But as you placed each card and the house grew taller, you began to worry more about the possibility of the house falling down than about building it. You worried about the air currents being stirred as people walked by; you were careful not to breathe while placing each card. Try as you might, it became harder and harder to concentrate on that perfect card house. The sweat beaded on your brow as your shaky hand placed one more card on top, and…CRASH!

Keeping Focused on What We Want

Many goals succumb to the same fate as the house of cards. Try as we might to keep focused on the goal, other pressures interfere and take our attention away from what we are really trying to achieve. Productivity standards, cost control measures, fire-fighting–all can undermine a project or effort and, over time, lead to a “Drifting Goals” scenario. We become focused on what we don’t want to have happen, rather than what we want to change.

The “Drifting Goals” archetype is helpful for trying to understand why an organization is not able to achieve its desired goals. “Drifting Goals” occurs when the gap between a goal and the actual performance is reduced by lowering the goal. Because this often happens over a long period of time, the gradual lowering of the goal is usually not apparent until the decreasing performance measure has drifted so low that it produces a crisis. The following seven-step process illustrates how to use the “Drifting Goals” archetype as a diagnostic tool to target drifting performance areas and help organizations attain their visions.

1. Identify a performance measure that has deteriorated or oscillated over time

Sometimes the actual performance measure that has deteriorated is not the same as the one you have identified. For example, when sales of Tater Tots fell from 1985 to 1987, managers at OreIda assumed that the decline reflected a change in consumer eating habits. But further exploration showed that the quality of the Tater Tots had gradually declined over the years: ‘Their once-chunky insides had turned to mashed potato. The outside had lost its light and crispy coating.”

(“Heinz Ain’t Broke, But It’s Doing a Lot of Fixing,” Business Week, December 11, 1989).

At Ore-Ida, the goal was in the form of a quality standard for Tater Tots (see “Drifting Quality Standards”). A gap between actual quality and that goal should have signaled the need for investments in new equipment and/or the quality of the ingredients (B1). But because the drift in the quality standard (B2) occurred over a long period of time, it was not perceived as a problem.

2. Are there implicit or explicit goals that were in conflict with the stated goal?

Sometimes there are implicit or explicit goals in an organization which are at odds with the stated goal. For example, Ore-Ida was committed to producing quality Tater Tots, but the company had also embarked on a series of cost control plans beginning in 1979. “Cost-cutting had led plant managers to step up line speeds and change storage and cooking methods. Over a decade, the moves had changed Tater Tots.” Identifying other related goals that may be affecting the particular performance measure could reveal conflicts which create sub-optimization.

Drifting Quality Standards

A gap between actual Tater Tot quality and the quality standard should have signaled the need to invest in production processes or ingredients (81). But because the drift in quality &alined over along periodof time, it was not perceived as a problem.

3. What are the standard operating procedures for correcting the gap?

Identifying the standard operating procedures (SOP’s) for correcting the gaps will give you a window into the kinds of corrective actions that are currently in place. You want to find SOP’s that may have inadvertently contributed to the slippage of goals. What are the things that have happened that may have caused the corrective actions themselves to erode over time?

4. Nave the goals themselves been lowered over time?

A key question is whether the setting of the goals has been linked to past performance. The idea is to have an asymmetric relationship between past performance and future goals. That is, when performance is continually improving, basing the next goal on the previous one can create cycles of continuous improvement. But this strategy can lead to disaster when performance begins to slip, creating a reinforcing cycle of declining quality.

At Ore-Ida, the actual Tater Tot quality and the quality standard were linked together in such a way that as the quality deteriorated, it affected the quality reference point (see ‘Slippery Slope’ of Quality”). So from year to year, the quality looked about the same even as it was decreasing (R3). One potential side-effect of sliding quality could be that as sales decrease (due to poor quality), the company might decide to cut back on investments in production process and materials. That would lead to lower quality, which would actually accelerate the deterioration of quality (R4). Breaking this cycle involves creating measures that will counterbalance such tendencies.

'Slippery Slope' of Quality

If actual quality and the quality standard are linked together, qualitymay appear toremain the same from year to year even as it decreases (R3). If deteriorating quality results in a decrease in sales, the company may cut back on investments, further accelerating the quality deterioration (R4).

5. Identify external frames of reference to anchor the goal

One way to keep goals from sliding is to anchor them to an external frame of reference. The reference point can’t be chosen arbitrarily, or it will be susceptible to change. Benchmarking provides an outside reference point. It won’t tell you how to achieve a goal, but it offers a frame of reference and shows what is possible in a given area.

The ultimate source, however, is the voice of the customer. At Ore-Ida, customer polls could have given a clear indication that sliding sales were a reflection of declining quality, not a change in consumer preferences.

6. Clarify the vision

Unless you establish a clear vision that is compelling for everyone involved, the improvement will be only temporary. You can motivate people and train them to use the tools that provide the corrective action, but if they really don’t understand what the vision is all about, at best they will only be complying. Over time, the system will slip back into making only the corrective actions that look good relative to what is being measured, regardless of the overall impact on the company.

7. Create a dear transition plan

After you achieve clarity around the vision, the next step is to explore what it will take to achieve that vision, and anticipate the expected time frame. Where are the goals in relation to that transition plan? If you’re currently operating at a level of 1 and you’re trying to get to 10, it is unrealistic to expect the change to occur overnight.

Unrealistic expectations about the time frame for achieving a goal can produce emotional tension and financial pressure which can undermine even the best improvement program. The question to consider at this point is how to make sure that the gap between current reality and the goal does not turn into a negative force. If we don’t carefully manage the effects of emotional tension, we lose the powerful potential of having a vision. In some ways, that’s the biggest challenge and potentially the greatest benefit of applying a “Drifting Goals” archetype.

Creative tension only works when somehow it taps into a level of motivation which is intrinsic. And that becomes a powerful leverage point for an organization whose creative forces have been tapped by the excitement of achieving the vision. The lesson of the “Drifting Goals” archetype is that in any attempt to achieve a goal or vision, you can’t bypass the emotional tension that results. But by channeling that tension into a creative force, you can transcend it and attain the vision.

The post Using “Drifting Goals” to Keep Your Eye on the Vision appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Eight weeks later . . . “Let’s see what you’ve come up with. No, this is all wrong. In the first place, these ads are too small. Start over. Make them full-page and full-color. Put the headline here, the body text here, and the logo there. You need a new photograph — this one isn’t dramatic enough. Use softer lighting here. This is better, closer to what I want. This works.

“Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of what I’m looking for — you know, what works with our customers.”

Many of us remember a time early in our careers when a manager coached us on an assignment. Although the details of the conversation varied, our boss inevitably gave us “words of wisdom” or “constructive criticism.” He or she expected us to learn in the time-honored tradition of apprenticeship, in which an expert instructs, monitors, and corrects the learner on how to do a task a certain way.

This traditional model contains a powerful implicit assumption by managers: “I’m the expert. I’ll tell you what you need to know. You’re here to learn from my experience. If you question me, you question my expertise and authority.” Unfortunately, this perspective locks both the manager and the employee into roles that don’t always serve the employee’s learning or the manager’s efforts to teach and guide. The teacher’s “performance” and expertise may take on greater importance than the learner’s improvement.

Timothy Gallwey, whose “Inner Game” philosophy has challenged most traditional coaching methodologies, often cites a valuable insight he gained about the roles of teacher and learner early in his career as a tennis pro. During a lesson, he was astonished when the student learned something before Gallwey had a chance to teach it to him. Gallwey remembers his exasperation as he thought, “How dare he . . . I haven’t shown him that yet!” Reflecting on it later, he realized that he had been more concerned with his own teaching than with the student’s learning.

What Gallwey discovered was simple — but not easy — for coaches, managers, and leaders to accept: When a coach concentrates on facilitating a person’s learning instead of on teaching, the coachee’s performance can undergo an almost magical transformation. Natural learning, based on the coachee’s learning style, happens quickly and easily — much the way we learned to walk or ride a bike. Because this kind of learning experience promotes relaxed concentration and enables us to create our own high-quality feedback, we stop trying so hard and perform almost unconsciously at increasingly effective levels. Over the years, Gallwey and others have shown that this change in focus can be effective in enhancing individual and team performance and learning in business, sports, and even music.

