1]
1. the act or power of resisting, opposing, or withstanding.
2. the opposition offered by one thing, force, etc., to another.
5. ( often initial capital letter ) an underground organization composed of groups of private individuals working as an opposition force in a conquered country to overthrow the occupying power, usually by acts of sabotage, guerrilla warfare, etc.

Synonyms
1. opposition, obstinacy, defiance, intransigence.

The above suggests that resistance is an active choice. It requires one to have given some thought to a situation or issue, to have concluded that it is not in their best interest, and to actively campaign against the situation or issue as a worthy and honorable endeavor. It communicates a hardening of position, the opposition of forces. It seems reasonable to conclude that anyone who is not adopting new ways of thinking and doing must have, in fact, actively made such a conscious decision. It seems reasonable and logical to label the person a resister.

Unpacking Doubt

Labeling someone a resister has a chilling effect on a leader – it removes the possibility of thoughtful and reflective conversation as a means of forward progress. As resisters, followers must simply be overcome. This can happen through brute force or by reliance on consumerism leadership, in which the leader sells the future and seeks buy-in from followers.

What happens if people who exhibit or demonstrate some slowness in adopting new ways of thinking and doing are viewed as having doubts rather than engaging in resistance?

From the dictionary:
Verb (used with object)
1. to be uncertain about; consider questionable or unlikely; hesitate to believe.
2. to distrust.
3. Archaic . to fear; be apprehensive about.
4. to be uncertain about something; be undecided in opinion or belief.
Noun
5. a feeling of uncertainty about the truth, reality, or nature of something.
6. distrust.
7. a state of affairs such as to occasion uncertainty.
8. Obsolete . fear; dread.

The above meanings are quite the contrast to those for resistance. They open an entirely new set of possibilities that can be explored by leaders and followers. It frames a conversation of mutual regard, one that holds the deep assumption that some reconciliation of ideas can and ought to be achieved, the opportunity to “move along in thought” in the words of Henry Real Bird, the poet laureate of Montana.

Doubt is something than can be explored as colleagues. Two parties can have the same goals, have doubts, and still work as colleagues in pursuit of reaching those goals. Two parties can have different goals, have doubts, and still work as colleagues to create common ground (where none existed).

Leaders frequently expect commitment from followers without giving followers the latitude to discuss any doubts they might have about the future. This is paradoxical – if there are no doubts, no commitment is required.

Imagine that you have a task for which you have the money, time, people, experience, knowledge, equipment, information, materials, and skills that might be required, all in unlimited supply. Save for remembering to begin, how much commitment is required? None, for a successful outcome is guaranteed.

It is only when any of the above is in short supply that people need commitment to work though obstacles and to deliver a successful outcome. Resources in short supply raise doubt about the outcome, about the future.

Future Possibilities

Peter Block asks, “If we cannot say ‘no’ (which is a form of expressing doubt) then what does ‘yes’ mean?”

Expressing doubt is a way of clarifying role, needs, and expectations in the context of vision and mission. Genuine commitment begins with doubt, and “no” is a symbolic expression of people finding their space and role in the strategy. It is when leaders fully understand what followers do not want that they can fully design what they want. The option to say no and pass is the foundation for commitment.

Expressing doubt is not about hijacking the future. Nor is it done in the expectation of guarantees that followers (and leaders themselves for that matter) will receive exactly what they want. Expressing doubt is a deep expression of integrity and honesty, and a gift to leaders and followers alike. The leadership task, writes Block, is to surface doubts and dissent without having an answer to every question.

Block poses some questions to assist leaders in surfacing and exploring doubt. These questions are considered by leaders and followers alike.

• What concerns about the future do you want to talk about?
• What is the “no” that you have been postponing that impacts your choice of the past or the future
• What is the “yes” that has lost its meaning that impacts your choice of the past or the future?
• What is the forgiveness that you have been withholding that may stand in the way of choosing the future?
• What is the resentment that you have that no one knows about that impacts your choice for the future?

How would change in organizations be different if leaders inquired into the doubts people have about the future rather than cast them as enemies of the future? What conversations would be created? What conversations would cease?

[1] (From Dictionary.com Unabridged, Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2011.)

