Prompted by an old friend seeking insights on blogging today, the following thoughts emerged…

My first attempt at blogging was before “Blogging” was a word, during virtual team working days. This was back in the early nineties.

As a leader of an early virtual team, I felt that I needed a way to let everyone know what I was doing and experiencing (meeting and planning wise) and I intermingled this with how I felt about it all (and the impact this had on our work and my own life).

The response I felt from the team was one of distinct discomfort. The depth and frequency of logging my reflections was presenting them with “too much information”. Plus they believed that they had to read my missives and continually adjust what they were doing accordingly (to adapt to the knowledge of an ever-changing tide “at the top”).

My “learning” at the time was that in a context where virtual team interactions were more transactional than transitional - let alone transformational - information was preferred to knowledge and knowledge was preferred to wisdom. Nobody knew what to do with wisdom when they were geared up and motivated to progress down a prepared pathway like a good group of soldiers - even if the leader realised they had landed on the wrong island. (Thanks for the metaphor, Steven Covey.)

Over time, learning to share my deepest insights to the advantage of others has required my also learning to be receptive to their deepest insights (and related concerns). I recall the death knell observation of one participant in a one-way “sharing” I was monitoring awhile back. “X is an interesting man. Too bad he is not interested in us.” When I heard that utterance, I knew it was the beginning of the end for ‘X’ in the role he was in. Social learning can rapidly escalate your ascension AND your downfall.

I’m currently experimenting with fostering social learning in a new-to-me area. Drawn to it by compassion (as well as the professional challenge of it all), I’ve put a lot on the line to do so - more than two years of non-billable time so far. I’m applying all the KM and virtual team experiences I can recall / re-create / re-engineer into the process. Getting people on all sides to participate and talk with and then trust me has been relatively easy. Facilitating the creation and moderation of a digital environment for them to listen to, talk about and learn from each other’s experiences without my direct involvement has been thus far only modestly successful.

Spanning the gaps between the societal ‘entrenched’ and the socially ‘disenfranchised’ requires stretching every psychological, technological and methodological sinew I have. In an environment where animosity overwhelms honesty and distrust decidedly thrusts itself in front of an otherwise rational mind, even modest successes are treasured. These successes have mostly been enabled via semi-private email, telephone and in-person avenues so far..

Moving the dialogue into a more visible / sharable space is my 2012 objective.  I want to enable people to be easily sifting through the growing groundswell of grumbles to find the golden nuggets that when applied in their own context, will work for them to reverse the tides of their ‘misfortunes’. Ultimately and perhaps unreasonably, I hope that Social KM can become a golden goose that helps turn grumbles into gold.

Brad

Each company has what it thinks of as its suite of core competencies that are highly attuned to whatever they do to generate revenue and to stay in and grow their business.

Every company also has a bunch of “oh I’d rather not have to do that bit” set of overhead type activities that it doesn’t regard as sexy or exciting revenue-generating stuff. You know - this is what we often call the -back office, administrative costs of doing business.

And therefore it sometimes tends to not focus its attention on developing that area particularly well, and therefore it sometimes tends to not focus on developing the people who happen to be working in that area particularly well either.

So over time, those back office activities can tend to atrophy a bit, and the people involved in those activities can tend to lose sight of their own exciting future potentials.

And at some point someone has the idea, “Well what if we paid another company who’s efficient at doing that stuff to do it for us instead?”

“And since we’re going to do that, we’re not going to need these staff anymore, so maybe we should give them the opportunity to go work for the other company…”

Well, in the particular experience that I’m thinking of, I was working with the receiving company - we’ll call it “Company B”. We were about to receive all of the staff from “Company A” in a very exciting multi-million pound deal.

And as part of this - because for Company B, this is core revenue-generating activity - we were going to pour all sorts of training and development cash into our ‘new hires’.

In fact, we were planning to invest significantly more money into the staff than the old company had done. And we felt very good about this. But for some reason the people didn’t want to play along. So as designers and negotiators of the deal, we began to sweat.

The people who were going to be transferred in this undertaking were looking like they were actually intending to opt out of both companies and go work for somebody else - and that would have ruined the entire deal really.

