My view of organization effectiveness starts with two important assumptions:

1. We are interdependent, and as a result
2. We need to collaborate.

Interdependence implies that people need to cooperate in order to accomplish what they want.  In the workplace, managers need employees to accomplish results that lead to department or organization success.  Likewise, employees need managers to help clarify goals and objectives, give feedback about performance, and provide fair compensation for the work performed.  During change initiatives, technical resources, subject matter experts and stakeholders need each other to shape workable solutions.  In families and personal relationships, people rely on each other to enhance emotional satisfaction through mutual acceptance, support, encouragement, or love.

One of the most troubling and frustrating aspects of human existence, however, is this notion of interdependence.  We realize that our needs, wants, desires, goals and objectives involve the participation of others and getting their participation sometimes can be confounding.  We feel dependent upon them to satisfy our need, resolve the difference, or provide needed support.  On the other hand, we also feel the need to eliminate the obstacle—or the person—which stands in our way.  We want to get the desired results independent of them.  We wish we could get what we want through our own effort, or at least exist without this “problem” in our life.

So, we are faced with a dilemma.  Our desired outcomes require a degree of dependence on them. It requires their contribution, their input, and their feedback.  Our preferred way of obtaining the outcome requires independence of us.  It requires that I do it, I take responsibility, I become self-reliant, and I achieve the result.  We resent dependence because we are not in control and can be blocked from our goal or manipulated to a different outcome, yet we recognize that independence is unrealistic because others often have something we need.

The trouble with this binary thinking is that it leads to destructive conflict.  When getting what we want becomes challenging it triggers our fight or flight instincts, and as a result, we are tempted to either to try to dominate and control or to run away.  That’s why bosses become “bossy,” employees quit, business partners become litigious, and personal relationships crumble.

And that is our big clue:  Conflict occurs only between interdependent parties.  We would not be in conflict with someone unless we needed something from them.  But interdependence does not mean we must lose ourselves in order to get what we want.  Interdependence requires drawing out the value of we.  If I am independent, I can achieve a great deal because I am self-reliant and capable.  But when we work together, we can achieve much more than I could produce alone, especially if you have something that would enhance my success.  Interdependence requires that we create a better outcome by exchanging or creating something of value to each of us.

The first step is realizing the fact that we are interdependent.  That is Assumption #1.  Then, it is about embracing Assumption #2 by recognizing that interdependence requires collaboration.  And collaboration begins with understanding the needs, desires and goals of each party required to create mutually beneficial solutions.

The amazing result is that when we choose to work together to achieve our desired outcomes, we are more inclined to coordinate our efforts, attend to one another, and have increased levels of productivity.  We also tend to like one another more and participate in more constructive communication and exchange.

So, the key to hacking the buggy code of intolerance, and minimizing the The Dangers of Corporate Fundamentalism, is to make the shortcomings of independence more painful than the patience and discipline required of collaboration.  Only then will others come to the table ready to listen, learn and create.

Intolerance.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines intolerance as the unwillingness to accept views, beliefs or behaviors that differ from one’s own.

In American politics, we have seen a level of bipartisanship that has Washington divided into Red and Blue extremes, and as Todd Purdum, National Editor of Vanity Fair, described in his September 2010 article, “Washington , We Have a Problem,” “the partisan calumny and contempt in Washington are today all-consuming.” Around the world, we are seeing intolerance take many forms from the rise of religious fundamentalism in both the Christian and Muslim worlds to “the blatant bigotry of many mainstream political leaders, journalists and other elites” in Europe (Washington Post).

In the workplace, intolerance reveals itself in a variety of ways.  It may be as blatant as a racial slur or ridicule of sexual orientation.  More often, it is as seemingly innocuous as a manager silencing a naysayer, discouraging the introduction of a new idea or calling a person “a negative thinker.”  It might also be demonstrated in customer-vendor relationships when battle lines are drawn, demands are made and both sides compete to determine how many pounds of flesh can be extracted before an mutually unsatisfying agreement is reached.

