According to project manager Janet Gould, the research will address three basic questions:

• What does it mean to be competent in systems thinking?
• What skills must people acquire in order to become competent in systems thinking?
• What additional skills are necessary to become an active facilitator of systems thinking within an organization?

Much of the initial work in the project has been devoted to defining what should be included in a list of systems thinking competencies. The diagram at the right shows a proposed framework for addressing the issue. Deciding what specific skills fall under each matrix cell is a crucial aspect of the research and will re-main fluid for some time. Even the current definition of the axes is a tentative selection.

Although dialog about the course content continues, a few formats for delivery of the course have been suggested. One possibility is to conduct an intensive, five-day course which would immerse the participants in the principles of systems thinking. Such an experience, explains Tom Grimes of Hanover Insurance Company, a sponsoring company, might help participants retain the lessons from the course. “We have such a capacity to think linearly in our lives,” he explains, “that it’s going to take a major learning experience to turn it around.”

Another possible format would be to have three days of instruction followed by “refresher courses” held every few months. In between, participants would keep logs describing how systems thinking is affecting their work. The iterative process could continue for a year or more, notes Gould.

Regardless of its final format, an essential element of the course will be team learning. Groups of people from the same division of a company will be encouraged to go through the course together and to continue using the skills they have learned back in the workplace. Explains Gould, “We think the learning might last longer with this method, because the participants would be working with a group of people with whom they can continue talking about systems thinking, rather than being isolated.”

Initially, the content of the course will be modeled after two courses already available—the MIT Summer Session, a week-long introduction to systems thinking, and a five-day course designed by consultant David Kreutzer for his clients. Both courses teach participants simple feedback loops and how to build simple computer models of complex systems. A limitation of both course designs, however, is that the skills covered do not fully address all the cells of the research matrix.

Grimes hopes to address four main objectives with the course:

1) To raise awareness of the limits and some of the potential dangers of linear thinking.

2) To use systems thinking as a way of identifying the assumptions we make underlying our decisions.

3) To develop a common language for talking about systemic issues.

4) To critique and expand our view of reality without getting into issues of personality or emotionality.

A prototype course should be ready in a few months. At that point, the researchers will begin to implement it in four or five participating companies. But Gould emphasizes that the course design is only part of the research project. “We also need to know from a research standpoint whether this course is going to do anything for a company. Are people actually learning what we’re expecting?”

…an essential element of the course will be team learning.

In order to evaluate the course, participants will answer questionnaires that test how well they have assimilated key concepts. Not only will their answers help the researchers gauge the success of the course, but Gould notes that the participants will also be able to track their own progress.

Internal facilitators will also play a crucial role in implementing systems thinking in a company. “Essentially you need to build up internal expertise in systems thinking,” explains Dan Simpson, Director of Planning at The Clorox Company. “Without that internal expertise, it’s unlikely any new thinking mentality will infiltrate the organization very well.” Simpson adds that a separate, more intensive course may be necessary to train the facilitators who will continue the systems thinking learning process inside their companies. “These people will continually make the translation from what is an academic field of study into operational action inside an organization.”

Despite the questions on how well the course might implement systems thinking in companies, there is no doubt among the course planners that systems thinking is a valuable tool for organizations. As Simpson describes it, “Systems thinking helps practicing managers begin to think through the ‘ripple effects’ of their decisions. It’s often not clear when you make a decision as a practicing manager in one area that there are interactions with other areas, intended or not. Systems thinking offers a way to control—or at least consciously manage—the ripple effect, as opposed to just letting things happen.”

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From my work with both business and education professionals over the last 15 years, I have come to believe that systems thinking’s steep learning curve is related to the fact that the discipline requires mastering a whole package of thinking skills.

STEPS IN THE SYSTEMS THINKING METHOD

Begin by specifying the problem you want to address. Then construct hypotheses to explain the problem and test them using models. Only when you have a sufficient understanding of the situation should you begin to implement change.