We (Company B) needed those people. Not only for the insider knowledge they had of Company A, who was to be their new client - but also, we just needed that additional amount of “human resource” to provide the service.

So it was a very handy and critically necessary amount of “resource” that seemed to be slipping through our fingers despite our calculated generosity for developing the staff.

Our perspiration turned into desperation and we decided to take a time-out in the negotiations and talk with everyone involved, in-person.

Why didn’t the people want to play along, when their new company was going to put in all this extra effort and money and resource to support and promote them?

There was a very specific reason, and that is, at the individual employee level, they were going to be going home each week with less money in their pocket, less cash.

So regardless of the fact that this new company was going to spend far more money on helping them to develop, they were in fact going to be walking out at the end of the day with a smaller cash-in-hand pay cheque.

And at the socio-economic level in which they were working, this was simply not a margin that they or their growing families could afford or wanted to accept.

So are you wondering how this scenario is relevant to Diversity and Inclusion? Here’s the explanation. Company A and Company B both thought “hey, this is a good deal for the people. Significantly more money is going into their development and over time, things are going to get better and better for them”.

But neither company had actually consulted with the staff targeted for the move and so no one had noticed that the actual cash-in-hand effect was worse for the people involved.

We had only communicated to them - not with them.

So we didn’t expect the problems and we certainly didn’t understand it when people said “forget this, I’m leaving”.

So regardless of our organisation’s strategic intentions to be inclusive of a diverse workforce, what we should have kept in-mind was; how the actual individuals involved felt - what it was that they were measuring to feel included - at a practical level.

Once we did do this, once we understood their situation - and they knew that we understood - we were able to re-structure the deal so that no-one lost out on pay day. The deal was done. Phew!

What did I learn?

• You can’t simply say “you’re included”, or “people are our greatest asset”. That just doesn’t work. You can ask them, “What is it that you need to see or hear or feel or know or do, or for me to do, that would result in your knowing that you really are included in what we’re thinking about doing?”
• All value is context-dependant - and what you actually communicate can only be measured in the RESPONSE you get - not by what you intended to say or to deliver.
• You need to step into your target recipients’shoes and walk a good mile with them inside their context before opening your mouth or your cheque book, so that you can deeply consider things from within their context first.

You can download more stories about being inclusive using this short link:

http://bit.ly/BeingInclusive

Psychometric Testing? Well……

I looked up one day to see a team of people crowding into the doorway to my office, hoping to distract me from my paperwork and seek my help. They wanted to know if I could arrange for psychometric testing to be done on all the members of their team. They wanted to get this done because they thought it might help them figure out how best to utilise the talents inherent with their team. They had heard and read that psychometric profiling often helped teams understand each other better. But they were stuck comparing the pros and cons of the various profiling methods and hoped I might be able to shed some light on the subject.

I explained that I wasn’t a great fan of psychometric testing as a rule. I said this was because people already tend to put other people into ?boxes’ and „leave? them in there - inevitably stunting their growth (or at best, not promoting potential development). I knew they would hear this view as contrary to their beliefs, and said so. I also said that, as they had already been doing some upfront research, trying to weigh the pros and cons of the various schools of thought out there, I wasn’t about to say that the process couldn’t be useful sometimes.

I acknowledged how popular the process seemed to be with senior management teams - certainly in the corporate world. And I said that I wanted to respond favourably to their request because they had taken the initiative to do some up-front thinking and research on the subject. So I asked them to set aside an afternoon together and to let me know when they had done so.

The team had already decided that what they really needed to do was to learn about their strengths and weaknesses, so that they could work together with greater awareness. And I also wanted them to see themselves in an expanded light as well. So I decided I would do something for them - albeit it something they were not expecting.

We didn’t have budget or time to do the normal deep psychological analysis that many consultancies offer. Yet I wanted them to have something to reflect on together, while still focusing on their individual strengths. Plus, they’d been -through the mill? and were already predisposed to blaming each other for their collective situation.

So I came up with an intervention for a two-hour session that fully engaged them, brought humour into the frame and also revealed each other’s unique personalities in ways that helped them reflect on themselves and their interactions with others as well. This is what I did…

In advance, I asked them to tell me where they were born and at what time of day. I provided this data to a third party who produced (for each of them) a uniquely written fifteen-page report. This report was an in-depth computer-generated astrological horoscope, covering many dimensions of their life.

