The piece from Theory U that was valuable was a simple way of framing the context for the discussion. The first round was pretty ‘heady’ stuff, lots of ideas and activity. For the second round, I made a point of introducing the discussion in the spirit of ‘empathic’ listening, listening from the heart. The  question was carefully constructed to be about ‘feelings’ of belonging in communities.

Then the last round of discussion was framed as ‘generative listening’. Not just telling others what should happen, but being alive to the possibility that something might emerge, collectively, in the discussion that would reveal a pathway to the future.

By the time we reached the conclusion, the conversation had a much deeper, slower tone.  The feedback from the guests was highly appreciative.

The simple lesson is about taking the time to make frame the conversation, making it really clear what is possible and desirable – standing up for empathy and openess.

More on Theory U: http://www.presencing.com/presencing-theoryu

More on World Cafe: http://www.theworldcafe.com

And for the Sustainable Grounds web site – cafe conversations for sustainability: http://sustainablegrounds.posterous.com

Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UNEP’s Green Economy Initiative, argues that the greening of economies is a new engine for growth, employment and the reduction of persistent poverty.

He has put numbers on it.  It is possible to demonstrate that a wetlands outside Kampala is creating more value in water treatment for the city, than converting it to agricultural land.  Pavan provides a powerful economic argument for preserving natural capital.

He is pretty funny, too.  At the Opera House last week, he showed a slide of Mars to make the obvious point:  “no biosphere…no economy”.  He also presented a satellite photo of trawler fleets intensively clustered on the edges of a marine reserve of the Pacific US coast. “The fish don’t read the regulations”.

The Economics of Biodiversity (TEEB) reports  are at:

http://www.teebweb.org

A career banker, Pavan Sukhdev is on  sabbatical from the Deutsche Bank for two years to conduct his environmental projects. More please.

A core skill of NVC is to distinguish between feeling and needs. In order to gain a strong sense of choice and autonomy in difficult circumstances. Feelings are not really ‘thoughts’ as we often talk of them (“I feel that you are really lazy”). They have a strong body aspect, and we often jump to huge inferences about someone else’s fault, when we are hurt by them. NVC teaches how to listen in a way that is generative for others, not blaming them or limiting their sense of freedom and liveliness in communication.

I look forward to next week’s training, with feelings of both excitement and, since last night, trepidation

If you want to learn more about NVC, Marshall Rosenberg, and the valuable network around his work, go to http://www.cnvc.org

Ideas for knowing what to do...

Knowing is not the same as doing. That’s Rule Number 18 from Alan M. Webber’s recent book, Rules of Thumb.^[1] Webber was the founding editor/owner of Fast Company, the hip business magazine he established after a long stint at the much more staid Harvard Business Review.  Rules of Thumb lists 52 business insights, all written in Webber’s engaging journalistic style and peppered with great stories about how to make sense of the tumultuous world in which we live.

Of Rule 18#, Webber says: “There are two ways of knowing. One comes from the head. It’s the kind of knowing that comes from reading and thinking – it’s the kind of theorising that experts excel at. The other way of knowing comes from doing. Unlike the first form of knowing, which starts in the head and stays there, this form of knowing starts in the hands and moves up to the head and then back down again in a knowing-doing loop.” (Webber: p86)

I think we can assume that ‘hands’, in this case, means real human experience; the kind of thing we tend to devalue if we privilege theoretical over empirical forms of knowing.

Of course, both are important. And when it comes to leadership, both are necessary.

Choosing between competing ideas, promoting one person over another, investing in new systems and technologies – what evidence do you trust most and why? Is there a ‘right’ decision? Theoretical knowing can sometimes let us down when complex decision-making is required; and too much reactive ‘doing’ can stir up more mud, robbing us of the space and time needed to see deeper patterns and connections.

The CAVAL Executive Library Leadership Program 2010 explores these polarities from different perspectives. Finding what works and why are central motifs for make stuff happen in the program’s design and facilitation.  That’s why leadership research and models are counter-balanced with stories from the field, providing texture and nuance, appealing to participants’ different learning styles and life experiences. Reading and thinking are important aspects of a leader’s toolkit; but of equal importance are the subjective states of curiosity, imagination, experimentation, patience and play.

With workshops in August and November, the intermediate months of the program will enable participants to scoot around the knowing-doing loop many times over.  Our aim is to inspire library leaders to have confidence in their own leadership ‘rules of thumb’.