Post-script, 2011.10.05: I just came across the following from my colleague Tim Soden, who I consider to be a wise person. “I believe that if I use a label to assert that someone is resisting me I am sabotaging myself by limiting my personal abilities after all ‘what we resists persists’.”

One of us expressed the desire to know more about how people in the field are thinking about organizational change at present. When I inquired about how such information would be used, he expressed the desire to make a connection to current thinking as leverage for engaging people in reading and thinking about a breakthrough way of thinking.

I experienced a feeling and a thought. The feeling was a bit of unease. This feeling always signals to me that something inside of me has yet to be unpacked, or that my personality (which favors things be exactly the way they should be) was asserting itself in an unhealthy way. The thought was, the more time we spend thinking about the present, the more it will influence our thinking about our breakthrough theory. And that drew me to the question, can we ever unthink what we know?

On Breakthrough, Leapfrog Thinking

I told my colleagues that I was interested in spending every bit of my time, energy, and thinking on that uncommon, breakthrough, leapfrog future, and had no interest in doing any thinking about the present for three reasons. One, simple math says that if we hope to produce this breakthrough thinking by some certain date, total available time is a constant, and the greater the fraction we spend on the present, the lesser the fraction we spend on the future. Two, I opined that every time we made any rigorous inquiry into the present we would be diluting the possibility of achieving breakthrough future thinking. Three, the more we think about the present, the more we anchor the present in our brains. All the energy that goes into thinking about the present becomes a tether to the present (which quickly becomes the past).

So, is it possible to unthink what we have already thought to clear our thinking for the future?

It strikes me that the question can be answered in (at least) two parts. The first is a brain-based answer and the second is a “thinking as a process” answer.

Is It Possible to Unthink: A Brain-Based Answer

Thinking, for me, falls into two large buckets. The first is thinking about what we already know. This is “sitting in a dark room with the thoughts I already have piecing them together in possibly new ways or at least going over them in some order”. The second is thinking that is a response to learning or discovery. This is when what we did not know becomes known. That does not mean it is entirely new knowledge; it may be an expansion of what we know or a new perspective on what we know. Nevertheless, it is some addition to what we already knew.

(I am neither a neurologist nor a neuroscientist. For now, I will rely on my understanding of the work of Lila Davachi, PhD of New York University and her research on memory. What follows is an extremely brief summation of how memory works (so brief that it is sure to have gaping holes but should suffice for the purpose of this article) and is limited to encoding memories, the role of the hippocampus, and generating (retrieving) memories.)

The brain records what we learn as memories. Long-term memories are encoded into the brain and from that moment forward sit around waiting to be retrieved (which, depending on the circumstances of their encoding, could be a lonely life). In between we retain them to various degrees.

Memory encoding is enhanced by several things: paying attention, working with information, organizing and generating information, distribution of practice (intervals of repetition), and context. In general, the greater the activation of the hippocampus, the more successful the memory formation. In general, the greater the emotion connected to an event, the greater the activation of the hippocampus. Memory retrieval actually plays a role in strengthening existing memory (by rewriting the memory in the brain). So, taken as a whole, the more you work with what you already know, the more the memory is strengthened.

All of this, it strikes me, suggests that the time we spend in animated thinking about what we already know (or expanding what we already know) has an inverse effect on encoding new memories that will be the stuff of breakthrough ideas for the future. So, in terms of leapfrogging into the future, the brain can be your friend at the same time it is your enemy. While retention of memory can fade with inattention and lack of retrieval, the physical brain cannot unthink what we already know (i.e., memories already encoded).

Is It Possible To Unthink: A Thinking as a Process Answer

Retention, then, may be a lever for unthinking insofar as the ability to retrieve a memory decreases as the time between retrievals of a memory increases. The brain is decently efficient in that regard. Davachi notes that as the time between attempts to retrieve a memory increase, the more the brain is inclined to send the memory to the “no need to keep this one on hand” bucket, giving the impression that the memory no longer exists.

