Posts Tagged ‘appreciative inquiry’
Offer your problems to God, and they may open opportunities that you never imagined.
I am not religious, and if they haven’t clicked away already, my friends who are ‘evangelical atheists’ will think I’ve taken leave of my senses
Management theory is reconsidering its philosophical rots
[Yes, I did mean roots but the typo is apt.]
I heard the idea of presenting one’s problems to God from a Rabbi on Radio 4 today and it is an idea that has been forgotten by management theorists for a long, long time. It is being actively and vigorously revived though, and if you want to be involved in modern management education, “opening yourself to the imagination of the universe” is an idea that you have to get you head around.
Old school management sucked the life juices out of us
“Old school” management is goal-oriented, and fundamentally arrogant and negative. It goes like this. “I define the goal and until you have completed it, you are not up to scratch.”
We might even say that old school management is evil. It is even evil even when we are setting our goals for ourselves and not others. It’s arrogant to believe that we know what is right, not only for today, but for tomorrow whose shape we barely know. It is very arrogant to believe that we know and the other does not. It is evil to undermine the worth of other people and to daily put ourselves and others in situations where we are not up to scratch.
But how do we open ourselves to the imagination of the universe?
For all my exploration of modern management theory, I am still a psychologist and I want to know “what am I going to DO?
“offering a problem to God”, as I understand it, does not mean letting go. It means beginning where we are, with our sense that the present does not meet our sense of what is right and wrong. We begin by accepting our negative evaluation, our arrogant assertion that on this matter we believe we are right, and our overbearing willingness to judge others. We accept that this is ground we stand on at this moment. This is our reality at the minut.
Then, we put this evaluation on the table, probably privately, it is offensive after all. And at last, we listen to what the universe has to say. What does the universe have to say about this problem?
We’ve raised the flag. We’ve said we will hear. Now we listen!
But are we predisposed to listen?
The difficulty is though, that in this mood, when we feel the world is wrong, and we are right and that we are allowed to tell others they are wrong, in this mood, listening to anyone is far from our minds.
Positive psychology, an overlapping school of positive organizational scholarship, kicks in now and has a lot to say on how to reach a point that we can listen and hear.
We begin by reminding ourselves that it is quite natural, housed in a human body, to feel alarmed when we notice something is wrong. Our biology is programmed that way. It is natural . . . well . . . to exaggerate. When times are rough, and we reel from trauma to trauma, or just from hassle to hassle, it is not long before we begin to shut down and focus solely on what threatens us, or simply annoys us.
Positive psychologists help us stay out of this zone of despair, cynicism and negativity. We look to them to keep us in that positive space where we can notice that something is wrong (or a least not to our taste) and listen to the universe. It is a tough balancing act.
Positive psychologists are not our only resource, though. Most world religions have rituals to manage this emotional housekeeping. Balancing our ‘alarm systems’ and listening to others is such an important skill that all cultures have ways of explaining the challenge. What is saying a brief prayer before a meal but a momentary regaining of balance where we take stock in an appreciative not panicky way?
In our secular world, we explain every thing more wordily but we are not necessarily wrong. Just ploddy. Two other very important factors in maintaining ’emotional tone’ are exercise and friends.
The contribution of positive psychologists
Positive psychologists advocate a simple ritual of a gratitude diary. A few brief notes at the end of each day makes the difference between believing that we have to solve every problem ourselves and “hearing” what the universe has to offer.
Offer your problems to the universe and allow yourself to be delighted by opportunities you never imagined.
And to my evangelical atheist friends, if you are such an objective scientist, try it before you knock it.
Suspicious of poetry
As a young psychologist, I bought into the notion that psychology must tell us something that is not common sense. Many leading psychologists still think this way. I don’t think it is right. The profession is setting itself apart from the world, above the world, beyond the world. It is now other worldly.
We should be more like management scientists. You know those tough guys who schedule the plans and manage the electricity grid so an airport never has more planes and people than it can cope with and the national grid doesn’t fall over when we all make supper at the same time?
Hard core scientists don’t set themselves up against common sense. They support common sense. Maybe they also read poetry.
Bridging the divide between poetry and management
That being said, maybe we need some prose to help people take the first steps. Writing coach, Joanna Young, tweeted this Lao Tzu quote today.
Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.