Partnership Coaching Defined

Effective coaching is a partnership between coach and coachee, expert and novice — a partnership whose purpose is to facilitate learning, improve performance, and enable learners to create desired results (see “Traditional Versus Partnership Coaching”). In partnership coaching, one individual works to support the learning and actions of another person or a team. Following this model, managers help people achieve what they want — through careful listening and gentle guidance — rather than tell them what they need to accomplish or to know. Shifting from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning requires a manager or coach to:

• Ask open-ended questions that focus the person’s attention on critical, relevant details rather than tell her what the coach knows.
• Create an environment that reduces interference — or negative self-talk by the learner — which can reduce the quality of the learner’s thinking and actions.
• Understand the difference between constructive criticism and edible — or usable — feedback and to make feedback learner-focused rather than teacher-focused.

INTERFERENCE MODEL

The Interference Model shows how, by reducing interference, individuals can dramatically and immediately improve their performance without learning any new skills. In an interference-free state, new learning is natural and easy

The Limitations of “Telling”

As shown in the opening example, the traditional structure used for conveying expertise and advice emphasizes telling. Although good, clear instructions are vital to the successful completion of a task, most managers find it difficult to convey information in a way that enhances a learner’s performance. In the telling mode, a coach usually assumes the employee understands what he is saying, but often the employee goes away feeling confused at best, and mistrusted and disrespected at worst.

Our informal polling of approximately 1,000 middle to senior-level managers indicates that executives use telling as a means of communication an average of 85-90 percent of the time. And yet, at least five conditions must be met for the telling approach to be effective. 1. The coach has to know exactly how to do the task. 2. The coach has to be able to articulate clearly what she does know. 3. The other person has to understand what the coach is saying. 4. The other person has to be able to translate those instructions into action. 5. The other person has to want to do the task. If one or more of these conditions is missing — which is often the case — the odds of a coach’s successfully transferring know-how to a learner are low. Moreover, the coach has likely wasted her own time, the other person’s time, and the company’s money.

According to the British author and business coaching expert Sir John Whitmore, “To tell denies or negates another’s intelligence; to ask honors it.” Yet shifting from telling to asking isn’t the only change coaches need to make in order to improve their skills; they also need to learn to ask effective questions.

The Anatomy of an Effective Question

Effective questioning uses the principle of creative tension to set up conversational structures that promote learning. According to Robert Fritz, a structure seeks to resolve the inherent tension within it, much like a stretched rubber band seeks to return to its original state. Asking a question sets up a tension that is resolved by an answer; for example, when asked “How are you?” we feel compelled to resolve the tension in the linguistic structure by responding.

A good question helps individuals put aside their assumptions regarding the correct or right answer and lets more reflective and flexible responses fill the void. The word question itself suggests a “quest” for something, inviting the respondent to create or find an answer. Thus, an effective or powerful question creates a structure in which an individual or group feels compelled to seek a resolution. In addition to providing creative tension, effective questions:

• Are nonjudgmental.
• Are open-ended (who, what, when, where, why, and how) instead of closed (requiring a yes or no answer).
• Raise awareness of the learner’s goals and current reality by broadening his perceptions.
• Reduce interference by focusing the learner’s attention.
• Make feedback “edible” — or easier for a learner to hear and use.
• Lead to deeper questions and more reflective and expansive thinking by the learner.

A powerful question asked with the wrong intention (such as getting the person to agree to something) isn’t as effective as a question posed from a place of genuine reflection and interest. When people feel cornered and manipulated, they are likely to be less forthcoming and thoughtful with their responses. “Yes/no” questions such as “Well, did you ever think about . . . ?” or “Wouldn’t you agree that . . . ?” can come across as accusatory because these queries often contain hidden assumptions about the speaker’s mental models regarding the best decision or the right answer. Such closed-ended questions can make people feel defensive and undermine a partnering relationship.

Surprisingly, tone of voice and body language carry approximately 92 percent of the meaning in conversations; the words themselves convey only 8 percent. The power of a good question can thus be lost if a manager comes across as condescending, negative, arrogant, or even overly solicitous. A leader who is well intended can still create crippling self-doubt within an employee by asking a good question with the wrong tone or inflection.

Overcoming Interference

In his article, “The Inner Game of Work: Building Capacity in the Workplace” (V8N6), Gallwey discusses the concept of internal interference and how it creates obstacles to learning (see “Interference Model” on p. 1). Gallwey defines interference as “the ways that we undermine the fulfillment or expression of our own capacities.” Interference can be internal or external; it impedes our performance by preventing us from concentrating and from receiving ongoing feedback. Gallwey has found that reducing interference can dramatically improve a person’s performance. Learning happens naturally when a person isn’t distracted by negative thoughts and can focus on what he is doing.

The key to reducing interference lies not in diagnosing it, but in asking questions that move learners’ attention away from judging their own performance to concentrating on the relevant details of the activity they are attempting to perform. For example, when an employee appears flustered because she doesn’t know how to resolve a problem, asking her what she is noticing about the situation or the problem, and what is and isn’t working toward resolving it, can increase her self-awareness and reduce her self-doubt, enabling her to focus calmly on the issue at hand. This self-awareness gives coachees pure, nonjudgmental, and noncritical feedback about what is actually happening. At the same time, coaches need to ask themselves, “Am I increasing or decreasing interference in this conversation?”

What, then, might the session in the opening example have sounded like if the coach had used questions to reduce the coachee’s internal interference and increase her focus?

“I want you to create the new print ad campaign. Here are copies of what we’ve done in the past. What do you think about the strategy and format we used? Here’s data from focus groups and information on how well the ads pulled. What do you think we could have done to increase those numbers? Our deadline is in eight weeks. How long do you think you will need? When can you tell me if this deadline is realistic?”

First coaching meeting: “I’ve had a chance to look at the first version of the new print ad campaign. First, I’m curious about your thinking behind this strategy. What about this style and format appeals to you? What about this approach do you think will appeal to our customers? What about these ads works better than our previous campaign?

“What concerns do you have, if any, about this strategy? Where do you think the trends for print ads are headed? Is there anything you’d like to do differently, given more time or money?

“I’m a little concerned about the size of the ads and the lack of color, but maybe I’m underestimating the impact. I guess I need to know more before I’ll feel completely comfortable with changes that feel this drastic. How will our customers respond to such changes? Will the ads cost more or less to produce? What is the impact on our overall budget?”

In the example above, the manager expresses little judgment regarding what is right or wrong, good or bad, about the proposed ad campaign. She asks open-ended, not yes or no, questions. Her intention, style, and tone convey a desire to learn the employee’s perspective and to help him think for himself and draw his own conclusions. The employee in this scenario is likely to experience much less interference than in the scenario at the beginning of the article, and thus should experience greater learning, clearer thinking, and improved performance. The responsibility for learning is placed on the employee — not on the manager. This employee will probably feel that the manager is “on his side,” supporting his development and achievement of desired results.

“Edible” Feedback

One of the most important ways to improve an employee’s performance and create structures for learning is clear, relevant feedback about current reality — what’s working and not working about the individual’s actions. The traditional feedback model consists of an expert offering so-called “constructive” criticism. But how do people generally feel when they hear, “I have some feedback for you”? Their level of interference usually increases. They may think, “Oh, no . . . I’m about to be judged, slam-dunked, pulverized. I hope I can defend myself, or maybe even blame someone else. Let’s get this over with, or maybe I’ll just zone out.” Meanwhile, they generally don’t hear or consider the coach’s observations simply because they are not edible.

An edible suggestion is one that the coachee can actually take in and digest because it doesn’t overload her with too much negative information, too much advice, or too many suggestions to remember or internalize. This feedback model shifts the focus away from the traditional mode of the manager telling the employee what went right and wrong to one in which the employee discovers for herself what she learned. By helping the performer “debrief her own perceptions of what did and didn’t work, the coach leverages our tendency to believe our own data and observations, rather than those provided by others.

Feedback should do exactly what the word says: Feedback information that nourishes the performer, increases self-awareness and focus, and allows him to internalize useful data for learning. Providing feedback in this manner fosters learning and improvement that are intrinsically, rather than extrinsically, motivated (see “How to Give Edible Feedback”). Performer-based feedback also creates trust and better, more reflective working relationships, because the data is more easily digested. This focus enables the coach to function as a mirror, reflecting back the appropriate, relevant information in a nonjudgmental way.