When I got the reports back, I collated them into collections according to the syndicate/break-out groups I planned to divide the staff into for the two-hour session. Then

I removed the front cover identifiers, handed them out and told each group that it was their job to figure out which report best reflected which person in their group.

I pre-framed the exercise by saying that ALL psychoanalytical approaches are seriously questioned by the proponents of the others, so I decided to take one that was universally in -disrepute? as the basis for the session. The truth was NOT the issue as far as I was concerned - what DID matter was that they use the reports as a CATALYST for discussion to develop mutual understanding of each others’ perceptions. They LOVED it, came to understand themselves and each other better and many bonded in a way that was only possible while having to deal with an externally -ridiculous? situation together.

What did I learn?

1.      When people bring something that is challenging to you, they may have already done their homework. So take the time to acknowledge and respect where they are coming from before launching into a solution.

2.      When people are in debate at the level of -Truth?, ask them to identify a context in which all sides of the current debate are -true? or at least equally relevant.

3.      Then ask, -Given this shared context, what is it that we will together most benefit from, if we take the right action.

4.      Once this shared benefit (within the shared context) has been collectively identified, you’ve got a shot at identifying a useful way forward.

You can download more stories about being inclusive using this short link:

http://bit.ly/BeingInclusive

Here’s an example (at Board Room level) of being inclusive amidst cognitive diversity….

It’s springtime in Scotland, early 1990’s. The dark cold indoor winter days have opened up into warm daylight hours with flowers blooming in the parks, birds twittering in the trees and people strolling through the meandering walkways feeling and smelling the promise of the season.

A nice scene - but not the one I am in. I am in a still-cold boardroom, witnessing the potential demise of a recently formed team of directors who have universally disappointed their Managing Director (MD) on a continuous basis for several months now. The atmosphere is frigid and words are being spoken through clenched teeth.

No one sits near the MD - the chairs at that end of the table where he is sitting are in arm-swinging distance. This MD is physically expressive.

The height of frustration is clearly expressed in the pallor of his skin tone and the sweat on his brow. He waves his arms in the air, calls a halt to the meeting, tells his (also frustrated) Directors to leave and tells me to stay behind. This is my first meeting in this board room and so while I am a little worried about what he might say to me, I am not worried that it will be about me. It’s clear that the relationship with his Directors is the source of his distress - not me, the newly hired-in consultant.

He tells me that time and time again, he’s asked his Directors for section development updates and strategic planning information. He tosses what he’s been given

today across the boardroom table and using his right hand to karate chop his left palm several times says -I ask for explicit information and this is what I get - this is all I ever get - from them! I look across the table and see pages of diagrams and illustrated cartoons. -They’re not taking me seriously at all. This is crazy - half of them are even doodling during our meetings3!!!

Cutting to the chase, this scene has been replayed out many times in this start-up organisation - the MD asking for explicit, bulleted information (as expressed by his body language), and his Directors (all hired for their track records of creativity and innovation) expressing themselves visually. The MD instinctively distrusts pictures due to their lack of detail, while the Directors see imagery as the only way to convey the whole picture in line with their evolving vision in an efficient manner.

The thing is, they were naturally expressing themselves in their preferred, sensory-specific styles. They were very comfortable with each other doing this. But they were not adapting themselves to their MD’s needs to see and / or read their informational updates differently.

As soon as we figured this out, we asked our selves how we could accommodate the communication gap between the MD and the Directors without compromising preferred styles of expression and information gathering. The solution in this case was to add bulleted lists to the illustrations - thereby retaining the big picture while adding in the necessary level of detail for the MD to feel that he had what he needed to assess the situation properly and make informed decisions.

The doodling during the meeting, by the way, was a perfect example of how some people doodle to learn and think while others doodle to distract themselves. You can guess who in the boardroom had which habit.

Lessons I learned?

1.      The response you get from others tells you what you are actually communicating to them - intentionally or otherwise.

2.      Others’ perceptions of your intentions may not be accurate, but their responses to those perceptions create a reality you will have to work with.