The core of contemporary management thinking
Sounds soppy, but these words from 1500 years ago are the core of modern management thinking.
Kindness in words creates belonging and the possibility of collective efficacy.
Kindness in thinking leads to creativity and strategic clarity and hence provides the bedrock of common action.
Kindness in giving creates the common ties that allow resilience and flexibility.
Some time on Google Scholar and you will drown in academic references.
Leadership, management, human resource management
Leadership: who are we journeying with and why are they essential to our journey?
Management: which way are we going and what can each of us do to help?
Human Resource Management: who feels secure with us and will be with us tomorrow?
Do you remember the Theory of Constraints?
A system is only as good as its slowest part!
And because slow sections are a fact of life, we rally around the slow section part, not the fastest part, or the most talented!
Basically, the slowly part must never be left with nothing to do!
A faster section needs to be standing by to deliver their work just as they need it. No sooner – there is no point as they cannot do it. And no later because their downtime will hold everyone back.
We also need a signal to tell us that slow section is nearly finished what they are doing, and the signal should arrive just in time for the buffer to release the next lot of work. Again there is no point in sending it sooner because they cannot do it and while work sits around, it costs us money.
So we won’t start our piece until we are reasonably confident that the slow section can receive it! Remembering that they will sometimes take longer and sometimes take a shorter time, we must be ready to change our plans accordingly.
There are a lot of practical applications for the Theory of Constraints
- Put the slowest child in the front of the line not at the back. Everyone has to walk behind lest they leave the child behind completely!
- Add resources to the slowest part of work until they are the slowest part no more! And then work with the new slowest part.
- Don’t bother to take on more work than the slowest part can do. It cannot be completed no matter how hard others work.
- And of course never be the slowest unit in a team because you will have to work non-stop while others watch you!
The Theory of Constraints and your Career
Tell me, where are the critical links in your career? Where is the point through which everything else flows at least once?
Where is the point which holds everything else up?
Now focus on that point, and get it as efficient as you can. Don’t hurry it and create a long “to do” list. It does not help the work speed up.
Just find a way to make it more efficient and effective.
Rinse and repeat.
P.S. Theory of Constraints is not inconsistent with a strengths based approach to psychology. When we focus on what the slowest part does well and do more of it, the system runs better. When we treat the slowest part as a nuisance and start harassing it with a back load of work – do this, do that! – then it will just get slower and the system slows down more. Look at the strengths of the slowest part and we will all get along a lot quicker. Quick people? Wait. We can’t go faster than our slowest teammate but we can have what they need at their finger tips just when they need it!
Beautiful New Year Resolutions: Follow the beauty you discovered in 2009?
Posted on: December 13, 2009
New goals to focus the new year
2010 is upon us. 2009 has gone fast. I began the year overloaded. I was stressed out in January and was working hard to limit my goals. That’s the purpose of goal setting, right? To reduce the number of things claiming our attention.
Do you achieve your goals? I sincerely hope not!
In the end, I over-achieved some of my goals and under-achieved others. Why? Why can’t we arrive spot-on?
Because that is not our job. Really it is not.
Events, dear boy, events!
Our job is to respond to events. Events, dear boy, events, as British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan once said. Or as the military say, no plan survives meeting the enemy.
Our job is not to press on regardless. Or job is to be aware of what is happening around us, to understand what is valuable, and look after that. We’ve had a good year when we’ve attended to who and what is important.
To be ready for unfolding events, it is a good idea to plan. Plans mean we have information at our finger-tips and we find it easier to read evolving situations and understand what we need and want to do.
A good year is when our goals unpack themselves and we discover what is ‘good and true, better and possible”
But our job is to learn. A good year is a year in which our goals unfold. A good year is when our goals unpack themselves. We come to understand the richness of the world and gaze upon it with respect and more curiosity bordering on reverence, not to forgive its wrongdoings but alive to what is ‘good and true, better and possible.”
So as we open our diaries for 2010, what has changed for us during 2009? Putting aside the farce of bailing out banks to the tune of more than half out annual GDP and politicians who rifle the petty cash, for farce is what that is, what changed for us during 2009?
Looking around the world, what do we see that we never used to see? What poetry & song did we hear this year, yet never heard before? Whom do we know whose style and approach to life we truly admire?