The “GROW” Model of Coaching

Partnership coaching involves shifting one’s mind-set from teaching, training, and controlling to asking coachees for their desired outcomes and ideas for achieving them; reducing coachees’ internal interference; and learning to give useful, edible feedback. All these elements are woven into a process for conducting a successful coaching session described by Sir John Whitmore in his book, Coaching for Performance. His “GROW” model can help guide coaching conversations to more meaningful and realistic resolutions (see “The GROW Model” on p. 5). Although there are many effective ways to coach in a partnership style, the GROW model provides a useful framework in which the coach guides the coachee toward articulating her goals and achieving desired results. By using effective questions in a nonjudgmental tone, the coach shows respect for the coachee and helps her to take ownership for determining the path to reach her goal.

G=GOALS

The coach and coachee agree on session goals and long-term goals. To set session goals, the coach asks questions such as:

• What would you like to accomplish in the time we have available?
• What would make this time well spent?
• What would you like to achieve today? To set long-term goals, she asks:
• What would ultimate success look like to you?
• If you could create anything you want, what might that be?

R=CURRENT REALITY

Centering on current reality means describing the situation as accurately as possible, challenging assumptions that might be blocking more effective thinking and action, and raising awareness of the relevant details of what is currently happening. Good coaching involves following the coachee’s interests and thoughts and exploring what he has tried so far, without judging. Questions about current reality might include:

• How do you know your perception of X is accurate? How can you be sure?
• Whom else might you check with to get more data about the larger perspective?
• What have you tried so far?
• What are your beliefs about this particular situation? This person? The other department?

O=OPTIONS

The first challenge here is to help the coachee create as many options for potential actions toward the goal as possible without judging the ideas’ merit or practicality. The focus is on the quantity — not quality — of options. Building on the ideas and then choosing among them comes later. The idea is for the learner to stretch the boundaries of his thinking and to use creativity to unlock options he might not otherwise consider.

Once the coachee completes his list of options for action, the coach may offer any ideas she might have thought of while the coachee was brainstorming. Examples of coaching questions at this stage might include:

• If money, time, and resources were no obstacle, what options might you choose?
• What are all the different things you might do?
• What else might you do? What else?
• If you were to ask X person, what might he or she suggest?
• Who else could help?
• What might some “sky is the limit” thinking sound like?
• Would you like to hear some ideas that have occurred to me while you were brainstorming?

At some point, the coachee’s well of ideas will run dry. Now he should look over the list and select those options that seem most promising. The coach can help clarify priorities by asking questions such as:

• Which options would you like to explore further or take action on right away?
• Which would you be willing to implement?
• How would you rate these options from high to low?
• Where would you like to begin?

W=WHAT’S NEXT?

This is the stage for committing to action — stating an intention that is time-phased and observable, identifying potential obstacles, and aligning support from collaborators. Possible questions might include:

• What are you going to do and by when?
• What’s next? What steps are involved?
• How might you minimize the obstacles?
• What might be some unintended consequences of taking these actions?
• How will you collect data for feedback over time as you progress?
• On a scale of one to ten, how certain are you that you will do this?

Self-Coaching

One of the remarkable things about partnership coaching is that managers don’t have to be subject matter experts in order to coach others who are — they just have to be expert coaches. Sometimes, having less expertise on the subject than the coachee frees an instructor from needing to share his knowledge; this “knowing” can get in the way of asking good questions.

Coaches who want to improve their skills can solicit feedback as part

THE GROW MODEL

The GROW Model illustrates the process of helping others clarify what they want, what they have now, options for achieving results, and a plan for action.

of every learning session by asking learners:

• What about the session worked well?
• What didn’t work as well?
• What might I do differently next time to support you more effectively?

Coaches can also guide themselves during a coaching conversation and gain additional learning afterwards by asking:

• What’s happening right now?
• Where is my coachee’s focus?
• How much interference is she experiencing? Where is it coming from?
• When I made that statement, what happened with her body language?

• What cues does she give me to sit quietly and let her think?
• What judgments appeared in my thinking?
• On a scale of one to ten, how would I rate our level of partnership?
• What worked and didn’t work for us in that coaching session?

These questions give managers the opportunity to make adjustments, test assumptions, and experiment with new possibilities.

Leveraging Partnership Coaching

At its most effective, partnership coaching is simply a generative conversation in which the coach asks nonjudgmental, open-ended questions that sharpen the coachee’s focus and increase her awareness of goals, current reality, and possible options for action. In a natural and easy way, it reduces interference and structures feedback for intrinsically motivated learning. This coaching model can leverage learning for individuals, teams, and organizations by helping them improve performance more quickly than in traditional forms of coaching.

As partnership coaching becomes part of an organization’s culture, every leader becomes a steward of learning and a facilitator of performance. Learners come to trust that managers are truly on their side, supporting their learning and development as a partner and not as a disciplinarian. Partnership coaching can be a powerful tool for implementing the principles of organizational learning by facilitating personal mastery, team learning, and shared vision.

Diane Cory is a facilitator, coach, and consultant whose areas of expertise include organizational learning, servant leadership, storytelling, creativity, and coaching.

Rebecca Bradley (Rebecca@ partnershipcoaching.com), president of Atlanta-based Partnership Coaching, Inc., is an executive coach and consultant whose focus is helping individuals and teams improve performance.

The post Partnership Coaching appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Holistic Alignment: Three Elements in Balance

But aligning strategy, structure, systems, and so forth isn’t enough. Organizational change efforts often overlook the need for another kind of alignment as well — that among the work we do, the reasons we do it, and the meaning it has for us. This more comprehensive, “holistic” form of alignment extends from an organization’s market and business strategies right down to the individual level. It encompasses three elements that we might broadly refer to as goal, role, and soul.

Goal: What Do We Want? Goals are the most evident and accessible focus of our efforts. What are we trying to accomplish? How will we proceed? How will we know when we get there? Tangible or not, goals provide the substance and aim for our planning, monitoring, and assessment of change. Most business models, like the McKinsey 7S framework, focus on alignment around goals.

Role: What Do We Contribute? Roles are how we see ourselves — our identity as we play a part in the change process. Alignment must include explicit consideration of the personal implications of change. How does this change affect how I see myself? How does it affect my status in the organization? My range of activity? My reporting relationships? We actively or passively thwart changes that are personally threatening. Intentional management of these personal issues is an overlooked prerequisite for success.

Organizational change efforts often overlook the need for another kind of alignment as well — that among the work we do, the reasons we do it, and the meaning it has for us.

Soul: How Do We Relate? Soul refers to the myriad human connections that bind us as families, teams, and organizations. These links provide the emotional content of our human systems. Am I safe? Liked? Respected? Fulfilled? Our organizations are made of human beings who have emotions as well as the skills and intelligence we usually attend to in our capacity as managers.

Alignment Parallels in Business Models

In one form or another, goal, role, and soul are present in many widely recognized analytic frameworks.

• Each source of competitive differentiation in Treacy and Wiersema’s Discipline of Market Leaders (Addison Wesley, 1995) addresses a different element in our model. Operational Efficiency focuses on the goal of creating shareholder value. Product Innovation focuses on the role of the firm’s distinctive capabilities and market identity. Customer Intimacy focuses on the soul of the firm’s often emotional connection with its customers.
• In Ulrich and Lake’s Organizational Capability (John Wiley & Sons, 1990), Financial Capability addresses the firm’s ability to create value cost-effectively and aligns with the goal element in our framework. Technological Capability centers on how the firm differs from other firms in what it can do, a role function. And Market Capability, focusing on connections between the organization and its customers, represents the organization’s soul.The fourth element in Ulrich and Lake’s framework, Organization Capability, is an integrative component. Bridging the three other elements, Organization Capability is analogous in our model to the individual, group, or structure of relationships that seeks to align goal, role, and soul.
• Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard (Harvard Business School Press, 1996) is a four-element model like Ulrich and Lake’s. In the Scorecard, Financial indicators track performance against shareholder value-driven targets (goal). Operational indicators track the performance of technology and processes (role). Customer indicators track relationship elements (soul). Finally, the Organization and Learning indicators, like Ulrich and Lake’s Organization Capability, track the health of the integrating elements, the people on whom the organization’s performance and success rest.