Much like the accomplished basketball player who is unaware of the many separate skills needed to execute a lay-up under game conditions – such as dribbling while running and without looking at the ball, timing and positioning the take-off, extending the ball toward the rim with one hand while avoiding the blocking efforts of defenders – veteran systems thinkers are unaware of the full set of thinking skills that they deploy while executing their craft. By identifying these separate competencies, both new hoop legends and systems thinking wannabes can practice each skill in isolation. This approach can help you master each of the skills before you try to put them all together in an actual game situation.

The Systems Thinking Method

Before exploring these critical thinking skills, it’s important to have a clear picture of the iterative, four-step process used in applying systems thinking (see “Steps in the Systems Thinking Method”). In using this approach, you first specify the problem or issue you wish to explore or resolve. You then begin to construct hypotheses to explain the problem and test them using models whether mental models, pencil and paper models, or computer simulation models. When you are content that you have developed a workable hypothesis, you can then communicate your new found clarity to others and begin to implement change.

When we use the term “models” in this article, we are referring to something that represents a specifically defined set of assumptions about how the world works. We start from a premise that all models are wrong because they are incomplete representations of reality, but that some models are more useful than others (they help us understand reality better than others).  There is a tendency in the business world, however, to view models (especially computer-based models) as “answer generators;” we plug in a bunch of numbers and get out a set of answers. From a systems thinking perspective, however, we view models more as “assumptions and theory testers” we formulate our understanding and then rigorously test it. The bottom line is that all models are only as good as the quality of the thinking that went into creating them. Systems thinking, and its ensemble of seven critical thinking skills, plays an important role in improving the quality of our thinking.

The Seven Critical Thinking Skills

As you undertake a systems thinking process, you will find that the use of certain skills predominates in each step. I believe there are at least seven separate but interdependent thinking skills that seasoned systems thinkers master. The seven unfold in the following sequence when you apply a systems thinking approach: Dynamic Thinking, System-as-Cause Thinking, Forest Thinking, Operational Thinking, Closed-Loop Thinking, Quantitative Thinking, and Scientific Thinking.

The first of these skills, Dynamic Thinking, helps you define the problem you want to tackle. The next two, System-as-Cause Thinking and Forest Thinking, are invaluable in helping you to determine what aspects of the problem to include, and how detailed to be in representing each. The fourth through sixth skills, Operational Thinking, Closed-Loop Thinking, and Quantitative Thinking, are vital for representing the hypotheses (or mental models) that you are going to test. The final skill, Scientific Thinking, is useful in testing your models.

Each of these critical thinking skills serves a different purpose and brings something unique to a systems thinking analysis. Let’s explore these skills, identify how you can develop them, and determine what their “non-systems thinking” counterparts (which dominate in traditional thinking) look like.

Dynamic Thinking: Dynamic Thinking is essential for framing a problem or issue in terms of a pattern of behavior over time. Dynamic Thinking contrasts with Static Thinking, which leads people to focus on particular events. Problems or issues that unfold over time as opposed to one-time occurrences are most suitable for a systems thinking approach.

You can strengthen your Dynamic Thinking skills by practicing constructing graphs of behavior overtime. For example, take the columns of data in your company’s annual report and graph a few of the key variables over time. Divide one key variable by another (such as revenue or profit by number of employees), and then graph the results. Or pick up today’s news-paper and scan the head-lines for any attention-grabbing events. Then think about how you might see those events as merely one interesting point in a variable’s overall trajectory over time. The next time someone suggests that doing this-and-that will fix such-and-such, ask, “Over what time frame? How long will it take? What will happen to key variables over time?”

System-as-Cause Thinking: Dynamic Thinking positions your issue as a pattern of behavior over time. The next step is to construct a model to explain how the behavior arises, and then suggest ways to improve that behavior. System-as-Cause Thinking can help you determine the extensive boundary of your model, that is, what to include in your model and what to leave out (see “Extensive and Intensive Model Boundaries”). From a System-as-Cause Thinking approach, you should include only the elements and inter-relationships that are within the control of managers in the system and are capable of generating the behavior you seek to explain.

