Simple tools for better conversations

Better conversations

In a world of increasing complexity and chaotic change, simple things can offer highly effective tools for managing change. My guess is that many people reading this constantly need to put structure around their plans – whether it is designing a presentation, workshop, conversation, interview or meeting – often at short notice.

ORID is a simple and versatile tool to help do this. ORID comes from the Technology of Participation (see the final paragraph below) and stands for objective, reflective, interpretative and decisional. It’s easy to remember because of the silent H, but it is anything but a “horrid” tool. For the last six months I have been using ORID to structure a wide range of different activities.

I was drawn to it because it is particularly helpful for providing context for a good conversation that enables people to reflect deeply. It helps probe beneath the surface and explore different perspectives – both rational and emotional. ORID stands for:

  • Objective: refers to experiential data – it is about facts and impressions, the things we sense: what people see, measure, observe, hear, and think. It is about information relevant to a theme, topic or issue.
  • Reflective: refers to how we react to that information – the images, emotions, and associations we make based upon our experiences.
  • Interpretative: about the meaning we make. What significance we ascribe to the experiences and emotions. This concerns the purpose we have, our values, connections we make between things and the ideas we have.
  • Decisional: about action – resolving the things we have discussed to a future direction and next steps.

Or, another way to remember this is, respectively: Senses, Heart, Head and Hands. ORID offers a better mnemonic.

A simple way to use the framework is to create a sequence of questions for people to address. For example, here are two very different scenarios and how ORID can be used:

  • 1.Developing a strategy or plan either large scale or for a specific project or component of a project
  • 2.Developing a intervention to help a team with a specific piece of work like trying to develop new values and behaviours
Scenario
1. Developing strategy or project planning session 2. Analyzing values and behaviours to improve team working
Objective: What is the current situation? Who are the key players? What are the relative strengths and weaknesses? What are the expectations and targets? How will we measure success? How do you see inter-actions between team members? What are the key processes, arrangements and practices that shape how you work together?
Reflective: How do we feel about this? What is motivating and inspiring vs. what makes us anxious and scared? What is this like; what does this remind us of; when have we done something like this before? How do you feel about the way the team works together; what you like or don’t like?
Interpretative: What is going to be critical to success? What insights does this give us about how to move forward? What will be significant? What decisions do we have to make? How are we going to benefit and how will others? Who can we learn from? What is the purpose of the team? Do the values and behaviors help or impede the achievement of your purpose?
Decisional: What is the best way forward? What needs to be achieved by when? Who does what? How can we engage others? What’s the best way to communicate this? What changes you would like to see put in place?

Over the last few weeks I have found ORID can be helpful to:

  • Design the interview and workshop process for a leadership team that wanted to change the way they work with each other (see above)
  • Structure a focus group for a cross-generational group of managers exploring how leadership needs to change in the 21st century
  • Define the behaviours that the HR Directors of a large engineering business want to promote in their business
  • Put together an interview guide to help me and a potential client work out best possible next steps

The framework can also be used to structure a conversation or to help a group make sense of the conversation they are already having. People will come at topics from any one of the angles above where one participant might offer ideas for action, another talk about the facts as they see them, another may talk about their feelings and another may try to suggest focusing on what is important. Most of us have probably been in meetings where all of this is going on at the same time and having access to a structure to help organize inputs and the conversation is incredibly helpful.

ORID sits at the core of the Technology of Participation developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs and represents the component parts of what they call a Focused Conversation. Building from this the Focused Conversation sits at the core of the Consensus Workshop approach, and in turn this represents the core of the Strategic Planning Process. So ORID is a core building block that is well worth knowing about.

 

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Bringing business strategy to life: dos and don'ts

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, once said “I’d rather have a first-rate execution and second-rate strategy any time than a brilliant idea and mediocre management.” Business literature is full of the perils of effective execution.

Here are some “Dos and don’ts” derived from an Executive sub-group that spent last year planning then implementing a new corporate strategy. They may resonate for other organisations.

