transformative change

12
Outside Expert The Magic of Thinking and Talking Together www.watercoolernewsletter.com volume 6 issue 4 july/august 2012 William Isaacs Founder and President Dialogos Please turn to page 10 The word “dialogue” has often been used, and frequently over-used, to refer to “meaningful” conversations. We need however a more nuanced understanding of this term. Dialogue is useful in some situations, but not in all. Dialogue can for instance be a potent catalyst for enabling leaders to create novel solutions to tough problems, or integrating large amounts of complex information into a coherent picture. It can help people face and make a tough strategic choice, one that has large risks; or help a team come to terms with uncertainty and find a shared direction. It is less helpful (or necessary) for solving routine, or familiar or well-understood problems. Clearing up misconceptions about dialogue can enable us to be more proficient with it. For instance we may assume Accessing Genuine Dialogue that dialogue as the art of talking and thinking together means agreeing, but that is not so. It means creating an environment and atmosphere where you can actually hear the source of the thinking behind the words, including your own. It is less about agreeing, and more about shared listening in such a way as to hear unanticipated possibilities. In some cultures when people chant they know how to create remarkable “overtones” – simultaneously producing both a basic note and a higher frequency sound, perceived as clear, flute-like or bell-like tones above the timbre of the voices. Dialogue can let us hear the overtones – the insights we create beyond what anyone individually can produce.

Upload: root

Post on 24-Mar-2016

215 views

Category:

Documents


2 download

DESCRIPTION

July August 2012 Root Newsletter

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Transformative Change

Outside Expert

Rudolph/Libbe Case Study I Conversational Leadership I Group Mojo

The Magic of Thinking and Talking Togetherwww.watercoolernewsletter.com

volume 6 issue 4 july/august 2012

William Isaacs Founder and President Dialogos

Please turn to page 10

The word “dialogue” has often been used, and frequently over-used, to refer to “meaningful” conversations. We need however a more nuanced understanding of this term. Dialogue is useful in some situations, but not in all. Dialogue can for instance be a potent catalyst for enabling leaders to create novel solutions to tough problems, or integrating large amounts of complex information into a coherent picture. It can help people face and make a tough strategic choice, one that has large risks; or help a team come to terms with uncertainty and find a shared direction. It is less helpful (or necessary) for solving routine, or familiar or well-understood problems.

Clearing up misconceptions about dialogue can enable us to be more proficient with it. For instance we may assume

AccessingGenuine

Dialoguethat dialogue as the art of talking and thinking together means agreeing, but that is not so. It means creating an environment and atmosphere where you can actually hear the source of the thinking behind the words, including your own. It is less about agreeing, and more about shared listening in such a way as to hear unanticipated possibilities. In some cultures when people chant they know how to create remarkable “overtones” – simultaneously producing both a basic note and a higher frequency sound, perceived as clear, flute-like or bell-like tones above the timbre of the voices. Dialogue can let us hear the overtones – the insights we create beyond what anyone individually can produce.

Page 2: Transformative Change

The Magic of Thinking and Talking Together2

Client Case Study

Bill Rudolph Chairman Rudolph/Libbe Companies, Inc.

The Rudolph/Libbe Companies is a full-service national construction firm and employer of more than 1,000 people, offering a broad range of construction, maintenance, facility, and energy services. We’ve built our business on the foundation of looking at projects from the perspective of our customer and helping them achieve their business objectives. This approach has helped us build great long-term relationships with our customers. Our business units, Rudolph-Libbe and GEM, Inc., provide different services, but share many common customers and regularly work in concert to deliver projects. Thus, we share a large number of interdependencies. We’ve worked together by sharing specific capabilities and specialization when that’s the best way to help our customer achieve their objectives. It’s like working with Lego pieces – the company that makes red pieces needs green ones, so we make them available where needed. We take the proper green pieces over to the red pieces and combine them, resulting in exactly what the customer needs.

Of course, it’s not always this simple. By nature, we’ve developed separate groups. Each unit has special skills that help us win business and create good value for customers, but our separateness can impede our ability to innovate and deliver a new and more valuable mix of skills, people, and processes.