I once worked with a woman who refused to use the word collaboration or collaborator. The Nazi occupation of European countries during the second world war relied on the venality and fear of local ‘collaborators’ and, for my work colleague, this invocation of the word had contaminated it forever.
While collaboration has recently undergone something of a renaissance; it’s worth noting that dictionaries still contain its dual meaning. It may be a big stretch to link the optimism that accompanies contemporary collaborative practices with the self interest that marks the behaviour of a traitor in a highly charged political situation; but I argue that the shadow side of collaboration is always lurking and that truly successful collaborators recognise the need to bring an element of design and a dose of self awareness to the table.

Luminous Sydney 2009: Curated by Brian Eno

As musician Brain Eno notes: “I like collaborations because a number of things happen that don’t happen easily on your own…you see your ideas through someone else’s eyes.” The Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Richard Tognetti, has built an international reputation for unlikely musical collaborations. He says: “Look, every collaboration is risky, but you risk dying if you don’t do it.”
Architects, artists, designers and musicians are often consummate collaborators and could not do what they do without the stimulation multiple contributors bring to a project.
Persistent multidimensional problems also benefit from collaboration, states the 2009 Creative Places and Spaces Conference held in Toronto to explore the notion of the ‘collaborative city’. Creatives, entrepreneurs, business leaders, community visionaries and social sector mavericks wrestled with the challenge of ‘building bridges across boundaries in order to solve problems, generate new ideas, or foster transformation’. One visionary in attendance, the engaging Sir Ken Robinson, argued that ‘collaboration is the key operating principle for the twenty-first century’. Creativity can be defined as original ideas that have value, but it’s collaboration that fuels innovation and puts these ideas to work.

When questions abound with no immediate answers, when a problem seems insurmountable, when the task ahead is laborious and involves many players, when the convergence of two or more different perspectives will yield a new creative product or act – it’s collaboration that takes centre stage. Whether its science, art, music or business, there are millions of examples of collaborative endeavours having seeded the new, the striking, the beautiful, or just things that work brilliantly for people.
But for collaboration to be successful, individual contributions are often blurred and merged with those of others. This challenges our ego, our need to be noticed and acknowledged, and it can trigger defensive patterns of behaviour. While we are all prone to various fears and competitive behaviours, we are also capable of stepping outside the machinations of our minds and choosing different thoughts, different options, different behaviours. But if we ignore the shadow side of collaboration, its Janus-like alter ego, we risk creating another faddish banner behind which lurks the temptation to pretend things are not what they really are.

Collaboration is hard work. It can involve rubbing up against differences, compromising to avoid conflict, getting nowhere fast, and collapsing into chaos when dead ends outweigh lively new beginnings. As veteran business academic Rosabeth Moss Kanter once said: “Everything looks like a failure in the middle.” There are no guarantees that anything one starts will be successful. But if we can design collaborative projects that value process as much as the product or outcome, that make space for shared learning and constructive feedback, and that help us cultivate patience and generosity towards others when things get tough – then there is a greater chance that we will navigate our way through the ‘middle’ without being tempted to pack up our toys and run away.

Let me give a positive example. I recently worked on a research project with a talented colleague. We each brought different perspectives, skills and temperaments to the task. The subject matter was intrinsically interesting; the client was intelligent and appropriately demanding; our travels took us to places we would never have visited otherwise and we met genuinely open and welcoming people. But there were some hidden fault lines – the timeframe was ridiculous, the work was interstate, and there were too many cooks in the kitchen overseeing every iteration of the project.
In the main, we worked in a harmonious collaboration that enabled us to meet every milestone by the due date. But it didn’t just happen by chance, we approached the project by agreeing on a number of parameters:

• we created a manifesto for how we wanted to work together, which included making each other look good in front of our clients
• we discussed strengths, weaknesses and a suitable division of labour
• we worked against our strengths when the need arose and acknowledged each other for doing so
• we challenged each other when we didn’t think a behaviour or attitude was helpful or a piece of writing up to scratch

The end result was a comprehensive report, which had fused our personal styles so completely that it was difficult to see where one voice ended and the other began.

This collaboration produced what was needed and strengthened a complimentary collegiate relationship. It worked because we designed it to work by having the hard conversations upfront and making it safe to give feedback along the way. Collaboration may be a ‘key operating principle’ in many domains, but its psychological dimension needs to be acknowledged and creatively managed in order for it to become a worthy vehicle for the claims made in its name.

I wondered if we were all crazy.

Yet the process, ‘Design Shop’ created and facilitated by Matt Taylor and hosted at The Difference in Sydney was extraordinary and enlightening.