 

1. Do partner at senior levels during the planning phase

Each member of the sub-group partnered with a colleague who was not involved to keep them abreast of progress, discussions and decisions. This minimised surprises when proposals were put to the full Executive team and improved the quality of discussions. Furthermore the partnering process worked so well that they adopted the principle by extending “buddying” to important external stakeholders as the strategy was communicated more broadly

2. Do increase the transparency of decision making

Strategy is as much about choosing what not to do as it is about choosing the way forward. The strategy process involves lots of “what if” discussions and evaluation of possible options. The sub-group developed a series of criteria (e.g. time to market, risk, cost, exploitation of existing strengths, potential reach, etc) against which to evaluate options. Share the results of these conversations during execution to help people understand the context for the chosen way forward

3. Do clarify strategy and other relevant factors

The sub-group get involved on a number of occasions on debating the capability of the organisation and its leadership to accept and/or implement different courses of action. What should we do – constrain ourselves by what we think we can achieve or respond purely to market needs and opportunities? After a while this group decided it could not focus purely on responding to the outside world and distinguished between its strategy for the growth of the business and its strategy for execution. These run in parallel and are two sides of one coin. Implementation therefore gets built into the strategic planning process

4. Do free executive time for decision making and plan the process

This group achieved the development of a new strategy in circa 3 months despite attempts over the course of the previous five years that had not led to material changes. Key to this success was ensuring 6 members of the team freed themselves for the work by delegating more routine activities. Along with this the team mapped their process in an initial contracting meeting that helped increase visibility for what they were going to do, how they would make decisions and how they would work with each other

5. Do specify what will be critical for success

During its initial discussions the group asked itself what will be critical to the success of their work. They developed a list of critical success factors, which reflect high sensitivity to the need to plan for execution. These included:

  • Clear need for change that goes beyond just need to meet the numbers as our people will not be motivated by purely financial rationale
  • Involve stakeholders
  • Avoid bouncing or appearing to want to bounce colleagues into decisions
  • Give time for discussion and reflection; recognize iterative process
  • Clarity of terms (e.g. difference between vision and mission) to ensure we all understand what we are aiming to achieve
  • Liaison with key functions to ensure different perspectives reflected in planning to make better decisions and ease implementation

6. Don’t forget to communicate the case for change.

It took a series of meetings and compelling external data for the top team to persuade itself that fundamental change was required to respond to external trends driven by the changing use of technology and consumer expectations. Once they had agreed, “we need to change” they stopped talking about it and talked instead about planning their response. They had to keep reminding themselves that others lacked their perspective and that they needed to explain continually why change was necessary

7. Don’t expect strategy groups to facilitate themselves

Give Directors support in the form of facilitation to help make their job easier and do not over-engineer the process. Facilitation should be low key, supportive and ready to step in when required. Simple things like the effective use of flip charts, voting mechanisms, agenda management, and defined outcomes for meetings make all the difference between effective vs. ineffective meetings. Left to their own devices many groups meander and get stuck. Choose facilitators who will be able to challenge effectively.

8. Do build on strengths

One of the previous strategic discussions had faltered following a high level review by one of the UK’s major consulting firms. This report had majored on a series of negative observations about the business and its failure to grow to full potential, address operational weaknesses etc. By the time the consulting firm had finished its review it had alienated most members of the Board. Not because the observations were faulty but because the review failed to balance negative and positive perspectives; it paid too little attention to recognising and celebrating the successes and strengths of the organisation. Effective execution requires getting the buy-in of the leadership team. To achieve this it helps to emphasise achievements and strengths, and hopes and wishes for the future. Of course weaknesses and risks need to be addressed, but achieving balance in early feedback and planning is an important step in the process of moving forward and implementing change.

These experiences illustrate that for this team strategy and execution cannot be divorced in the way that Jamie Dimon seems to suggest. Effective strategic planning involves planning for implementation if it is going to be of value and bringing strategy to life begins during the initial conversations in the strategic planning process.