By contrast, the more common System-as-Effect Thinking views behavior generated by a system as “driven” by external forces. This perspective can lead you to include more variables in your model than are really necessary. System-as-Cause Thinking thus focuses your model more sharply, because it places the responsibility for the behavior on those who manage the policies and plumbing of the system itself.

To develop System-as-Cause Thinking, try turning each “They did it” or “It’s their fault” you encounter into a “How could we have been responsible?” It is always possible to see a situation as caused by “outside forces.” But it is also always possible to ask, “What did we do to make ourselves vulnerable to those forces that we could not control?”

EXTENSIVE AND INTENSIVE MODEL BOUNDARIES

The extensive boundary is the breadth or scope of what’s included in the model. The intensive boundary is the depth or level of detail at which the items included in the model are represented.

Forest Thinking: In many organizations, people assume that to really know something, they must focus on the details. This assumption is reinforced by day-to-day existence—we experience life as a sequence of detailed events. We can also think of this as Tree-by-Tree Thinking. Models that we create by applying Tree-by-Tree Thinking tend to be large and overly detailed; their intensive boundaries run deep. In using such models, we would want to know whether that particular red truck broke down on Tuesday before noon, as opposed to being interested in how frequently, on average, trucks break down. Forest Thinking–inspired models, by contrast, group the details to give us an “on average” picture of the system. To hone your Forest Thinking skills, practice focusing on similarities rather than differences. For example, although everyone in your organization is unique, each also shares some characteristics with others. While some are highly motivated to perform and others are not, all have the potential to make a contribution. Regardless of the individual, realizing potential within an organization comes from the same generic structure. For example, what is the relationship among factors that tends to govern an individual’s motivation?

Operational Thinking :Operational Thinking tries to get at causality—how is behavior actually generated? This thinking skill contrasts with Correlational or Factors Thinking. Steven Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the most popular nonfiction books of all time, is a product of Factors Thinking. So are the multitude of lists of “Critical Success Factors” or “Key Drivers of the Business” that decorate the office walls (and mental models) of so many senior executives. We like to think in terms of lists of factors that influence or drive some result.

There are several problems with mental models bearing such list structures, however. For one thing, lists do not explain how each causal factor actually works its magic. They merely imply that each factor “influences,” or is “correlated with,” the corresponding result. But influence or correlation is not the same as causality.

For example, if you use Factors Thinking to analyze what influences learning, you can easily come up with a whole “laundry list” of factors (see “Two Representations of the Learning Process”). But if you use Operational Thinking, you might depict learning as a process that coincides with the building of experience. Operational Thinking captures the nature of the learning process by describing its structure, while Factors Thinking merely enumerates a set of factors that in some way “influence” the process.

To develop your Operational Thinking skills, you need to work your way through various activities that define how a business works examine phenomena such as hiring, producing, learning, motivating, quitting, and setting price. In each case, ask, “What is the nature of the process at work?” as opposed to “What are all of the factors that influence the process?”

Closed-Loop Thinking :Imagine discussing your company’s profitability situation with some of your coworkers. In most companies, the group would likely list things such as product quality, leadership, or competition as influences on profitability (see “A Straight-Line vs. a Closed-Loop View of Causality”). This tendency to list factors stems from Straight-Line Thinking. The assumptions behind this way of thinking are 1) that causality runs only one way—from “this set of causes” to “that effect,” and 2) that each cause is independent of all other causes. In reality, however, as the closed-loop part of the illustration shows, the “effect” usually feeds back to influence one or more of the “causes,” and the causes themselves affect each other. Closed-Loop Thinking skills therefore lead you to see causality as an ongoing process, rather than a one-time event.
To sharpen your Closed-Loop Thinking skills, take any laundry list that you encounter and think through the ways in which the driven drives and in which the drivers drive each other. Instead of viewing one variable as the most important driver and another one as the second most important, seek to understand how the dominance among the variables might shift over time.