Now, the skills and abilities that separate us are also great assets. Like most organizational divisions, we are really good at certain things. We see the benefit of keeping these skill areas separate, and we don’t want to give up these unique offerings. Basically, we want to do “both – and.” We have customers who came to us precisely because of our core capabilities, and they are referring us to other customers. These are relationships where we want to continue to invest, so we can serve these customers forever.

We have also found that we can bundle our core capabilities across business units and create opportunities that our competitors can’t replicate. It is really fun when we get our

Building Blocksfor a High-Performing Team

When a company has two successful primary business units, and wants to be significantly more successful, its people really need to know how to think and talk together.

Page 3: Transformative Change

www.watercoolernewsletter.com 3

customers excited about how we help their businesses perform more successfully when we package capabilities across business units, so we wanted to know how to do more of that.

Help Wanted We’d been trying to grow these capabilities to a new level for a number of months and weren’t making much progress. In our language, we were stuck in our current thinking and needed someone to bring the winch and lift us out. We needed to figure out how to get this right – to accelerate the growth of our customer offerings of unique packages of capabilities from across the companies, without giving up what is already working well. We knew we needed outside help, and we decided to work with Root.

There are unseen benefits to getting help from outside your own company when you’re moving through a change process. Root wasn’t derailed by knowing our history or things we had tried in the past. We started with a clean sheet of paper, and that helped us see the potential and possibilities through fresh eyes.

Partnering with Root, we explored the elements that create a high-performing team. We started with behaviors for building trust and mastering conflict. Having the ability to discuss difficult topics in a constructive way is vital to making change. We needed to isolate and work on the behaviors that are important to us as a company to replicate success – as well as eliminate behaviors that are roadblocks to success.

Root interviewed our executive and senior management team members separately on the critical issues and how we felt about them. They created a Watercooler® sketch to make it easier for us to visualize, think, and talk about our issues. That helped us decide what we needed to deal with, what we truly believe, and what opportunities could lie ahead.

The Beauty of Rules Together, we crafted a set of behavioral ground rules. As simple as this sounds, it was a remarkably enlightening experi-ence. This exercise allowed us to really appreciate the value

of a strong leadership foundation. Without this step, we wouldn’t have been able to move to development of plans to accelerate the growth of our capabilities.

From there, we identified our current state and the critical issues to deal with to grow this aspect of our business. We determined the elements that we really wanted to address from both opportunity and challenge perspectives. As a group, we defined the best ways to please customers and how we felt about growth, our business model, and our culture.

Then, using the foundations built with our new behaviors and the Watercooler® sketch – and when we faced our underlying beliefs and truth statements – we more clearly began to understand the world around us. We developed a picture of a future state for our companies and articulated what we’d like to accomplish that’s different from what we’ve done in the past.

As of today, we are refining our idea of our future state. We’ve engaged another level of senior management, beginning with an introduction to the behavioral ground rules. Together, we talked about why those are important to us and how we expect this group to hold us accountable for living them. They then made their own behavioral ground rules to improve team performance and organizational health. This is ongoing, and we intend to continue to engage more and more people.

The Key: Changing Habits Probably the most important thing we’ve seen from a results perspective is the benefit of the behavioral changes. This is basic, but it’s really the foundation that must be in place be-fore you can talk about any business issue. The ground rules allow teams to move forward far more easily.

When we faced our underlying beliefs and truth statements – we more clearly began

to understand the world around us.

Please turn to page 11

Page 4: Transformative Change

The Magic of Thinking and Talking Together4

Outside Expert

You may have had the opportunity to take part in a World Café conversation, where groups of four or five sit at small tables, exploring “questions that matter.” At intervals, all but one member moves to another table. The remaining member shares highlights from the previous conversation. After several rounds, participants offer insights, learnings, and opportunities to the whole group.

If so, you may have seen how the collective intelligence of a group can cross-pollinate ideas, make unexpected connections, and create action opportunities. You may then have thought about how we often use the intelligence of just a few people when we could gain so much more by including people more intentionally in the conversation.