 

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Developing a strategic narrative: 10 tips

A strategic narrative is central to employee engagement according to David MacLeod and Nita Clarke, and the Engage for Success movement they shaped. It provides a clear vision to help create common purpose, and a clear direction aids decision-making and prioritizing. The narrative should also explain why you have your vision – a theme emphasised by Dan Pink, the author of Drive, who highlights the importance of creating a sense of meaning for people.

However, developing a clear strategic narrative is difficult – perhaps the most difficult of the four enablers of engagement according to a straw poll conducted at a recent Engage for Success event.*

Here are 10 tips that may be helpful if developing a narrative for your business.

  1. Answer the question of why you exist as an organisation; your “reason for being.” This provides a sense of meaning for people. It is rarely about money. Leadership should be wary, if they want to create an engaging climate, of framing their reason for being as purely financial. Involve a wider group in addressing this question asking how people think and feel about working for the business. Appreciative inquiry can be helpful as an approach exploring people’s high points at work, their wishes for the future and generating conversations about what motivates and inspires them about the business. Ask too how they think the business is different from others and what that means for them
  2. Map the history and key milestones: the story so far; successes and challenges you have overcome. Within the history of the business are thousands of stories and moments that matter to the people who helped to make them happen, or who got through the tough times during which important relationships were formed. Old brand names, products and locations will still resonate and establish links with these to the current business. Avoid the temptation to write the past out of the story
  3. Look at challenges and issues today that are outside your control. These could be technological, global, social, competitive or regulatory changes. Identify key forces that shape the environment within which the business operates and to which it needs to respond to survive and grow, or that create opportunities for new areas of growth
  4. Do the same for internal forces for change whether they are positive or negative. The narrative can include both internal strengths (e.g. teamwork, pride, customer focus) and weaknesses (e.g. unchecked inter-departmental rivalry, resistance to change, fear of the unknown)
  5. Rumfelt describes good strategy as the application of strength to promising opportunity. Di Fiore says it requires focusing on what to offer and what not to offer and being clear about your difference. Boil strategy down to ideas and phrases that are easy to understand, that build on strengths and that illustrate growth potential
  6. Describe the key things that need to happen in the short-term. For example: how you will meet customer needs, what innovations you will launch or develop, what will have changed in a year? What the short-term future looks like (the things you need to do to execute your strategy)
  7. What the longer-term future looks like (your vision; where you are headed and what that means for employees, customers and others). This is one of the toughest sets of questions to answer. Nevertheless it is worth pushing for answers and it helps to make the questions as tangible as possible. For example: how will a day in the life of a typical employee be different, how will customer meetings look different, what issues will the Board be discussing, who will be leading the company, what sort of people will have left and what sort of people will be working for the business now. Where will they work from, what will they spend their time doing, etc? In today’s disruptive times it is often impossible to be clear on answers to questions like these. Paradoxically, being specific on questions like this help leadership and others realise these questions cannot be answered with any certainty. While this creates anxiety it also helps all recognize that the future will emerge as a result of conversations internally and with customers and suppliers; and of course as a result of competitive or other external activities. The narrative now may contain alternative future possibilities and the process of debating these possibilities helps leadership define an umbrella vision that can cover all of them, some important “what if” questions to build into the story and some milestones that help people see the longer journey
  8. Think about the consequences of not changing or not going down this journey and build this into the narrative. It becomes another reason why you need to change
  9. Everyone in the organisaiton should be able to see themselves in the narrative, whether front line customer facing people, back office support, managers or leaders. This is an important test and if the narrative does not cover everyone new insertions may need to be made or “chapters” revised
  10. Remember the narrative is a start point not an end. Use the narrative as a platform for engagement giving employees the chance to join conversations about their futures and to help shape it.

The narrative is there to develop “a clearly expressed story about what the purpose of the organisation is, why it has the broad vision it has and how an individual contributes to that purpose.” (Engaging for Success; MacLeod and Clarke; page 75).

View your organisation as a social construct and see the narrative as a tool to help people explore. The narrative can help this process prompting the kinds of questions that lead people to debate what needs changing and why, and it becomes a tool to help deliver that future.

*Engagement through a Neuroscience Lens; April 29, 2015; Telegraph Media Group

 

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Finding out why we do what we do

John J. Scherer, talking at the European Organisation Development Network conference in the UK earlier this month offered what I thought was a profound insight.