What’s the implication when so many of the management frameworks we use differ more in vocabulary than in content? We might infer that, whether we are considering the interaction between two individuals or between two organizations, the under-lying dynamics and requirements for success are similar. One of the clearer articulations of the requirements for successful alignment comes from the Harvard Negotiation Project. Two HNP out growths, Fisher and Ury’s Getting to Yes(Houghton Mifflin, 1981)and Stone, Patton, and Heen’s Difficult Conversations(Viking, 1999), base successful interactions on attending to multiple levels in the “conversation” the facts of the situation (goal), the power and identity elements inherent in the process (role), and the emotional content (soul).

Operating from this perspective, participants strive to create “win-win” opportunities and to strengthen their relationships in the course of the conversation or negotiation. Alignment is more than ensuring all parties agree on the goal or “ends.” The “means,” both in terms of roles in the process and the emotional importance of the change, become crucial alignment considerations. In some sense, Machiavelli got it backwards—rather than the ends justifying the means, the means enable the ends.

Dialogue As a Change Process

At Genuity, we face tremendous challenges in helping our company navigate through relentless and accelerating market changes. As an e-business network provider, Genuity’s business must change at, or in advance of, the pace of change in the Internet market. We’re using dialogue around goal, role, and soul to help management teams reorient after particularly wrenching changes, such as reorganizations.

Dialogue Around Soul. First, we attend to the emotional implications of the change by explicitly discussing the positive and negative emotions team members have experienced during a recent large-scale reorganization. This catharsis serves to establish the common emotional experience team members share, both in surviving the disruption of personal relationships and in appreciating the grace with which many people handled the reorganization despite its personal impact.

Dialogue Around Role. Then, we detail the changes in the way work will occur. Here, William Bridge’s Transitions Management model is particularly effective. As team members describe their new responsibilities, they explicitly note what former roles and responsibilities are no longer part of their work, what they are carrying forward into the new organization, and what new areas of responsibility they are assuming. This discussion serves both to educate the group on the changes in their overall focus and to allow individual team members to honor the valuable work they no longer perform, validate roles they continue to perform, and accept new roles.

Dialogue Around Goal. Finally, we turn our attention to the future and our vision of the organization we want to become. A simple brainstorming exercise about the attributes of the organization in two or three years provides the basis for this work. The team sorts the attributes into four categories: strategy, people, customers, and process. Then, team members “tell a story” about the connection between strategy and people and between customers and process. The strategy/people story is a, “recruiting pitch” to a fictional prospective hire describing how Genuity connects its people to its strategy. The customers/process story is a “sales pitch” to a crucial prospective account about how our processes drive customer value. Further work focuses on building the organization’s strengths to grow the business toward the vision.

Explicitly attending to the needs of goal, role, and soul through this relatively simple three-phased approach helps teams adapt more quickly and completely to large-scale changes. We’ve seen teams rapidly establish productive working relationships after undergoing fundamental structural and staffing changes. But this process is not a magic bullet. For groups to continue to work productively, they will need to continually attend to and reinforce the alignment of all three elements.

Managing the Whole Change Process

To a significant degree, all business activity is about managing change. Some changes are on a large scale and are formally recognized as requiring change management. But all business activities involve transformations in one form or another, turning inputs into outputs. Consequently, effective managers must attend to all three elements in change and continually work to create alignment both systemically and interpersonally.

We all bring our whole being to the workplace. The choice is not whether we can engage the whole person at work, but how we manage the inevitable engagement. The connection can be generative or degenerative — the direction is jointly determined by both the individual and the organization. Engagement is a dialogue, and parties can be adept or inept at that dialogue.

Alignment required for organizational change must consider all aspects of the business model, the process for the change, and the “codicils” of the emotional contract between the organization and the individual. By consciously attending to our needs on the levels of goals, roles, and souls, we more effectively and holistically reinvent our organizations in the ongoing change process that is both business and life.

The post Holistic Change: Creating Organizational and Individual Alignment at Genuity appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

CLASHING GOALS

Quality and schedule sometimes conflict (B1 and B2 conflict with B4 and B5). The pressure to expedite a project increases the pressure to cut corners (B3) and lower the quality goal (B6). Over time, as the quality of our efforts declines, the quality goal declines, which reduces the gap. This leads to a further decrease in the quality of our efforts and a subsequent lowering of product quality (R7).

8:58, only to find that you are the first one there. You check your calendar to make sure that you have the right date, time, and place. Yep, you do. Around 9:05, some of your coworkers show up, and by 9:10, everyone has arrived for the “9 o’clock” meeting. So, what do you learn from this experience? Probably the same thing the others have already learned—that the, “real” starting time for meetings is never the stated time. This is a common example of the “Drifting Goals” archetypal structure.

Down the Slippery Slope

Many of us have had experiences similar to the one described above. As a group, we commit to a certain meeting time or project deadline with every intention of fulfilling that promise. Nevertheless, “life” intervenes in the form of traffic jams, more pressing deadlines, and urgent phone calls so we relax our standards around keeping the commitment. We think to ourselves, “The rest of the group is bound to be late, so I’ll spend one more minute polishing this presentation” or “Waiting an extra day for the new release won’t kill our customers!” We say 9:00 a.m., but, through our own tardiness or lack of reaction when others arrive late, we tacitly accept that it’s O. K. to begin the meeting no later than 9:05. Well, maybe 9:10, but we absolutely should start by 9:15. So, why don’t we just schedule the meeting for 9:15? Because then it’s likely to start at 9:30! This dynamic reminds us of the old adage “give him an inch, and he’ll take a mile.” It seems that once we compromise a little, we are headed down a slippery slope with no bottom in sight.

One obvious solution to drifting meeting times would be to establish accompany wide norm that meetings must begin as scheduled no matter what. Many groups have experimented with different incentives (or more accurately, disincentives) to encourage people to arrive on time ranging from monetary penalties to singing a song for being late with mixed results. For numerous organizations, though, delayed meetings are just a surface manifestation of a larger and potentially more serious pattern of drifting goals.

The Danger in Deadlines

Perhaps with things like meetings, it’s not such a big deal if everyone translates 9:00 to mean 9:15. The problem with such habits is that they have away of spreading to other areas, such as quality standards, new product launches, and marketing campaigns.

The danger lies in the tendency for all goals to drift, depending on the forces that are operating at the moment. In other words, we want a quality of 10, but when time is tight, we will settle for 9.5. If we are even more pressed,9.3 will do. And on it goes.

Some standards are more important to maintain than others. For example, new product launches generally need to stay on schedule so the company can fulfill advanced sales. But more often than not, deadlines beg into slip, often because people are juggling multiple demands. When this happens, the project manager has at least two choices about how to address the gap between the desired and actual deadline (see “Clashing Goals”). One way is to simply delay the launch date(B1), which is not an acceptable alter-native in most cases. Another way is to increase the amount of effort or resources devoted to the project so that progress can be made faster and the launch date can be met (B2). If management makes it clear that the deadline must be maintained at all costs, then this second scenario will likely occur. But if the organization doesn’t allocate the resources needed to expedite the project, people in the system must find other ways to reach the goal. One solution is to reduce the quality of efforts on the project; that is, to cut corners, which will lower the time required to produce the end-product (B3).

In some cases, taking such a shortcut makes sense in order to get acritical product out on time, even though the quality may not be up to our usual standards. The problem with this approach is that it rarely remains an isolated event, but rather becomes apart of the way we do things. The next time we get into a time bind, we may “cheat” a little on quality again because it worked the last time. So by setting rigid deadlines in isolation of other factors, we can actually create undesirable long-term outcomes, such as lower-quality products.

Competing Goals

The “Drifting Goals” phenomenon occurs more often when we are juggling competing objectives than when we are trying to meet a single target. Ideally, we would like to produce a high-quality product on schedule every time, but what happens when these two requirements seem to conflict (when B1and B2 conflict with B4 and B5)? In “Clashing Goals,” we see that the pressure to expedite a project does two things. It increases the pressure to lower the quality goal (B6)and it lessens the quality of the efforts that we can put forth. Over time, this decline in quality of efforts also has a negative effect on the quality goal itself, which creates a dangerous reinforcing dynamic. Specifically, as the quality of our efforts declines, the quality goal declines, which reduces the gap. This leads to a further decrease in the quality of our effort sand a subsequent lowering of product quality (R7).

