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http://www.ispso.org/Symposia/Paris/2001french.htm
Simpson, P., French, R. & Harvey, C. E. (2002). Leadership and negative capability. Human Relations, 55(10), 1209-1226.
Nagative capability is one of the most important things any leader can learn! Leadership requires a balance between positive capability and decisive action, and negative capability and reflective inaction, and the wisdom to know which is called for in any given situation. There is a time to use our experience, expertise and gifts in decisive action, and there is time to recognize our inexperience, ignorance, and helplessness which, well-used, can contain situations of uncertainty, inadequate resources, and lack of trust. Negative capability when used wisely can create the space for new and creative ideas to emerge.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Monday, December 15, 2008
Mental Models: Are you aware of yours?
I believe this is a profoundly important book, and is very helpful for organizations who tend to get stuck. This is just one of the chapters.
The reason that new ideas are rarely implemented and followed through on in organizations is because of the strength of our mental models (deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting.) Organizations can break through this log-jam by managing mental models - i.e. by surfacing, testing and improving them. We don't hold 'organizations' in our heads, but images, assumptions and stories. While we don't always behave congruently with our espoused theories, we do behave congruently with our mental models (or theories-in-use.) The problem is not that we have such mental models, but that they are often implicit and unexamined. Sometimes we can use new mental models to replace old redundant ones. To surface and examine our mental models we must "recognize leaps of abstraction", articulate what we don't usually say, balance inquiry and advocacy skills, and recognize discrepancies between espoused theories and theories-in-use. Also, organizations need to train people to surface key assumptions and develop face-to-face learning skills. There are ways to make learning of this nature unavoidable. 1) Move from traditional planning to learning, and 2) create internal boards to help people with creative thinking. People need to know that consensus or agreement is not the required outcome of learning. We need both reflection skills (leaps of abstraction, and the left-hand column) and skills of inquiry (balancing inquiry and advocacy.) Guidelines to this kind of reciprocal inquiry are offered.
Senge, P. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline, the Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. (pp. 175-204) New York: Doubleday.
http://www.quality.org/tqmbbs/tools-techs/menmodel.txt
The reason that new ideas are rarely implemented and followed through on in organizations is because of the strength of our mental models (deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting.) Organizations can break through this log-jam by managing mental models - i.e. by surfacing, testing and improving them. We don't hold 'organizations' in our heads, but images, assumptions and stories. While we don't always behave congruently with our espoused theories, we do behave congruently with our mental models (or theories-in-use.) The problem is not that we have such mental models, but that they are often implicit and unexamined. Sometimes we can use new mental models to replace old redundant ones. To surface and examine our mental models we must "recognize leaps of abstraction", articulate what we don't usually say, balance inquiry and advocacy skills, and recognize discrepancies between espoused theories and theories-in-use. Also, organizations need to train people to surface key assumptions and develop face-to-face learning skills. There are ways to make learning of this nature unavoidable. 1) Move from traditional planning to learning, and 2) create internal boards to help people with creative thinking. People need to know that consensus or agreement is not the required outcome of learning. We need both reflection skills (leaps of abstraction, and the left-hand column) and skills of inquiry (balancing inquiry and advocacy.) Guidelines to this kind of reciprocal inquiry are offered.
Senge, P. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline, the Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. (pp. 175-204) New York: Doubleday.
http://www.quality.org/tqmbbs/tools-techs/menmodel.txt
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Your Company's Secret Change Agents
I loved this article on change through the good that is already happening inside your group, or for religious people, through "what the Spirit is already doing." This is not a method I always use, but have used in the past, and think is a good method particularly in environments suspicious of experts and 'strong leaders.'
Pascale and Sternin describe the "Positive Deviant" approach to change in their article, "Your Company's Secret Change Agents." Traditional change management involves uncovering root causes, hiring experts or importing best practises, and assigning leaders to champion change. The Positive Deviant approach seeks indigenous sources of change - those who are already doing things in a radically better way. The isolated success strategies of such people are brought into the mainstream. The key is to engage the members of the community that need to change in the process of discovery, making them "evangelists of their own conversion experience."