This new approach is “conversational leadership” in action. Conversational leadership is a way of seeing, a pattern of thinking, and a set of practices that are particularly important today, when questions are complex and require new ways of thinking together. Through strategic conversations about questions that matter, leaders have unprecedented opportunities to tap collective intelligence and guide committed action. How we address challenges and opportunities may mean the difference between “business as usual” and the breakthrough thinking and action needed today.

Thomas J. Hurley, Regional Vice-Chair, North America, Oxford Leadership Academy

Juanita Brown, Ph.D., Founder of Whole Systems Associates

A Framework for Conversational Leadership To design effective architectures for engagement, a conversational leader will do these six things:

1. Clarify purpose and strategic intent Without clarity and intent, no one knows where they are headed or why. Purpose determines which issues are important and which questions matter. It helps leaders discover relevant stakeholders and select formats to support collaboration. It guides the development of strategy and enables people to decide what to do as they make real-time decisions in rapidly changing circumstances.

2. Explore critical issues and questions Without a focus on critical issues, there’s no reason to act and no context for collaborative learning. Leaders are typically judged on how well they address the issues that define their domains. Yet we often act on issues without taking time to thoughtfully define them. A conversational leader develops the capacity for evoking and articulating powerful questions—and fosters that capacity in others.

3. Engage all key stakeholders Without engaging all key stakeholders, there is little chance of breakthrough thinking. The process of identifying critical questions shows the need for diverse voices

ConversationalLeadership:

Thinking Togetherfor a Change

Page 5: Transformative Change

www.watercoolernewsletter.com 5

so innovative solutions can reveal themselves. Cross-functional teams, multi-stakeholder dialogues, and getting the whole system in the room make us aware that an “ecology of thought” is needed to understand any important issue, develop solutions, and catalyze support for change.

4. Skillfully use collaborative social technologies Without collaborative social technologies, dialogue can devolve into diatribe, and solutions are owned by those with the loudest voices. This all doesn’t happen by accident! We must be intentional about choosing processes for engagement in ways that foster “coherence without control.” To design an environment that fosters collaborative thinking, we need to clarify context, create a hospitable space, explore questions that matter, encourage everyone’s contribution, cross-pollinate and connect perspectives, listen together for insights, and share collective discoveries.

5. Guide collective intelligence toward effective action Without collective intelligence and wise action, our future remains imperiled. The outcome of all this activity is effective action in service of purpose and strategic intent. Once leaders view the organization as a living network of conversations, they can focus on questions that truly matter. In addition, they can design infrastructures that enable “harvests” so related conversations can connect and amplify each other.

6. Foster innovative capacity development Without leadership capacities that rise to today’s complex challenges, we rely on approaches that are no longer adequate. Developing the capacity for conversational leadership may be one of the most productive investments that organizations can make. Yet our formal training and experience poorly equip us with the mental models or process skills needed to respond creatively to the complexity of today’s challenges.

Shaping Positive Futures We need an expanded concept of leadership development—one that encompasses the skills, knowledge, and qualities to create and guide networks that continually renew the capacity to learn, adapt, and create value.

A true conversational leader:

· Creates a climate for discovery.

· Evokes and honors diverse perspectives.

· Asks powerful questions.

· Suspends premature judgment.

· Explores assumptions and beliefs.

· Embraces ambiguity and not-knowing.

· Listens for connections between ideas.

· Captures key insights and articulates shared understanding.

Our individual and collective power is amplified as we “think together” and connect our conversations to create possibilities for change. In an era when all of us are called to step forward with courage, conversational leadership can transform how leaders understand their organizations, how companies employ their collective intelligence, and how we all participate in “thinking together, for a change.”

Tom is a senior consultant and executive coach on creating strategic alignment and competitive advantage through collaboration, engagement, and accountability. He serves as Regional Vice-Chair, North America, for Oxford Leadership Academy. Juanita has served as a senior affiliate with the MIT Sloan School’s Center for Organizational Learning, as a research affiliate with the Institute for the Future, and as a Fellow of the World Business Academy.