What might favor such a “loss of memory”? Exciting the hippocampus and generating powerful new memories that create deep grooves in the brain will in time command more of the brain’s attention than memories that receive decreasing attention. Holding on to those new memories through frequent and emotional retrieval can create what Jeffrey Schwartz and Henry Stapp describe as “attention density”. And what favors such new powerful new memories? Conversations that draw our attention to future possibilities through powerful questions that create a deep shift in the way the brain works to answer the questions.

Powerful questions have three attributes. They are personal, ambiguous, and anxiety provoking. (See the article on Powerful Questions for more on this.) Taken together they make it difficult for the brain to quickly download easily accessible memories and serve them up as quick answers to the questions. Powerful questions make us pause and think again for the first time.

If the heart of the question says that problem solving the past is not on the table as a viable topic, what is left but to begin a deeper inquiry into the “Why?” of things, and in so doing discover the non-obvious and the uncommon. If the heart of the question rules out a better understanding of current ways of thinking around organizational change, what is left but to shift to ask “What if?”. Such is the stuff of breakthrough thinking and leapfrogging into the future.

Future Possibilities

It is neurophysiologically naive of course to think that even powerful questions and engaging conversations do not draw on already formed memories. The brain is quick to call a bluff. Through powerful questions we can access those memories as springboards for imagining how current mental models might give way to future possibilities – uncommon insights into new ways of understanding change in organizations. Such is the stuff of newly formed memories that combined with chosen accountability and ownership may open way into futures different from the past.

So, is it possible to unthink what we already know? The answer is mixed. The brain may say “yes” or it may say “request denied”. But as a matter of intention we can always choose to focus on breakthrough thinking and leapfrogging. As a matter of choice we can put our attention on that intention. We are continuously rewriting our memories based on what we give our attention to. And we always give our attention to our intentions, whether those intentions are actively articulated or passively allowed to frame our actions.

With it has come consumerism leadership and the ubiquitous practice of getting buy-in from followers. How ought we understand and put into perspective a mindset of leadership based on consumerism?

Selling

Marketing and advertising fuel consumerism. Sellers rely on stories designed to tickle the brain to light up with pleasure, either real, perceived, or expected.

Sellers frequently claim they seek a win-win relationship. A critical assessment of the claim must address the issue of which party defines winning. It is always the seller, never the buyer. Sellers have to close the sale to win, otherwise they lose. Sellers do not receive rewards for sales not made. The definition of win-win can only be understood through the lens of how the seller must win, not through the lens of how the buyer might win.

Selling is not, inherently, a transparent process. It requires a story favorable to the seller. Can you think of an advertisement or sales pitch that encouraged you to carefully consider whether the purchase was really necessary? Have you ever been pointed to a competitor’s product with the hint that it might be better for you?

The Mindset of the Leader as Seller

The overarching mindset of the seller is closing the deal; it is the only way the seller can keep her/his job. A seller’s patience and skill does not change that mindset.

This is likewise true for the consumerism leader. Selling to followers requires a basic indifference to their desires and needs. A key element of selling, no matter how artfully practiced using psychology and brain research, is overcoming objections. There is one and only one goal – make the sale. Helping others has little or nothing to do with selling, despite claims to the contrary. You can test this the next time you are the target of a sales pitch – say to the seller, “My needs and desires would be better met by passing on this offer, thank you” and observe the response.

Buying

It has become patriotic to make one’s contribution to the well-being of others by over-spending as much as possible. We’ve been conditioned to respond to advertising and to behave as responsible consumers. Effective messages convince the soul and the mind that it is possible, and desirable, to reward oneself and contribute to the nation by transacting one simple purchase. By extension, followers are encouraged to believe that they are likewise contributing to the best interests of the organization when they buy-in.

The Mindset of the Follower as Buyer

People know when they are being sold. Followers can discern that in a leader, it often being easier to do so in the workplace. The reliance on overcoming objections as the default position of leaders as sellers alert followers they are target of buy-in efforts.

Once consumerism leadership has been established, and leaders expect to gain buy-in from people, it should come as no surprise when followers behave like consumers. What, generally speaking, is typically on a consumer’s mind?

• What’s for sale?
• What is the exchange value?
• What if I want another sales person (leader)?
• I expect a bigger discount.
• I want it in yellow.
• I’ll wait for the end of year sale.
• Do you barter?
• Do you accept coupons?
• I left because I got a better deal elsewhere.

