This is not a simulation, a test, or an experiment. This is a real question I asked in one of my leadership workshops where I use a teaching methodology called “case-in-point.” An integral part of the theory of Adaptive Leadership developed over the past 15 years by Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky, and their colleagues at the Harvard Kennedy School, case-in-point is a methodology for teaching leadership experientially.

According to the Adaptive Leadership framework, leadership is the practice of “mobilizing people to tackle tough issues, adapt and thrive.” With case-in-point, the facilitator use situations and events present in the classroom to illustrate real-world concepts. In front of our eyes, the group dynamics of the class provide powerful material for reflection in real time, helping participants in a day class, leadership retreat, or university course to develop their ability to innovate and adapt to changing circumstances in their organizations.

In this article, I would like to share my learning about the use of this methodology and explore its potential for leadership work in 21st-century organizations.

A Call to Congruence

Carl Rogers once said, “I realize that I have lost interest in being a teacher… I am only interested in being a learner, preferably learning things that matter.” Leadership is something that matters to me.

Have you ever been taught emotional intelligence with the instructor using PowerPoint slides? Or taken a time management course where the instructor shows up late for class? How about learning yoga poses from an angry and mean practitioner? When I started teaching leadership, I vividly remember facing the challenge of how to make my content match my way of teaching. When teaching leadership, this call to congruence – how what I am teaching is demonstrated in how I teach it – was the major headache of my work and a fateful question. I discovered that teaching leadership is in itself an act of leadership.

When you prepare to teach leadership, you face a pedagogical bind: You need to determine which learning tasks will get across the material effectively to other adults – who are not necessarily less “leaderful” than you – and what content to select. I knew what I didn’t want to do: that was teach leadership “in the third person,” through mere descriptions and explanations or five-step slides. I struggled with how to create a space for my students where leadership was lived in the first person rather than studied like a theoretical concept.

I am a World Café host. The World Café is a methodology that allows large groups to deepen their inquiry through important questions in a setting that promotes informal conversations and authenticity. From that methodology, I learned the art of hosting conversations that matter. From Action Learning, I also learned how to leverage the power of great questions in order to learn in real-time as individuals, as a team, and as an organization. So when asked to design a leadership course, I decided that, rather than teaching or preaching, I would rely on evoking, naming, reminding, recognizing, questioning, acknowledging, and affirming. I stopped asking “how can I teach?” and instead started asking “what if leadership is already in the room, and my work is to give it the space and freedom to manifest itself?” I became familiar with the concepts of the Adaptive Leadership framework, in which a leader comes to a group armed with the strong belief that creativity and innovation are the product of interpersonal and intergroup relationships, and that leadership is about engaging differences for positive outcomes. I learned that leaders must pose difficult questions, knock people out of their comfort zones, and manage the resulting distress. According to Heifetz, they expose their followers “to the painful reality of their condition and demand that they fashion a response.”

The experiment started, but I failed to read the signs: I hadn’t remembered yet that the words “experiment” and “peril” come from the same root, with the peril being the courageous act of trying this leadership pedagogy in a real class.

A Daring Way to Teach Leadership

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” – Mike Tyson

I knew it was bad. After that first day, the program director wanted to meet me after hours. She started our conversation saying, “So, how did it go today?” She continued, “What’s going on with those evaluations?” and finished with, “You have to do something for next class; we can’t have the same problems tomorrow.”

I couldn’t say that I hadn’t been warned. My contact at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government had suggested that I not use case-in-point; she said I didn’t have enough of a “name” or reputation to do it. But I pressed on. People had complained to the program director about the class, and now I had to change something or risk repercussions. Or did I really need to? It was time to step into the unknown.

The decision that night was the beginning of a new phase for me as a leadership educator. I realized that, in my own way, I was dealing with the adaptive challenge of teaching leadership, taking risks, stepping into my aspirations to elevate the discourse in the class, and tapping into a bigger call beyond evaluation forms. I had reached a deeper awareness of myself as an educator, of my impact, and of the system I was part of.

I could have gone a different direction; instead, I reaffirmed my commitment to case-in-point and made only two adjustments to the session. I owned my role as a leader and modeled the behaviors I wanted my students to learn by practice. The results were encouraging. Here are a few excerpts from my students’ evaluations that day:

• “I now lead with questions and have been able to unleash my team’s potential as well.”
• “This will likely prove to be the most important course of the program in the next stage of my career.”
• “The idea of the majority of problems being an adaptive challenge was an epiphany, and the open-ended questioning has been extremely helpful in reorienting the way I think about things, particularly my own behavior.”
• “I missed the point, assuming that there was one.”
• “I disagree with the fact that taking responsibility is what we should do in all our life events.”

(This student called me two months later. He had second thoughts about the evaluation forms he filled out after the class.)

I was off the hook with the program director and in for the ride – regardless of my many mistakes – with this risky and yet powerfully invigorating way to teach. Case-in-point had allowed me to learn and practice leadership experientially in a way that was aligned with my purpose as an educator.

Two Critical Distinctions

According to Heifetz, the Adaptive Leadership framework includes two critical distinctions that are central for understanding case-in-point:

• Authority/Leadership
• Technical Problems/Adaptive Challenges

Authority/Leadership. The first distinction clarifies that having a position of authority does not mean that we exercise leadership; paradoxically, the powerful expectations on the role make us less likely to exercise leadership. Heifetz reminds us that an expert is not necessarily a leader:

For many challenges in our lives, experts or authorities can solve our problems and thereby meet our needs. We look to doctors to make us healthy, mechanics to fix our cars… We give these people power, authorizing them to find solutions and often they can deliver… Problems that we can solve through the knowledge of experts or senior authorities are technical challenges. The problems may be complex, such as a broken arm or a broken carburetor, but experts know exactly how to fix them.

To determine whether we need to exercise authority or leadership, we need to analyze the nature of the problem we face. That brings us to the second distinction:

Technical Problems/Adaptive Challenges. Rather than being technical problems, many of the challenges we face today are adaptive. Heifetz and Linsky maintain:

The problems that require leadership are those that the experts cannot solve. We call these adaptive challenges. The solutions lie not in technical answers, but rather in people themselves… The surgeon can fix your son’s broken arm, but she cannot prevent your son from rollerblading without elbow pads. The dietitian can recommend a weight-loss program, but she cannot curb your love for chocolate chip cookies… Most people would rather have the person in authority take the work off their shoulders, protect them from disorienting change, and meet challenges on their behalf. But the real work of leadership usually involves giving the work back to the people who must adapt, and mobilizing them to do so.