The figure “Drifting Goals over Time” shows the long-term dynamics of this structure at work. The quality goal appears to stay stable for periods of time and drops slowly relative to the wider swings of the actual quality of efforts. This dynamic serves to mask the long-term downward trend, which is why this archetype is often referred to as the “Boiled Frog Syndrome.” The changes in the goal are slow enough that nobody detects the dangerous trend until the company is in serious, “hot water.

Identifying Interdependent Goals

DRIFTING GOALS OVER TIME

The quality goal appears to stay stable for periods of time and drops slowly relative to the wider swings of the actual quality of efforts. This dynamic serves to mask the long-term downward trend.

Returning to our original example, people in organizations constantly juggle the competing goals of getting to meetings on time and attending to a whole slew of tasks they need to accomplish. One leverage point would be to emphasize the importance of actually starting as scheduled and to ask what it would take for everyone to keep that commitment. We may discover that 9 a.m. is not the best time to accomplish this goal because there are too many other competing variables—traffic, urgent messages to return, and problems to troubleshoot. It may be that gathering at lunch time will make the goal more achievable, especially if lunch is provided! Lunch or no lunch, the principle is to establish the importance of meeting a specific goal in the context of multiple goals, and then to set up structures to minimize the conflicts between competing demands and priorities.

The post Drifting Goals: The Challenge of Conflicting Priorities appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Partnership coaching offers an alternative to managing and teaching. Its purpose is to facilitate learning, improve performance, and enable learners to create desired results. Using this model, managers help people achieve what they want rather than tell them what they need to accomplish or know. How? Managers (1) ask open-ended questions that focus the learner’s attention on relevant details, (2) create an environment that reduces interference, or negative self-talk by the learner, and (3) make feedback “edible”; easier for the learner to hear and use.

How to Give “Edible” Feedback

“Edible” feedback consists of nonjudgmental questions and suggestions that are easy for the learner to hear and to act on. The questions help raise the learner’s awareness of his or her goals and current reality, focus the learner’s attention, lead to deeper and more expansive thinking by the learner, and are open-ended (who, what, when, where, why, and how) rather than closed (yes/no). The suggestions add only what is necessary to complete the learner’s understanding “John/Jane, I observed your meeting/conversation/ presentation/etc. I have some feedback that you might find useful . . . is now a good time? Before I give you my thoughts, I’m interested in your perceptions, specifically:

1. What worked well for you during that presentation/meeting/conversation?
2. What didn’t work as well for you?
3. What might you want to consider doing differently next time?
4. Would you like me to offer suggestions that have occurred to me as we’ve been talking?”

The coach is now in a position to confirm the perceptions of the learner or add a different perspective. Clear, nonjudgmental observations about what worked, what didn’t work as well, and what the person might do differently next time will be welcomed and more likely used for improved performance next time.

Effective Questions

• Are nonjudgmental—this requires a neutral tone of voice and facial expression and curiosity rather than criticism— and are open-ended
• Raise awareness of the learner’s goals and current reality
• Reduce interference by focusing the learner’s attention
• Lead to deeper questions and more reflective and expansive thinking by the learner
• Surface assumptions and mental models not seen before
• Surface assumptions and mental models not seen before • Are not manipulative or asked in order to help the learner arrive at a “correct” solution or answer

TRADITIONAL VS. PARTNERSHIP COACHING

This material is drawn from “Partnership Coaching” by Diane Cory and Rebecca Bradley, THE SYSTEMS THINKER,Vol. 9 No. 4 (May 1998). © 2000 Diane Cory and Rebecca Bradley. An expanded version of this “Toolbox” is available in a pocket-guide format; for information, go to www.pegasuscom.com.

The post Toolbox: Partnership Coaching appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

• Quickly capturing your hypotheses about the causes of dynamics;
• Eliciting and capturing the mental models of individuals and teams;
• Communicating the important feedback processes you believe are responsible for a problem.

The conventions for drawing CLDs are simple but should be followed faithfully. Think of CLDs as musical scores: At first, you may find it difficult to construct and interpret these diagrams, but with practice, you will soon be sight-reading. In this article, I present some important guidelines that can help you make sure your CLDs are accurate and effective in capturing and communicating the feedback structure of complex systems.

Avoid Ambiguity in Labeling Causal Links

AMBIGUITY OF LINKS

To be effective, your CLD should not include any ambiguous causal links. Ambiguous polarities usually mean there are multiple causal pathways that you should show separately.

People sometimes argue that a specific link in a CLD can be either positive or negative, depending on other parameters or on where the system is operating. For example, we might draw a diagram that relates a firm’s revenue to the price of its product and then argue that the link between price and company revenue can be either positive or negative, depending on the elasticity of demand (see “Ambiguity of Links”). A higher price means less revenue if a 1 percent increase in price causes demand to fall more than 1 percent. This link would be labeled with a negative sign. But less elastic demand might mean a 1 percent increase in price causes demand to fall less than 1 percent, so revenues would then rise, resulting in a positive link polarity.

When you have trouble assigning a clear and unambiguous sign to a link, it usually means there is more than one causal pathway connecting the two variables. You should make these different pathways explicit in your diagram. The correct diagram for the impact of price on revenue would show that price has at least two effects on revenue: (1) it determines how much revenue is generated per unit sold (a positive link), and (2) it affects the number of units sold (usually a negative link).

Is It Reinforcing or Balancing?

There are two methods for determining whether a loop is reinforcing or balancing: the fast way and the right way. The fast way, which you may have learned when you first started working with CLDs, is to count the number of negative links—represented by “-” or “o”—in the loop (see “‘+’ and ‘-’ Vs. ‘s’ and ‘o’”). If the number is even, the loop is reinforcing; if the number is odd, the loop is balancing. However, this method can sometimes fail, because it is all too easy to mislabel a link’s polarity or miscount the number of negative links.

The right way is to trace the effect of a small change in one of the variables around the loop. Pick any variable in the loop. Now imagine that it has changed (increased or decreased), and trace the effect of this change around the loop. If the change feeds back to reinforce the original change, it is a reinforcing loop. If it opposes the original change, it is a balancing loop. This method works no matter how many variables are in a loop and no matter where you start.

Make the Goals of Balancing Loops Explicit

All balancing loops have goals, which are the system’s desired state. Balancing loops function by comparing the actual state to the goal, then initiating a corrective action in response to the discrepancy between the two. It is often helpful to make the goals of your balancing loops explicit, usually by adding a new variable, such as “desired product quality” (see Desired Product Quality in “Explicit Goals”). The diagram shows a balancing loop that affects the quality of a company’s product: The lower the quality, the more quality improvement programs the company initiates, which, if successful, correct the quality shortfall.

EXPLICIT GOALS

Making goals explicit in balancing loops encourages people to ask questions about how the goals are formed. For example, what drives a company’s desired level of quality?

Making goals explicit encourages people to ask how the goals are formed; for instance, who determines desired product quality and what criteria do they use to make that determination? Hypotheses about the answers to these questions can then be incorporated in the diagram. Goals can vary over time and respond to pressures in the environment, such as customer input or the quality of competing products.

Making the goals of balancing loops explicit is especially important when the loops capture human behavior—showing the goals prompts reflection and conversation about the aspirations and motives of the actors. But often it is important to represent goals explicitly even when the loop doesn’t involve people at all.

Represent Causation Rather Than Correlation

Every link in your diagram must represent what you and your colleagues believe to be causal relationships between the variables. In a causal relationship, one variable has a direct effect on another; for instance, a change in the birth rate alters the total population. You must be careful not to include correlations between variables in your diagrams. Correlations between variables reflect a system’s past behavior, not its underlying structure. If circumstances change, if previously dormant feedback loops become dominant, or if you experiment with new decisions and policies, previously reliable correlations among variables may break down.

ICE-CREAM SALES AND MURDERS

Causal loop diagrams must include only what you believe to be genuine causal relationships, never correlations, no matter how strong.

For example, though sales of ice cream are positively correlated with the murder rate, you may not include a link from ice-cream sales to murder in your CLD. Such a causal link suggests that cutting ice-cream consumption would slash the murder rate and allow society to cut the budget for police and prisons. Obviously, this is not the case: Both ice-cream consumption and violent crime tend to rise in hot weather. But the example illustrates how confusing correlations with causality can lead to terrible misjudgments and policy errors (see “Ice Cream Sales and Murders”).