The follower in the workplace brings the same flavor of questions to consumerism leaders.

If the buyer has no choice in the sales process (if the seller is your boss, walking away from the deal is a risky option) s/he tends to develop passive approaches to turning down the sale. There are many: saying yes but meaning no; and unending stream of questions; repeated mistakes while expressing deep frustration and the desire to do better; public words of encouragement combined with private acts of sabotage.

Consumerism leadership sets up the employee buyer as the most important person. Where does that leave the organization’s real customers?

In organizations, oddly enough, the consumer mentality takes a strange twist. Normally the consumer receives something in the exchange, giving up money for some product, tangible or intangible. In organizations followers are often called upon to give something up in the process of buying in. It should come as no surprise that consumerism leadership risks encouraging weak and insincere followers.

The Effects of Consumerism Leadership in the Workplace

More than anything, consumerism leadership dulls the minds of followers. It anchors compliance in the minds of followers, and rarely, if ever, touches people in a way that sparks commitment.

The consumer mentality is such that buyers assume a passive position and simply wait to sift through the barrage of offers that endlessly swirl around them. Buyers are accustomed to tuning out the chatter that holds no interest, quickly assessing offers in terms of its personal value to them, and being manipulated.

Knowing one is being manipulated and agreeing to be swayed by the manipulation is not a contradiction. Being aware of manipulation and making a decision from within that awareness is proof to ourselves that we can, and do, engage in rational decision making.

The worst effect that consumerism leadership has in the workplace is the deepening belief that all important thinking belongs to leaders, and nothing of real importance is required from followers. Think about the looping cycle this creates – consumerism leadership breeds passive followership and lazy minds which in turn reinforces leaders’ belief that followers must be manipulated through sales pitches into going along with the thinking of the leaders (who are the only ones capable of the thinking required).

Future Possibilities

Why do leaders resort to making sales pitches to the people who rely on their leadership? Is there an alternative? If so, what is it? If consumerism leadership holds that people are unable and/or unwilling to think for themselves and make their own informed decisions, what does the assumption that followers can and want to engage look like? What form does leadership based on treating followers as capable, autonomous thinkers take? What is choice leadership? What is choice followership?

Choice is the ultimate acknowledgment of autonomy. The very act of giving someone a choice (that is, a true choice, which includes the right to say no and pass; if you cannot say no, then what does yes mean?) is to place that person in a place of doing their own thinking. It sets the table for ownership and accountability. It elevates their status, and deepens the relatedness between leaders and followers. It creates a near future with a higher degree of certainty, and it tempers the power differential with fairness.

These five elements – status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness – described by David Rock in his article “SCARF: a brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others” in the NeuroLeadership Journal (Issue One, 2008) create a foundation for leaders who elect to lead through engaging people at the level of their own deepest desires.

What Would You Buy If You Were Selling To Yourself?

Try this exercise. At the top of a piece of paper write, “This is the deal”. Assume that you have agreed ahead of time to buy what ever you write down. What will you write?

Think about the dynamics of the question. It is near impossible to think about the question as only the seller or only the buyer. Something shifts; a mutual consideration takes over and you realize that from the seller’s perspective you have a choice in what you offer and from the buyer’s perspective you have a choice in what you purchase.

The question invites you to align the interests of the buyer and the seller. The seller makes an honorable offer and the buyer gives it thoughtful consideration. You realize that you are neither selling nor buying, but that you are now engaged in a deep conversation on crafting an exchange that serves the values and interests of both parties.

Choice does not require the leader to abdicate her/his leadership. On the contrary, it opens way for the leader to invite followers into some heavy lifting, to engage in charting their own path forward, to assuming ownership and accountability for the future they want.

Choice likewise does not throw the entire enterprise open to the whims of the followers. All choices can, and should, be available within the context of vision, mission, values, strategy, constraints, customer needs, hopes, and expectations, and the requirements of stakeholders.

Choose, Choose, Choose!

Choice leadership generates possibilities exponentially. No longer is thinking the sole bailiwick of the leader. Not only can followers engage, but they must, not as a response to a mandate, but because they see their own best interests in their own hands.