The practice of leadership takes place in an authority structure, by those who either have or do not have authority. In an adaptive challenge, the authority structure – the people in charge – can contribute, but others must participate as well. All people involved are part of the problem, and their shared ownership of that problem becomes part of the solution itself.

Reflecting on these two distinctions, it is easy to see how professors, trainers, and consultants end up committing what Heifetz calls “the classic error”: treating the adaptive challenge of teaching as a technical problem, and applying the power of expertise by telling people what to do.

We feel as though we are fulfilling our end of the deal; professors, trainers, and consultants are paid for teaching, not for facilitating learning in others. “You are the expert: teach us” seems to be the implicit contract that students expect instructors to uphold. And, indeed, many educators consider teaching a technical problem, exercise authority rather than leadership, and deploy their power or personality to influence student learning. In the process, they avoid conflict, demonstrate resolve and focus in their use of time, and provide decisive and assertive answers to problems through authoritative knowledge built over many years. Learners in the class find comfort in the predictability of the endeavor and by its inevitable output delivered according to the plan. But both the instructor’s and the learners’ need for control and predictability is a symptom of an inability to trust: the less we are able to trust, the more control we need and the more vulnerable we are to its loss.

The cost of this collusion – of the professor to be a central and predictable authority figure, and of the student to be passive yet in control – is the energy, engagement, effectiveness, and ultimately meaning of the learning enterprise itself. A quick-fix mentality wins, one that shies away from the confrontation, frustration, and confusion needed for learning and unlearning to happen. The result is that people lose their ability to grow through experience, tolerate ambiguity, and use sense-making skills.

Case-in-point supports learning over teaching, struggle over prescription, questions over answers, tension over comfort, and capacities and needs over deficiencies. It is about embracing the willingness to be exposed and vulnerable, cultivating persistence in the face of inertial pushbacks, and self-regulating in the face of challenge or open hostility. Why? Because this is what leadership work looks like in the real world. In the process, students and the facilitator learn to recognize their default responses, identify productive and unproductive patterns of behavior, and test their stamina, resilience, and readiness to change the system with others.

Planning and Facilitating with Case-in-Point

Heifetz describes the challenge in doing case-in-point:

During this process, the instructor walks the razor’s edge between generating overwhelming stress and allowing comfortable passivity. Students learn by example that giving responsibility for problems back to the social system at a rate it can digest may be central to leadership.

In case-in-point, a facilitator must not take reactions toward him personally (that is, he must separate himself from the role) and must encourage the same in participants. Recognize that it is difficult to move out of a role and analyze an event if you are part of it. This may mean not taking offense for disrespectful behavior and later asking the person to reflect on how productive his statements were.

Ultimately, the role of the facilitator in case-in-point is to demonstrate the theory in practice, by acting on the system in the class. Case-in-point uses the authority structure and the roles in a class (instructor, participants, stakeholders) and the social expectations and norms of the system (in this case, the class) to practice in real time the meaning of the key concepts of authority, leadership, adaptive challenge, technical problems, factions, and so on.

Planning. How does a facilitator plan a session where she uses case-in-point? Like in Jorge Luis Borges’ novel The Garden of the Forking Paths, the text – in this case, the lesson plan – is only the point of departure for many possible learning events and lessons learned. The facilitator follows the emergence of interesting themes amid interpersonal dynamics and investigates those dynamics, in response to the guiding question, “What does this moment illustrate that is relevant both to the learning and to the practice of leadership in participants’ lives?” What emerges in the action pushes the class down one path of many possible junctures. For the facilitator, the implicit lesson plan turns into a labyrinth of many exciting yet fierce – and sometimes overwhelming – possibilities.

Facilitating. A case-in-point facilitator’s main tool is the question. Questions are the currency of inquiry, and ultimately case-in-point involves ongoing research into the art of leadership that benefits as more people join the conversation. Here a few great questions that I have used successfully:

• “What’s your intention right now?”
• “What did you notice as you were speaking?”
• “In this moment, what do you need from the group to proceed?”
• “What happened as soon as you asked everyone to open their books to page 5?”
• “What have you noticed happens in the group when I sit down?”
• “Am I exercising leadership or authority right now?”

Michael Johnstone and Maxime Fern have expanded on four different levels of intervention for a case-in-point facilitator.

At the individual level: The facilitator may comment on someone’s contribution or action for the sake of reflection, trying to uncover assumptions or beliefs. For example, “Mark, could I ask you to assess the impact on the group of the statement you just made?” “What should I do at this point and why should I do it?” “Are you receiving enough support from others to continue with your point?”

At the relationship level: The facilitator might intervene to name or observe patterns that develop between two or more participants. For example, she may say something like, “I noticed that when Beth speaks, some of you seem not to pay attention., Or “What does this disagreement tell us about the different values that are present in the room?”

At the group level: The facilitator might confront a faction or a group with a theme emerging from the conversation, maybe after participants agree with or disagree on a controversial statement. For example, “What does the group propose now? Can you articulate the purpose that you are pursuing?” “I noticed many of you are eager to do something, as long as we stop this process of reflection. Why is that?”

At the larger level: The facilitator might comment on participants’ organizations, communities, nationalities, or ethnicities, saying for example, “In light of the large number of foreign nationals in the room, what are the implications of the insistence in the literature that Jack Welch of GE is a model for global leadership?”

Qualities of a Case-in-Point Facilitator

Besides a sense of adventure, here are a few qualities that have helped me in the class in facilitating with case-in-point:

1. Thinking Systemically Under Pressure. With case-in-point, I have relearned systems thinking and finally appreciate what thinking systemically under pressure and acting systemically “live” really look like. Case-in-point aims to re-create in the class the work of leaders in systems – that is, mobilizing the social system so it does the work of dealing with tough problems. This perspective reframes leadership altogether; suddenly, leadership work appears to be what it really is, that is, identifying and acting on the leverage points of a social structure to create reinforcing/balancing loops in service of organizational success. When leaders think systemically, they come to see that people are not right or wrong in their opinions or actions, but simply effective or not effective at influencing the many variables of the complex system in which they operate. In teaching with case-in-point, I have found great value in making those variables explicit for the group to see in action.