While few people are likely to attribute murders to the occasional double-dip cone, many correlations are more subtle, and it is often difficult to determine the underlying causal structure. A great deal of scientific research seeks the causal needles in a huge haystack of correlations: Can eating oat bran reduce cholesterol, and if it does, will your risk of a heart attack drop? Does economic growth lead to lower birth rates, or is the lower rate attributable to literacy, education for women, and increasing costs of child-rearing?

Do companies with serious quality improvement programs earn superior returns for stockholders?

Scientists have learned from experience that reliable answers to such questions are hard to come by and require dedication to the scientific method—controlled experiments; randomized, double-blind trials; large samples; long-term followup studies; replication; statistical inference; and so on. In social and human systems, such experiments are difficult, rare, and often impossible. You must take extra care to determine that the relationships in your CLDs are causal, no matter how strong a correlation may be.

John D. Sterman is the J. Spencer Standish Professor of Management at the Sloan School of Management of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of MIT’s System Dynamics Group.

This article is part of a 2-part series. Click here to view the second part.

The post Fine-Tuning Your Causal Loop Diagrams—Part I appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

The first question seemed important because it appeared that both sides had been moving toward a peaceful settlement since 1993, when they signed the Oslo Accords. Certain parts of the West Bank had been returned to full Palestinian control on an agreed-upon path to Palestinian statehood, and the newly formed Palestinian Authority had publicly announced its acceptance of Israel’s right to exist. Just two months before we moved to Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Barak had made the strongest Israeli offer yet for completing negotiations and paving the way for a Palestinian state comprising most of the West Bank and Gaza—although, much to the surprise of most Israelis, the offer was rejected.

The second question seems almost inevitable in human relations when things do not go the way people want them to. Instead of considering our responsibility for creating certain situations, we quickly seek to blame others. Moreover, in this case, there were plenty of likely candidates: Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader who turned down Barak’s breakthrough offer; Ariel Sharon, the Israeli right-wing leader whose visit to the Al Aqsa mosque complex sparked the Palestinian riots; Barak, for appearing to force the Palestinian leadership into a corner and refusing to meet with Arafat face-to-face at Camp David; and President Clinton, for appearing to side with Israel against the Palestinians during these same negotiations.

As unavoidable as these two questions are, I believe they are the wrong ones. As a systems thinker trained to look for the non-obvious interdependencies producing chronic problems, I found it pointless to ask “Why now?” about a conflict that has been going on for anywhere from 30-50 years at a minimum to nearly 4,000 years at the extreme. Similarly, it made little sense to blame anyone when the conflict has extended well beyond the political if not physical lifetimes of most of the leaders mentioned above and other participants in the current crisis.

Instead, I began to ask a different set of questions:

• Why does this problem persist despite people’s extensive efforts to solve it?
• Why do Israelis invest so much to increase their sense of security, yet feel so insecure?
• Why do Palestinians, despite enduring the loss of lives and extreme economic hardship, gain so little of the respect and sovereignty they try so hard to achieve?
• Why is it difficult for those people on both sides who want a workable compromise to gain sufficient support for solutions they perceive as possible?
• Where is the leverage in the conflict, that is, what can people do to produce a sustainable systemwide solution?

The field of systems thinking is especially effective for enabling people to understand why they have been unsuccessful in solving chronic problems despite their best efforts. While a systems view can’t fully answer these questions, it can illuminate how people think—and the consequences of their thoughts and actions on the results they achieve—in ways that can help them see and achieve sustainable new solutions. By understanding the exact nature of the vicious circles we have been trapped in, we can create new patterns of relationships that serve us better. I set about to apply systems thinking to the Middle East crisis to see if I could shed light on possible ways out of the ongoing tragedy.

A Four-Stage Cycle

My view is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict proceeds through a pattern of four stages: 1. Both sides fight for the right to exist. 2. The tension escalates. 3. Pressure leads to negotiations. 4. Peace efforts break down.

When peace efforts break down, the two sides cycle back to the first stage and intensify their fight for the right to exist (see “A Cycle of Violence”). From a systemic perspective, this pattern of behavior indicates that the “solutions” that the two parties are employing are unintentionally making the problem worse, or at least perpetuating it.

1. Both Sides Fight for the Right to Exist. What makes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so intractable is that both sides see themselves battling to establish their basic right to exist. Israelis and Palestinians have become ardent enemies because each claims the same land. While some voices on each side acknowledge the right of the other to exist and are willing to exchange land for peace, others— often the more dominant voices— deny this right and refuse to negotiate. As a result, many ask, “How can coexistence be an option when the other side challenges our right to exist?”

Israel’s fears about its existence are justified by past events. The country came into being in 1948, shortly after one-third of the world’s Jews were exterminated in World War II. Immediately after it was founded, Israel was threatened by five surrounding Arab states, which vowed to “drive the Jews into the sea.” The Arabs felt that the partition proposed by the British and agreed on by the U. N. took land away from Arabs who had lived there for generations. Border raids by Egypt and Syria led to additional wars in 1956, 1967, and 1973. To protect its northern border, Israel occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000.

Israelis interpret many Palestinian actions as proof that the Palestinians do not recognize their right to exist. For example, the current Intifada, the Palestinians’ demand for the full right of return of its refugees to their homeland in what is now Israel, and continued anti-Semitic incidents abroad remind them of their vulnerability and the need for a Jewish state.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian people have never controlled their own destiny. The Ottoman Empire controlled their land for 400 years. The British took over in 1917 and ruled Palestine until 1948. In the Israeli War of Independence, an estimated 600,000 Palestinian refugees fled parts of Palestine that were later absorbed by Israel. Their numbers, including descendants, have now swelled into the millions. Jordan took over rule of the Palestinian West Bank from the British and held it until 1967, when Israel won that territory during the Six-Day War. Since then, Israel has established, expanded, and consistently defended settlements in the West Bank—often land lived on for centuries by Palestinians. Palestinians have frequently received a hostile reception through-out the Arab world. Since 1970, their attempts to resettle first in Jordan and then in Egypt and Syria were largely denied. Palestinians who have established themselves in Lebanon cannot practice professions. The only country that currently recognizes Palestinians as citizens is Jordan. Many suffer in refugee camps throughout the region, hoping to return to the lands they were forced to flee.

In their efforts to assert their right to exist, most Palestinians and Israelis will only consider two options: One is to negotiate an agreement of peaceful coexistence that divides the land of Palestine into two viable states; the other is to try to maintain or wrest control of all of the land at the expense of the other party. For a long time, many on both sides seemed to favor the first alternative, despite the powerful influence of extremists acting to achieve the second. But the profound mistrust the Israelis and Palestinians have developed for each other has caused more people on both sides to be drawn to the second alternative, despite the costs involved.

Two powerful factors entice both sides to fight for control of all the land: threat and desire. For most Israelis, the primary threat is to their security. Since 1967, the country’s policies have also been fueled by the desire of a powerful minority of religious Jews to retain control over the historical Jewish lands of Judea and Samaria, which constitute much of the West Bank. Israel’s response to threats to its security, as well as to pressures from the religious right, has been to control Palestinian movements through-out the territory through blockades, check points, and permits—actions that might be consider edmilitarily defensible but that are often implemented in ways that feel humiliating to the Palestinians. Israel has conducted targeted assassinations, bombed strategic Palestinian infrastructure, appropriated additional land to protect the settlers, defended the violent acts of some settlers, and killed civilians when under attack.

For Palestinians, the threat to their existence involves not just the lack of a homeland but the lack of respect they perceive from others. They feel ignored for the losses they have incurred and demeaned by both the actions and broken promises of the Israelis. Their anger at their history of mistreatment by foreign rulers, fanned by an Israeli occupation of the West Bank that the U. N. considers illegal (U. N. Resolution 242 defines the West Bank as “occupied territory”), leads them to demand respect as well as sovereignty. Furthermore, although Palestinian moderates would accept a viable state that has contiguous borders within the West Bank, comprises almost all of the West Bank and Gaza, and includes East Jerusalem as its capital, many Palestinians dream of reclaiming all of the land of their forebears—a reclamation that would result in the elimination of Israel.

