This is one manager’s response to his experience in Hanover Insurance Company’s “learning laboratory” – the heart of a systems-based approach adapted by the company about four years ago.

The dynamic complexities of the insurance business, including tumultuous changes in the social environment, prohibit all but the best players from being successful. Hanover, one of the largest companies writing property and casualty insurance in this country, has responded to this challenge by using systems thinking.

“By its nature,” explains Bill O’Brien, Hanover’s president, “the property and casualty industry is interconnected with many other systems. It deals with diverse and complex issues. We believe the greatest competitive advantage an organization can possess is its capacity for learning.”

It has been said that the shortcomings of systems come not from the people who work within them but from defective designs. Systems thinking (and the field of system dynamics) requires one to view the structural aspects of performance rather than just the individual performances of people.

Organizational learning transcends one person learning a skill on a case-by-case basis…

This thinking is carried into the learning laboratory where organizational learning is distinguished from individual skill learning. Organizational learning transcends one person learning a skill on a case-by-case basis; it creates a shared base of knowledge across the organization, not just within senior management.

The learning laboratory came about partly as a response to a problem Hanover needed to solve: During 1985 and 1986, Hanover found the number, size, and complexity of claims increasing, and this created a need for more people to handle the volume. Claims managers at Hanover found it difficult to recruit and hire experienced claim personnel. The pool of candidates was either too small or the skill level was not of a sufficiently high caliber to fit the company’s professional image. Therefore, a large number of trainees were brought into the work force just when Hanover needed to respond to more complex issues and to project more accurately the future size of claims.

Systems thinking was used to deal with these issues. The learning laboratory was developed to explore and test assumptions relative to claim management function.

A simulated environment

The learning laboratory uses management simulators (computer models that allow one to see the dynamic consequences of one’s decisions), which operate like the simulated cockpit pilots use.

In the learning laboratory, a simulated claim environment is created where feedbacks arc discussed and weighed with other managers who have had similar experiences. This is done using a computer simulation based on a dynamic model of relationships in the claim environment. Playing with simulated events in teams is combined with periods of debriefing, to reflect on what has occurred.

Claim managers analyze issues of the day and begin to test their assumptions about time availability and quality and how these concepts relate to adjuster capacity. It is when they question their long-held beliefs about claim management that they begin to get insights about how to manage differently. This is when their behavior can change.

One example of how systemic thinking has clarified priorities and created more balanced thinking — and practice — is its application to the issue of fluctuating workload.

Devising a means to deal with the peaks and valleys of workload is a primary function of a claim manager. At times, skilled claim adjusters are inadequate to handle the incoming and pending workload; at other times, insufficient workload can cause good work habits to slacken. Time is then filled by the work available.

How a manager responds during times of pressure and times of less activity is critical to the success of the entire organization. To be effective, his or her response must take into consideration all of the feedbacks in the system.

One manager who dealt with the workload issue after he attended the learning laboratory explained it this way: “When I came back from the learning laboratory, I had a much better understanding of what the important issues were. Before the lab, I would have said that lack of quality was the only important factor. After the lab, it was obvious to me that productivity was also a key issue. So I restructured some units to enhance their ability to settle claims.

“After I saw dramatic increases in productivity, I applied pressure to improve quality — and I have seen a difference.”

It works

When claims managers integrate the system dynamics approach into their own decision-making, they accelerate the changes that need to occur in the organization. When they “experience” the consequences of their decisions, they are motivated to look for points to intervene in the system, rather than to just rely on older, tried, and supposedly true methods to solve the problems of time availability, quality, and adjuster capacity.

Managers are encouraged to clarify and test their assumptions about why things happen as they do. They make their own mental models explicit, and by doing so can change those models that arc not useful. Besides shortening the learning curve for the many new managers in the company, the learning laboratory accelerates the acquisition of communication skills they need to pursue their goals. Systems thinking provides the language through which management can understand and communicate what to do about the dynamics they experience.

The learning laboratory is a place where managers become familiar with formulating hypotheses, measuring results, and comparing actual results to expectations. When a manger learns through experience to take a systemic view of the operational decisions that must be made, the transfer of learning from a workshop setting or laboratory to the workplace is complete.

The use of systems thinking has given Hanover a competitive advantage in dealing with the complexities inherent in the property and casualty insurance industry.

The use of insurance as a means of transferring costs seems like a simple process. But managing that process is extremely complex. Over time, the connections among cost transfer variables (pricing, taxation, risk transfer) are obscured and become blended with other feedbacks in the system.