2. Being Comfortable with Improvising. I have used case-in-point with participants so accustomed to the traditional “death by PowerPoint” approach that they walk in the room and decide where to sit based on my answer to their question, “Where are you going to project the slides?” What I like about this new approach is that it is improvisational; in case-in-point teaching, what goes on in the classroom itself is “the grist for the mill” for learning and practicing leadership within a social group. As such, it is unpredictable and truly emergent. For the facilitator, this unpredictability means that you have a sense of how the first three minutes will go, but then your trained intuition must lead you in navigating the disequilibrium in the class. And indeed, I had a participant mention to me that the class was annoying because it looked too much like the work he was doing in his office.

It has helped me to have absolute clarity about the key issues that are likely to show up in real time, like students’ expectations that the instructor will guide them and take care of their discomfort, factions and the values they represent, people’s tendency to leap to action for its own sake, and so on.

3. Holding the Space for the Living Case Study to Emerge. As a World Café host, this concept has been easy to adapt in my leadership development work. I find it critical for case-in-point to create an atmosphere, a setting (Heifetz calls it “a holding environment”) where inquiry, questions, and experimentation are welcome.

I find the first few minutes of the class to be critical for setting the context for learning and inquiry. If this phase is successful, within a short time, we have created a space for learning through direct observation. All is there for our reflective learning: acts of deference to authority, conflict between factions, character assassinations, apathy, the inability to act, demagogy, scapegoating, courage, fear. The seemingly abstract concepts we read in the news or in history books – like the rise to power of a dictator, the inability of an organization to deal with a corporate takeover, or the disturbing group dynamics of exclusion – materialize in front of our very eyes in powerful vividness.

4. Using Emotional Intelligence and Conflict Skills. Working with case-in-point has allowed me to analyze with more clarity the misconception I often notice that good decision making or good leadership is dispassionate, rational, and totally unbiased. In fact, I believe the opposite is true: It is not only nearly impossible, it’s counterproductive to try to eliminate passion and emotion from decision making. The fact is that those feelings are the same ones that will drive the successful implementation of the team’s decision. Heifetz calls this “below the neck” work. Frustration and verbal aggression often show up during case-in-point sessions. The trick is to deal with them as data and manage them accordingly. You must be aware of the impact of your teaching. Generally speaking, it is necessary to hold a gentle and compassionate approach toward those in the class who get impatient, angry, or openly confrontational. A key metaphor from the Adaptive Leadership framework, “the pressure cooker,” helps in this endeavor. You have to regulate the pressure: not too much so that the situation won’t explode, not too little so that nothing gets learned.

If it is true that great leaders do not take “yes” for an answer, then your success as a leader and as a case-in- point facilitator may depend on your willingness to push the inquiry of a group into passionate, conflictive territory. Interpersonal friction, “broken record” ideas, and intolerance for new questions are symptoms of work avoidance that need to be dealt with directly and without hesitation. This is a tricky area where there is much learning potential for the instructor, as disputes are often a positive sign of moving an issue forward and of the beginning of change.

A Way of Being, Not a Way of Teaching

For me, case-in-point has represented a journey of identity. As such, it is rooted in the distinction between an ontological (science of being) versus an epistemological (science of knowing) view of leadership. When we teach using the case-in-point approach, we’re helping our students learn how to act their way into knowing what is right for their specific organization rather than bestowing our knowledge for them to apply, whether it fits their circumstances or not. Likewise, case-in-point is a statement of congruity, of “practicing what we preach” and, in the process, learning to be better instructors. At the same time, we introduce our students to an exciting realm of possibility, aspiration, and innovation beyond technique or theoretical knowledge.

Heitfetz says, “Live your life as a leadership laboratory.” For educators, doing so means experimenting with it, in small pieces first, then in larger increments, celebrating mistakes, and taking pleasure from the journey. This process seems to me the real gift of case-in-point, and it is the best wish that I can make to those who will dare to start using it.

Adriano Pianesi teaches leadership at the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University and is the principal of ParticipAction Consulting, Inc. He has 15 years of experience in the nonprofit, government, and public sector to his work in leadership development, strategic workplace learning, and elearning. A certified Action Learning coach and long-time World Café host, Adriano is an innovator and practitioner in dialogue education and conversational learning, and has been facilitating leadership retreats since 2002.

The post “The Class of the Forking Paths”: Leadership and “Case-in-Point” appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

TEAM TIP

Large-scale problems require paradigm-shifting change processes. Whether facilitators are tackling climate change, organizational transformations, poverty reduction, or ecosystem degradation, they must be capable of partnering with others to lead fundamental shifts rather than simply surface-level fixes. For more than a decade, I have worked with and studied the capacities required for leading this kind of change, culminating in my graduate work in global change management, in which I interviewed successful pioneers in this work in the US and Germany (see “Research Process”).

These pioneers helped me formulate responses to four questions:

1. How can we enable people to enact fundamental change?
2. How can we liberate the enormous possibilities that global change processes offer?
3. How can we change ourselves in order to be authentic when facilitating these paradigm-shifting processes?
4. How can we shape our organizations toward higher performance?

I will characterize the sum of these responses as “paradigm-change facilitation,” a body of work aimed at identifying, illuminating, and accessing the inner stances and core abilities that allow us to realize transformational processes together. Although this process is highly specific to each person and situation, we can generalize the steps (see Paradigm- Change Process).

Real transformation starts with the ability to make paradigm changes within ourselves by following an iterative, four-step process.

The four steps for supporting fundamental change are:

Accessing — access our inner resources and the individual parts of the system

Interrelating — study and/or create interrelationships among those parts

Learning — learn to be changed by the parts and their interrelationships

Inspiring — dissolve ourselves into the system and change it from within by starting to ask for and listen to its essence

Inner Stances and Core Abilities

I define “inner stances” as the mindset and attitude with which one approaches a particular situation.