To learn more about The World Café, go to: http://www.theworldcafe.com/index.html. To contact Tom or Juanita, you may email them at tom.hurley oxfordleadership.com or [email protected].

Our individual and collective power is amplified as we “think together” and connect our conversations

to create possibilities for change.

Page 6: Transformative Change

The Magic of Thinking and Talking Together6

Something extraordinary happens when people use the technique of thinking and talking together.

When everyone is open, accepting, and contributing, you can achieve results far beyond your

expectations. Almost anything is possible when we think together. When no one cares who the

ideas came from, it’s amazing what gets done.

Innovation Point of View

Group Mojo: Creating Magic

Brian Donovan, Director, Insights and Client Solutions, Root Inc.

Jason Stafne, Senior Conceptor, and Michael Champion, Senior Conceptor, Root

Now, we aren’t referring to brainstorming, which has its own good points. When a group brainstorms, they literally throw ideas around that may or may not match. All ideas are “good.” Brainstorming can prepare you for this kind of exercise, but it’s not the same thing.

Thinking and talking together results in making

something that you can all get excited about, that’s a result of all your ideas, not just the “best” one. This is an important element of the creation process. It’s an affirmation of others’ value and worth, and it builds on the energy, producing even more creativity.

Page 7: Transformative Change

www.watercoolernewsletter.com 7

There are many benefits of thinking and talking together, but here are three of the best.

1. Solving Puzzles Together Is Gratifying and Enjoyable. Thinking and talking together works so well because it’s fun! When we’re solving puzzles, the joy is in figuring it out, not just finding out the answers. No good comedian tells the punchline before the joke. That’s too easy. And no good teacher explains a difficult concept in overly technical terms. That’s too hard. But when we find that sweet spot between the two, we make those connections with happiness and pride.

The most powerful mystery films juxtapose images in a way that engages your brain in solving the puzzle. A half-open door. A man looking over his shoulder. A scream. Your brain likes solving the puzzle. Compare this with an art film, where things are just too disconnected. Your brain tries to make the connections, but after a while it just gives up. In the same way, groups of people who think and talk together can make connections without force or pain. This co-thinking is spurred on by perseverance and peer pressure, and that leads to getting creative more successfully and more quickly.

2. Iterated Pictures + Dialogue = Co-Creation. We use sketching to help people visualize the ideas we are co- creating. The magic isn’t in the technique of the artist, but in how people can contribute ideas without fear and with appreciation for others’ ideas. As the sketch is iterated, we see a picture unfold, and this reinforms our thinking. We ask questions, think and talk together some more, and then change the picture as we go along.

The stumbling block with starting and stopping is that people are generally uncomfortable if they don’t know what’s coming next. But, as in life, only when you’ve completed the current step does the next step become obvious! But with each new picture, you can see what you’ve done. Ideas become visible as you create them. And because they’re tangible, they’re memorable. They make an impression, positive or negative. And when everyone is satisfied with that last iteration, the final piece is a work of art conceived by nobody and everybody. Rarely is something so compellingly owned by the entire group. Together, you have created something that didn’t exist! Doing this together is exponentially powerful.

Please turn to page 8

Page 8: Transformative Change

The Magic of Thinking and Talking Together8

3. We Oscillate Using “Kinda-Like” Connections. People get programmed to shut down a lot of behaviors that make them creative and allow the big breakthroughs. When we open those closed doors, however, we become innovative. The only way to break through is to introduce new thoughts and new dialogue and allow for the possibility of changing your patterns.

When people explain things to each other, they often use the “Kinda- Like Technique.” One person says, “It’s kinda like…” and then connects that event or object to something they’ve experienced. The other person may understand – or not, in which case he’ll say, “Oh! Is it kinda like…?” And then together you form a picture in your minds that is pretty similar. The best way to innovate is to oscillate ideas between life experiences, moving back and forth using comparisons.

Thinking and talking together prevents us from holding back innovative ideas because we think they may not be relevant. The “kinda-like” experience is what makes co-creation so powerfully different from sitting in a room trying to create something on your own. Like atoms banging into each other, one person’s ideas colliding with others creates a new energy.