“When I came back from the learning laboratory, I had a much better understanding of what the important issues were.”

Then, if we push one lever (such as reducing costs in an attempt to impact profitability) another may go out of balance. Solving one problem almost always creates other problems. Using a learning laboratory to understand the dynamics of systems, so that we know what kinds of problems our current decisions are likely to create down the road, has given Hanover the ability to leverage, balance, and more effectively manage the cost transfer system.

Like many other businesses, the property and casualty insurance industry’s profits are cyclical in nature. Periods of relatively good results lead to intense price competition and the lowering of underwriting standards. This invariably causes deteriorating results and leads to increased prices and tightened underwriting standards.

Over time, the industry begins to experience improved results and increased profits, which initiates the next cycle of intense competition. During periods of unprofitability, the market for insurance becomes highly unpredictable.

Hanover has distinguished itself from its competitors by providing a consistent market to both long-term policy holders and independent agents throughout several of these cycles. By exercising management discipline and understanding the dynamics of the insurance cycle, Hanover is able to balance underwriting, marketing, and investment considerations over periods of years, rather than months. We are able to manage the insurance cycle rather than be managed by it.

By combining the freedom to act with the skill to make better decisions, system dynamics has given Hanover a way to manage change.

Robert S. Bergin is property claim manager for the Hanover Insurance Company in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he is responsible for first-part claim handling philosophy and direction. Geraldine F. Prusko is responsible for litigation management at Hanover Insurance Company. She has 20 years of technical and management experience in the insurance industry and has been a trial lawyer as well as a claim handler.

This article way condensed from ‘The Learning Laboratory ” The Healthcare Forum Journal, March 1990. From The Headlines Certain phenomena occur with such regularity that they constitute a generic set of structures called systems principles. Many of these systems principles are played out in the headlines of newspapers and magazines. The following anecdotes carry lessons for systems thinkers. Eroding Goals “When Tater Tots sales fell in the period from 1985 to 1987, managers first blamed changing eating habits in the U.S. But further study revealed startling news: Cost-cutting had led plant managers to step up line speeds and change storage and cooking methods. Over a decade, the moves had changed Tater Tots. Their once-chunky insides had turned to mashed potato. The outside had lost its light and crispy coating. ‘We were pressing so hard on cost that we were affecting quality,’ says Gerald D. Herrick, president of Ore-Ida Foods Inc. ‘It’s pretty embarrassing.”‘ “Heinz Ain’t Broke, But It’s Doing A Lot Of Fixing,” Business Week, December I 1, 1989. Challenging Our Mental Models On the Chinese New Year in 1989, Mr. Huang, a researcher at AT&T Bell Laboratories who is trying to develop an optical computer, gathered his research group for a progress report. “But instead of talking logic devices and laser diodes, a deadpan Mr. Huang presented each person with an egg and a seemingly impossible mission: to balance it on end. Chinese folklore said the New Year was the perfect time to do it…Eventually, all five researchers man-aged to balance an egg. ‘When we left that room, ‘ Mr. Huang remembers, ‘no one could believe we had ever thought that balancing an egg was impossible.’ Mr. Huang hopes his research will play a similar role in convincing people that optical computing isn’t so difficult that it should be ignored.” “Speed of Light: Is Optical Computing The Next Frontier, Or Just a Nutty Idea?” Wall Street Journal, January 30, 1990. The Systems Thinker 5 April/May 1990

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What Is Human Dynamics?

Human Dynamics is a body of work that identifies and illuminates innate distinctions in the way people function as whole systems that include mental, emotional, and physical dimensions. It is the result of an ongoing investigation launched 24 years ago that has so far involved more than 80,000 people from over 25 cultures. From this research, we discovered that three universal principles – mental, emotional, and physical – combine in people in specific patterns characterized by distinctly different ways of processing information, learning, communicating, relating to others, solving problems, undertaking tasks, and, as a result, exercising leadership and contributing to groups or teams. These different “ways of being” appear to be so foundational in the human make-up that they can be seen the world over, identified at every age level (even in infancy), and observed in males and females equally. In other words, these distinctions are more fundamental to who we are and how we function than age, race, culture, or gender.

We have identified nine of these distinct human systems, or “personality dynamics.” Of these, five appear to be by far the most prevalent. The individuals representing these groups have characteristic gifts and affinities for certain ways of functioning. They flourish and contribute best under certain conditions. Most importantly, they have their own distinctive paths of development.