Matt is an irrepressible 70 yr old, with a mind rich with concepts and processes worked out over a lifetime of engagement with creative practices, coming from an architecture background, but now applying his work across many domains.

We might not have created a viable Australia in a single weekend, but what emerged was a very serious attempt to describe the conditions and processes under which such an aim was even imaginable.

What did I learn from the process? 1. Matt’s design places a high premium on ‘structure’ – the careful staging of each piece of the workshop process to create the fundamental platform for ‘unleashing group genius’. I was impressed by the rigour of Matt’s process. Unusual in the realm of facilitation and change management, he has a meticulous approach to the precise sequencing of very specific processes. In the early “scanning” phase it is open, divergent, in the middle “Focus” stage the emphasis is on distilling the critical features (indeed the very definition) of the problem,in the final “Act” phases different methodologies and processes ensure rapid action planning. Along the way, he uses constant iteration to create, test and refine the robustness of the concepts.

2. That it is worth taking two of the three days to define the problem. Normally we jump to working on solutions about a nano-second after a problem is declared. We prematurely seek alignment and agreement. This does a disservice to the complexity of much of our work.

3. That the future must be addressed from ‘there’ not from ‘here’. Like Otto Scharmer (links below), Matt Taylor’s process insists on the uncertainty of an emergent future. It is no use extrapolating from the present to address
the future.

A web site is being created to capture the results of this process, and invite other to join. Watch this space, and we will publish the links as they emerge.

Links

Matt Taylor   http://www.matttaylor.com/

(enter at your peril, there is so much here, representing a kind of lifetime notebook. My current favourite is the “Solution Box” but you will have to search to find it.

An article on Design Shop

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/11/genius.html

Otto Sharmer Theory U

http://www.ottoscharmer.com/publications/summaries.php

The Difference  is a purpose-built workshop space in Sydney, based on Matt Taulor design principles

http://www.thedifference.net.au/

The sessions confirmed my suspicion that the Australian working culture is  abysmal at performance feedback. Contrary to the popular stereotype of blunt, frank and open communication, in our workplaces we are, in the main, unassertive, indirect, ironic, passive and excessively accommodating. With some rare exceptions – the people who do the tough conversations for the rest of us.

We are also reluctant to praise, and do it badly. “You are great” doesn’t work. “Thanks for staying on last night to get that report in, I was really stressed about it”, is more valuable. It is specific, accurate, and
embedded in real workplace demands.

We are not open to feedback on our own performance, we would rather walk on hot coals than seek feedback from our colleagues. And many of us like to persist under an illusion that we are going just fine, thanks very much.

We have overplayed the significance of formal performance evaluation, dreading the annual appraisal because we don’t have a frequent and consistent approach to performance conversations.

These things are simple. But they need to be translated into daily practice, to encourage a culture of robust and respectful feedback about performance – one conversation at a time.

Some practical suggestions

-Encourage frequent conversations about performance and results (start small, everyday stuff)

-notice and articulate the good stuff (not just the things needing improvement) and be very specific

-Start early, as soon as there is a problem

-focused on behaviour and results not on personality

-Model being open to feedback from others, encourage people to seek it out

Practice the language of good feedback

• Future – oriented
• Use the f’eedback sandwich (positive, improvement, positive)
• Use questions to generate awareness and ownership (“how did you go on that document?”)
• Keep putting the ball in their court
• Suggest and share: “consider…” “have a think about…”

If you would like a stimulus for change in your workplace, invite us to come and run a half day workshop for your team.

What to do when you are stuck:
1. Breathe.  Breath is life.  Just notice when you are stressed whether you tend to hold your breath.  Brain and body need oxygen!

2. Look around not just up.  Look sideways, look down: your next move might not be in the straight line upward that you see in your minds eye.  When we panic our scope of options tends to narrow.
As a short woman I am shorter that most of the men who have written up the climbs so my shorter arms and legs mean I am often in the position of having to find my own route.  Just like life.  I can think “it’s not fair” and that may be true, but how far I actually go relies on my focus being entirely, positively forward.

3. Don’t hang around thinking.  You will exhaust your muscles and any move will get exponentially harder the longer you hang around thinking about it. Do something!

4. Make a small move rather than a big one.  Make an inconsequential move rather than the big one you want to make.  A slight change of perspective may show you an opportunity for movement that you couldn’t see before. A small move is less tiring than a big one. Many small subtle moves may take you where you are going with much less effort and more elegance  than a few large ones.