He said, for those considering their development and future – “You do not need to change yourself, you need to come home to yourself. That changes everything.”

Or putting it another way, clarify and define the fundamental things that “get you out of bed in the morning”. Why you do what you do. John said our need is to understand “what calls me” in order to fulfill our potential.

John tells a compelling story of his life and his journey to focus on five key questions that we should all answer. John’s site is http://www.the5questions.com/about-johnjscherer

John had a key experience during the war that had helped him understand the answer to his “what calls me” question and he encouraged us to debate this in the room. Later, one brave person piped up with a question maybe half the room was wondering – what if I’ve not had an experience like this and I don’t know the answer to the “what calls me” question?

So I was wondering how other people have found their answers to the question about what calls me. It’s neither easy nor obvious to answer this question. Questions that may help include:

  • What are the high points for me so far at work and home; why are they important to me?
  • When I feel “in the zone” – operating at my best – what factors are present that speak to my underlying purpose?
  • Looking back, what’s made me happy, fulfilled and satisfied?
  • When I have had a “good day at the office” what’s been going on?
  • What am I looking forward to? What things excite and challenge me that appeal to something that’s not about capability but about why I come to work?

I wonder what questions other people have found helpful to address the why question, or what experiences have been instrumental in helping them to address the why question?

 

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The importance of ground rules – bias and better groups

I’ve always found the discussion about Ground Rules in groups frustrating. I think they are important and/but I’ve shared that sense of “come on let’s get on with the real work” that I have seen in others. But I had a bit of an ah-ha moment today when I was re-reading the Skilled Facilitator by Roger Schwarz and thinking about some of the insights from Daniel Kahneman and Matt Lierberman around bias. I think they are connected. They help explain how important ground rules can be, why we don’t always recognise that, and what we can do about it.

Roger Schwarz makes a difference between behavioural and procedural ground rules that govern how groups can work. He suggests that there are specific behaviours that improve a group’s process. These behaviours turn an abstract set of core values (valid information; free and informed choice; internal commitment; compassion) into guidelines for how the group should work together. These “ground rules” are:

  1. Test assumptions and inferences
  2. Share all relevant information
  3. Use specific examples and agree on what important words mean
  4. Explain your reasoning and intent
  5. Focus on interests, not positions
  6. Combine advocacy and inquiry
  7. Jointly design steps and ways to test disagreements
  8. Discuss undiscussable issues
  9. Use a decision-making rule that generates the level of commitment needed.

These rules may help mitigate our unconscious biases. Matt Lieberman, David Rock and Christine Cox suggested a model to categorize biases into COST:

  • Corner-cutting: mental shortcuts that help us make quick decisions; like making decisions based on information that comes to mind most quickly, or only accepting data that confirms our preconceptions
  • Objectivism: the belief that our perceptions, beliefs and understanding are true while others are wrong; like thinking that because they know less than us their perspective has less value, or thinking “I knew that all along” after the event (the 2015 election bias!?)
  • Self-protection: our motivation to feel good about ourselves and our groups; like accepting or rejecting what’s being said on who is saying it not what they say or believing our success is based on character while others is based on luck
  • Time and money: our tendency to value what is easy to reach, and place more emphasis on threats vs. rewards: like valuing smaller short-term rewards against longer-term more valuable rewards, or over valuing sunk costs

I can appreciate that some of the ground rules mitigate against some of the biases. Testing assumptions, sharing information and discussing the discussable helps reduce corner cutting; defining terms and inquiring properly reduces our tendency to lack objectivity, and so on.

The insight for me was that people in groups are biased whether we like it or not and ground rules are a choice we have as a group to increase our awareness of that risk and try to minimize it.

The Ground Rules then become a need not a nice to have and the challenge for the facilitator and the group is how to engage in this discussion in a way that elicits meaningful and helpful ground rules – especially if the group may not be aware of the need because bias is unconscious!