Being aware of and understanding these natural, inherent differences is significant for developing successful and effective human relationships of all kinds – for leading and partnering with others in the workplace, for developing loving and supportive family relationships, and for successful teaching and learning. When we don’t recognize and take into account these differences, we fall prey to misunderstanding others and misinterpreting their behavior; poor communication; less than optimum teamwork; and, in class and training settings, teaching approaches that do not “match” students’ specific learning processes. When we do understand the differences, the way is open for us to acknowledge and appreciate diverse ways of functioning; to see and adapt to others’ needs; and to relate, manage, and teach in ways that enable each group member to perform at his or her best. We are able to consciously utilize our own and others’ distinctive processes and capacities to achieve optimal individual and group performance.

The Three Principles

Let us first briefly explain what we mean when we refer to each of the three principles – mental, emotional, and physical. The Mental Principle is related to the mind. It is expressed in thinking, seeing things from a detached perspective, formulating a purpose or vision, seeing the overview, setting structure, and establishing principles and values.

The Emotional Principle is concerned with forming relationships. It is the subjective part of us that knows and values the world of feelings in ourselves and others; that needs and offers personal communication; and that relates, organizes, and collaborates. We express the Emotional Principle when we make new connections among diverse elements and exercise our creative imagination.

The Physical Principle is that part of us that is most down-to-earth and practical. It is expressed in making, doing, actualizing, and operationalizing. The Physical Principle has to do with the realm of the senses, rather than that of the mind or the emotions. It is concerned with understanding the operation of systems, both natural and human-made, and with creating effective systems of operation.

All of these dimensions are active in all people, but to varying degrees and in various combinations (see “The Mental, Emotional, and Physical Principles”).

It is also important to note that each of these principles is of equal value. They are all needed in the functioning and development of a whole and balanced person. We could also say that all are equally needed for the functioning of a whole and balanced organization.

At this point, pause and ask yourself, “With which of these principles am I most comfortable and familiar? Which do I express most easily and naturally? Could I benefit from some development or help with one of these areas?” As we shall see, individuals are generally more comfortable and familiar with two of the principles, while the third is often less known, developed, and utilized.

Mental, Emotional, and Physical Centering

While all of us have mental, emotional, and physical dimensions, we have discovered that people seem to be “wired” in such a way that one of these three principles is central in each individual’s functioning. People are “centered” mentally (rationally), emotionally (relationally), or physically (pragmatically) (see “Centering”).

Of course, each human system comprises a continual interplay of mental, emotional, and physical life. Nevertheless, each person is characterized by a central process that is specific and consistent. The principle at our core determines how we typically take in and process information.

Mentally centered people process information in a logical and sequential way. They are also characterized characterized by an innate detachment. They experience life as if they were standing on a hilltop, so they naturally maintain a birds-eye view on events and a long-term perspective.

Emotionally centered people, on the other hand, process information in a non-linear, associative, interactive way that incorporates feelings and intuition, rather than through a strictly rational process. This relatively spontaneous way of proceeding often results in the generation of new ideas and the exploration of new avenues of thought or action that might not have emerged through a more linear process. For emotionally centered people, engaging in dialogue with others is essential as a means of clarifying thoughts, feelings, and intuitions, as well as for establishing the sense of personal connection with others that makes life meaningful for them.

Finally, physically centered people process information in a systemic way – they gather and assimilate large amounts of data, and think in terms of the interconnections that make up whole systems of functioning. Because of their affinity for the systemic, they may be fascinated by the patterns they observe in the flow of events across time, from past to present and projected into the future, or they may have a keen interest in, and sense for, how things work mechanically.

Five Predominant Personality Dynamics

We have found that there are three variations on each of these major themes. Mentally centered people may be “mental-mental,” “mental-emotional,” or “mental-physical.” Emotionally centered people may be “emotional-mental,” “emotional-emotional,” or “emotional-physical.” And physically centered people may be “physical-mental,” “physical-emotional,” or “physical-physical,” making nine personality dynamics in all. Whereas the first principle indicates how one processes information, the second indicates what one processes – the kind of material that is the natural focus of attention. (This interaction will become clearer when we outline particular personality dynamics.)

CENTERING

While all of us have mental, emotional, and physical dimensions, people seem to be “wired” in such a way that one of these three principles is central in each individual’s functioning. People are “centered” mentally (rationally), emotionally (relationally), or physically (pragmatically).