TWO REPRESENTATIONS OF THE LEARNING PROCESS

Factors Thinking merely enumerates a set of factors that in some way “influence” the learning process. Operational Thinking captures the nature of the learning process by describing its structure.

Quantitative Thinking: In this phrase, “quantitative” is not synonymous with “measurable.” The two terms are often confused in practice, perhaps because of the presumption in the Western scientific world that “to know, one must measure precisely.” Although Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle caused physicists to back off a bit in their quest for numerical exactitude, business folk continue unabated in their search for perfectly measured data. There are many instances of analysis getting bogged down because of an obsession with “getting the numbers right.” Measurement Thinking continues to dominate!

There are a whole lot of things, however, that we will never be able to measure very precisely. These include “squishy,” or “soft,” variables, such as motivation, self-esteem, commitment, and resistance to change. Many so-called “hard” variables are also difficult to measure accurately, given the speed of change and the delays and imperfections in information systems.

A STRAIGHT-LINE VS.A CLOSED-LOOP VIEW OF CAUSALITY

The assumptions behind Straight-Line Thinking are that causality runs only one way and that each cause is independent of all other causes. Closed-Loop Thinking shows that the “effect” usually feeds back to influence one or more of the “causes,” and the causes themselves affect each other.

But let’s return to our “squishy” variables. Would anyone want to argue that an employee’s self-esteem is irrelevant to her performance? Who would propose that commitment is unimportant to a company’s success? Although few of us would subscribe to either argument, things like self-esteem and commitment rarely make it into the spreadsheets and other analytical tools that we use to drive analysis. Why? Because such variables can’t be measured. However, they can be quantified. If zero means a total absence of commitment, 100 means being as committed as possible. Are these numbers arbitrary? Yes. But are they ambiguous? Absolutely not! If you want your model to shed light on how to increase strength of commitment as opposed to predicting what value commitment will take on in the third-quarter of 1997—you can include strength of commitment as a variable with no apologies. You can always quantify, though you can’t always measure.

To improve your Quantitative Thinking skills, take any analysis that your company has crunched through over the last year and ask what key “soft” variables were omitted, such as employee motivation. Then, ruminate about the possible implications of including them systems thinking gives you the power to ascribe full-citizen status to such variables. You’ll give up the ability to achieve perfect measurement. But if you’re honest, you’ll see that you never really had that anyway.

Scientific Thinking: The final systems thinking skill is Scientific Thinking. I call its opposite Proving Truth Thinking. To understand Scientific Thinking, it is important to acknowledge that progress in science is measured by the discarding of falsehoods. The current prevailing wisdom is always regarded as merely an “entertainable hypothesis,” just waiting to be thrown out the window. On the other hand, too many business models are unscientific; yet business leaders revere them as truth and defend them to the death. Analysts make unrelenting efforts to show that their models track history and therefore must be “true.”

Seasoned systems thinkers continually resist the pressure to “validate” their models (that is, prove truth) by tracking history. Instead, they work hard to become aware of the falsehoods in their models and to communicate these to their team or clients. “All models are wrong,”” said W. Edwards Deming. “Some models are useful.” Deming was a smart guy, and clearly a systems thinker.

In using Scientific Thinking, systems thinkers worry less about outfitting their models with exact numbers and instead focus on choosing numbers that are simple, easy to understand, and make sense relative to one another. Systems thinkers also pay lots of attention to robustness they torture-test their models to death! They want to know under what circumstances their model “breaks down.” They also want to know, does it break down in a realistic fashion? What are the limits to my confidence that this model will be useful?

The easiest way to sharpen your Scientific Thinking skills is to start with a computer model that is “in balance” and then shock it. For example, transfer 90% of the sales force into manufacturing. Set price at 10 times competitor price. Triple the customer base in an instant. Then see how the model performs. Not only will you learn a lot about the range of utility of the model, but you also will likely gain insight into the location of that most holy of grails: high-leverage intervention points.