These filters shape the logic behind our daily actions. They shape the way and the intensity with which we relate to others as well as to the content within which we’re operating. I define “core abilities” as the skills, methods, and tools used to create a setting where paradigm shifts are likely to happen a setting in which entirely new ideas, intentions, and perspectives come into reality.

Before I describe these inner stances and core abilities, I invite you to take about three minutes to reflect on four questions. To do so, you will need to imagine that you are in a position to facilitate a paradigm shifting process. You will refer to these answers at the end of this article:

1. What is the inner stance with which I enter the room when I am facilitating a paradigm-shifting process?
2. What inner stance allows me to connect to the other stakeholders?
3. What inner stance enables me to activate and make full use of my innate and trained core abilities?
4. What inner stance allows me to maintain the creative tension as we think out of the box and enact something genuinely new?

In my research, I found that successful, paradigm changing practitioners seem to have certain inner stances and core abilities:

Inner stances

1. Being present with mindful passion
2. Creating reality out of an attitude of letting go to let come in
3. Knowing that one does not have to merely like but must love and integrate other belief systems
4. Being an interdependent part of our surroundings

I define “core abilities” as the skills, methods, and tools used to create a setting where paradigm shifts are likely to happen.

Core abilities

1. Learning and perceiving in- formation
2. Creating trusting relationships
3. Enabling a holistic worldview
4. Contextualizing the facilitation process with the characteristics of human development

Experiencing Inner Stances

The first stance, being present with mindful passion, includes a willingness and ability to develop, train, crystallize, and act mindfully out of one’s innate purpose. Practitioners who successfully realize paradigm-level change tend to work with a high level of concentration while remaining detached from the situation. Passion brings the focus, while mindfulness reminds the practitioner that there is not just one truth to be defended, rather an infinite number of truths worthy of being integrated. This perspective increases the facilitator’s ability to overcome doubts, accept ambiguities, and bridge different opinions.

One way to practice this stance in everyday live is by aligning one’s will (intentions) with one’s feeling (relationships, emotions) and thinking (cognition) during a facilitation process. I perceive the “O Process” of the Ecosynomics framework as well as the “U Process” of the Presencing framework as powerful approaches to achieve this kind of alignment. They also help to create shared understanding on the levels of willing, feeling, and thinking. By consciously applying the principles of the O as well as the U Process, we can build our ability for authenticity and mindful presence.

The three other stances are letting go to let come in; dislike the system, but love it; and be an interdependent part of it. When we are humble and have a welcoming and loving attitude toward both “enemies” and “friends,” we are more likely to see ourselves as learners and not as knowers of the situation. This objectivity and curiosity allows us to serve the process out of a conscientious and exploratory mindset and thus support emergence of a new future.

Letting go of one’s own ideas and realizing a loving attitude does not mean that we always have to like our counterparts; we are merely making a conscious decision to embrace their world in a neutral and appreciative way. In the facilitation process, this means not imposing our own ideas or serving any specific interests, but rather fostering a holistic and interrelated awareness toward others and the process. By cultivating this stance, we prevent our self-interest from blocking any emerging possibilities, ideas, or products. This attitude enables the practitioner to ask for and listen to the essence of how the system (and its individual parts) makes sense of the topic at hand.

Experiencing Core Abilities

The first core ability, learning and perceiving information, requires an intrinsic willingness to constantly gain and improve our basic skills. It requires learning, experiencing, and internalizing relevant models, concepts, and tools derived from evidence-based scientific and spiritual levels of human existence. One way to do so is by organizing learner-centered study workshops with colleagues or friends. In this protected space, people are more likely to learn how to apply relevant concepts, theories, and models of change in a way that will serve the purpose rather than letting them be the purpose of the intervention. In addition, by integrating emotionality and mindfulness, practitioners can find peace and sovereignty in dealing with conflicts and ambiguities.

The second core ability, creating trusting relationships, strengthens the social fabric as a whole. While teaming and trust-building methods support this process, the practitioners I interviewed focused on two main drivers: a sense of humbleness and a high level of self-awareness. Paradigm-change facilitators must remain uninfluenced by power and authority, and be able to relate to and support the individual members of the group, so that they can gain clarity about their own intentions, become a trusted part of the process, and avoid taking action independently.

To build self-awareness, try to sense your own boundaries and limitations. By being clear about yourself and your abilities, gifts, and limitations, you can see the larger system much more clearly. As a result, the practitioner can support the group in understanding its organic structure, different subgroups, and inherent common purpose. I was amazed to find that even though all the practitioners I met were highly experienced professionals, they never perceived themselves as superior to others.

The third core ability, enabling a holistic worldview, requires thinking in interdependencies and grasping how and why different parts of a system come together to accomplish a common goal. In this kind of thinking, no single part of the system alone can achieve the function or purpose of the system as a whole.

Paradigm-change practitioners seek to discover and highlight individual and groups mental models. They bring assumptions to the surface and create a common understanding of reality as it is, not as it is assumed to be. This ability to combine systems thinking with the knowledge of group dynamics helps the stakeholders to appreciate each other’s different backgrounds, enabling them to form new agreements and partnerships.

One possibility for cultivating this ability in everyday life is to study and apply systems thinking. To complement this study, practice actively putting yourself in a position of being an “in-betweener,” switching between different concepts and cultures. For example, go to a meeting or party that doesn’t interest you and try to internalize why it may appeal to someone else. Try not to have one fixed viewpoint, but switch, interrelate, and interconnect be- tween different cultures and perspectives. Attempt to develop a feeling for when to apply which model, concept, or tool in order to integrate rather than separate.

In facilitating paradigm change, the practitioner acts as a vehicle for fundamental shifts in thought and action.

The fourth core ability, contextualizing the facilitation process within the characteristics of human development, requires an indepth knowledge of how people change and grow. It is not enough to understand the concepts; practitioners must also work on their own personal development as well. They need to be able to process knowledge “spatially,” — understanding how actions and decisions affect somebody in remote areas — and “temporally” — understanding how actions and decisions will impact people in the near and distant future. To help develop this perspective, the following questions could serve as a daily training: “How many hands has this product I am holding in my hands touched?” “What might those people have done to have this job and what are their dreams for the future?” and “How are those dreams connected to me, the consumer of this product?”