What brings us alive and takes us bubbling with enthusiasm towards 2010?
Take your first small step that may be the giant step needed by mankind
Often what brings the light to our eyes is deeply personal. We don’t want to expose what we love to the harsh glare of spotlights and public scrutiny. What we share is not for the sake of sharing. It is for the sake of nurturing what we feel is beautiful and it is for the sake of encouraging what we would like to see more of.
Of the many beautiful things we have discovered, which are we able to move towards? Which are we able to do more? Where and how can we take part and in the process make them more beautiful?
We may have the smallest role to play in their beauty. But it may be our role in creating a beautiful world. That small step on the edges of our existence may be a large step for mankind ~ if only we would take it.
A day of awe
Posted on: January 20, 2009
Do you remember this day?
Inauguration Day
Isn’t it quite astonishing that we welcome a politician with such excitement and anticipation? I would so love to see pictures and videos of what you are are doing as you watch Obama take the oath of office and make his first speech as President.
Today, I chatted online with another “non-American” who added the usual “touch wood” caveat that I mentioned yesterday. None of us want to be too excited “just in case”. And to work through our anxieties seems ill-timed.
Good leadership is about us
The level of our excitement teaches us an important lesson about leadership. Good leadership is not about the man or woman walking in the leader’s shoes. It is about us. It is about our expectations of ourselves and of the people around us.
Do Americans trust themselves?
How much do we believe in Americans, and how much do they believe in us? How much do Americans believe in each other, and how much are they willing to reach out to each other to show that commitment?
A day of belonging for many
Today is the day of those who have worked long and hard for this moment, and who lived their lives believing that this day would never come. Today is the first day they believe they fully belong. This day is theirs to celebrate and to cherish.
A day of reflected joy and marvel for us
Today is the day we get to bask in their reflected joy and to marvel at their resilience, determination, loyalty and generosity. There are not many moments like this in a lifetime when we stand in awe of people who have accomplished so much. It is a day of gratitude when we are happy for no reason than the world has taken us gently by surprise.
A day when we quietly wonder whether we are much better than we though we were
It is a moment in which we ask – are we not a little better than we thought?
Poetry in HR?
Posted on: December 18, 2008
Psychology and no poetry
I studied psychology and taught work psychology for many years. I arrived in psychology from the physical sciences and found the hard core experimental and measurement approach quite familiar. Indeed as a youngster, I might have fled had I been asked to deal with poetry. Literature had been my worst subject at school by quite a long way and I simply lacked the frameworks for understanding what poetry offered.
Poetry in management theory
One of the pleasures of the school of positive organizational scholarship is that it embraces poetry. Indeed, poetic language is one of the five original principles of appreciative inquiry. Leading exponent, David Cooperrider, coins many a melodic expression, the best known being: the good, the true, the better and the possible.
Poetry in government
As he accepted his nomination for Secretary of Energy, I was delighted to see Nobel Prize winning physicist Stephen Chu quoting the words spoken by William Faulkner when he won his Nobel Prize in 1950. Speaking to a world concerned about the ramifications of nuclear power and nuclear bombs, Faulkner said:
It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.
I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.
He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things.
It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.
The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
Poetry in business and HR?
If this is good enough for the Secretary for Energy and the White House, then it is good enough for factories, banks, shops and insurance brokers!
Do you employ a poet and an artist? Do you think a style of HR that lifts hearts, reminds us of courage and honour and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of our past and are the glory of our present and our future, together?
Be careful of citing companies who do well by doing good!
Death and taxes are certain in this world. So is the likelihood that any company you quote as doing good will make the headlines in the morning. I’ve taught for years, and this rule never fails me!
Wal-Mart at its best
So taking my reputation in my hands, I am delighted to pass on another little appreciative inquiry nugget that I spotted in the Management Education briefing circulated by The Economist.
Wal-Mart, the big shop that people love to hate (I’ve never been in one, have you?) did respond well after Hurricane Katrina. They suprised themselves, as well as their detractors, and supposedly sparked an ephiphany moment for CEO, Lee Scott.
“What would it take for Wal-Mart to be that company, at our best, all the time?”
Wal-Mart as an example of appreciative inquiry
This simple sentence is typical of appreciative inquiry. We identify the high point and work out the processes that led us there. Frequently, we find solutions to a range of problems that we previously thought intractable.