The lesson for me is to come up with approaches to generate more meaningful discussions around ground rules based not just on procedural stuff (keep to time, phones off, etc) but on those things that that can make an essential difference to the way the group works perhaps by providing input on bias and/or using more visual and imaginative ways to generate the list of rules (e.g. remember back to the group best at managing conflict or generating innovative approaches – what did they do?)

Sources: Roger Schwarz – The Skilled Facilitator Approach, Jossey-Bass, 2002; Matthew Lierberman, David Rock and Christine Cox – Breaking Bias, Neuroleadership Journal 2014

 

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Creating the future

I’m interested in large group meetings that help accelerate change and Future Search is an approach in which people from different organisations and communities come together on a difficult issue, or an area of potential growth and change, and develop a way forward together. Marvin Weisbord developed the approach with Sandra Janoff and it’s been used on issues as diverse as addressing affordable housing shortages in North America to child welfare in war torn Somalia.

I went to a 3-day simulation session in Chesterfield run by Sandra earlier this year. It was quite a revelatory experience. I saw first hand what it means to “hold the system up to itself” and the potential power of this approach to change – designed to make a difference in real time. Rather than coming together just to share understanding, the claim for this approach is that it leads to action across communities.

Our simulation involved the NHS and I “played” the part of a doctor – my brother is a consultant for real so I’ve heard him talk a lot about the challenges. It quickly became apparent across the room that different perspectives of staff, educationalists, policy makers and others create some of the problems that the NHS faces. We found ourselves mirroring what we hear and see in the media in the room. Furthermore, within areas of disagreement we found areas of common ground where people can make progress. I found myself getting quite emotional and had that “Aha” moment about how this approach to change could help unlock situations not just in the NHS but also in the corporate and charity sectors. It can help get the whole elephant in the room and help different groups recognize that some problems will never go away – they are just dilemmas that need to be managed and that it requires shifts from all stakeholders to make progress.

This is a good process for when people are stuck and looking for a shared vision and action, particularly if urgency is high. It’s especially useful if the stakeholders do not have other ways to meet and talk.

However, leaders need to be open to potentially creative solutions that may emerge; there is no point in adopting Future Search if one or other party is not open to possibilities.

Here is a link to the Future Search Network if you want to learn more: http://www.futuresearch.net

 

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Brain friendly facilitation

I’ve been doing some research* into the practical value of learning about how our brains work for leaders. We’ve involved different levels from Executive Directors of a global engineering business through to senior regional managers in one of the UK’s High Street Banks. One of the consistent themes in the feedback is the value of David Rock’s SCARF model to help managers plan future projects, mergers, processes and other challenges. It can also be a valuable tool for managers or facilitators planning one off sessions or a series of interventions.

The SCARF model provides a shorthand about stimuli that create toward or away responses in our brains. Toward responses make us more likely to be open to ideas, collaborative, positive, focused, creative and resilient. Away responses (“fight or flight”) make us more anxious, susceptible to distractions, and they reduce our capability to remember things and perform at our best. If we want good meetings we want people in Toward states.

SCARF stands for:

  • Status: feeling important relative to others, improving oneself, responding to challenges, getting better
  • Certainty: predicting the future, knowing what is going to happen
  • Autonomy: controlling how things get done
  • Relatedness: feeling connected, safe with others
  • Fairness: fair exchanges, equal treatment.

Meetings often can put people into situations where many of these work in a negative direction (e.g. senior people holding court, unclear objectives and agendas, lack of control, mixed with people we do not know and some people getting disproportionate amounts of air space).

Using SCARF provides a scientific basis for planning how to establish a more productive working climate in the group quickly. We could:

  • Invite people to share past successes and achievements (status)
  • Provide extensive up front information about attendees and desired outcomes (certainty)
  • Work together to confirm agendas and establish the decision making processes we will apply (autonomy)
  • Provide extensive opportunities to connect, minimize input and maximize discussion (relatedness)
  • Ensure equal air space and use techniques to draw out quieter participants in safe ways (anonymous voting, gradients of agreement, etc.) (fairness)

Some of this appears common sense and affirms what we may instinctively do anyway. Some provides useful ideas and challenge into the planning process. This really just scratches the surface into ways we can achieve full participation, mutual understanding, inclusive solutions and shared responsibility.