Time is now spent sifting through the best choice – the one that is the best fit for vision, mission, values, strategy, constraints, customer needs, hopes, and expectations, and the requirements of stakeholders.

The looping cycle becomes leaders finding resources and bringing information to followers who engage with leaders to make choices that further refine the focus of leadership and generate more choices.

The Mindset of Choice Leaders and Followers

The deep, enduring effect of choice leadership is removing change by mandate from the organizational mindset and replacing it with an invitation to followers to own the future, and to be accountable for it. There is a deep divide between a leader using her/his authority or power to mandate a requirement and hold followers accountable (if the mandate was such a good idea and it was the leader’s choice, shouldn’t the leader be held accountable?) and a leader that frames conversations that lead followers to acknowledge their own stake in creating the present they want to change, and which leverage that ownership of the present into ownership of the future. People who claim not to own the present are very unlikely to suddenly start owning the future when it becomes present.

Choice deepens when followers feel the confidence that they can express doubts about their ownership and accountability. Commitment to choices is not necessary if all of the money, people, equipment, knowledge, experience, information, technology and time is available in endless supply. Short of remembering to start, no commitment is required because the outcome is guaranteed.

It is only when resources are in short supply that any commitment is needed. There are obstacles to overcome and constraints to navigate. People have to stretch, time has to contract, risks have to be taken. Imperfect information is the best available and what people don’t know they don’t know can sink the desired or needed outcome. Such is the stuff of doubt.

When people can express doubts they gain the support of their colleagues and find the courage and resolve to open way forward. Doubt is the acknowledgment that the commitment to reach goals is an emotional one as well as a factual one.

Finally, choice leadership and followership is one in which the gifts that people bring are honored and celebrated. People at the margins are brought into the center. The dictum to respect others is paired with the expectation to be respected.

Acknowledging gifts does not mean that gaps are naively ignored. It does mean that leaders endeavor to find the best fit for people’s gifts across the entire enterprise rather than judge the follower only in the context of the current job s/he occupies. The quest for best fit does not rule out followers leaving the organization, either through their own choice, the choice of leaders, or by mutual choice.

Future Possibilities

Are there limits to choice? Answered concretely, the answer is likely “yes”. But allowed to slip the fear of loss of control, how might leaders continue to leverage the power of inviting followers to choose and to serve as their allies and guides? What is the synergy that can emerge? What are the levels of engagement that can be realized? What are the possibilities of aiming high and pressing hard? Can the workplace be a place where leaders inspire followers who in turn inspire leaders? How can a soft idea translate into the concrete reality of producing goods and services in hyper competitive market places? How can choice reduce expenses and increase revenues?

The possibilities begin with the assumption that they are possible, at least for the purpose of inviting followers to exercise their choice and think about them.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Readers of Peter Block will recognize fragments of his thinking in this article. Thank you, Peter, for the inspiration.

They are personal. This is not to say they are personally invasive, only that when the question is posed, it is unmistakably clear that the question must be considered on a personal level.

They are ambiguous. The ambiguity removes the option to download past thoughts or opinions or theories. The answer is not obvious. The question causes a stop in the normal flow of self-talk. With no obvious quick response available, something inside has to be unpacked in order to frame, or begin to frame, a response.

They are anxiety provoking. Not in the sense of putting one in harm’s way, but to the extent that the answer is not obvious one has to navigate the waters of uncertainty and ambiguity in order to begin to make meaning of the question. There is risk.

Taken together, the three attributes are, in the words of Henry Real Bird, the poet-laureate of Montana, an invitation to think, to move along in thought.

These attributes draw us into asking what experience we expect from considering the question that has been posed, what we expect to learn from the question, how much risk we are willing to take in the course of moving along in thought, and how much the experience of those around us matters.

Powerful questions can be philosophical and complex. They can also be simple in and of themselves, and derive their power from the duration of reflection we give them. Some pull us down paths already traveled but look at the landscape from a different point of view.

Powerful Questions for Individuals

My coach, Katherine Jackson, asked me, “What brought you to now?” “What do you mean by ‘now’” I asked. “Whatever you take it to mean” she replied. She was not being coy.