Appreciative inquiry & me
And I ask myself: what will it take for me to be that person, at my best, all the time?
Essential HR in the recession
Posted on: December 3, 2008
The Recession: How big is the problem?
Six years ago, before I left Zimbabwe, I did some work for the UNDP in Harare. Their Representative, whom you might think of as the UN Ambassador, was, as you might expect calm, multilingual, knowledgeable, worldly, and very experienced. He said something to me that was memorable, as I am sure he intended it to be. He said:
Right now you are in a tunnel, and you cannot see the light at the end. But you will pass through the tunnel and see light at the end again one day.
As it happened, I left Zimbabwe, as have three to four million others, and I have found myself in the ‘West’ in the middle of the financial crisis, experiencing deja vu.
Where are we in our understanding?
The stage theory of bereavement is often criticized, but is nonetheless useful for thinking in an organized way, about catastrophic events. We aren’t in a deep dark tunnel, as we were in Zimbabwe, and as Zimbabwe still is. We are in the very early phase of denial. After this will come anger, then bargaining and at the every last, accommodation.
At the moment, we are still trying to fix things, to make them stay the same. We lop off a few workers here, and cut back on some expenditure there. And in the process, in all likelihood, we make the recession worse! We retreat into what we know, or into the laager as they say in South Africa, and cut off all possible creative and generative engagement with the unknown.
But if we don’t take immediate action to retrench and downsize, will we survive? Won’t we just be overrun, and go out of business?
What is the alternative?
Situations like these are exactly what positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship address. Our dread of the tunnel does not make the tunnel go away. And sadly, our dread of the tunnel leads us to do things that feel so right, yet could be so deadly. For example, is it a good idea to conserve the batteries on our torch? It is? When we don’t know how long the tunnel is going to be? Maybe we need a fresher look at what it happening.
The principle of positive human sciences, whether we are looking at psychology generally, or ‘organizational scholarship’, is to identify the processes that have led to our strengths. As we have no idea what the future holds, we don’t want to squander those strengths, and more importantly, we don’t want to destroy the processes that generated those strengths, and that will sustain and regenerate them. It is not just the strength we look for, in other words, it is the process that generated the strength that we seek.
Capital we have seen is as volatile as pure alcohol – it evaporates in a flash. It is part of the business package. We need it. But it is not dependable.
The distinct role and contribution of HRM
Our job in HRM during the recession, is to focus our attention on our human strengths, and on the value of our relationships with each other. It is tough to do this when people are in a panic. They want relief from the terror of the tunnel. And they want relief now.
Calming the panic is our first duty. When the Chief Executive, to the high school student on-work-attachment, are calm, they bring their technical knowledge to bear, and find innovative solutions that last week, we didn’t know were possible. They turn the tunnel from an object of dread, and real danger, into a place of opportunity and growth.
We also need to remember that some people don’t show their panic. So we have to judge their mood by their activity. Are they suggesting solutions, or is their very lack of complaint, suggestive of loss of efficacy? Calming different personalities, from the voluble executive to the quiet person who falls into passive-aggression, calls on our unique technical training.
Our chances
Will we always succeed? No of course not. In business, winning is not a given. But, if we do not believe that our people are capable of working constructively and together, on the challenges we face, then we can be sure of one thing. We will communicate our doubt. And our doubt contributes to a downward spiral of self-efficacy and collective efficacy. We become part of the problem.
Our ethical responsibility, when we don’t believe in our company and more importantly, its people, is to resign, and make way for someone who can work with them, to find the sweet spot where they will surge ahead.
Sadly, when we take short term actions to ‘feel safe’, we may experience the satisfaction of immediate relief. We might feel less exposed, temporarily, until our customers and suppliers are in trouble, as has happened in the financial sector. It is a case of making haste and less speed.
To quote @Pistachio of yesterday.
The world seems to run on courage. When mine falters, things get so stuck and difficult. When it flows, things start to flow also.
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Recommended reading: David Whyte, British-born corporate poet now living in Seattle has a marvellous CD, Mid-Life and the Great Unknown, available through Amazon.
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The way ahead at John Lewis, a British department store where the staff are shareholders in the business.
UPDATE: For an HR Managers perspective on the Recession, I have written a summary on a new post.
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flowing motion 
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