Conditions Needed for Thinking and Talking Together So how do you do this? Every group will have its own way of thinking and talking together, but these are the essential conditions.

1. Listening. We’re talking about really hearing with an open mind. We need to listen in a way that enables us to add something relevant that relates to the previous statement. This makes us all better listeners because we need to give full attention to the speaker so we can build on that idea. (Compare this with the usual tactic of simply waiting for someone to stop talking so you can tell your own idea, which may or may not be related at all.)

2. Framing the problem. You start with a vague goal. You set parameters, but realize that no one will know what it “looks like” until it’s complete. Imagine that you’re a kid, and you and your buddies want to build a fort in the woods that you can sleep in. That’s it! It’s not a black hole of a thought, but it’s also not an architectural mockup. As it’s built, ideas are altered and added to. And working spontaneously and creatively, the result is something you never imagined…a fort, yes, but one with a lookout tower, a game room, and a refrigerator! The key is giving up the need to be certain of what you’re building, because the idea will change and reshape as you work on it.

Continued from page 7

Page 9: Transformative Change

www.watercoolernewsletter.com 9

3. Finding comfort in being uncomfortable. To accept new ideas, we have to accept a certain degree of ambiguity. Remember, we only need to take one step at a time into the unknown. All Columbus knew for sure was that he had a ship that could sail, and that there was water to sail on. That’s pretty ambiguous! Be willing to be uncomfortable for the moment, and as you take the next step, the previous one will make more sense.

4. Trusting in yourself and the team. Fear paralyzes us. Uncertainty delays us. Trust allows us to be brave and take reasonable chances, believing that every problem is solvable. Think about it: If scientists can map the human genome, we can probably figure out how to set our team’s initiatives for the next quarter.

5. Adding in diversity. To make thinking and talking together even more effective, include varying perspectives. Instead of being surrounded by like-minded people, invite an out-of-the-box person to your creation session. Diversity of life experiences and viewpoints plays well with the “kinda-like” activity. The results will always be stronger when your group isn’t totally homogenous.

6. Physically manifesting what you’re building. We need to actually see what we’re creating as we create it. This can mean stick figures on a whiteboard, or something built with Legos, or an actual sketch by someone who can actually draw. It doesn’t matter. This is important for two reasons: First, when your session ends, you have something concrete that symbolizes your work. And second, it’s a point of reference during the discussion so you can remember previous points and be inspired to enhance ideas as you go.

Thinking and talking together moves a group to a place you never could get to by yourself. You not only unearth totally new ideas, but you actually change things. Co-creating ignites a “group mojo” that spreads. When you do it regularly, it’s a skill you can replicate. You become a better listener, a better discussion leader, and a better interpreter of others’ viewpoints.

Often, the work that produces the greatest results is the work that has been most enjoyable. Like kids building a fort, all building on each other’s ideas no matter who thought of them first, we can make better things when we think and talk together… and have more fun.

Want to know more about creating group mojo? Email Brian at [email protected].

Page 10: Transformative Change

The Magic of Thinking and Talking Together10

Continued from page 1

One of the constraints to dialogue comes because people react with well-worn habits of thought and rigid, dug-in positions. When the stakes go up, the familiar routines come out. Most of us go into meetings able to predict what others will say, mentally rehearsing how the conversation will go before it begins. This is because we know people (including ourselves) are on autopilot, operating from memory. Not much creativity leaks out in such cases.

Dialogue’s roots tell us that dialogue is about the “flow of meaning”: dia means through and logos is “word” or “meaning.” Dialogue is meaning moving through oneself, or through a group of people, enlivening and changing them. This points to a core requirement for dialogue – the shift from an extractive to contributive mindset. Most people try to take some value from a conversation. Instead, we need to think about how what we add could be a gift to the people involved. Creativity requires an orientation in giving, not taking.