As stated by a VP of client management for a well-known enterprise technology vendor, “I went into the meeting thinking this client was one of our best relationships.  They rated our work highly, appeared arm-in-arm with us at conferences, and were one of our frequent testimonials.  I knew we were in trouble, though, when I walked into the conference room and saw their purchasing director and two attorneys.  It was as if today was the day they decided to beat the crap out of someone and it was our turn.  There was no give and take discussion.  It was all about how they were right and we were wrong.”

Intolerance of any kind in organizations is a form of workplace violence.  Plain and simple.  It may not lead to physical violence per se, but it is not about connecting, partnering or collaborating.  It is about dominating and eliminating that which is different.

Intolerance is an ideological fundamentalism that insists there is only one right way and that all other ways are wrong.  A fundamentalist is one who says, “If you don’t think the way I think, then you are unworthy.  And if you say that my way is the wrong way, then you are against me.”

This is a form of violence because ideological fundamentalism is closely followed by rhetorical fundamentalism which becomes a gateway to physical fundamentalism.  The initial thought of “you don’t think like me” often is carried further in the minds of intolerants when they say, “People who don’t think like me (or us) should get in line or leave.  My, gosh, they are anti-company.  They don’t buy into our values or our culture.”

Then rhetorically the intolerant might start asking questions such as “What should we do with people that are anti-company?”  Pretty soon we are ready for the final stage that says, “Anyone who is against the company should be fired” or “any vendor who is unwilling to see things our way should be sued.”

There is a temptation within intolerant thinking to escalate any variation from a “difference” to a “danger.”  And by talking about anyone who thinks differently as wrong, inappropriate, unsuitable or anti-company, you are laying the foundation for somebody in power to do something about it.

Listen, I’ve been around technology for most of my career, so I understand the idea of binary constructs. One/Zero.  Right/wrong.  Black/white.  Us/Them.  In/Out. Red/Blue.  Conservative/Liberal.  Capitalist/Socialist.  Yin/Yang.

It is human nature to try to make sense of an uncertain world with the certainty of binary thinking.  We seek to find an answer, the one answer, to every question.  And if we don’t know it, we search the web or hire a consultant and expect a presentation of THE answer.  We want to skip the organization assessment, skip the contextual analysis, skip the frameworks and methodologies and go right to the answer.  And we want the answer to be clear, concise and presented quickly.

Leaders often make the mistake of thinking they must be prepared to give one answer, the only answer, to every challenge that comes their way.  This faulty thinking creates a problem.  It makes leaders think that their answer must not only be right, it must be followed or else it is a challenge to their authority.  It presents another problem because when a leader finds the “right way” it means all dissention must be shut out.  Now, they might manage to have genuine sympathy for others in their wrongness, but make no mistake about it, they are wrong.

Leadership based upon this thinking means the right way is about my thinking, my approach, my team, my function, my division, my region, my company, my culture, my tribe, my dogma.  Any deviation from that is substandard.

But here’s the rub.  Organization effectiveness and intolerance cannot coexist.

We live in a business world that is increasingly partnered, contracted, outsourced, off-shored, virtual, international and matrixed.  Our organizations and project teams are flat, without any real hierarchy and without direct reporting lines.  There are multiple business models that work in a variety of contexts.

Dare I say it?  There is no One Right Way.  In fact, teaming, collaboration, invention, innovation and creativity require the expansiveness of multiple right ways.  They also demand a new way of thinking and a new way of approaching our interactions with the differences we encounter along the way.

Over the next few posts, I will begin to share (in fewer words) what I have learned about how we hack the code of collaboration in these evolving organization forms.

Play is the highest form of research. Albert Einstein

When was the last time you played at work?  When was the last time you spent your workday having fun?  More importantly, if you are a leader, when was the last time you encouraged your employees to play?  If you are having trouble remembering, then you may want to give it a try because fun, play, and playmates are critical ingredients for generating creativity and innovation.