3.      Until you step into another’s shoes, listen through their ears, see through their eyes and feel through their emotions, you are effectively operating in a manner that can be regarded as dumb, deaf and blind by those with whom you are interacting (or not, as the case may be).

4.      A simple solution with immediate impact may be possible - even if there’s a history suggesting the contrary.

You can download more stories about being inclusive using this short link:

http://bit.ly/BeingInclusive

I’m reviewing my recent “performance” on http://bit.ly/BradSpeakingToUKSG to help others that I work with learn what they might want to do or to NOT do, when speaking to large audiences.

It was a room full of librarians, in my case…so…shoosh!

Over the last few months, I’ve been working on a project to help Litigants in Person represent themselves in UK Civil Courts more effectively than they have done historically.

We “released” a beta website to help the process along this month. You can check it out at: http://bit.ly/help4lips

A legal team has asked me to help them digitaly leverage an aspect of their live training programme. How? Check: http://bit.ly/YouOnWeb

These days, it’s so very easy to get this type of work done without all the overhead of just a few years ago…

Hurray!

I’ve been meaning to post some fo the feedback from the group work I do….

 

“Good work all round”

 

“Structure of planned day still made sense even in light of the morning’s revelations”

 

“A sign of a well-thought-out day”

 

“A lot of good planning with the appropriate style of day for the department”

 

“I appreciated time given to let certain areas expand even if they were outside scope of the day”

 

“We talked about frustrations regarding wider organisation but not sure we fully explored possible tensions between teams and individuals but maybe we’ve created something to build on”

 

“Discussion in threes helped generate insights. It helped provide comfortable safe environment to discuss difficult issues”

 

“Very positive and very well facilitated. Also unexpectedly cathartic”

 

“Really positive day”

 

“Enjoyed the frank session in the morning where we could all talk openly about issues over the last year”

 

“Follow up on what ideas arose from today’s away day”

 

“I liked the way the trainer allowed the group to divert from the agenda set and talk openly about really important issues”

 

“Discussion before lunch was very illuminating and helpful”

 

“Hope that the issues raised can be taken forward and not just left”

 

“Glad not to repeat the 3 minute session in the pm – wasn’t looking forward to it”

 

“Good issues but still very little that was concrete”

 

“Domination of group discussion by people in front of room”

 

“Being able to go off the printed agenda to explore an issue that was relevant and had caused some concern to the team and having time allowed to do this without hurrying back to the agenda”

 

“Useful and enjoyable day”

 

“I felt we are more comfortable as a team now”

 

“Able to speak openly and understand everyone’s roles and ways of working together. The only other thing I wanted was decisions and plans for definite follow up. So we’ll have to plan some meetings…”

 

 “The opportunity to openly discuss issues we all have in a constructive and supportive way was very positive”

 

“Really good to move around and discuss things in small groups with people we would not normally discuss these things with”

 

“The whole day felt very unifying”

 

“Open, frank discussion worked very well and I feel we should have these discussions on a regular basis”

 

“Good day to get to know all members of the directorate and appreciate some the otherwise unknown aspects of their jobs”

 

“I enjoyed the larger group discussions and hearing about what obstacles they had to overcome and ideas they had”

 

“I would be happy for the day to run to 5 pm to squeeze even more in”

 

“More opportunity to discuss cross team work”

 

“Suggestions made to group as one thing they can take away from the day”

 

“Really good content and ways of working together”

 

“Opportunity to work with different teams and to share ideas”

 

“People have a lot of insight and creativity”

 

“Opportunity to be honest in a safe environment”

 

“Opportunity to hear others’ points of view”

 

“An empowering day”

 

“Amazing conclusive working environment”

 

“Location, food , ambience was great”

 

“Drifted at times but some key successful outcomes”

 

“Renewed sense of possibilities going forward”

 

“Smile face with big hug”

 

“Felt really good that everyone was open and honest and was able to express thoughts and feelings that needed to have come out a long time ago”

 

“Felt much more part of the direct and feel confident that I’m working with dedicated and talented individuals”

 

“Made good progress on future direction of directorate”

 

“Less jargon in the workbooks please (I didn’t understand all the terminology)”

 

“good opportunity to come together to share opinions and ideas”

 

 

1. The overall objective for a Directorate’s “Away Day” is of primary importance - yet this must be separated from the initially imagined process design for achieving it.