Of these nine possible systems of functioning, we have found that five are by far the most prevalent – mental-physical, emotional-mental, emotional-physical, physical-mental, and physical-emotional. Any group of people – the members of a management or project team, a department, the students in a classroom, family members seated around the dinner table, a meeting of heads of state – will include some combination of these five different ways of being “wired,” with their distinctly different natural processes of learning, communicating, problem-solving, relating, developing, and so on.

Following are brief thumbnail sketches of each of these five most commonly encountered personality dynamics. These summaries provide a basic sense of their similarities and distinctions, and also of the misinterpretations of each that commonly arise as a result of their particular ways of functioning.

Mental-Physical. As we have already indicated, the thinking process of mental-physical people is linear, logical, and sequential (mental principle), and it is focused upon operations in the external world (physical principle) – as opposed to emotional data. Because of their “hilltop” perspective, they tend to focus on the long term and to think in relation to enduring principles and values. Because of their innate detachment, their emotional life is typically extremely even. Mental-physical people offer teams emotional stability, objectivity, and their gift for selecting and articulating what is essential – key points, principles, values, goals, and information. They value clarity; for this reason, they often prefer written communication. They are usually precise and meticulous in any task that they undertake.

Mental-physical people often ask the questions “Why?” and “What do you mean by…?” But they are frequently silent in groups, either because they feel no need to speak if others are saying what needs to be said, or because they think carefully before speaking and cannot find the space to participate if a process is less than orderly. Because of their natural detachment and reticence, and because they do not readily express their feelings, others may interpret mental physical people as being aloof, disengaged, uncaring, or unwilling to be approached. None of these interpretations is necessarily true. If you want to know how a mental-physical person is really thinking or feeling, just ask. Such questions will help him or her to connect and communicate.

Emotional-Mental. Emotional mental people process in a non-linear, associative way (emotional principle) the world of ideas (mental principle). They deeply enjoy a highly interactive brainstorming kind of communication, in which one idea triggers another, leading to the generation of new ways of thinking or acting. Emotional-mental people typically love movement and change. They are often innovators, drawn to the new and untried. They intuitively sense new possibilities in people, situations, and events, and endeavor to make them happen.

In undertaking new projects, emotional-mental people can move into action with the strong sense of a general direction to be taken, but with minimal data and little or no real prior planning. This experimental movement leads to new experiences, which suggest next steps that may be entirely unanticipated at the beginning. They repeat this process until they reach a satisfactory outcome.

Because emotional-mental people concentrate on the future, they typically recollect very little about the past. They do, however, remember data required for any project that is their current focus of attention – but only until the project is completed. Emotional-mental people usually have little awareness of physical signals from their bodies. They may be able to work long hours with great concentration because they are unaware that they are hungry or tired.

Others may misunderstand emotional-mental people as being either pushy or, because they will initiate movement with little or no prior planning, irresponsible. Instead, they are following their natural instinct to move things forward and light the fires of new endeavors, often relying on others to execute the details.

Emotional-Physical. Emotional-physical people also think in a non-linear, associative way (emotional principle), preferably through dialogue with others, but their focus is on the physical world (physical principle) – especially people! They experience constantly changing emotional responses to their environment and all the objects, people, and events in it. They are sensitive to others’ feelings and often can sense those feelings in their own bodies, even when others aren’t outwardly expressing them. This ability can be a gift, providing helpful information and insights; it can also be a burden, affecting the emotional physical person’s sense of well-being in negative circumstances, or creating confusion about whether feelings experienced are his or her own or those of someone else.

Emotional-physical people value personal connection and communication with others. They bring to teams both a high degree of creative thinking and a concern for creating harmony among group members. The quality of the group’s process is as important to them as the outcomes. However, they can only offer their full capacities if they feel comfortable and “safe.” If they feel threatened or judged in any way, they may withdraw and stay silent.

Emotional-physical people can relive emotion-laden events from the past as if they were occurring again in the present. Sometimes others judge them as “too sensitive,” “using too many words,” or insufficiently logical. The truth is that their sensitivity is a gift to be valued – they use it for understanding individuals and interpersonal situations. Their sometimes extensive communication results from their need to establish personal connections and to ensure that misunderstandings don’t arise. And their non-linear thinking has an emotional logic, frequently reflecting a “knowing” that they cannot rationally explain. Their intuitive gift is often a wasted resource in organizations.