A Divide and Conquer Strategy

As the success of Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization has shown, systems thinking is both sexy and seductive. But applying it effectively is not so easy. One reason for this difficulty is that the thinking skills needed to do so are many in number and stand in stark contrast to the skill set that most of us currently use when we grapple with business issues (see “Traditional Business Thinking vs. Systems Thinking Skills”).

By separating and examining the seven skills required to apply systems thinking effectively, you can practice them one at a time. If you master the individual skills first, you stand a much better chance of being able to put them together in a game situation. So, practice . . . then take it to the hoop!

“Barry Richmond is the managing director and founder of High Performance Systems, Inc. He has a PhD in system dynamics from the MIT Sloan School of Management, an MS from Case Western Reserve, and an MBA from Columbia University”

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HOW DIALOGUE SUPPORTS OUR EXPANDING WORLDVIEW

The inner circle describes Newtonian approaches to managing and organizing. The outer circle describes quantum approaches. Both are valuable, but the need for quantum approaches is growing as organizational life becomes more complex.

Neither worldview is right or wrong; however, each offers unique advantages under specific circumstances. Indeed, in the diagram, the dotted lines that separate the two paradigms imply permeable, flexible boundaries. Moreover, the arrows suggest that other ways of organizing will also evolve.

But for now, we seem to be lodged in the Newtonian mode of operating, with our eyes cast toward the quantum one. Most of us say we want to have shared leadership and more collaboration in our organizations. We want to foster systems thinking and to leverage diversity. But the inertia of older ways of working often keeps us from moving in these directions.

Dialogue can play a key role in an organization’s ability to adopt a quantum approach to day-to-day operations and challenges, because it focuses on how diverse perspectives and interests within a system relate to one another. What exactly is dialogue? In its simplest sense, dialogue is a form of conversation intended to build shared understanding and learning around how the members of a group think about a given issue or question. Dialogue is markedly different from discussion, or debate. We dialogue in order to learn from each other and clarify what we are trying to accomplish together.

The core skills and practices of dialogue are suspension of judgment, listening, reflection, assumption identification, and inquiry.

Suspension of Judgment. In conversation, it is our nature to make value judgments quickly: We often make assessments that what someone said is good or bad, right or wrong, etc. Suspension of judgment isn’t about stopping judging – we couldn’t do that if we tried. Rather, it’s about noticing what our judgments are – and then holding them lightly so that we can still hear what others are saying, even when it may contradict our own judgments.

Listening. In Westernized, modern cultures, people normally listen to others from the standpoint of their own personal interests. To listen in dialogue is to flex a very different conversational “muscle.” Not only must we listen for our own and others’ voices, we must also attend to the larger picture of what everyone is voicing together.

Reflection. Reflection is the capacity to wait in silence, to consciously slow the rate of speed with which the conversation might take place, and to see beyond our immediate responses to what we are hearing, thinking, and feeling in the moment.

Assumption Identification. Our assumptions and beliefs about how the world works powerfully shape the decisions and results we get in organizations. Yet we often gloss over our assumptions, never challenging ourselves to see what drives our decisions at a deeper level. Our ability to think creatively has a lot to do with our ability to surface and examine our underlying assumptions.

Inquiry. Another core capacity of dialogue is inquiry; that is, the art of asking questions to clarify thinking and generate new possibilities. Inquiry requires a keen sense of curiosity about learning what others might say about a topic of conversation. It also requires the ability to formulate open-ended questions that draw out others’ opinions.

Transforming Organizational Culture

Just as dialogue can dramatically impact our worldview, once awareness of the power and capacities of dialogue arises in an organization, the entire culture may ultimately be transformed. Dialogue stimulates deep change, not only in the pace and approach with which people make decisions but also in their attitudes toward diversity, questions, and other important concepts.