2. The person holding the overall objective (e.g. the Director) may well not be the best-placed person to design the day, though their ideas will help the facilitator notice important nuances of their support needs.

3. Designing the day requires an understanding that goes deeper than the vocalised objective. It requires attention to the un-vocalised dimensions of the overall objective as well.

4. If you don’t pay attention to the un-vocalised dimensions, and you only do what is ‘logically’ expected, then your process design and the Away Day’s outcomes will simply be “as expected” (at best).

5. An Away Day is not time-bound to “the day” away. It begins in the moment of its inception. This is because the twinkle in its sponsor’s eye contains the DNA of its success.

6. The facilitator’s “DNA analysis” of the twinkle in the sponsor’s eye will reveal the undercurrents that are influencing the overarching objective. These undercurrents are the necessary ingredients of a recipe for success.

7. The moment someone is made aware of the pending Away Day (and their expected presence in same), the Away Day has in fact effectively begun - and with it, the undercurrents that will be affecting the actual day away will have as a result broadened, deepened and sped up.

8. Navigating the surface requirements of the design and development process - while adjusting to the changing undercurrents as additional people come into the frame - requires more than meets the eye of a casual onlooker.

9. Like a duck moving smoothly forward on the surface of a stream converging with other streams, a lot of swift and artful paddling may be required beneath the surface to maintain both balance and momentum.

10. Managing this discrepancy between observable activities and the actual underlying momentums can result in a greater time and attention investment than logically predicted at first. Each time new undercurrents are identified, another review and revision process to the process leading to - and then flowing into - the day away is required.

11. Additionally, the time required for the actual “Away” period itself may not be optimal, as its duration will have likely been set from logical (rather than psychological) parameters. But chances are, you will need to deal with this time constraint - and design for the pre-set duration, e.g. and “away day”.

12. During the away day, if you have designed it well, the process can essentially run itself, freeing the facilitator to provide appropriately subtle steers in directions that increase the potential for realising the desired outcomes in support of the overall objective.

13. Providing “appropriately subtle steers” (aka skilfully facilitating) is easiest when the facilitator is free to observe and interact with everyone present. The administrative side of event management is therefore best handled by another person. This will leave the facilitator free to focus on the human dynamics as they are shifting in every moment.

14. When facilitating for sustainable change, the following perspective on human dynamics can be helpful;

• An emotional state, repeated over time, creates a mental state.
• A mental state, repeated over time, creates a behavioural pattern.
• A behavioural pattern, repeated over time, creates a personality.
• A personality, repeated over time, creates a character.
• A character, repeated over time, creates a destiny.

15. The destiny of a Directorate is the result of the diversity of characters making up the Directorate. Sustainable change across a Directorate can only come about constituent-by-constituent. It’s very valuable therefore, to check in with and account for the emotional state of the Directorate’s constituency.

16. Sustainable change at any level (individual or group-wide) requires a continuous re-aligning of emotional, mental and behavioural patterns. Without this internal aligning, any suggested external “process” changes that come out of an “Away Day” are likely to be still-born or not survive the first week back in-office.

17. Back in the office, it’s survival of the fittest. The fittest suggestions for change coming out of an Away Day will be the ones most closely aligned with the emotional well-being of the Directorate’s constituency. There’s little point extending out beyond the Directorate with a change suggestion unless the Directorate is itself strong about the change in relevant ways.

18. When reaching out beyond the boundaries of those involved at the Away Day (where they recognised and acknowledged the need for a change and identified the next steps towards making this happen), it’s important to keep the following four challenges in-mind;

• “Not True” (re: accuracy of situational assessment)
• “So what?” (re: logical/organisational importance)
• “Do I care?” (re: personal relevance)
• “Who are you?” (re: your personal state of engagement with them)

19. You can verify this for yourself by recalling the response everyone had to the last “communication” coming down from your Executive Group. Any two of these challenges can kill a change initiative dead - sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. So plan in advance for these challenges, so you can detect and respond to them effectively when they come up.

20. They will come up.