Physical-Mental. Physical-mental people think systemically (physical principle), with a focus on ideas, purposes, and structures (mental principle). They plan consciously, strategically, and systematically. They want to know the purpose of any endeavor and then create a logical step-by-step plan for achieving that purpose. They tend to have a conscious strategy for almost everything they do.

Physical-mental people value efficiency and create systems of operation to achieve it, then refine those systems to make them even more efficient and, if possible, broadly applicable. They like to use models, diagrams, and charts to assist their thinking or communicate their ideas. Physical-mental individuals gather considerable data as a basis for their planning and put it into logical structure quite quickly. They have a capacity for seeing patterns in varied data or in the flow of events, from which they make projections into the future and devise action plans.

Physical-mental people have a detailed memory for data in areas that interest them. In communicating with others, they are always looking for the action to be taken or problem to be solved. They like communication to be factual and organized.

A common misunderstanding about physical-mental people is that they do not care about people or their feelings. This misperception can occur because they may be so focused on results that they may sometimes fail to consider human factors in their planning. Also, they usually find it difficult to express personal feelings. They typically express their caring through their actions rather than their words.

Physical-Emotional. Physical-emotional people process in a systemic way (physical principle) the connections (emotional principle) among data, events, and people in order to comprehend or create whole systems of operation. Their natural process of thinking, planning, and learning is not systematic but organic. When approaching any new endeavor, they immerse themselves in gathering and absorbing data without initially sorting or prioritizing it. (Because for them everything is connected to everything else, they do not always know initially what might be relevant). They then assimilate, sort, and link all of this information in a process that may be as much unconsciously as consciously directed. This process, like digestion, takes its own time, until suddenly everything comes together in a highly detailed, systemic understanding of a situation, plan of action, or product. Because the entire process takes place internally, others may think that “nothing is going on,” when in fact very much is “going on,” though the person may not be able to clearly articulate what it is until the process is complete.

Physical-emotional people are sometimes labeled “slow” in a negative sense. In classrooms they may be categorized as “slow learners,” with the implication that they may not be as smart as other students who respond more quickly. They are not really slow at all, but rather thorough. Their organic process takes time, but they are typically able to assimilate and synthesize more data and comprehend and handle more complex situations than people of any other personality dynamic.

Physical-emotional people typically have a prodigious capacity to remember data. They can recollect events from even the distant past in which they were fully engaged in extraordinary sensory detail. Because physical-emotional people think and experience in terms of interconnections, they appreciate communication that provides “the whole story,” and they often convey information through detailed stories.

Distribution of Personality Dynamics

The personality dynamics that we have identified are not equally prevalent or evenly distributed. Of the five dynamics that we have described, mental-physical people are encountered most rarely – they seem to constitute no more than about 3 percent of the population. The great majority of the world’s people appear to be either emotionally or physically centered.

Anyone of any personality dynamic may be more or less intelligent, more or less compassionate, more or less contributive, more or less gifted.

It has been fascinating for us to experience over the years that in the Western cultures in which we, or the facilitators we have trained, have worked extensively (such as North America, Europe, South America, and Israel), we have found a slight majority of people to be emotionally centered and the rest to be physically centered. In Eastern countries in which we have worked, such as Malaysia, China, Singapore, and Japan, we have found by far the great majority of the people to be physically centered. These findings apply even to people of Asian descent whose families have lived in the West for many generations.

We have no explanation for the fact that the two physically centered personality dynamics seem to predominate in the East and the two emotionally centered ones in the West. We simply offer our findings. However, we emphasize that no value judgments adhere to this observation. All of the personality dynamics are equal in value. It is not “better” to be one more than another. Anyone of any personality dynamic may be more or less intelligent, more or less compassionate, more or less contributive, more or less gifted. What is different is how they “are,” think, experience, and go about things. Indeed, we can say that each needs the others for results that are optimal and whole.

Nature vs. Nurture

We have often been asked if we think that this distribution of personality dynamics could be the result of cultural influence. Our experience has led us to believe otherwise, for a number of reasons:

The cultural explanation does not account for the many physically centered people in the West or the emotionally centered people in the East.

If culture created the personality dynamics, then one would expect the many people of Asian background who have been assimilated over generations into Western cultures, and who are not part of an Asian community within the larger community, to show the characteristic processes of the majority in their adoptive cultures. However, we have not observed this to be the case. Although many Asian Americans, for instance, may have adopted more characteristically Western values, their foundational processes of handling information, learning, problem-solving, and so on remain those characteristic of physical centering.