I realized she was not asking me to simply recount the factual details of a journey. The more I thought about the question the more it brought me to the realization that I was being asked to consider the culmination of all the thoughts and experiences I had ever had, the manner in which they had intertwined with each other, and how and why they had produced the me that was here right now.

Was the now of my life the only possible result of this train of thoughts and experiences? Could I have interpreted them differently? Worked from different deep assumptions? Responded differently? Grown into a different person?

I struggled with the meaning of “now”? Caught between the past and future, is now just a point of transition? A forward reflection of the past and a requirement for the future? Blissfully disconnected from both the past and the future?

The past is fixed but the future is whatever possibility we imagine it to be. Can a reflective journey through the past that delivered me into the now paradoxically free me from reliving the past and open way into future possibilities? Can the totality of all the neuronal activity of my brain be leveraged into new insights and understandings, be burned into my brain as new pathways, and become the hardwiring we tap into without conscious awareness?

Powerful Questions for Organizations

What can powerful question do for organizations, if anything? “What brought us to now?” Can the possibilities for creating shift in individuals be adapted for organizations?

The answers, I think, are no and yes respectively. “No” insofar as organizations have no ability think and reflect separate from the people who populate them. “Yes” insofar as the ability and willingness of persons to each engage in the heavy lifting of inner work and choose to place the fruits of that labor in the community’s awareness. There is, I think, a prerequisite for using powerful questions in organizations.

Making Time to Think

Nancy Kline’s marvelous book, “Time to Think” makes the observation that the common complaint that people ought to do better thinking is rarely met with the intentional practice of making time and place for thinking, actively encouraging people to think, and placing a high value on thinking. In all to many organizations thinking is something one is expected to do in copious amounts so long as it does not interrupt work. Thinking at the expense of productivity is frowned upon in lean continuous improvement circles.

Communities of Learning, Thinking, and Practice

Some years ago I sent an invitation to all the managers and leaders who had attended a week-long course on leadership that I taught. It was a real invitation. I described taking the time to think by considering a question. I let people know that there was a price for attending;  people would have to give up problem solving and negotiating self interest; they may find themselves feeling vulnerable; they should be willing to take some risks (even as the risks were unnamed). I told them I would honor their option to say no and pass. Finally, I let them know I really hoped they would attend.

Of the 120 invitations I sent, close to 90 people responded, 75 said they wanted to attend, 45 said they would attend. Thirty-five people showed up on a Friday afternoon at 4 PM.

I asked one question: “What question inspires engagement in you?” I emphasized that the answer to the question was itself a question. They were not to iterate what inspired engagement but to identify the question that inspired engagement.

We began with personal reflection. Five minutes of silence. People then broke into small groups of three (very difficult to hide in a group of three). They could leave the room, wander the halls, remain at their table, anything of their choosing. They were to share their thoughts in the manner that worked for their group of three.

We reconvened about 25 minutes later. I posed a four part question: “What struck you about the question I asked, what struck you about your experience thinking about the question, what struck you about your small group conversation, and what struck you about the question that, for you, inspires you?”

Shift

I was not really interested in the actual questions that inspired them. They would be personal, and to place an expectation in the room that they had to give voice to them was not the work I had hoped the original question would provoke.

I finished (about 45 minutes late, almost everyone still there) with an invitation to offer a closing thought. It was an invitation, telling each person s/he could say no and pass. In one way or another, to greater or lesser degrees, people said they felt different. The afternoon had been hard work, and many said they had to unpack some inner parts of themselves to see the original question through to the end.

A decently large group of people returned to work on Monday with a different view of their own leadership. They now had a group of colleagues with whom they could share their thinking. They understood the people who looked to them for leadership differently. They were, by their own accounts, different people, willing and able to have different conversations in the workplace, willing to ask a few questions of their own, curious to explore leadership while they did their jobs of moving the business of the business forward.

Powerful Questions

I am not known for having original thoughts or ideas. I tell people I fully expect to die without ever having one. So, I do not feel the burden to compose powerful questions myself. I keep a journal, and write down any I hear. Then I plagiarize them to no end to adapt them to the circumstances in which I find myself.

If you know of any powerful questions, or have a gift for thinking of powerful questions, leave a comment and share.