As Tim Brown, CEO of design firm IDEO, asserts, playfulness helps us get to better creative solutions.  When leaders establish an environment of trust where people feel secure enough to be vulnerable, employees will feel secure enough to explore something new, take risks and play.

This is not only critical in jobs where creativity is a primary focus, such as design jobs, it also is increasingly important in any job requiring continuous improvement, operational efficiency or collaborative problem-solving.  And the last time I checked, most jobs in the American economy fit this bill.

When play is connected to an employee’s organizational tasks it facilitates the cognitive, affective and motivational dimensions of the creative process.  But even when play is only a diversion, it fosters the important social dynamics that encourage creativity in the first place.  In other words, play helps people develop relationship skills that take them from their own individual points of view to creative and collaborative solutions.

The importance of this social component to creativity was highlighted recently by Adam Grant of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Jim Berry of the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  In a study appearing in the forthcoming Academy of Management Journal, they share that “managers who are interested in fueling creativity will find it advantageous to create conditions that support prosocial motivation and perspective-taking.”

Prosocial motivation is the desire to have a positive impact on others.  Perspective-taking is the ability to understand the emotions and experience of others, and when that interest in understanding others is driven by a desire to make a positive impact, employees develop ideas that are useful as well as novel.

Play helps us understand and empathize with one another, and that in turn, improves our ability to see the world through another’s eyes, or role play.   And as Tim Brown points out, our ability to role play helps us have empathy for what we are designing or improving.  It helps us create services and experiences that are authentic.  Play helps us think creatively about the perspectives of others and identify new, more effective strategies for helping them.

So, Ideo’s founder, David Kelley, is on to something when he said he wanted to work in a company where “all the employees are my best friends.”  Friendship is a shortcut to fun and play.  And our ability to play improves our ability to relate, connect, understand, and trust that we can take the creative risks needed to innovate and change.

Change is a lot like going from Oz to Kansas.

On one hand, it’s as uncomplicated as closing your eyes, clicking the heels of your ruby slippers and willing yourself from one place to another.  Individuals and organizations have the ability to make change that simple—an uncomplicated choice, a straightforward decision, a path taken with no looking back.  And like Dorothy learns at the end of the movie, we always have the potential to instantly go home.

On the other hand, most of us need to follow a Yellow Brick Road.  Yellow Brick Roads provide clear paths, somewhere to place our attention, and the constants during times of turmoil when monkeys are flying toward us in attack.  We may not always stay on the path, in fact it may not even be needed to get to our destination, but it is there to provide a unifying sense of direction and purpose.  Even if it is not exactly the way home, it prompts the action required for us to achieve our objective.

In any successful change campaign, change leaders must present a clear, straightforward step that employees can take to help them move toward the destination.  Even if more complex action is required at some point in the future, a well-defined first step or two provides welcome reassurance.

After landing in a strange land where nothing looked familiar, Dorothy was quickly comforted to know that the Yellow Brick Road would lead her to someone who could get her home.  She had no idea of the challenges that she would find on the road ahead, but the road itself provided the comfort needed to get moving.

Resistance to change, much like the flying monkeys, is always lurking somewhere in the shadows waiting to wreak havoc on your efforts.  Even when employees buy into your change vision, they quickly develop cynicism, or resistance, if they don’t know how you plan to achieve the vision.  By showing them the first few bricks, you start them down the path required to move forward.  More importantly, once you have them focused and moving, they start to define the subsequent steps and can help identify additional requirements needed to achieve the goal.

Those first few steps are critical to get employees engaged.

George, the director of a government agency’s maintenance and utilities function, was trying in earnest to improve the operational effectiveness of his organization knowing that many jobs were at risk to outside contractors.  The organization’s labor costs had increased, and the agency they served was less satisfied with the quality of work and the time it took to complete projects.

George and his deputies knew that they were going to have to change the managerial and employee culture from a “government mindset” to a “business mindset.”  So, they started peppering their daily conversations with this message.  They would say things like “We have to start thinking like business people,” or “What are you doing to become more efficient?”