The authors show how this approach has worked, both in some of the largest and most intractable change problems on the planet, and in corporate settings. The model involves 6 steps: 1) Make the group the guru, 2) Reframe through facts, 3) Make it safe to learn, 4) Make the problem concrete, 5) Leverage social proof, and 6) Confound the immune defence response.
They believe that such internally developed solutions circumvent transplant rejection, since the change agents share the same DNA and the host. The classic KAP - knowledge, attitude, practise approach is turned upside down. This approach seeks to identify positive deviant practises and then change people's attitudes through action, because people are much more likely to "act their way into a new way of thinking that to think their way into a new way of acting."
This requires something of a role reversal for leaders because leaders become followers, teachers become students, and experts become learners.
This is a cheeky method of change, and bears consideration... I hope you enjoy it.
By the way, if you can think of anyone who would enjoy a weekly article on leadership and/or organizational change, please point them to this blog. And while you are here, if you have time, click on a few ads, because I benefit financially each time you do!
Blessings
Bethan
Pascale, R., & Sternin, J. (2005, May). YOUR COMPANY'S Secret CHANGE AGENTS. Harvard Business Review, 83(5), 72-81. Retrieved November 30, 2008, from http://www.nogaps.nl/pdf/changeagents.pdf
Pascale and Sternin describe the "Positive Deviant" approach to change in their article, "Your Company's Secret Change Agents." Traditional change management involves uncovering root causes, hiring experts or importing best practises, and assigning leaders to champion change. The Positive Deviant approach seeks indigenous sources of change - those who are already doing things in a radically better way. The isolated success strategies of such people are brought into the mainstream. The key is to engage the members of the community that need to change in the process of discovery, making them "evangelists of their own conversion experience."
The authors show how this approach has worked, both in some of the largest and most intractable change problems on the planet, and in corporate settings. The model involves 6 steps: 1) Make the group the guru, 2) Reframe through facts, 3) Make it safe to learn, 4) Make the problem concrete, 5) Leverage social proof, and 6) Confound the immune defence response.
They believe that such internally developed solutions circumvent transplant rejection, since the change agents share the same DNA and the host. The classic KAP - knowledge, attitude, practise approach is turned upside down. This approach seeks to identify positive deviant practises and then change people's attitudes through action, because people are much more likely to "act their way into a new way of thinking that to think their way into a new way of acting."
This requires something of a role reversal for leaders because leaders become followers, teachers become students, and experts become learners.
This is a cheeky method of change, and bears consideration... I hope you enjoy it.
By the way, if you can think of anyone who would enjoy a weekly article on leadership and/or organizational change, please point them to this blog. And while you are here, if you have time, click on a few ads, because I benefit financially each time you do!
Blessings
Bethan
Pascale, R., & Sternin, J. (2005, May). YOUR COMPANY'S Secret CHANGE AGENTS. Harvard Business Review, 83(5), 72-81. Retrieved November 30, 2008, from http://www.nogaps.nl/pdf/changeagents.pdf
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Think about how you are thinking!
ishkbooks.com/NWNM/NWNM-Ch05.pdf
This is a fascinating article from the book New World, New Mind, which shows how our brain has been trained to think and notice in particular ways, and how these ways are no longer always helpful. In fact, they may be causing us tremendous harm. This article will make you think about how you think!
"The human mental system has cleverly evolved a few major strategies to steer people thought the kinds of day to day conditions that challenged our forebears. But these strategies often underlie personal, social, and political problems (pg. 99) because we use default patterns (resulting from evolution through earlier states and ages of human development) to deal with new realities. Some such mental processes are obsession with:
• short-term thinking where sudden or new and unexpected events take centre- stage in our minds. Instead it is a struggle to commit ourselves to long-term preventive measures to deal with problems that that are causing much more harm, e.g. automobile crashes versus terrorist abductions.
• scarcity - valuing and searching for scarce items, e.g. hard-to-get people are more attractive.
• stereotyping to caricaturing - stereotypes are essential for thought, but we have to be careful of caricaturing, i.e. judging by appearances e.g. height, attractiveness, seeming intelligence, or race.
• proximity - more consideration to first hand than reported information.