True Thinking

How do we create an atmosphere of true dialogue? Perhaps surprisingly we achieve this by learning to think. There are two dimensions to this process: the processing of existing ideas which exist in memory, and perception and creation of new ones. Most of the time we spend mentally is in the former domain. In dialogue we seek to make room for the latter. Thinking moves more gently, less rapid fire, more like water flowing than fireworks and sparks. It requires incubation, gestation. Thinking doesn’t mean processing existing ideas, or extracting meaning, but letting a flow move through oneself. It means being in a dialogue with more subtle levels of oneself. We have the idea that the “clash” of difference produces insight. In fact this produces sparks, but not sustained fire. The rhythm of true thinking connects you to insight, which is the passionate rearrangement of existing ideas.

Ultimately dialogue lets us go beyond collaboration – literally working together – to find a new level of shared understanding about what it means to create together. It can open us to a shift in identity – to let us discover that we are more than who we thought we were. This is the deeper secret of dialogue – it opens a window into the source of deeper creativity that emerges from being who we really are. From this place an entirely new level of action emerges.

When we are in dialogue we are creating, not just talking, and as we do this, a different form of identity emerges, like the overtones in a chant. This level of experience is quite impactful, and not quickly forgotten. A change in meaning, at this level, produces a change in being. Dialogue is not in this sense a mere sharing of ideas, but a breaking into a new state of experience.

A New Way to Lead

The discovery of genuine dialogue opens much more than new ways of talking together; it lets us discover new ways to lead. Many of us are finding that trying to navigate the volatility and uncertainty evident on every hand with old maps and familiar methods simply no longer works. We need a new way of orienteering, of finding our way. We need a new kind of dialogue with our worlds. After many years of experimenting with dialogue, I have found that a new approach to leading in times like these has become more apparent:

1. Leaders must personally become aware of how their internal thoughts and actions impact the world around them. We must learn to work with the invisible. What goes on in you impacts what goes on out there with others. While this may sound obvious, few pay attention to it, or more, do anything about it. This is the centerpiece of a new approach to producing a generative shift in effectiveness.

2. We must seek to understand and build alignment around the potential in any situation, and not just focus on what we can see. This is about focusing on what we want, not what we think is doable. It requires true dialogue – to discover and declare it. This is not fantasy management. It is about creating the new instead of merely reacting to the existing. We often dare not articulate the potential we sense, for fear of being seen as foolish or impractical. As a result we never create it.

3. Leaders must also learn to create safe environments, which we call “containers,” where it is possible to speak and think together. The dominant cultures in most organizations do not permit this. Most professional settings are ritualized, rigid and quite unsafe. They prescribe some forms of engagement, and rule out others. Working to fit in, people do not bring all of themselves to the table. It becomes dangerous to discuss or admit to error, or uncertainty, or

Page 11: Transformative Change

www.watercoolernewsletter.com 11

Our success so far is all a result of changing habits. We all publicly committed to establishing the behaviors, and we’re making progress in holding each other accountable to them. We’ve all stumbled – and we’ve pointed it out in a constructive way. We talk about getting a “yellow card” when we deserve it, and we laugh about it and start over. We revisit the rules before and after meetings and check how well we followed them.

As we continue to dialogue about our opportunities, we’re getting better at the technique and also at accelerating the delivery of new and better solutions to our customers that improve their business performance. By discovering the resources, knowledge, and skills where another unit can help, new and even better solutions for our customers have become apparent.

Eventually, we’ll launch this to the rest of the organization. We have a lot of work ahead in terms of defining our future state and engaging our leaders in making it a reality. With their input, we’ll modify our visualization tools to better communicate where we’re going.

When we started this new technique of thinking and talking together, we wanted to use the skills and processes of one unit to benefit another to make it “go faster” – not to re-invent the wheel. Now, with a collective view, we see even more opportunities to move our growth agenda forward faster.

Bill Rudolph was named president of The Rudolph/Libbe Companies, Inc., in April of 1998 and Chairman in May of 2004. The Rudolph/Libbe Companies is the parent company of Rudolph|Libbe Inc., GEM Industrial Inc., and Rudolph/Libbe Properties.

Continued from page 3

doubt; to do so is often professional suicide. It can in some cultures be equally difficult to challenge mediocrity or declare a passionate purpose. New creative action comes only as we expand the bandwidth of what we can accept and what we can seek.