The response of the organization was a universal, “Huh?!”  Employees understood the objective—and they wanted to save their jobs—but they had operated a certain way for so long that they didn’t know how to get from Point A to Point B.  George was communicating, “We want to go home,” but he wasn’t showing employees the Yellow Brick Road that would lead them there.

When he and his leadership team pointed out the first few bricks, however, his organization got fully engaged.  One brick was to start measuring aspects of their performance, such as the cost per job or the days to completion.  Another brick was to provide outside benchmarks of cost and quality.  And the final brick was to “give permission” for employees to work outside the guidelines of policies and procedures if they could show it would lead to higher quality and better service.

Once those steps were identified and taken, employees at all levels found their brains, hearts and courage and skipped happily down the Yellow Brick Road toward Oz.

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Randy Nelson knows something about how to build collaborative, innovative cultures.  Although currently the Head of Artistic Development and Training at DreamWorks Animation, two years ago when he did this piece, he was the Dean of Pixar University.  For twelve years, Randy was responsible designing curriculum and delivering classes and programs to continuously increase the skill and collaborative ability of Pixar’s mixed technical, artistic and management staff.

Pixar’s business model differs significantly from the standard Hollywood model in which there is a production organization that is set up in an ad hoc way for each film.  Pixar is an organization with regular, full-time employees that has sought to shift the center of focus from the ideas to the people who create the ideas.  Central to this strategy is Pixar University, a cross between an art and film academy that seeks to develop the skills of the employees, the learning curve of the organization and the collaborative spirit of the culture.

So, for those of you interested in improving the collaboration environment of your organizations or project teams, here are a few takeaways:

• Like a good improvisational actor, accept every offer to collaborate.
• Make your partners look good.  It’s not about judgment or saying “This is pretty good. How can I make it better?”  It’s about saying “Here’s where I’m starting. What can I do with this?”
• Focus on error recovery, not failure avoidance.  It’s about resiliency, adaptability and the ability to make something from failure.
• Be interested, not interesting.  Be a great listener who amplifies the person talking.  Seek to know what others want to know.
• Use communication as an opportunity for translation. If you just emit “techie speak,” nobody really hears you. The responsibility for translation gets pushed to the receiving end of the conversation, and as a result, gets garbled. Do the translation at the sending end so that it doesn’t have to be done at the receiving end and the listener can say, “I understand.”
• See collaboration as amplification.  This means connecting a group of individuals that are interested in each other, that bring separate depth to the problem and that bring a breadth that gives them interest in the entire solution.  This combination it allows them to communicate in ways that promote understanding and add to overall solutions.

Sometimes it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a change leader to take on the full responsibility of change . . .

A couple weeks ago I completed an Accelerated Change Readiness workshop with a project team for a Fortune 500 company.  They were preparing for a technology implementation and the workshop was designed to help them think through the change management issues for the initiative.

We spent three very active days understanding the project objectives, assessing the organization’s cultural and political context, and identifying methods and protocols for stakeholder engagement, communication, decision-making, and conflict resolution.

It was intense, but fun, and the group, who was from various functions throughout the company, did a terrific job working through the project risks and creating a roadmap for managing change.

At the end of the workshop I pulled the project leader aside and asked for her thoughts.  I wanted to know whether she thought the project team identified the core issues and risks, gelled as a team, and were ready to manage change on the initiative.

She looked down at her feet, then out the conference room window.  She forced a smile and said, “I understand all that happened over the past three days.  So many of the risks we identified described exactly why these kinds of projects have fallen short of expectations in the past.  I mean, it’s true, we need to address these risks if we want to meet stakeholder expectations.  The problem is that to get there, we will have to take on more than the stated scope.  The team is ready to do it, but I’m not sure that I am.”

“What makes you hesitant?” I asked.