• excitement prepares us for change, but gradual problems are not only often not noticed, they are deliberately ignored or suppressed. They creep up and start to feel natural.
In some ways our minds are too adaptable, we quickly get used to things, some of which are harmful. We seem to need shocks and tragedies to goad us into action. We get tired of being cautioned, especially about those threats that quick and personal action cannot prevent.
Ornstein, R. E. & Ehrlich, P. R. (2000). Where defaults harm. Daily Life Decisions. New world, new mind: moving toward conscious evolution. (pp. 94-118). Cambridge: ISHK.
This is a fascinating article from the book New World, New Mind, which shows how our brain has been trained to think and notice in particular ways, and how these ways are no longer always helpful. In fact, they may be causing us tremendous harm. This article will make you think about how you think!
"The human mental system has cleverly evolved a few major strategies to steer people thought the kinds of day to day conditions that challenged our forebears. But these strategies often underlie personal, social, and political problems (pg. 99) because we use default patterns (resulting from evolution through earlier states and ages of human development) to deal with new realities. Some such mental processes are obsession with:
• short-term thinking where sudden or new and unexpected events take centre- stage in our minds. Instead it is a struggle to commit ourselves to long-term preventive measures to deal with problems that that are causing much more harm, e.g. automobile crashes versus terrorist abductions.
• scarcity - valuing and searching for scarce items, e.g. hard-to-get people are more attractive.
• stereotyping to caricaturing - stereotypes are essential for thought, but we have to be careful of caricaturing, i.e. judging by appearances e.g. height, attractiveness, seeming intelligence, or race.
• proximity - more consideration to first hand than reported information.
• excitement prepares us for change, but gradual problems are not only often not noticed, they are deliberately ignored or suppressed. They creep up and start to feel natural.
In some ways our minds are too adaptable, we quickly get used to things, some of which are harmful. We seem to need shocks and tragedies to goad us into action. We get tired of being cautioned, especially about those threats that quick and personal action cannot prevent.
Ornstein, R. E. & Ehrlich, P. R. (2000). Where defaults harm. Daily Life Decisions. New world, new mind: moving toward conscious evolution. (pp. 94-118). Cambridge: ISHK.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Might I feel superior because I am a wimp?
Well here is an interesting look at how we deal with our own wimpy-ness, or how we deal with unconscious cognitive dissonance.
Herbert, W. (2008, August 6). Suckers and Saints: How We Rationalize Being Wimpy. Newsweek.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/151158
The author argues from research done that when we are feeling insecure, inadequate or stupid for being too weak to say no to an inappropriate request, we compensate for this psychologically by interpreting our actions as saintly, and the actions of anyone who refused to do the inappropriate task as ‘sinful’. On the other hand when we are feeling secure and confident, we do not need such self-glorification.
Herbert, W. (2008, August 6). Suckers and Saints: How We Rationalize Being Wimpy. Newsweek.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/151158
The author argues from research done that when we are feeling insecure, inadequate or stupid for being too weak to say no to an inappropriate request, we compensate for this psychologically by interpreting our actions as saintly, and the actions of anyone who refused to do the inappropriate task as ‘sinful’. On the other hand when we are feeling secure and confident, we do not need such self-glorification.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Men and women talking together.
Tannen, D. (1995). The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why. Harvard Business
Review, 5(73), 138-148.
Oh, so that is why that keeps happening to me! Oh, that is what happens in that group. Tadaaaa!
This is a critically important article, a must-read for anyone who is in a relationship, work environment, or group where men and women talk to each other! Yes, everyone should read it.
Tannen points out that communication involves BOTH saying what we mean, and HOW we say what we mean. Our cultural experience affects how we talk and how we listen. We make mistakes when we interpret and evaluate others as if they feel the same way we’d feel if we spoke the way they did. She shares her findings about the influence of linguistic style on conversations, and human interactions in the workplace. She shows how speaking practises learned in childhood affect judgements about competence, confidence, who gets heard, who gets credit, and what gets done. She discusses cultural factors involved in linguistic style both in terms of the communication of ideas, and the navigation of relationships. These change depending on the rank of the speaker and listener, and then on gender. Females focus on rapport, and men on status.