5. Commit.  “Committing moves” in climbing are ones that will be much harder to come down from than to go forward, eg there is no going back.  Equivocating is death.  Well perhaps a little melodramatic there.  But still: if you think you can, you can.  If you think you can’t, you can’t.  This is a constant lesson in climbing. Trust yourself.

6. Talk to your support person: ask for the kind of support you need.  Assuming you are not lead climbing, let your support (belay) person know what is going on so they can give you some slack if you need it or prepare to brake if you fall.   So  many times in business and work and personal life I have seen people get all secretive when they are having a bad time and leave it up to the people around them to  notice or guess what is happening and intuit how to support them.  Or just try to muscle through in misery.

And on climbing in general…

No excuses: persistence is magic.
When you are doing something hard, you have to focus, you have to keep asking HOW can I do it, not thinking about why you can’t do it. We all have ways and times where we are disadvantaged and we all always have damned good reasons to excuse ourselves from effort.

“Discipline is freedom” BKS Iyengar
Of course if you spend your daily life eating too much, drinking too much and so on you can’t expect to head up that rock face with grace and agility.  Rock climbers stay fit.  Rock climbers practice.  Just like anybody who is good at anything.  You become what you practice. Practice means doing it even when you don’t feel like it.  Doing “the donkey work” means that some day or moment you will get to the state of grace you desire.

The Make Stuff Happen team is already working with one of these boards to make sure they come up shining by helping with the business planning process for this year including elements of the design of the regional planning process.

One of the key requirements of the new RDAs is to come to grips with all the overlapping plans in existence that affect their region.  This is not an academic exercise, although there is certainly a research and analysis component, but an activity that must also embrace and manage the needs and expectations of stakeholders. One intention of this requirement is to improve coordination across three tiers of government and maximize resources to address the complex challenges and opportunities facing regional Australia.  These include issues such as: regional growth, housing, transport, climate change, changing demographics, opportunities for youth, health, agriculture, broadband, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability.

Make Stuff Happen is at home operating in complex and dynamic environments dealing with and fostering change.  At a time when the new RDAs may need “legs” to hit the deck running in terms of planning and consultation, we offer a service that is both sophisticated in thinking and practical in application.  We can make things happen while helping you to manage expectations and move through the business planning process to create a strategy for doing your regional plan.  We can also effectively manage your regional planning process.

What we can offer you is:
A consistent, independent process for planning
Integrated team building and planning for the board/committee
Management of significant change
An extensive range of tools and processes
Expertise in getting and sorting a wide range of inputs
Critical analysis
Help managing the expectations of different stakeholders
Consultations that build on what has already been developed: reap the value from past consultations – not duplicate them
Meetings that achieve things for time-poor people
A planning process that gathers and sorts information effectively and results in action
Strategies for involving a wide range of stakeholders effectively

I enjoy new technology, but am not an early adopter. I get excited looking at new netbooks, then always feel disappointed once I buy something. The dream outpaces the reality.

Yet Web 2.0 applications have turned out more valuable than I had imagined. Many are practical, simple and cheap (or free).

The two I use most are wikis and online surveys.

Online surveys give you a quick and accurate access to people’s opinions on all sorts of topics. They can be used to measure satisfaction, gather perspectives and views on issues, even to follow up on workshops and training. They are a great marketing tool, getting people involved in your activities and proposals.

We recently used an online survey to track feedback from 14 participants on a six-month leadership course. We were able to revise and change the workshops from month to month on the basis of the survey responses. At the end we used the results to identify valuable quotes and testimonials from each of the participants and quickly insert these into a brochure to promote the program to sponsors.

It was so much easier than taking notes along the way, and it was all in the words of the participants themselves.

Wikis (think wikipedia) are a simple device for a group of people to collaborate in creating a document. Instead of sharing e-mails and track-marking changes across numerous documents, all the changes go into a single master document and you can track the history of each person’s contribution. I use them with my colleagues to draft tenders. I have also used a wiki to draft a report, sharing the document with clients. A common experience for such reports is that when the written report goes in, the client is disappointed. The written version is never quite what they expected. With the wiki, the clients (and their colleagues and bosses) had seen drafts from their earliest stages. They were able to contribute on sections where their expertise was relevant. They get a sense of control and involvement, even in the messy and chaotic early draft stages. I felt that the cliets were much more accepting of final report since their expectations about the results had been managed all along the way. This is just a couple of uses for wikis.

These web to devices are simple, often free or very low cost.

You can do it all on your kitchen table.