Month: January 2017

I'm working periodically with a small team of people in what we loosely call a learning set – basically they set a topic, I get some discussion ideas together on it and then we spend a couple of hours together exploring it and reflecting on its organisational design implications: they've set 'the growth mindset' for our next meeting.

The way I tackle this type of challenge is to just jot down a bunch of things that spring to mind on it. In this case, I've got Carol Dweck, improv, Kagan/Lacey, Marilee Adams, play, laughter, learning organisation: it's a process a bit like opening the fridge and seeing what's in it that you can concoct a delicious meal from.

So now I'm looking at the list of discussion ingredients. Hmm – is there a delicious meal equivalent here, or will I have to go and forage for other things? I'll start with what I've got and see what happens.

The phrase 'growth mindset' was coined by psychologist Carol Dweck, in her book Mindset: Changing The Way You think To Fulfil Your Potential, first published in 2008 and just out (January 2017) in a revised edition.

Her theory suggests that intelligence and ability are not fixed characteristics, but can be changed and developed and grown. It's a very attractive, and popular, theory that is being extensively tested in schools. The UK, for example, has a project called Changing Mindsets currently running.

It's easy to see why it might be seized on as organisational initiative to help change culture, improve management skills, increase productivity, and so on. But it is no 'silver bullet' as some have pointed out and Carol Dweck is fully aware of.

She makes the point that people are not of either growth or fixed mindset, saying: 'Let's acknowledge that (1) we're all a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets, (2) we will probably always be, and (3) if we want to move closer to a growth mindset in our thoughts and practices, we need to stay in touch with our fixed-mindset thoughts and deeds.'

With this caveat in mind, taking the phrase literally, 'growth mindset' could simply imply being a continual learner, open-minded, non-judgemental and willing to try things out. People who are curious, who look out for opportunities and consider things as a 'offer' that you can choose your response have a 'growth mindset'.

I'm just finding out that improv is a great vehicle for learning and practicing this open-mindedness type of response. Robert Poynter, in his book, Everything's an Offer, tells a great story about Danny Wallace someone who decided, that for a year, he would say 'yes' to everything that came his way. (His story was later made into a film).

A different tack on being open to learning and growing is taken by Kegan and Lacey in their work on change. Several years ago they proposed 'Seven languages for transformation'. There's a useful summary table here. Their work has developed into a set of broader techniques and methods for learning and growing. Take a look at their book An Everyone Culture which presents and discusses 'the simple but radical conviction that organizations will best prosper when they are more deeply aligned with people's strongest motive, which is to grow. This means going beyond consigning "people development" to high-potential programs, executive coaching, or once-a-year off-sites. It means fashioning an organizational culture in which support of people's development is woven into the daily fabric of working life and the company's regular operations, daily routines, and conversations.'

Marilee Adams work is similarly around language use, specifically about the way we ask questions – she describes 'learner questions' and 'judger questions' and offers suggestions on what type of questions lead to learning and growth.

A completely different tack on learning and growth is through 'play'. Children learn through play and so can adults – though sadly we tend to lose that facility – 'play brings joy. And it's vital for problem solving, creativity and relationships.' Author and physician Stuart Brown notes that 'Particularly in tough times, we need to play more than ever, as it's the very means by which we prepare for the unexpected, search out new solutions, and remain optimistic.' Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul.

Linked to this is laughter with some evidence that laughter defuses situations and offers opportunities in the workplace to re-think and re-group.

Then there's the whole learning organisation genre with multiple theories and approaches. See a literature review here.

I think enough 'ingredients' to discuss a growth mindset. The intriguing part of the discussion will be on how to design an organisation to encourage it.

What additions would you make to the list of method for developing a 'growth mindset'? Can organisations be designed to encourage it? Let me know.