*Working with Hilary Scarlett we analyzed the impact of learning about Neuroscience in BAE Systems, Lloyds Banking Group, BIS and Orbit Housing Group. David Rock developed the SCARF model and Sam Kaner et al defined key facilitation goals in the Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making.

 

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Measurable learning from Neuroscience

Hilary Scarlett and Mike Pounsford have provided evidence that learning about Neuroscience can generate change. They spoke this May at the Organisation Development Network conference and Melcrum has just published their work. See the download of their presentation at Roffey Park and the link for the article.

The difference Neuroscience can make.pdf

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Virtual inner child can cure self-criticism

I found this piece in The Times today really interesting. It describes how psychologists at UCL have found that people respond well to the sounds of their own voices comforting child avatars! When the voices are played back to themselves it can positively affect their mental wellbeing. The jury is out but the report says that they are now exploring whether this can help depression.

One of the things that struck me was what Dr. Caroline Falconer (who led the study) said: “Being kind to oneself is an alien concept in western culture.” I know that much of my self-talk is self-critical so I’ll try harder to focus on being more aware of this in future!

But this also links to the findings of some research I am doing with Hilary Scarlett which shows that leaders are getting lots of benefit from learning about emotional regulation and the practice of mindfulness. Essentially the feedback we are getting is that being more aware of your thinking and emotions can help you manage your anxieties, concerns etc and therefore become more effective at helping others through change.

The Times article adds another thought to this because one of the practices of mindfulness is to develop compassionate thoughts for oneself and others. I know that there are sceptics and cynics out there but I think that the science is beginning to confirm what many Eastern philosophers have known for years. Cultivating more self-awareness is key to providing better health, happiness and effective leadership.

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Large group conversations

The “field” of large group intervention methods needs to be understood and used more by communications and engagement teams. The approaches are designed to bring about change in whole systems by working with a microcosm of the whole system in the room, and the meeting structures typically run from 1 – 3 days with upwards of 60-80 participants or more. Approaches include Future Search, Search Conference, Real Time Strategic Change and others.

When we are designing and facilitating engaging leadership and employee conferences we might not be looking for change like this, but what is useful about them are some of the tools and approaches used in the methodology:

  • Open Space (developed by Harrison Owen – the structure that underpins Unconferences) can be used to get issues and breakouts driven by participants; it can form part of a larger event or the event itself
  • World Café in which people rotate around issues and share learning is another problem exploration approach; again can be part of the whole
  • Graphic facilitation to capture discussions and provide a record of the meeting is now ubiquitous
  • Learning maps (the precursor to the Big Picture/Big Conversation) as a tool to engage large groups in thinking through how to apply strategy could be a useful approach for planning education and implementation around most change initiatives
  • Customer journey mapping, visioning, storyboarding, and other visualisation methods can help generate energy and insight and support action planning
  • Polarity Management (see the book of the same name from Barry Johnson) helps groups work through difficult implementation issues such as control vs. autonomy, centralise vs. decentralise, focus on individual vs. team

There is a huge range of these techniques which help create events that are completely unlike traditional conferences but which also help people get significant work done in a fun and engaging way. What is important is to highligh some principles that underpin large group methods:

  • Clarity on purpose, outcomes, who’s going to be there, process, etc is obviously essential
  • Adopt a systemic perspective – things are the way they are because of the way the system works; change requires changing the system
  • Involve all people who have a stake in the issue at hand in the room
  • Address issues from multiple perspectives to build a better understanding and expose what may be hidden to some participants
  • Recognise that all parties should have an opportunity to influence plans and decisions
  • Share responsibility for decision-making and subsequent implementation amongst affected parties
  • Create communities of action around some common shared purposes

We recently designed and facilitated the conference for 150 members of the HR function at leading engineering business using Open Space, Customer Journey Mapping and team based action planning. We used no tables and no PowerPoint in 2 days and participants rated it the best conference yet. More importantly the large group co-created the HR vision for the business.

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