Observations from My Path

I have witnessed many colleagues and close friends involved in paradigm-change processes (see “Case Study” on p. 9). These practitioners gained their diverse working knowledge in leadership and management positions in the three sectors of civil society, economics, and politics. Those who have been successful demonstrated an extraordinarily high level of self-awareness and perceived themselves as global change agents. They participated in facilitation processes with curiosity and humbleness toward the past, present, and future, as well as with regard to the visible and non-visible parts of the system. I have been deeply impressed by their ability to think, feel, and act during an intervention while maintaining a learning instead of a knowing mind- set. They demonstrated great rational, emotional, and spiritual skills. All of them showed a good working knowledge of multiple levels of human interaction and personal development concepts. They combined these with the principles and tools of empowerment, trust, mission, and passion.

Coming Back to Your Starting Point

To return to the propositions described above, I invite you to take out your notes from the short reflection you made at the beginning. To what degree do your notes correlate with the four stances and four core abilities I suggest?

In facilitating paradigm change, the practitioner acts as a vehicle for fundamental shifts in thought and action. This approach invites practitioners to understand that they are not using tools and methods to realize change, but that real transformation starts with the ability to make paradigm changes within ourselves. At the heart of this belief is the willingness of all participants in the process to recall the inner stances and core abilities that enable them to reinvent themselves at every moment.

What daily exercises do you take part in to transform your own mindset so you can shape your organization toward higher performance? Here are some practices I learned during my research:

• When lying in bed at night, reflect on how you responded to the situations you encountered, how you learned from them, and how you tried to change the larger context.
• Reflect on the degree to which you are using yourself as a vehicle for change.
• Paint, write, or model the inner stances from which you seek to inspire change in the existing structures.

By following these and other practices, you are likely to improve your ability to lead fundamental change rather than working just on surface-level fixes.

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Our 21st-Century Challenges

In an age of Compression, all of these forces act at once. To get our minds around the enormity of this fact, not only do we need systems thinking, we need a system for systems thinking. This kind of thinking is not normal in today’s organizations. We have to learn it, and to learn it, we have to practice it.

Without taking a systems approach, well-intentioned, intelligent people grab for magic solutions to our environmental messes, such as seeding the oceans with iron to sequester carbon, creating sulfuric clouds in the sky to reflect solar heat, or pumping CO2 into the ground for storage. Because they have faith in technology, they jump on these ideas, seemingly unaware that the unintended consequences of such actions could be catastrophic. But it’s easy to see how each of these actions could backfire. Most of our messes today are the unintended consequences of past “solutions.”

Global Objective in Compression

To begin to approach this confluence of issues more systemically, we propose setting a measurable baseline objective:

By the year 2040, create a quality of life around the globe that is equivalent to that of today’s industrial societies while consuming less than half the energy and less than half the virgin raw materials as were consumed in the year 2000, with near-zero toxic releases.

To achieve this objective, people in both advanced and less-advanced economies must learn to make much better use (and reuse) of resources. The truth is, though, that these standards can’t be uniformly applied to every part of the world. Those barely surviving can hardly consume less than they currently do. Because industrial economies consume significantly more materials and energy than other economies, the cuts in those regions need to be deeper. Fortunately, they also have more innovative technological research with which to meet this tough goal. These kinds of initiatives are starting to become reality, not vague hope. For example, several years ago, the British Parliament enacted the Climate Change Act of 2008, setting timetables toward an 80 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Of course, to achieve these goals, we need to go beyond basics like reduce, reuse, recycle. We currently have too few inventive, innovative organizations with business models that allow them to be viable while processing less material and energy, not more. A transformation is unlikely to occur by gradually raising performance bars through regulation, with governments coercing the reluctant to meet minimum standards. Instead, we need to create what I call “Vigorous Learning Enterprises.”

Vigorous Learning Enterprises

• Meta-Vision, or keen, broad system insight, especially by leaders.
• Common mission and goals related to Compression, that unifies effort.
• Systems and structure for rigorous learning built into regular work for everyone, not for just a few people.
• Behavior for learning; ability to subdue personal infighting to concentrate on problems and issues.
• Servant leadership, putting the mission, organization, and development of it people before personal gain or ego.

All this is possible, but so contrary to instinct that this culture needs a built-in mechanism that reinforces behavior almost daily.

What is a Vigorous Learning Enterprise? Vigorous implies that an organization “does” something. It’s not strictly academic or social. Those most critical are in mining, agriculture, food processing, manufacturing, utilities, healthcare, police, fire, justice, and so on. They either process large amounts of energy and material (and are thus gatekeepers of our consumption), or they provide services that are crucial to the quality of life. A rough estimate is that 30-40 percent of the American workforce is engaged in such work — a high percentage, but not everyone.

Learning is the act, process, or experience of gaining knowledge or skill. In an organizational setting, it includes process learning, innovation, and organizational learning.

Enterprise is used in many senses, but the intent here is analogous to the supply chain: several tiers of customer organizations going out and several tiers of suppliers feeding in, plus feeder educational institutions, consultants, advisors, banks, auditors, and the like.

Here are some principles and practices for Vigorous Learning Enterprises:

1. They are mission-driven. Serving a social need or mission has to trump all other objectives, including growth, profit maximization, job creation, and personal aggrandizement. The turning point for leaders is realizing that their organization must support nature; nature does not exist to support or enrich them. That shift changes the emphasis from what we get to what we do. The actions by BP and other companies involved in the Gulf oil blowout illustrate why this change in focus is important. Attempting to limit liability — the basis of corporate charters — is a dysfunctional way of dealing with such problems.
2. They look at their physical processes. When we move away from focusing on what we get, we can more objectively look at physical processes: how our customers act, what our workers do, and how our business models operate. When we identify our primary customers’ real needs, we recognize that anything else is waste. Lean thinking identifies waste as what a customer will not pay for. In Compression Thinking, we go a step further and identify waste as any unnecessary use or destruction of resources, things that nature should not have to “pay for.”
3. They expand their cognition (meta-vision). By expanding our view, we can both improve local processes and anticipate effects far removed in time and distance.
4. They extend the concept of “waste.” The concepts of eliminating waste that are a part of lean today are typically confined to a few elements of operations and never applied to full life cycles. By expanding the definition of “waste” to include materials, energy, space, and unproductive behaviors, we can define elimination of waste as doing whatever is necessary by the lowest energy process we can devise. Low energy use is usually associated with low use of all resources.
5. They value quality over quantity. This new kind of organization values quality over quantity; provides service, not promotions to buy more “stuff”; does it right the first time; and emphasizes prevention over remediation. As Yogi Berra might say it, “Fix it before it happens.”
6. They avoid “model myopia.” We need to learn to look at what really goes on in our organizations without the prejudice of model blinders, including all the financial ones. We’ve hitched our guidance systems to obsolete measurement models. Even customer- centered lean operations typically conflict with accounting models. Physical measurements of what we do are far from perfect, but they beat self-referencing measures based only on human valuations, which is what market-derived dollar measures have been.
7. They develop rigorous structures for learning. Systems structured on the basics of the quality movement are a good start, but few manage to spread throughout the entire organization. Also, sustaining the behavior is challenging, especially when issues are “wicked,” meaning that people perceive them from different tunnel visions or conflicting spheres of interest. To make a new culture “stick,” the organization needs codes of conduct with daily reinforcement built in, or human nature will take over and undermine the system. In this sense, we’re really trying to elevate our level of civility, at least in our work settings.
8. They create “tribal cohesion.” We must create a sense of cohesion — trust and confidence — across work enterprises, including suppliers and customers, while minimizing “tribal rivalries.” These arise from more than ethnic and religious differences. They include functional silos, intellectual property divides, and races for reward and recognition. Rivalry and competition are instinctive, but cohesion is vital for true information sharing to occur. Everyone has to be confident that all share a common allegiance to a universal mission. No working organization today functions at the level of a vigorous learning enterprise, but some of our best organizations have mastered big chunks of the skills and culture required. These rigorous organizational cultures demand the highest levels of professionalism. Is this impossible? No. Is it difficult? Yes.

New Business Model

One of the most counterintuitive aspects of coping with Compression is the need to rethink the business model so that an organization can be viable without focusing on selling more, more, more. DTE Energy (Detroit) is one of the more aggressive utilities in helping customers reduce their energy usage. By doing so, the company reduces costs for its clients, many of whom are struggling financially, and eliminates the need to expand its energy capacity. An overview of how DTE helps customers save energy is available at www.dteenergy.com/ businessCustomers/saveEnergy. PortionPac Chemical in Chicago also has a business model that foreshadows those of the future. PortionPac primarily produces cleaning chemicals, but it sells few of these products directly. Instead, it provides service contracts, so customers pay for clean buildings, not cleaning products per se. After signing on a customer, PortionPac trains the client’s cleaning personnel in methods that are designed to minimize the use of detergents and other chemicals. (Excess cleaning chemicals are a major source of problems for sewage plants and of pollution in waterways.) Over six months or so, a new client’s use of cleaning chemicals usually drops by 40-50 percent. The less product PortionPac ships, the higher the margin it earns on the service contract.

This approach makes conventional business sense, but PortionPac is also on a mission to increase the respect given to cleaning personnel, who are usually poorly paid and whose role in an organization is often ignored. The goal is for cleaning personnel to contribute to reducing or eliminating the pollution a company generates, and thereby reducing the pollution of whole cities or regions. Cleaners see what others don’t, so PortionPac can help clients examine their waste streams to see ways to reduce waste of materials and toxic releases.
DTE Energy and PortionPac are on the way to becoming Vigorous Learning Enterprises. By placing a strong emphasis on developing people and, in turn, expecting extraordinary performance, these organizations clash with current assumptions both for business and government.

Mission First

Leaders become teachers, mentors, and role models — rather than central decision makers who stand in the way of learning — to create a top-performance organization.

Think of the organization’s primary purpose as performance to mission, not maximizing profit, soaking up employment, serving as an owner’s personal fiefdom, or other ulterior motives. Making this shift is obviously the big hurdle. However, transforming working organizations, as wild as that idea may seem, has more promise than trying to shift public policy. Working organizations are not democracies, with everyone doing as they please. For good or bad, companies, nonprofit hospitals, and military units are disciplined organizations.
People’s behavior changes when the environment in which they function changes. If companies change what they do and how they do it, the working culture slowly changes with it. No other avenue of social change seems to offer this possibility.

But to spearhead such a change, leaders of a working organization must absorb the thinking and work on a sequence of change that moves the company in a direction that can deal with Compression. Leaders start with themselves, becoming role models of the discipline and behavior they expect from others. That’s servant leadership, not status-based leadership. Probably the most succinct description of servant leadership comes from the military: Mission first. Troops second. Me third.

Global Objective in Compression

Sometimes control-oriented leaders of no-nonsense organizations regard concepts and methods for open dialogue and self-initiative as “permissive management.” But a Vigorous Learning Enterprise is the opposite. Leaders demand that all employees develop themselves, individually and collectively, into the very best of what they are capable. Leaders become teachers, mentors, and role models — rather than central decision makers who stand in the way of learning — to create a top-performance organization.

The human challenge — rapidly changing ourselves and our organizations — is the greatest one we face, but it’s the key to meeting all other challenges. Compression compels us to have same spirit of the race to put a man on the moon, but with a lot more of us actively participating in this common mission. This time, the stakes are even higher.

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The ultimate success of a system dynamics investigation depends on a clear initial identification of an important purpose and objective. Presumably a system dynamics model will organize, clarify, and unify knowledge. The model should give people a more effective understanding about an important system that has previously exhibited puzzling or controversial behavior. In general, influential system dynamics projects are those that change the way people think about a system. Mere confirmation that current beliefs and policies are correct may be satisfying but hardly necessary, unless there are differences of opinion to be resolved. Changing and unifying viewpoints means that the relevant mental models are being altered.

Unifying Knowledge

Complex systems defy intuitive solutions. Even a third-order, linear differential equation is unsolvable by inspection. Yet, important situations in management, economics, medicine, and social behavior usually lose reality if simplified to less than fifth order nonlinear dynamic systems.

Attempts to deal with nonlinear dynamic systems using ordinary processes of description and debate lead to internal inconsistencies. Underlying assumptions may have been left unclear and contradictory, and mental models are often logically incomplete. Resulting behavior is likely to be contrary to that implied by the assumptions being made about underlying system structure and governing policies.