There were conversations going on this week about the merits of having dispersed versus co-located team members. We are trying to decide whether to co-locate people. It's a fraught and complex issue not least because it could mean requiring people to move. It also means determining criteria for co-location, for example:

• Is it to improve the outcomes of working on a specific project? If so, what happens when this is closed? (And how do we know we couldn't get the same outcomes from a dispersed team?)
• Is it to encourage multi-disciplinary working? If so, how do know what multi-disciplinary mix to co-locate in a continually changing work context?
• Is it to cluster functional or operational team members together (perhaps creating silos)? If so how will we know that this type of co-location is 'better' than multi-disciplinary?
• Is it to indicate that we don't approve of remote/dispersed/virtual working? If so how will we explain that as many organizations are now shifting towards virtual working? (Also, does requirement to be on a specific site challenge attracting and retaining people?)

As in many conversations, views are based on emotion, opinion and personal preference with not too much (any?) discussion about actual evidence of the merits of one over the other. I started to look around for empirical research on this topic.

Three studies stood out as representing the findings of several:

'Comparing traditional and virtual group forms: identity, communication and trust in naturally occurring project teams' reports on a 'field study of naturally occurring project teams in a global firm. In this study, some groups were traditional (that is, co-located or face-to face), some were purely virtual (completely distributed), and some were what we call 'semi-virtual' or hybrid (composed of a local subgroup as well as remote team members)'. ( J. Webster and W.K.P. Wong)

The Effects of Teams' Co-location on Project Performance 'This paper aims to present an analysis between teams' co-location and project performance. … what are the effects of teams' co-location on project performance? The paper provides a literature review about teams' co-location, its advantages and disadvantages, virtual teams and project performance parameters.' (This paper looked at a variety of performance indicators, for example, speed and ability to solve a customer's problem comparing the different types of team's performance against the indicators). (Marina Mendonca et al)

Team member proximity and teamwork in innovative projects 'Innovation teams vary in terms of team members' proximity, i.e., the degree to which all team members are in direct vicinity over the duration of the project. The proximity of team members, however, has potentially important implications for the collaborative working of teams. In this paper, we develop and test hypotheses relating team members' proximity to the performance-relevant team collaborative processes included in Hoegl and Gemuenden's [Organization Science 12 (4) (2001) 435] teamwork quality framework, i.e., communication, coordination, balance of member contributions, mutual support, effort, and cohesion.' (Martin Hoegl and Luigi Proserpio)

In brief these three papers tell us that:

1. Team size matters (whether or not co-located) – smaller teams work better than larger teams on various dimensions including trust, productivity, and knowledge sharing.

2. Management style matters – if teams are to be dispersed then it must be a positive team-design decision – so you select team members for their ability to build relationships over distance and for managing working well alone. You select team leaders/managers for their ability to trust, respect and empower others. Thus, 'good' management is more important in dispersed teams than co-located ones. (Which could, I guess, suggest that if you knew you had poor managers you should opt for co-location as team members can collectively work around poor management better when they are in proximity. Alternatively you could train people to lead and manage dispersed teams effectively).

3. Social and community spirit matters – whether dispersed or co-located teams that have a sense of team identity, trust each other and get on well socially perform better than teams without any one of these. In part this is factor is related to management style.

4. Technology matters – where communication is mediated through various forms of technology – collaborative platforms, webchats, SMS, phone, etc then dispersed team members must have excellent skills in using it (and the technology needs to be effective and reliable). Face to face is easiest for communication as you are picking up nuanced non-verbal signals among other things.

In terms of productivity, quality and successful outcomes researchers have not found a difference between co-located teams and dispersed teams assuming the four points above are in play. To repeat, these are: small teams, good management, community spirit, effective technology and technology use. Where all four factors are not in play then performance is somewhat improved by co-location.

Where researchers have found a productivity and performance difference is in teams that are part co-located and part-dispersed. As Webster and Wong report: 'Study results imply that it is best to avoid creating semi-virtual teams – in other words, all team members should be 'in the same boat', that is, all local or all remote. However, if creating semi-virtual teams cannot be avoided, there are methods for minimizing problems.'