4. We need to learn to transform our memory and habits of how we once thought to function. Organizations are often caught in patterns of habitual reactions. Organizational muscle memory reasserts itself in the face of change. Only by becoming conscious of these taken-for-granted ways of working, and practically trying to function differently, can we rewire ourselves and our systems, gain access to new insight, move past our jaded perspectives and breathe fresh air.

5. Finally we must cross the threshold of thinking to acting and living from it. We can’t just have the insight; we need to live it and be it. A new way of leading requires a shift from the inside out in attitude, thought and action.

While all this may seem a tall order, there are simple ways to begin. Start by asking yourself these questions:

• What is it I really want to create?

• What’s the finest I could offer of myself in this situation regardless of how I feel about it?

• What is getting in the way of my doing this?

• What is at risk for me if I really achieved what I can imagine?

• What is at risk for me in imagining it at all?

Ask these just for yourself or as a group. However, know that the answers are meaningless until each individual asks them first for themselves. Without individual leaders, there can be no collective leadership. If you take these questions seriously, you can succeed. While no one can do it for you, you can be inspired to act – and then inspire others through your genuine example.

William is Founder and President of dialogos, a Cambridge, MA leadership and consulting group. In 1999, he wrote Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together (Doubleday). He is a leading authority on collective leadership, the design and development of organizational learning, and the practice and theory of dialogue. He is also a Senior Lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. For more information, go to www.dialogos.com.

©2012 William Isaacs. All rights reserved.

Page 12: Transformative Change

The next issue of the Watercooler newsletter is September/October.

What we heard you say…In our May/June issue we asked you how you would define the word alignment in your business. Many of you took the time to respond with your best thinking and experiences on the meaning of alignment. The concept of a singular focus or shared focus came across loud and clear.

Others talked about the interlocking ownership of vision and values with a strong line of sight from the organization to division, to teams, to individuals. We have a real bias for simplifying metaphors, and you suggested the idea of a machine with a systematic flow of people, processes, and technology to perform efficiently on a daily basis.

At the heart of alignment is understanding. You suggested that the big picture or understanding the WHY behind decisions and actions can appeal to people’s highest level of thinking, and as a result enables the highest level of alignment and commitment.

Regardless of the definition that most resonates for any of us, the one sentiment that came across clearly in all definitions is the feeling that as we raise the sails of the organization, the real magic of alignment is that it catches the power of the wind, harnessing people and capabilities that we already have, to take us to new destinations and levels of performance.

Business by the numbers…

“Alignment would be that all departments and team members within the organization are focused on the key initiatives or objectives that are determined to be the primary areas for growth.”

– Assistant General Manager

“Engaging people in the vision and values that are foundational to the strategic direc-tion and plan and identifying the tactics and resources needed for success at every level – individual, team, division, leadership.”

– Director, Learning & Performance

“Alignment in the business workplace is to have a system-atic flow (almost machine-like) with all the working parts in the right conditions to perform accurately and effectively. I do not feel our company has any-thing in place to engage daily.”

– Division Manager

“Faculty vs. staff...I feel that I am sitting back and watching the television se-ries Survivor, or the movie The Hunger Games. Individuals are self-motivated. We are a business currently going through a restructuring.”

– Associate Director of Development

“Currently, our PDS is assisting us in getting our goals aligned, and our strategy team is helping us populate that information.”

– Senior Program Manager

“When leadership and followership all under-stand the WHY behind actions that are being taken. An example would be that leaders have to make tough choices and staff offer ‘share-the-pain’ solutions to lessen the impact.”

– Principal

billion$55

of executiveshave smartphones

Outsystems.com, August 2011

82%of executives do not believe their company’s strategy will

lead to success. *

53% 64%of executives say they have

too many conflicting priorities. *number of dollars marketers

will spend on interactive(display, mobile, email, social, search)

channels by 2014 Outsystems.com, August 2011

54%of executives say their company’s way of creating value is not well

understood by employeesor customers. *

* Booz & Co., June 2011