System dynamics modeling can be effective because it builds on the reliable part of our understanding of systems while compensating for the unreliable part. The system dynamics procedure untangles several threads that cause confusion in ordinary debate: underlying assumptions (structure, policies, and parameters), and implied behavior. By considering assumptions independently from resulting behavior, there is less inclination for people to differ on assumptions (on which they actually can agree) merely because they initially disagree with the dynamic conclusions that might follow.

If we divide knowledge of systems into three categories, we can illustrate wherein lie the strengths and weaknesses of mental models and simulation models (see “Three Categories of Information”). The top of the figure represents knowledge about structure and policies; that is, about the elementary parts of a system. This is local non-dynamic knowledge. It describes information available at each decision-making point. It identifies who controls each part of a system. It reveals how pressures and crises influence decisions. In general, information about structure and policies is far more reliable, and is more often seen in the same way by different people, than is generally assumed. It is only necessary to dig out the information by using system dynamics insights about how to organize structural information to address a particular set of dynamic issues.

THREE CATEGORIES OF INFORMATION

There are three categories of information about a system: knowledge about structure and policies; assumptions about how the system will behave based on the observed structure and policies; and the actual system behavior as it is observed in real life. The usual discrepancy is across the boundary a-a: expected behavior is not consistent with the known structure and policies in the system.

The middle of the figure represents assumptions about how the system will behave, based on the observed structure and policies in the top section. This middle body of beliefs are, in effect, the assumed intuitive solutions to the dynamic equations described by the structure and policies in the top section of the diagram. They represent the solutions, arrived at by introspection and debate and compromise, to the high-order nonlinear system described in the top part of the figure. In the middle lie the presumptions that lead managers to change policies or lead governments to change laws. Based on assumptions about how behavior is expected to change, policies and laws in the top section are altered in an effort to achieve assumed improved behavior in the middle section.

The bottom of the figure represents the actual system behavior as it is observed in real life. Very often, actual behavior differs substantially from expected behavior. In other words, discrepancies exist across the boundary b-b. The surprise that observed structure and policies do not lead to the expected behavior is usually explained by assuming that information about structure and policies must have been incorrect. Unjustifiably blaming inadequate knowledge about parts of the system has resulted in devoting uncounted millions of hours to data gathering, questionnaires, and interviews that have failed to significantly improve the understanding of systems.

A system dynamics investigation usually shows that the important discrepancy is not across the boundary b-b, but across the boundary a-a. When a model is built from the observed and agreed-upon structure and policies, the model usually exhibits the actual behavior of the real system. The existing knowledge about the parts of the system is shown to explain the actual behavior. The dissidence in the diagram arises because the intuitively expected behavior in the middle section is inconsistent with the known structure and policies in the top section.

UNDERINVESTMENT IN CAPACITY

Rising backlog dampens customer orders because of increasing delivery delay (B1). However, if management is reluctant to invest in capacity expansions until the backlog reaches a certain level (Standard “Buffer” Backlog), orders will be driven down until demand equals capacity (R3). The awaited signal to expand capacity never comes, because capacity is controlling sales rather than potential demand controlling capacity (B2). If management tries lowering price to stimulate demand (B4), the resulting lower profit margins will further justify a delay in capacity investment (R5).

These discrepancies can be found repeatedly in the corporate world. A frequently recurring example in which known corporate policies cause a loss of market share and instability of employment arises from the way delivery delay affects sales and expansion of capacity (see “Underinvestment in Capacity”). Rising backlog (and the accompanying increase in delivery delay) discourages incoming orders for a product (B1) even while management favors larger backlogs as a safety buffer against business downturns. As management waits for still higher backlogs before expanding capacity, orders are driven down by unfavorable delivery delay until orders equal capacity (R3). The awaited signal for expansion of capacity never comes because capacity is controlling sales, rather than potential demand controlling capacity (B2).

When sales fail to rise because of long delivery delays, management may then lower price in an attempt to stimulate more sales (B4). Sales increase briefly but only long enough to build up sufficient additional backlog and delivery delay to compensate for the lower prices. In addition, price reductions lower profit margins until there is no longer economic justification for expansion (R5). In such a situation, adequate information about individual relationships in the system is always available for successful modeling, but managers are not aware of how the different activities of the company are influencing one another.

Lack of capacity may exist in manufacturing, product service, skilled sales people, or even in prompt answering of telephones. For example, airlines cut fares to attract passengers. But how often, because of inadequate telephone capacity, are potential customers put on “hold” until they hang up in favor of another airline?

System dynamics models have little impact unless they change the way people perceive a situation. A model must help to organize information in a more understandable way. A model should link the past to the present by showing how present conditions arose, and extend the present into persuasive alternative futures under a variety of scenarios determined by policy alternatives. In other words, a system dynamics model, if it is to be effective, must communicate with and modify the prior mental models. Only people’s beliefs—that is, their mental models—will determine action. Computer models must relate to and improve mental models if the computer models are to fill an effective role.

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This essay was inspired by a chapter on comfort zones in a book, The Bigger Game, by Laura Whitworth and Rick Tamblyn, with Caroline Mac- Neill Hall (Outskirts Press, 2009). My attention was grabbed by this sentence: “All comfort zones have some kind of benefit and some kind of cost attached to them.” The essential point is that if we want to play a bigger game in life, if we want to grow, we’re going to have to identify our comfort zones and leave those that don’t serve us behind.

Kinds of Comfort Zones

Whitworth and Tamblyn identify two types of comfort zones: habits of action and habits of thinking. Habits of action could include never missing a particular TV show, eating certain foods, always brushing your teeth, reacting by yelling when something doesn’t go your way. Habits of thinking might be things like noticing what’s going well, feeling grateful for small things, focusing on what’s going wrong, finding fault with others, feeling inadequate to many tasks. Habits that include both action and thinking include the roles we gravitate toward in our lives. We may find ourselves repeatedly playing the caretaker, the expert, the general, the free spirit, the martyr, or some other role.

The Irony

The irony is that we develop comfort zones to keep ourselves safe and happy, yet over time, these habits actually devolve us to a state of boredom and complacency. So if we’re interested in growing, having more meaning in our lives, or succeeding at a new level, we need to:

• identify our comfort zones, and
• ask whether or not they’re serving us.