Becoming Self-Directed. One of the most noticeable attitude shifts that dialogue can catalyze is the movement from being “other-directed” to being “self-directed.” What do these phrases mean? Being other-directed indicates waiting for some outside authority to give direction, while being self-directed stems from the capacity to listen within one’s self for what is appropriate in a given context. Dialogue helps us build a system-wide view of what is happening, because it lets us see the many connections between actions and functions in a team and throughout the whole organization. Once we have the big picture before us, we can more easily see our place in it. As a result, we often begin taking more responsibility for our own day-to-day decisions after engaging in dialogue. Over time, we become less dependent on managers or supervisors for answers and direction. Decision-making diffuses throughout the organization, and individuals are able to align their behaviors with the organization’s core vision because they can see it in its entirety.

Dialogue helps us build a system-wide view of what is happening, because it lets us see the many connections between actions and functions in a team and throughout the whole organization

Valuing Diversity. Another core shift happens in attitudes toward diversity – whether it’s diversity of gender, race, ideas, culture, sexual orientation, or all of these. While many tout the idea of diversity as valuable in organizations today, in reality, diversity often makes us uncomfortable. We unconsciously desire to be with people like us and seldom go out of our way to seek out diverse opinions. Indeed, many people view diversity of any sort as a source of conflict and an obstacle to decision-making.

But something problematic happens when we cluster only with like-minded people: We have trouble generating new ideas and innovations. We also lose sight of the larger picture that the expression of diverse perspectives can create. And without that larger picture, our decisions stem from a narrow perspective. Simply put, without inviting and exploring diverse viewpoints, we risk making unwise, ineffective, and downright dangerous decisions.

Fortunately, dialogue provides the tools for navigating these differences. As people feel more confident using the tools, diversity and conflict become less frightening. Instead, they become sources of creativity and new energy.

Staying in a Place of Inquiry. Another shift in attitude that occurs as people practice dialogue is that individuals gain a new appreciation and tolerance for questions. In Western cultures, we often feel compelled to drive for answers. We don’t like to leave questions unanswered and problems unsolved. If a question pops up, we want a fast answer. In dialogue, we seek to stay with questions long enough to allow diverse perspectives to contribute to the generation of more possibilities – thus promoting new learning and creativity.

Attending to the Larger Picture. As a related shift, dialogue teaches us to attend to the larger picture, which ties back to the sense of shared responsibility we explored above. When we practice dialogue, we place more value on seeing the whole, seeing how the parts all add up to more than their simple sum. Newtonian thinking takes a particularly narrow focus on things by breaking problems and challenges down into small, analytical, bite-size pieces. Because dialogue is integrative, it teaches us to pay more attention to the whole: “Where is the whole company going? What are we doing together? How does my part contribute to the whole?”

Practicing Dialogue

To reap the benefits of dialogue, you don’t have to practice it only in a formal sense. Once you understand dialogue’s core capacities and begin practicing them, you can weave them into any conversation. People often get confused about this. They think that to dialogue, everyone has to sit in a circle, with serious expressions, and practice in a structured way every week. While this is the most complete form of dialogue, it isn’t the only way to hone these capacities.

What are the best avenues for introducing this form of conversation, and the skills that support it, that will deliver the most value to your organization? Below are some easy-to-implement suggestions.

Leading Change by Example People often ask, “Well, what if I’m talking with people who don’t know dialogue?” Our advice is: Try practicing it anyway – your modeling just might rub off on them! Many of the principles behind dialogue are actually quite intuitive; it’s just that when we are conversing with others in a competitive environment, we tend not to use them. By trying to remain consciously aware of these capacities, we will be more likely to use them. This kind of skills modeling is your most powerful way of influencing others to give dialogue a try.

This may sound simple, but of course it can be hard to change our conversational styles – particularly in a culture that emphasizes win-lose metaphors of war and sports and that equates quick results with success and even survival. Yet such change is possible – through small shifts made one person, and one moment, at a time.

Experimenting with Personal Practice. One great way to both model dialogue skills and start introducing dialogue at work is to begin a personal practice of the skills. Here’s how you might do this: Choose a skill area, such as suspension of judgment. Outline a plan for working with the skill. For example: “I will notice my judgments and consciously suspend them in designated conversations. I will notice how my judgments affect my listening. I will notice what impact suspending my judgments has on my listening and on the overall quality of my conversations.” At the close of each day, review your daily practice and note any specific observations and learning (see “Tips for Practicing Dialogue Skills”).

