Inspiring Leadership Greatness
Learning to manage anxiety in the presence of silence is another insight from the work of Weisbord and Janoff. As they suggest, “We are mindful that each time we break the silence, we deprive someone of a chance to make a valuable observation.” Waiting even 10 seconds will seem like an eternity, but it allows people to experience whatever is happening and come up with insights about what’s next.
I am a big fan of Weisbord and Janoff, creators of Future Search, and learned much about facilitation when I took their training. Their new book Lead More, Control Less applies their years of experience to leadership, and offers great insights.
One of their concepts is how to handle one’s anxiety when leading meetings. Often we try to rush to solution or tell people what to think. Stating the obvious signals you’ve heard people and actually eases your own anxiety. It also eases anxiety for others. State the obvious and pause. In my experience someone will come up with the next step for the meeting.
I have had the honour of working with many talented leaders who are so people oriented that they drive themselves crazy trying to ensure people are happy. These leaders often have to make tough decisions, though, and it’s not possible for everyone to be happy all the time.
Even though intellectually I think most of these leaders know this, they still keep thinking that if they had done something different, people would be happy.
They won’t be – there is no one right way. That’s the reality of work and life – there is pain at times. Helping everyone accept this might just start to ease people’s suffering.
I’ve written about the importance of having cheerleaders in your life, especially when you are trying something new and/or taking risks.
But we also need to step back and analyze who’s in our network more broadly in order that we don’t get blindsided by circumstances and perspectives we hadn’t considered.
Who do you interact with most and/or consult with around projects? Are they all like you? Or is your network diverse?
From Tradition to Innovation – The Grand Challenge facing many large organizations
Dave Whittington, December 17, 2014
I was making a presentation and facilitating a conversation about innovation last week in Vancouver. The final part of my presentation was about the organizational context in which innovators need to operate and the challenges faced in many large organizations. During the ensuing conversation one participant observed that we perhaps needed to better understand how to make a business case for innovation. That got me thinking, and hence this blog.
I’m going to simplify things to make my case, and I know that real life is always more complex, but I think some of the ideas here might have value all the same. The normal route to a business case for innovation would go something like this. List what is wrong with the current state, and paint a vivid picture of the advantages to be gained by being innovative. On the face of it this makes a lot of sense. When you look at established models for leading change, such as John Kotter’s seven steps, we see the need to clearly state what is wrong with the current situation and communicate a vision of where we should be going.
There’s a downside to this approach, and I’m going borrow heavily from Barry Johnson’s work on Polarity Management to explain why. Let’s start by assuming that Tradition and Innovation are two sides of a polarity. So in any large organization there will be fans of tradition and fans of Innovation and they compete with each other for attention. There will be zealots on either side, but reasonable people would have to accept that there are positives and negatives on both sides. The first step in managing this polarity is to map the positives and negatives for either side.
Now we can see where the normal business case fits. It’s a clear call for a move from bottom left (the downside of tradition) to top right (the upside of innovation). The problem with this straightforward call to action is that it only acknowledges half of the issues and has the effect of further polarizing the situation with each camp becoming more firmly entrenched in their beliefs that “the other side” just doesn’t “get it”.
Why innovators need to embrace tradition
The way out of this is simple, but somewhat counter intuitive, and not a part of any model for leading change that I’ve ever seen. We first need to accept that there are positives on both sides. There are also negatives on both sides. If we are to have any chance of bringing on board the tradition bearers in the organization, we have to acknowledge the legitimacy of their perspective. We have to change the conversation from a left vs. right argument, to a top vs. bottom dialogue, because we can all (except for some of the extremists perhaps) appreciate the value of the positives on both sides and acknowledge the potential negatives of both too.
The business case goes something like this. “There are some real positives to the traditions we’ve built up in this organization and we do not want to lose them. We also acknowledge that there are potential pitfalls if a push to being more innovative isn’t well thought through. However, right now, we need innovate in some critical areas because our current way of doing things is not serving us as well as it has done in the past.”
You see, instead of simply talking about the down side of bottom left and up side of top right, we’ve acknowledged the whole system. We’ve also done this in a very particular order that involves acknowledging the position of the tradition bearers first, and making the case for innovation second. There’s a basic rule of communication that says that people are more likely to listen after they first know that they have been heard.
This shift to valuing both the positives of innovation and the positives of tradition is a great example of moving away from either-or thinking and as Jim Collins clearly stated in Built to Last, “embracing the genius of the ‘and’”. More recently, this capacity to reconcile what look like oppositional ideals was recognized as a critical skill for organizational leaders by Roger Martin in The Opposable Mind. This cognitive skill is also a key component of great innovators. According to Dyer and Gregersen, Associational Thinking is a key cognitive skill in the Innovator’s DNA.
To summarize, if we are to make an effective case for more innovation in the large organizations we work in, we have to embrace the genius of the ‘and’, practice associational thinking, and acknowledge the value of the traditional.
I remember when I was growing up, I had my fingers in everything. I couldn’t help myself. I always had to pick things up, and if I could, I’d take them apart. I remember my Mum pleading with me, “Look with your eyes and not with your fingers”. I was fortunate that I grew up with Lego, Meccano, the most amazing chemistry set, at least two soldering irons, etc. I built my own Scalextric cars, which were pretty good, but were never quite as fast as the best you could buy off the shelf, but that wasn’t the point.
I was also fortunate that I went to a “technical” school after passing the now infamous “11 plus” exam. The school had great labs and workshops, and I was further encouraged to think with my hands, but in a much less creative way. There was no crossover between the subjects. I even remember that “Art Metalwork” and “Engineering Metalwork” were taught by different staff in different workshops. At age 14 I wanted to study car maintenance (remember the Scalextric) … but it wasn’t an option for me as I was on the “academic track”. Slowly but surely I was encouraged to think less and less with my hands.
Now in my early 50s, I’m rediscovering how much fun it is to build stuff. There’s so much going on right now. I’m not sure who’s leading the charge, but the folks at IDEO have been enormously influential, as has Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk of 2006, which now has over 25 million views. Prototyping, playing and building are key concepts in the plethora of frameworks for innovation and creativity that are being published just now. It’s as if we’re coming out of the dark ages of creativity with a whole bunch of new tools to play with. It’s very exciting.
At a personal level, I have a Raspberry Pi that has opened up a whole new world of stuff to build. I once again own a soldering iron and I have more hand tools than will fit in their box. I’m making stuff again, and my brain is energized. At a professional level, I’m doing some really interesting work with IDEO’s Human Centered Design (HCD) toolkit, and I’m finding inspiration in the increasing interest in workplace innovation. As a society, I’m hoping that we’re entering a renaissance for thinking with your hands. Sorry Mum, I just can’t help myself.
In the last while, I have found myself saying, “when things get back to normal,” meaning when I can get back to doing business the way I used to (or was comfortable with). Well, I think I have known all along that’s a bit deluded and news of a triple dip recession only heightens my awareness that doing business right now requires huge amounts of courage, nerve, risk taking and creativity. This IS the new normal.
The way we talk about our situations really does contribute to the outcome. What are your “favorite” stories and how do they help or hinder you?
We can become entrenched in our attitudes and beliefs. Change viewpoints … assume you are one of your team members and watch your energy shift. If you are having difficulty with this one, find a pair of shoes that are quite different and walk around in them for a while. Symbolically this might help you shift your perspective and energy and communicate differently with your team members.
Today’s blog is based on the 4 of diamonds, a communications teamwork tip from our Teamwork Explorer.
I was inspired to read about Hubspot’s CEO, Brian Halligan, who takes employees on off site “story walks” to build trust and organizational culture.