The trouble is that we are usually blind to our comfort zones because they’re so familiar to us we think they ARE us. All the more reason this is important. Whitworth and Tamblyn say, “The fact is that unexamined comfort zones run our lives.”

The Good News

The good news is that when we actually do identify and step outside a comfort zone, we build a new comfort zone with greater capacity. The more we do this, the more we grow, the more we’re able to accomplish, and the better we feel about ourselves.

Cost/Benefit Analysis

Part of the examination of our comfort zones needs to be identifying what the benefit is and what the cost is. So one comfort zone my friend Stephanie has developed is cooking healthy, homemade meals. The cost is that it takes more time and some thinking ahead. The benefit is that she stays amazingly healthy. Sometimes this analysis is tricky. I have a comfort zone of doing yoga and chi kung every morning. I’ve been doing this for a long time. Because I do almost the same thing every day, it’s become really easy. I realize now I need to do some different or more difficult moves.

A Reason to Change

This whole idea of looking at your comfort zones may be interesting but not make any difference in your life, unless there is a vision or a dream big enough to pull you out of that space. For me, the goal of staying healthy to enjoy my children and grandchildren keeps me walking outside even when the weather is cold. My friend Krishna is leaving a good job he’s had for years because he’s written a book that is changing people’s lives. He wants to share that message broadly through workshops and webinars (see Beyond The Pig and the Ape by Krishna Pendyala).

So what is your reason to move out of a comfort zone? Where might the benefit be greater than the cost? I love the “final note” in Whitworth and Tamblyn’s chapter on comfort zones:

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A Starting Point for Theory-Building

Quality pioneer Dr. Edwards Deming once said, “No theory, no learning.” In order to make sense of our experience of the world, we must be able to relate that experience to some coherent explanatory story. Without a working theory, we have no means to integrate our differing experiences into a common picture. In the absence of full knowledge about a system, we must create a theory about what we don’t know, based on what we currently do know.

Each systems archetype embodies a particular theory about dynamic behavior that can serve as a starting point for selecting and formulating raw data into a coherent set of interrelationships. Once those relationships are made explicit and precise, the “theory” of the archetype can then further guide us in our data-gathering process to test the causal relationships through direct observation, data analysis, or group deliberation.

Each systems archetype also offers prescriptions for effective action. When we recognize a specific archetype at work, we can use the theory of that archetype to begin exploring that particular system or problem and work toward an intervention.

For example, if we are looking at a potential “Limits to Success” situation, the theory of that archetype suggests eliminating the potential balancing processes that are constraining growth, rather than pushing harder on the growth processes. Similarly, the “Shifting the Burden” theory warns against the possibility of a short-term fix becoming entrenched as an addictive pattern (see “Archetypes as Dynamic Theories” on pp. 9–10 for a list of each archetype and its corresponding theory).

Systems archetypes thus provide a good starting theory from which we can develop further insights into the nature of a particular system. The diagram that results from working with an archetype should not be viewed as the “truth,” however, but rather a good working model of what we know at any point in time. As an illustration, let’s look at how the “Success to the Successful” archetype can be used to create a working theory of an issue of technology transfer.

, “Success to the Successful” Example

An information systems (IS) group inside a large organization was having problems introducing a new email system to enhance company communications. Although the new system was much more efficient and reliable, very few people in the company were willing to switch from their existing email systems. The situation sounded like a “Success to the Successful” structure, so the group chose that archetype as its starting point.

'SUCCESS TO SUCCESSFUL' EMAIL

Starting with the “Success to the Successful” storyline (top), the IS team created a core dynamic theory linking the success of the old email systems with the success of the new system (middle). They then identified structural interventions they could make to use the success of the old systems to fuel the acceptance of the new one (loops B5 and B6, bottom).

The theory of this archetype (see “‘Success to the Successful’ Email” on p. 8) is that if one person, group, or idea (, “A”) is given more attention, resources, time, or practice than an alternative (, “B”), A will have a higher likelihood of succeeding than B (assuming that the two are more or less equal). The reason is that the initial success of A justifies devoting more of whatever is needed to keep A successful, usually at the expense of B (loop R1). As B gets fewer resources, B’s success continues to diminish, which further justifies allocating more resources to A (loop R2). The predicted outcome of this structure is that A will succeed and B will most likely fail.

When the IS team members mapped out their issue into this archetype, their experience corroborated the relationships identified in the loops (see “Core Dynamic Theory”). The archetype helped paint a common picture of the larger “elephant” that the group was dealing with, and clearly stated the problem: given that the existing email systems had such a head start in this structure, the attempts to convince people to use the new system were likely to fail.

Furthermore, the more time that passed, the harder it would be to ever shift from the existing systems to the new one.

Using the “Core Dynamic Theory” diagram as a common starting point, group members then explored how to use the success of the existing system to somehow drive the success of the new one (see “Extended Dynamic Theory”). They hypothesized that creating a link between “Usefulness of Existing Email” and “Usefulness of New Email” (loop B5) and/or a link between “Use of Existing Email” and “Usefulness of New Email” (loop B6) could create counterbalancing forces that would fuel the success loop of the new system. Their challenge thus became to find ways in which the current system could be used to help people appreciate the utility of the new system, rather than just trying to change their perceptions by pointing out the limitations of the existing system.

Managers As Researchers and Theory Builders

Total Quality tools such as statistical process control, Pareto charts, and check sheets enable frontline workers to become much more systematic in their problem solving and learning. With these tools, they become researchers and theory builders of their own production process, gaining insight into how the current systems work.

Similarly, systems archetypes can enable managers to become theory builders of the policy- and decision-making processes in their organizations, exploring why the systems behave the way they do. As the IS story illustrates, these archetypes can be used to create rich frameworks for continually testing strategies, policies, and decisions that then inform managers of improvements in the organization. Rather than simply applying generic theories and frameworks like Band-Aids on a company’s own specific issues, managers must take the best of the new ideas available and then build a workable theory for their own organization. Through an ongoing process of theory building, managers can develop an intuitive knowledge of why their organizations work the way they do, leading to more effective, coordinated action.

ARCHETYPES AS DYNAMIC THEORIES

Limits to success dynamic theory

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