Because their military position is weak relative to Israel’s, Palestinians fight through sniper attacks, verbal incitement, and suicide bombings against civilians. They justify their reliance on violence by observing that, in the past, Israel has not kept its promises unless it was physically provoked. For example, many view Israel’s decision to remove all of its soldiers from southern Lebanon in the spring of 2000 as a response to the violent resistance of Hezbollah fighters. Palestinian leaders also maintain strict controls over the information available to their own people—for example, by denying Israel’s existence in student textbooks and maps—and incite refugees to believe that they will one day reclaim all of their land.

A CYCLE OF VIOLENCE

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict proceeds through a pattern of four stages: Both sides fight for the right to exist; the tension escalates; pressure leads to negotiations; and peace efforts break down (R1). When peace efforts break down, the two sides cycle back to the first stage. This pattern of behavior indicates that the “solutions” that the two parties are employing are unintentionally making the problem worse, or at least perpetuating it.

2. The Tension Escalates. Over time, both sides have grown increasingly dependent on the strategy of retaliation (see “Dependence on Retaliation”). As one side gains a temporary advantage in its battle for legitimacy, the other acts to regain its own advantage. This pattern of escalation manifests in several ways:

• Israel uses military force and constraints on Palestinians’ movement to retaliate for Palestinian actions.
• Palestinians perpetrate violence against Israeli citizens and encourage their people to deny Israel’s right to exist.
• Each side perceives itself as a victim of the other’s aggression instead of seeing how its own actions contribute to the escalating conflict.

In the short term, each group’s strategies to claim its right to exist succeed. Through their containment policies, Israelis reaffirm, “They cannot force us to leave.” Through violent resistance, Palestinians reaffirm, “They will have to take us seriously.” In the long term, however, both sides fail to see the unintended consequences of their actions: They only increase the feelings of threat experienced by the other side, motivating them to act to reduce these attacks and regain their own sense of legitimacy—even as the loss of life and other costs increase.

For example, Israeli actions have increased economic hardship for Palestinians, deepened their feelings of humiliation and indignation, and led to significant losses of life. (According to U. N. estimates, as of December 2001,15 months after the Al Aqsa Intifada began, approximately 800 Palestinians had been killed, and the Palestinian economy was losing $11 million per day. The death toll has climbed with the recent escalation in violence on both sides.) In response, the Palestinians have become more unified and motivated to take even bolder actions; suicide bombings now occur several times a week. In the words of Jibril Rajoub, head of preventive security for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, many Palestinians feel that “We have nothing left to lose.” In turn, greater resistance has only served to increase Israel’s determination to defend all of the land. An editorial in the Jerusalem Post states, “What must be defeated is the Hezbollah model—the idea that if you kill a few Israelis for long enough, they will get tired and leave.”

DEPENDENCE ON RETALIATION

Both sides have grown increasingly dependent on retaliation in response to threats to their right to exist (B2). In the long term, this strategy only increases the feelings of threat experienced by the other side (R4) and undermines the fundamental solution—negotiations for peaceful coexistence (R5). Third parties contribute to the conflict when they take sides (R6).

This cycle of retaliation is further compounded by the fact that both parties perceive themselves as victims of forces beyond their control. Palestinians claim they are victims of Israeli aggression; Israelis feel besieged by the entire Arab world. Each side emphasizes how the other’s actions hurt it while ignoring how its own actions hurt the other party. Because the self-perception of powerlessness is so deeply ingrained in the psyches of both peoples, it is very difficult for them to perceive that they have now become aggressors as well as victims. Each fails to see their own responsibility for increasing the levels of threat they experience—and fails to consider actions they might take to reduce these threats.

3. Pressure Leads to Negotiations. Only when the loss of life and resources incurred by both sides reaches a critical point do people begin to question the viability of resolving the conflict by force. In tandem with changes in the larger geopolitical forces affecting the region, this questioning eventually prompts a renewal of peace negotiations. We have seen this cycle occur several times, for example, when the failure of the first Intifada and the fall of the Soviet Union led to meetings in Madrid in 1991 and the Oslo Accords in 1993, and when, after the assassination of staunch peace advocate Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and the extremism of the hardline government of Benyamin Netanyahu, Israelis elected the more liberal Barak in 1999.

Many on both sides believed they had reached a potential breakthrough in negotiations when, at Camp David in the summer of 2000, Barak offered the Palestinians most of the West Bank and East Jerusalem—an offer that Arafat rejected. Even after the Camp David meeting dissolved and the Al Aqsa Intifada began, parties on both sides continued to meet. At Taba in January 2001, they came very close to an agreement that many on both sides believe will eventually be the basis for a negotiated settlement.

4. Peace Efforts Break Down. Despite signs of a significant breakthrough on the most difficult issues, all peace efforts have inevitably broken down. Long-term dependence on destructive ways of resolving the conflict have led to profound mistrust and hatred. This hostility undermines the peace process in two fundamental ways. First, it decreases commitment by both sides to pursuing peaceful coexistence and strengthens people’s dreams of recovering all of the land. Second, it weakens the trust-building process by leading to a series of conditions, mixed messages, and broken promises.

Because of the build-up of mistrust and hatred, many people believe that a peace agreement can only be reached with the aid of international brokers—both at the negotiating table and on the ground thereafter. However, using brokers is problematic because each group tries to get the third parties to take sides—something the international community is not immune to doing. The United States has historically sided with Israel, and the European Community has generally sided with the Palestinian cause. As a result, both Israelis and Palestinians succeed in deflecting responsibility for the conflict and perpetuating the cycles of blame and victimization, rather than being accountable for their own destructive actions.

Extremist Actions

Remarkably, despite all of these barriers, at times the peace process appears to move forward. After the Oslo Accords, Israel ceded parts of the West Bank to Palestinian control, and the Palestinian leadership arrested Palestinian extremists. Informal dialogues as well as more formal negotiations on common issues such as water management grew, and people on both sides believed that peace could be achieved. Even after the Al Aqsa Intifada had raged for nearly a year, the worldwide coalition developed after September 11 to fight global terrorism gave both Israelis and Palestinians hope that the international community would finally succeed in getting them to agree to a sensible and honorable peace.

But no matter how intelligently and well designed a peace agreement may be, some people will perceive themselves as losers. Effective compromise is likely to mean that Israel will surrender most of the West Bank and all of Gaza and accept some symbolic right of return for Palestinians. In exchange, the Palestinians would recognize that Israel has the right to retain control over the remainder of the territory. In this scenario, Israeli settlers and right wingers would have to give up their homes and their dream of control over the promised lands of Judea and Samaria. Palestinian losers would include radical groups and refugees who have survived in terrible conditions in camps and who still dream of reclaiming all of the former Palestine.

To extremist groups on both sides, a compromise is unacceptable. When peace appears too near, they strike the ultimate blow to its realization. For example, the murder of nearly 30 Palestinians in a mosque by Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein is one of several Israeli actions that disrupted progress on the Oslo Accords. Bombs set off by the radical Palestinian group Hamas in 1996 are partly to blame for the failure of Israeli Labor Party leader Shimon Peres to get elected and fulfill Rabin’s promise of peace.

Extremist violence does not need to be directed against the other side in order to be effective. A Jewish settler assassinated Rabin, perhaps Israel’s most effective advocate for peaceful coexistence. Palestinian extremists have also murdered fellow Palestinians who pursue coexistence as a legitimate option. Nor do extremists need to act violently to be effective; they can also make unreasonable demands. For example, many believe that Arafat’s insistence on a full right of return for Palestinian refugees to Israeli territory was the breaking point in the July 2000 Camp David talks. Others view Sharon’s insistence on a total cessation of Palestinian violence in order for peace talks to resume as an impossible standard intended specifically to stall further negotiations.

Whatever the method used, the actions of an extreme few seem to successfully undermine compromises that would benefit the majority of both peoples. Such events set off additional rounds of blocking, incitement, and fighting that only serve to build further mistrust and hatred and undermine negotiations.

Systemic Solutions

What does this analysis suggest in terms of systemic solutions to resolve the conflict? I believe that both the protagonists and third parties must:

• Accept that their current solutions are a dead end and hurt themselves—not just the other party.
• Think systemically before taking new action.
• Reduce threats to the other side—and be willing to take risks for peace.
• Reaffirm the goal of peaceful coexistence, reiterating that both sides have rights to live in viable states in former Palestine—and that both grieve the dream of recovering all of the land.
• Expect the international community to hold both sides responsible for their actions—and give up favoring either one.