This means that women often end up unconsciously inviting the subordinate role through conversational rituals like apologies, feedback, compliments, and ritual opposition. Managers need to devise ways to ensure that everyone is heard and credited, and need to understand that different communication styles must be recognized so that the talents of all can be utilized. Managers need to become even better at reading interactions and more flexible in adjusting their own styles to those of the people with whom they interact.
I wonder how easy it would be for me as a woman to simply stop making disclaimers before I say something that makes what I say much easier to dismiss.
http://www.pa-awis.org/useful/tannen.pdf
Review, 5(73), 138-148.
Oh, so that is why that keeps happening to me! Oh, that is what happens in that group. Tadaaaa!
This is a critically important article, a must-read for anyone who is in a relationship, work environment, or group where men and women talk to each other! Yes, everyone should read it.
Tannen points out that communication involves BOTH saying what we mean, and HOW we say what we mean. Our cultural experience affects how we talk and how we listen. We make mistakes when we interpret and evaluate others as if they feel the same way we’d feel if we spoke the way they did. She shares her findings about the influence of linguistic style on conversations, and human interactions in the workplace. She shows how speaking practises learned in childhood affect judgements about competence, confidence, who gets heard, who gets credit, and what gets done. She discusses cultural factors involved in linguistic style both in terms of the communication of ideas, and the navigation of relationships. These change depending on the rank of the speaker and listener, and then on gender. Females focus on rapport, and men on status.
This means that women often end up unconsciously inviting the subordinate role through conversational rituals like apologies, feedback, compliments, and ritual opposition. Managers need to devise ways to ensure that everyone is heard and credited, and need to understand that different communication styles must be recognized so that the talents of all can be utilized. Managers need to become even better at reading interactions and more flexible in adjusting their own styles to those of the people with whom they interact.
I wonder how easy it would be for me as a woman to simply stop making disclaimers before I say something that makes what I say much easier to dismiss.
http://www.pa-awis.org/useful/tannen.pdf
Thursday, November 6, 2008
The tyranny of structurelessness
One of the most intriguing articles I have read so far is this one. Written for the collection called Radical Feminism in the 1970's, it is fascinating how many feminists did not read it. Here is a summary and a link for anyone who wants to read it.
It suggests that the idea of a group without leadership or structure might be appealing, but in fact simply masks power, it does not actually distribute it. What do you think?
Blessings,
Bethan
The tyranny of structurelessness. In A. Koedt, E. Levine & A. Rapone (Eds.), Radical feminism (pp. 285-299). New York: Quadrangle Books.
Freeman explodes the myth of so-called “structureless” groups. She asserts that such groups are not useful for anything but conscious-raising, or chat groups. When such groups want to change their task, they also need to change their structure. She challenges the very notion of “structureless” groups, and asserts that only formal structures, not informal ones, can be prevented. She shows how these groups do not eliminate power relationships, but simply mask them. For true shared participation to occur, “structure needs to be explicit and not implicit.” (Freeman, 1973, pg. 287) She dissects such issues as “elitism”, the “star system” problem, and the political impotence of “unstructured groups”, and offers some essential principles that are essential to democratic structuring and politically effectiveness.
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html
It suggests that the idea of a group without leadership or structure might be appealing, but in fact simply masks power, it does not actually distribute it. What do you think?
Blessings,
Bethan
The tyranny of structurelessness. In A. Koedt, E. Levine & A. Rapone (Eds.), Radical feminism (pp. 285-299). New York: Quadrangle Books.
Freeman explodes the myth of so-called “structureless” groups. She asserts that such groups are not useful for anything but conscious-raising, or chat groups. When such groups want to change their task, they also need to change their structure. She challenges the very notion of “structureless” groups, and asserts that only formal structures, not informal ones, can be prevented. She shows how these groups do not eliminate power relationships, but simply mask them. For true shared participation to occur, “structure needs to be explicit and not implicit.” (Freeman, 1973, pg. 287) She dissects such issues as “elitism”, the “star system” problem, and the political impotence of “unstructured groups”, and offers some essential principles that are essential to democratic structuring and politically effectiveness.
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html
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