What the research shows is that for dispersed teams to work well there has to be a conscious and ongoing intentionality to make them work well. Where they are co-located there has to be a view on what co-location means (a team spread across two floors is not necessarily co-located).

The research suggests that coming down in favour of either dispersed or co-located teams without thinking it through is too simplistic a response. Both can work and both have pros and cons. Discussing the various trade-offs and making a considered decision, using available evidence and given the organisation's context and options could lead to an informed choice.

What's your view on remote or co-located teams? Let me know.

NB: If you don't want to go for academic research that is evidence based, Martin Howe gives his 'tentative opinion' on various types of team configuration in a useful and nicely illustrated piece.

Sparked by a conversation this week on change managers v organisation development practitioners, and fanned into flames by my starting to write something on this topic for the revised edition of my book (see my Ship of Theseus blog) I thought I'd rough out my thinking here and seek feedback from readers.

What seems have happened is that 'change management' is now the territory of tech and project people, while 'organisation development' is getting further linked to behavioural sciences, neuro-stuff and the field of individual and group dynamics.

This view has some evidence. Take a look at http://www.indeed.co.uk a jobs vacancy site. Vacancies related to 'change management' are almost all in the tech and project management space. Here's a fairly typical one that mentions both projects and IT:

• Purchasing are in the process of a significant transformation throughout the function on a global basis, and this transformation requires strong change management across several key projects. As the Change Coordinator, you'll be responsible for planning and managing business change projects into key Purchasing business groups, ensuring process and IT projects land successfully in the business.

Several of the roles I looked at require the ability to implement OCM. This is an acronym I had to look up. It turns out to be Organizational Change Management. The Californian Government IT Leadership Academy has a good set of resources around it although at a first glance they look pretty prescriptive as they are aimed to align the OCM lifecycle with the project lifecycle.

Prosci (a consulting company) explains the change/project management alignment link like this:

• 'When an organization introduces a change with a project or initiative, that change needs to be effectively managed on both the technical side and the people side. A technical side focus ensures that the change is developed, designed and delivered effectively. The discipline of project management provides the structure, processes and tools to make this happen. A people side focus ensures that the change is embraced, adopted and utilized by the employees who have to do their jobs differently as a result of the project. The discipline of change management provides the structure, processes and tools to make this happen.' (You can download free a whitepaper explaining further).

This form of change management isn't the realm of typical organization development practice in my experience and I was reinforced in this view when I saw that the Change Activation Toolkit – also a comprehensive set of resources but you have to pay for it – says that it 'supports organizational development'.

So what do jobs for organization development practitioners look like? Here's an extract from one vacancy again fairly typical.

• To assist in building the organisation's ability to perform and thrive in a fast-paced and unpredictable environment. Specific OD activities include: Organisational diagnosis, using Systems Theory and theories of organisational culture and strategy. Design and facilitate OD processes with teams at all levels in the organisation, relating to: organisational change, strategy, team development; conflict resolution, leader development, organisational culture and values.
• This role requires undergraduate Organisational, Social or Clinical Psychology qualification (with in-depth knowledge of organisation behaviour, group dynamics, unconscious processes in organisational systems); Psychometric testing and 'quantitative 'tool kits' will not be used.

My hypothesis is that 'change management' is about supporting planned change that is delivered through a formal project – often a technology based one – so it has a defined scope while 'organisation development' is about 'the activities engaged in by stakeholders in order to build and maintain the health of an organization as a total system. It is characterized by a focus on behavioural processes and humanistic values. It seeks to develop problem solving ability and explore opportunities for growth'. (Finney and Jefkins, 2009). As such, OD's scope is much broader than that of change management. It is much more closely aligned with learning theories and behavioural/neuro sciences (as in the role description requirements above) and is much less formal and 'frameworked' in its techniques and delivery.