Building a Safe Container. Another strategy for incorporating dialogue into your organization is what we call container building, or creating an environment to support dialogic forms of conversation. Container building entails arranging a safe place where all can speak their minds, where people explore questions like: “Why are we all here? Do certain things need to be said before each of us can be fully present for the conversation? What guidelines do we want to agree on that will support our purpose?” The goal of container building is to create shared meaning and intention about where you are as a group, where you’re going, and what practices will help you get there.

If a key purpose of dialogue is to promote learning, along with whatever other goal is at hand, we need to create an environment that supports authentic speaking and new ideas, an environment where the words dumb and mistake do not have a home. If a team member cannot say what he’s thinking, or if he’s withholding information that may be important to the team, how can learning take place and good decisions be made? All teams need an environment where everyone can get their cards on the table, so the team can play with a full deck.

Team leaders can play a central role in container building, through a dialogue principle that we call “suspension of status and roles.” No matter what level you occupy in your organization, it can be very hard to speak honestly in a meeting when your boss is in the room. In dialogue, we agree to do our best to temporarily suspend status and roles. Of course, these don’t disappear, but by suspending them, we become more conscious of power differentials and their impact on our communication. If you happen to be the leader in such a conversation, you can suspend your status – and contribute to container building – by actively practicing suspending judgment, listening, speaking later rather than earlier, and acknowledging and building on others’ comments.

Sustaining Energy and “Aliveness.” When learning occurs during a meeting or conversation, a feeling of energy and spark arises within the group. By intentionally asking questions like those that follow, everyone takes responsibility for keeping the conversation alive and valuable. “What is of interest to the group? Is what I’m saying adding to the conversation in a way that expands and/or deepens the picture? What are we learning?”

Stalking Dialogue Opportunities

If we assume that learning is happening all the time, then we can practice engaging in it day to day, rather than relegating it to certain times or locations, such as training rooms. By stalking dialogue opportunities, we can simultaneously promote learning. Where can we find such opportunities? Look for occasions in which people are grappling with decision-making, problem-solving, conflict work, visioning, and other challenges that strongly affect the whole group or organization. Below are some tips for using dialogue during these times

Problem-Solving and Decision Making. With both problem-solving and decision-making, groups focus on taking action. And though dialogue is not about immediate action, it is about building shared understanding of a problem in order to decide on the most appropriate action for the entire system. A good maxim here is “Dialogue first, decide second.” Establishing an environment for listening, inquiry, and reflection will take you a long way toward surfacing root causes to problems, reaching shared understanding of a problem, and avoiding decisions and solutions that may create short-term success but prove extremely costly in the long run (see “Opportunities for Dialogue”).

Conflict. Conflict also offers an excellent opportunity to practice dialogue. In fact, by using dialogue, you can turn conflict into a learning experience. We have seen this happen numerous times within work groups. One common source of conflict stems from differences in personal styles; for instance, some people want to move ahead quickly while others prefer a slower pace with time to reflect. When differences lead to conflict, we remind group members that dialogue is about suspending judgment of others’ behaviors and perspectives and about listening to understand. Second, we ask that people resist the urge to create guidelines or ground rules that inevitably validate one behavior or style and negate the other. The group will usually find a way of conversing that works for all involved .

Someone once said that “the opposite of one great truth is another great truth.” Acting on this, the next time you become embroiled in a conflict of opinion in your work team, try switching positions back and forth with your “opponent.” That is, argue for your side, then try arguing from the other side as your adversary now argues from your side. Ask yourselves, “What might we learn if we consider both sides to be right answers in a larger picture? And what larger picture might include both viewpoints?”