“Listen,” she said.  “I know the best sol . . . no, make that the right solution, the right thing to do for the company, is to add to our scope and complete the other elements of solution design.  But that would mean extra work, and for me, extra risk.  Getting other stakeholders involved to weigh-in on the solution will make this more complicated.  My job is just to get this project done on time.  It’s not to resolve political battles.”

“I can understand your feelings,” I consoled.  “Will you be able to complete the project without navigating around or through a few of those battles?”

“I’m not sure, but isn’t it enough just to focus on the project alone?  That’s doing my job, right?”

This project manager was staring straight into the eye of the needle and confronting the dilemma many project managers must face:  Should she work around the more strategic change challenges and get the project done?  Or should she take on the larger challenges to achieve the more impactful result?

In my mind, as well as the stakeholders interviewed and surveyed prior to the workshop, there is no choice.  Achieving the narrowly focused, “practical” result would be worse than awful.  The end-users would receive the technology with a yawn and the project team would know they compromised.  Executives may well call it a success publicly, but privately confess that the end result was uninspiring.

One of the great fictions of modern business is that the 80% solution is acceptable.  All the talk about moving from “Good to Great” or being “In Search of Excellence” or achieving the “Tipping Point” and too many businesses settle for “good enough.”  Just fly in an airplane, eat at a fast food restaurant, shop at all but a few grocery or retail stores, call into a call center, or ask human resources for anything.  Most change initiatives also fall into the same pattern.

It’s not that any of the above is all that bad, it’s just rare that they are exceptional.

How often in your projects are stakeholders saying, “Wow!  That was really well done.”

So my challenge for change leaders is:

Do you want to put any amount of effort into an uninspired result?  Or are you ready to stay on the straight and narrow path through the eye of the needle to extraordinary.

Derek Sivers, the founder and former president of CD Baby, shows in this funny and revealing video that while a leader gets things started, it’s the courageous follower that transforms the “lone nut” into a leader.  It’s the follower’s choice to follow and encourage others to follow that makes the difference between an isolated incident and a trend.  New followers follow the follower as much as, if not more than, the leader.

So, what does this mean if you are the leader?  And what does it mean even if your leadership role doesn’t require that you are a trend-setting innovator?

1. Stay true to your convictions.  It’s your strength and commitment that sets you apart and captures the attention of those around you.  It may take time for your ideas to catch on, but keep at it.
2. Embrace and nurture your followers.  Show abundant appreciation for those with the guts to walk away from the safety of the tried and true to follow you.  And then . . .
3. Collaborate.  Make it about the movement, not you.  Make your followers co-conspirators.  Give them space to shine.

If you really want to create something special—whether you are the leader, an early stage follower, or part of the in-crowd—be courageous.  Step up, show the way and know that your fearless example teaches and inspires.

As Ed Roland and Collective Soul express so well, great results happen when you begin to listen.

In the late 1980’s, the economy in Japan was strong, and everyone was making money, trading stocks, investing in real estate, and busy buying assets throughout the world.  Behind all the luxury and pleasures, however, lay the realities of a grueling corporate life that had employees constantly working and constantly stressed.  Physicians in corporations started to worry about stress related disorders in the work force as their schedules became overrun with employees suffering from anxiety attacks, ulcers, headaches, insomnia, and depression.

The word “karoshi” (Karo= overwork, Shi= Death: Death from overwork) became a regular topic on the evening news, in the morning papers and in the conversations of union leaders, business executives, attorneys, statesmen, clergy and families.

With the mounting social pressure, Japan’s health and safety law was amended and made business owners responsible for the health and safety of their workforce, including mental health. A subcommittee of the Ministry of Labor decided that managers in corporations should have some knowledge of stress and stress related disorders as well as relaxation methods and listening skills.  The government also gave out grants and other promotional measures so that businesses would implement a Total Health Promotion plan (THP).