Mapping the difference between the two shows that they are distinct but overlapping. They are both people focused but beyond that:

• OD scope is whole system v CM scope is defined by specific project/programme
• OD based in behavioural sciences and learning theories v CM based on popular change models (e.g. Kotter, ADKAR, Lewin, Bridges, Kubler-Ross)
• OD practitioners require process consulting skills v CM practitioners require project management skills
• OD underpinned by humanistic values v CM underpinned by efficiency/effectiveness criteria
• OD Practitioners developed against OD practice framework v CM practitioners developed against Change Manager competency model

What's your view on OD v change management? Let me know.

A couple of weeks ago, the Economist ran a piece on 'elites'. The writer cautions "Careful writers should avoid this word; it is becoming a junk-bin concept used by different people to mean wildly different things."

It's the same with the phrase 'the establishment'. The Atlantic ran a similar piece to the Economist's saying, "Of course, 'the establishment' has no agreed-upon meaning."

Wikipedia currently defines 'the establishment' as, "a dominant group or elite that holds power or authority in a nation or organization." I like the fact that their definition of establishment includes the word 'elite' because now we may be able to agree that both words might be consigned to the junk bin. I can't think many people would self-define as being either part of an elite or 'the establishment' particularly as both words have been flung about wildly as pejoratives in recent politics. But I may be wrong on the self-identification thought.

I'm thinking about these words because at the same time as I read the Economist piece someone sent me a question: 'How do we understand what lies beyond the establishment view? To clarify – this is about how we understand views from across the spectrum rather than just those we are most commonly exposed to.'

Junking the words 'elite' and 'establishment' misses the point that the words also carry a meaning of 'power' or 'authority' and this to me is the heart of the question. Power comes in many forms and is not only about hierarchy, or social status or money. Gareth Morgan in Images of Organization lists 14 sources of power.

Suppose we take the stance that it is less about elites or establishments and more about how do people with power learn to listen to and understand points of view and perspectives different from their own. From what we've seen in the press recently we could get an impression that people with power do not want to understand what lies beyond their view.

A 2011 BBC documentary 'The British Establishment; Who For?' explores that concern. 'From the City, to the police, to the press, to Parliament, and in cultural institutions including the nation's universities and even the BBC, a narrow elite, drawn from the least-diverse backgrounds, make the rules, socialise, and define what is and is not permissible among the nation's leaders.'

But let's assume they do what to understand what lies beyond their view. Why would they want to and how would they get the understanding?

Why would they want to understand what lies beyond their view? John Stuart Mill, a British philosopher, writing On Liberty in 1869, reasoned that: 'there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.'

Research on dissent led by Charlan Nemeth at UC Berkeley finds in favour of 'the value of dissent for cognition and decision making. In general, we find that dissent stimulates thought that is broader, that takes in more information and that, on balance, leads to better decisions and more creative solutions'.

For communities and societies to advance there needs to be a healthy level of dissent combined with a humility and willingness to listen generously and openly in order to understand other perspectives and experiences, rather than holding on to a view and/or looking only for information and opinions that will confirm it.

How can you get an understanding of other views? There are many avenues to explore. Here are three possibilities:

1. Generous listening, Krista Tippett explains: "Generous listening is powered by curiosity, a virtue we can invite and nurture in ourselves to render it instinctive. It involves a kind of vulnerability – a willingness to be surprised, to let go of assumptions and take in ambiguity. The listener wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other, and patiently summons one's own best self and one's own best words and questions."
2. Taking a learner rather than a judger perspective is another: Judger questions are reactive and automatic, leading to defensiveness, win-lose relating, and a view of limited possibilities. Learner questions are flexible and adaptive, leading to questioning assumptions, win-win relating, and a view of plentiful possibilities. See the Inquiry Institute for information and resources
3. Inquiry and immersion: going to ask questions and immerse yourself in the world of those you are trying to understand. "Back to the floor' a TV series challenged the top executives [of large UK companies] to leave their rarefied position of power to spend a week at the sharp end of their business. Rude awakenings await the bosses as they get a taste of the frustrations, grievances and humour of working on on their own frontline."

How would you suggest 'the establishment' and those with power learn to understand other perspectives. Let me know.