POSSIBLE LEVERAGE POINTS FOR CHANGE

Successful interventions often involve breaking a link between variables or changing variables. Before beginning to intervene in this long-standing cycle of violence, Palestinians, Israelis, and the international community need to think systemically and accept that current approaches are a dead end.

Accept That Current Solutions Are a Dead End. While some observers do recognize the vicious cycle in which both sides are caught up, most Palestinians and Israelis are unable to see how their own actions hurt their cause. Currently, each side tends to hear the solutions offered by third parties as actions that the other side should take but won’t; thus, current solutions have reached a dead end. By taking a systemic perspective on the ongoing conflict, perhaps each group will be able to see actions it can take in its own best interests. To that end, both Israelis and Palestinians must become aware that:

• They are weakening their own positions through actions that gain them temporary advantage only to leave them more threatened and frustrated in the long term.
• Neither side can succeed in claiming its own right to exist without also having to acknowledge this right for the other.
• Any actions that don’t acknowledge each other’s rights will lead only to greater threats to Israeli security and Palestinian sovereignty—and to greater losses of life and material resources on both sides.
• Because each side is an aggressor as well as a victim, it can do more than it believes, individually and in cooperation with the other party, to change the situation.

Whatever past injustices have led Israelis and Palestinians to this point, in the present they are both responsible for their actions. Both have the opportunity to act in wise ways that ensure a more creative and satisfying future for all. To the extent that each group understands how its actions unwittingly undermine its own cause, they can then initiate and implement more sustainable proposals for peace.

Think Systemically Before Taking New Action. Thinking systemically involves:

1. Testing the underlying mental models that drive so much of people’s behavior.
2. Shifting from the question “Who is to blame?” to “Where is the leverage in the dynamic between the two sides?” Letting go of blame does not necessarily mean letting go of anger, though it does mean finding solutions that create less pain and anger in the future.
3. Asking, “What can we do to break the spiral of retaliation and revenge?” While the vicious cycle is now painfully obvious to both sides, what is less clear is that it can only be broken if each side takes its own initiative to act differently.
4. Considering the unintended consequences of proposed solutions.

Reduce Threats to Both Sides. Instead of being so concerned about whether or not the other side will change (a source of repeated failures to deescalate the conflict), each side needs to focus on what it can do to initiate change. Additionally, before taking any action, each should consider the following questions:

• What are the benefits of our actions in the short term?
• What are the likely consequences of these actions in the long term?
• How will the other side likely react to our actions?
• What will we do when they react?
• Will our actions and their likely reactions produce the outcome we want?

These questions indicate that the first step each party can take in its own best interest is to reduce threats to the other side. In other words, each side must make more efforts to reduce threats on the ground and not limit its actions to discussions at the negotiating table.

Israel can act in ways that demonstrate respect for the Palestinian people without losing sight of its own security needs. This means freezing investment in settlements and reclamation of land where Palestinians live, eliminating acts of harassment and humiliation that do little to bolster security, and allowing Palestinians to move freely as the violence subsides. Palestinians can reduce both violence and incitement while continuing to claim their right to a state with viable borders. They can engage in nonviolent resistance while validating Israel’s right to exist.

Reducing threats not only minimizes defensive reactions, but it softens the mistrust and hatred that have prolonged the conflict. Doing so will likely make both sides feel more comfortable returning to the negotiating table. Once the two sides reach agreement, they then need to keep the promises they make instead of finding loopholes that only lead to further escalation.

At the same time, each side must be prepared to take risks to achieve peace. Israel must not only insist on creating secure borders, but also be willing to risk that it has both the military strength and moral high ground to thoroughly defend Israeli lives and territory within pre-1967 borders. Palestinians must not only insist on a viable state with contiguous borders within the West Bank and Gaza, but also be willing to risk that they can develop their own state effectively and efficiently. While these risks feel very real to both sides, the risks to safety and sovereignty they currently face are untenable.

Reaffirm the Goal of Peaceful Coexistence. Ultimately, any compromise requires that both sides give up their respective dreams of controlling all of Palestine. Making this choice means preparing people on both sides to accept that they will achieve less than what they really want. It means grieving the loss of the dream and claiming the best that this situation has to offer. It means containing the extremists on both sides and not allowing their actions to deter the compromise that benefits the majority of people on both sides. For Israelis, it means preparing to welcome back the settlers who have risked their lives to populate all of “the promised land.” For Palestinians, it means accepting the Jews’ historical claims to this part of the world and setting realistic expectations for Palestinians’ right of return to what is now Israel.

Both sides need to replace the dream of recovering all of the land with a dream of peaceful coexistence. Palestinians can focus on channeling the determination and education of their relatively young population—as well as support from the international community—into peaceful lives, economic well-being, and global respect. Israelis can focus on directing their enormous creativity and energy toward producing environmental, social, and economic advancements that benefit all of its population.

Expect the International Community to Hold Both Sides Responsible. Third parties drawn into the conflict will only be effective when, rather than taking sides, they hold both sides responsible for the conflict and condition their engagement on actions taken by both to resolve it. Third parties can take four additional actions to support peacemaking:

• Validate the pain and anger experienced by both sides without feeding a cycle of blame and revenge. Empathizing with statements such as “This terrible thing happened to me” can lead to true healing, while buying into accusations such as “They did this to me” only supports further helplessness and reactivity.
• Validate people’s belief that any new peace process within the existing framework is likely to fail. The process will fail as long as each side believes it can take the same actions and get a different result or waits for signs that the other side is changing. However, it can succeed if both sides change their own behavior and trust that the other party will do the same.
• Anticipate and explicitly address the pitfalls of entering the peace process. Acknowledge that, historically, negotiations have been weakened by conditions, mixed messages, and broken promises, and that extremists take actions to undermine agreements when peace appears near. Encourage both sides to address these negotiation issues before they become a problem, contain their extremists, and educate their people to refrain from revenge if the extremists strike.
• Be prepared to provide on-the-ground support. Until now, the international community has been reluctant to commit on-the-ground support to help each side keep the agreements. Given current levels of mistrust and hatred, third-party brokers might need to establish a physical presence as well as provide financial aid to achieve the required changes.

Balance of Power?

Some Israeli and Palestinian reviewers of this work have challenged one particular aspect of the analysis—it assumes that both sides have equal power in and responsibility for the current situation. Clearly, Israel has more power militarily and economically, and Palestinians have suffered more in terms of human casualties and economic hardship. I believe, however, that balance exists precisely because neither side has succeeded in eliminating the claims of the other to the land they inhabit. The ongoing impasse suggests that Palestinians’ strengths in terms of determination, armed resistance, and incitement have compensated for what they lack in other resources. Palestinians also have veto power at the negotiating table, which they used pointedly at Camp David.

Both sides also have external supporters and detractors that appear to balance out their respective power. Israel is strongly supported by the U. S., while it’s criticized internationally for not honoring U. N. Resolution 242 recognizing the West Bank as occupied territory. Its neighbors in the Middle East accept its existence only reluctantly, if at all, while some threaten to destroy it. Moreover, global anti-Semitism still exists, as exemplified by a recent U. N. conference on racism that turned into an almost singular attack on Zionism. Palestinians, on the other hand, receive strong verbal encouragement from their Arab neighbors to fight for statehood—even though these same neighbors treat Palestinians poorly in their own countries and often fail to follow through on financial promises. Most of the official money that sustains Palestinians comes from Europe (and ironically from Israel, when it permits Palestinians to work there). Other Arab leaders fear that if Palestinians were to achieve statehood, it might stimulate popular uprisings in their countries—something that these nations do everything to repress.

A systemic viewpoint of the Israeli-Palestinian situation inevitably points to the interdependent and unintentionally self-destructive nature of both sides’ actions. Each party has a role in creating and perpetuating the conflict, and each must take responsibility for doing what it can to resolve it. Becoming aware of how their own actions unwittingly undermine their effectiveness and accepting the limits of what they can create are essential ingredients for both the Palestinians and the Israelis to achieve the security, respect, and sovereignty that each deserve.

David Peter Stroh (davidpstroh@earthlink.net) is a cofounder of Innovation Associates and a charter member of the Society for Organizational Learning.

The post A Systemic View of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict appeared first on The Systems Thinker.