During one of the promotional workshops Akira Ikemi, then a teacher and researcher at University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Japan (UOEH), met the health and safety staff form Daihatsu.  As a result of this encounter, he went on to create a remarkable listening workshop that he taught for the next twenty years at Daihatsu and to other major Japanese corporations including Mitsubishi Chemicals, Sumitomo Steel, Nippon Steel, and NTT.

The real value the workshops came from the results of a study he conducted while teaching with his colleague Shinya Kubota.  Using pre-training and post-training surveys, they discovered a strong link between managerial listening and the mental health and satisfaction of employees.  Employees who perceived their supervisors as having strong person-centered attitudes—demonstrated significantly by active listening skills—exhibited less fatigue, depression and anxiety than those who did not.  They also found that this same group of employees had higher levels of motivation, better relationships with coworkers, and increased levels of productivity.

Ikemi also found that listening skills are teachable.  Managers who participated in listening training programs were able to develop the skills and techniques that create these positive effects.

So, listening isn’t just some touchy feely practice held up as an ideal by those trying to get managers to put away their iPhones.  It’s hard-core capability that is proven to produce profound physical, emotional and cognitive results.  It can take managers from “walking in the desert all alone” to having the capability to connect, engage and create higher levels of employee performance.

Hey you’re now thirsty
Walking in the desert all alone
Hey you’re now searching
Lost in isolation from your soul
The bullets you bite
From the pain you request
You’re finding harder to digest
And the answers you seek
Are the ones you destroy
Your anger’s well deployed

Hey why can’t you listen
Hey why can’t you hear
Hey why can’t you listen
As love screams everywhere

Hey you now hunger
Feeding your mind with selfishness
Hey you now wander
Aimlessly around your consciousness
Your prophecies fail
And your thoughts become weak
Silence creates necessity
You’re clothing yourself
In the shields of despair
Your courage now impaired

You crucify all honesty
No signs you see do you believe
And all your words just twist and turn
Reviving just to crash and burn
You’re fighting till the bitter end
If only your heart could open up
And listen

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.

There are few documents that have more clearly stated the case for change than the United States Declaration of Independence.  There, also, are few better examples of the patient, persistent and collaborative process required to align an executive team around not only a document, but more importantly the full knowledge of the implications of their commitment.  It was not without conflict and politics and compromise, and it took time to reach consensus.  In the end, and with history as our proof, the painstaking process of building this revolutionary case for change was a key reason for the clear vision and commitment of a new nation.

Happy Independence Day!

Context is everything.

It affects how we see.

As demonstrated by Beau Lotto, founder of the hybrid art studio and science lab, Lottolab, color lets us see the similarities and differences between surfaces.  But when you vary the parameters, when you change the context around which you see, you change the color that falls to your eye.  As a result, the light that falls onto your eye is meaningless because it could mean literally anything.

This explains both the problem of change management as well as the solution because what’s true for sensory information is true for information more generally.  There is no inherent meaning in information.  It’s the context around that information and what we do with it that matters.

If we want to create behavior change, we have to first understand what people see, and second, change the context around what they see.  This helps them see the same information differently.

After finishing the first day of a two-day change readiness workshop, the program manager for the project, a VP of human resources, came up to me and said, “I get it.  I get it.  I get it.  But I have to tell you, I feel terrible right now.”

“Yeah, why’s that?”  I asked.

“Every project I’ve ever done before just examined the project context only. That was the extent of our change readiness assessment.  And when you started asking about our business goals and organization politics and personalities of executives and how our department operated, I thought you were headed into dangerous territory.  It was stuff we couldn’t control.

“But now I see that by understanding the entire context–the project and how the project fits into the overall organization–we are better prepared to manage the unknown.  It broadens our perspective.”

“So why do you feel terrible?”

“Because now that I can see this clearly, I can’t hide behind excuses.  I have to do this additional work if we want the results we say we do.  That’s a much tougher job because it’s about managing relationships, not producing PowerPoints.”

And that’s about navigating uncertainty because only through uncertainty do we listen closely enough to develop a deeper understanding of the perceptions of others.