Visioning and Strategic Planning. For individuals, groups, or organizations to develop a meaningful strategy, they must first engage in some authentic conversation about purpose, values, and beliefs about how the world operates and how they want to be in relationship with that world. All too often, people crank out visions and strategies without ever stopping to examine the ground on which they stand, the assumptions they hold about how things work, and the implications of those assumptions for future dreams and plans.

Inquire into your assumptions about what is working in your company’s current reality and why; where you want to go and why; and how you think you might get there. Look for any inconsistencies or incompatibilities in assumptions that might lead to strategies and actions that are not coherent with your desired results. For example, you want to move toward a collaborative culture because you assume that by collaborating, people can craft creative solutions to daily challenges. On the other hand, you propose a reward strategy that compensates people for individual accomplishments because you assume that individuals will feel devalued if you don’t recognize them independently. These assumptions may both be valid, and yet if you don’t recognize how they may undermine one another, you will almost certainly send competing and confusing messages.

A lot of people talk these days about the need to “think out of the box.” It’s a great concept, but it’s very hard to do unless you first have a clear vision of the box. Dialogue can help by surfacing the assumptions that create your current reality. Then you can ask the question, “How would our assumptions and thinking need to change in order to create a different reality?”

Successes and Challenges

Where has dialogue been most successful, and, conversely, where has it faced the biggest challenges in organizations? Dialogue seems to have the most chance of success when it’s used by people who already have an affinity for and support its values. Such people might not yet be consciously aware of the skills and capacities involved, but they have an innate attraction for dialogue’s underlying principles.

Commitment from team leaders and members also increases dialogue’s chances of success. By leaders’ commitment, we mean managers’ support of people in their practice of dialogic communication skills, as well as their willingness to see and make changes in their own style. This approach means participating in the dialogue process, not simply supporting it from afar. And, when leaders are truly committed to the dialogic process, they do not mandate it. They recognize that to do so would be incongruent or inconsistent with the very values of dialogue. Instead, they invite employees to participate voluntarily.

Change agents or people who do organizational development work can be especially successful at bringing dialogue directly into how they are promoting organizational change. They may not call it dialogue, but it is clear that their facilitation style is dialogic in nature. These individuals pay attention to the way that people are taking part in conversations. Whether it’s a team-building session, visioning, or problem-solving or coaching session, they bring dialogic skills into those contexts and demonstrate the value of attending to conversational forms. They also encourage shared responsibility for the quality of conversation. By doing so, they shift responsibility for monitoring behaviors and setting ground rules from themselves to the group members We’ve also noticed that dialogue is successful when people talk about things that are really important to them. They are usually strategic in their use of the process and do not use dialogue as a blanket approach to any issue. They make choices about where dialogue skills are most appropriate and bring the highest value. By applying dialogue in this way, practitioners reinforce its value.

Still, as with every important tool, there are some challenges that come with incorporating dialogue in an organization. For one thing, we don’t recommend introducing dialogue in an atmosphere where there is little to support its use. When people are trained in dialogue but not supported in the ongoing, daily practice of it, their expectations will ultimately be dashed.

Another big challenge is that while dialogue often produces an immediate impact, the cultural changes that it supports don’t happen overnight. They may take years, perhaps even lifetimes. We have to recognize that dialogue can shift a culture dramatically, but it will do so over time. And that can be a challenge in a culture that wants quick fixes and immediate gratification.

We feel confident that dialogue will play an increasingly important role in the future in organizations. As dialogue works its way further into our consciousness, there will be more brave souls eager to learn it. The idea is to recognize and seize the opportunities for dialogue that make sense within your organization or community. By nurturing dialogue, both as it spontaneously emerges and in planned sessions, you’ll be well on your way to leading long-term organizational learning and change.

Glenna Gerard and Linda Ellinor are co-founders of The Dialogue Group and co-authors of Dialogue: Rediscover the Transforming Power of Conversation (John Wiley & Sons, 1998). Glenna (ggunlimited@earthlink.net) has a consulting practice based in Laguna Beach, CA. She helps groups and organizations design environments and processes for powerful conversations. Linda (lellinor@home.com) is an organization consultant living in Dana Point, CA.

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