We have come up with the same findings in following infants adopted from the East into families in the West in which both of the adoptive parents were emotionally centered. As these youngsters develop, they may exhibit their parents’ influences in some aspects of their outer behavior – for example, by being somewhat more expressive of their feelings and individually oriented than is typical of their Asian-raised counterparts – but their fundamental processes remain those we have described as characteristic of physical centering.

The evidence indicates, therefore, that while there is a continual interaction between any individual’s personality dynamic and the external environment, the latter neither determines the basic natural processes nor fundamentally alters them. It may influence what one thinks or learns, but not how one naturally thinks or learns.

We are led to assume, therefore, that the distinctions we have identified are inherent and genetically determined. This conclusion is reinforced by our findings that people almost always identify at least one parent as having the same personality dynamic as themselves or, if not, a grandparent.

Implications for the Workplace

These different ways of being and functioning are represented wherever people live, learn, and work together. They are present in every work environment, among management and project teams, in boardrooms and training rooms, in meetings with staff or potential clients, in conference calls with colleagues or strangers from around the globe, and, of course, in classrooms (see “Human Dynamics in Education”). It has been said that 90 percent of the difficulties that organizations face can be attributed to dysfunctional relationships among people. When people develop awareness and understanding of the different personality dynamics, much interpersonal misunderstanding and conflict is avoided. Also a groundwork is laid for developing optimal communication, teamwork, coaching, mentoring, and training. A shared base of understanding enables colleagues to work together more effectively and to consciously leverage one another’s gifts and capacities.

Sandra Seagal and David Horne are the founders and directors of Human Dynamics International, an organization that disseminates unique training programs in the fields of organizational development, education, healthcare, and cross-cultural bridge-building. They are also the founders and directors of the Human Dynamics Institute, which is engaged in original research into the personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal functioning and development of people. Sandra and David are coauthors of Human Dynamics: A New Framework for Understanding People and Realizing the Potential in Our Organizations (Pegasus Communications, 1997) and are working on a new book directed toward parents, teachers, and all who care about children. For more information, go to www.humandynamics.com.

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In the mid 1980s, “knowledge management” superseded “information management,” again building on the best aspects of the existing practice while representing an exponential leap forward. By recognizing the need to capture, store, and make accessible people’s operational knowledge, proponents of knowledge management tapped into a hidden source of competitive advantage.

Today, the field of “knowledge ecology” has emerged as a natural outgrowth of knowledge management. Whereas the target of knowledge management is to accumulate and leverage knowledge, knowledge ecology’s goal is to develop and mobilize collective intelligence and ultimately organizational wisdom. By acknowledging the social nature of learning and the key role that technology can play in bringing people together, knowledge ecology bridges the gap between the static data repositories of knowledge management and the dynamic, adaptive behavior of natural systems (see “The Virtuous Cycle of Knowledge Ecology”). To understand this new approach to “knowing what we know,” we first must understand the relationship among knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom.

The Knowledge, Intelligence, Wisdom Value Chain

Knowledge. Knowledge is the capacity to act. As Peter Drucker has said, “Knowledge is information that changes something or somebody — either by becoming grounds for actions, or by making an individual (or an institution) capable of different or more effective action.” Books, databases, lists of “best practices,” help desks, and so on are important in that they contribute to and influence our knowledge. However, these mainstays of traditional knowledge management implementation themselves do not have the capacity to act. They are repositories of information, not of knowledge.

Researchers from across the spectrum agree that learning is a social activity. We create, share, and utilize knowledge through our interactions with others. In this way, knowledge emerges through productive conversations — both face-to-face and through various media — and networks of relationships. These resources cannot be managed, only inspired by work systems that reward collaboration, learning, and innovation.

Intelligence. Designing knowledge-creation structures and practices requires a certain level of intelligence. Intelligence refers to our effective use of knowledge and our capacity to respond to specific opportunities and challenges as they emerge. In biological systems, an organism’s innate intelligence enables it to adapt to changing circumstances. The same is true of social systems. The main function of a workplace’s collective intelligence is to sustain the “social organism” by augmenting its ability to rapidly respond to conditions of accelerating complexity and chaos.

An organization develops collective intelligence the same way bodies do — through a nervous system. The nervous system in a social organism is the ongoing series of conversations and contacts that enable it to coordinate its actions and learn from its experience. It is embedded not in computers and hardware, but in the interactions among people that bring the organization into existence day after day and help it evolve. Collective intelligence continually emerges from the energy and information that move through this infrastructure.

To thrive, an organization must have both the wisdom to ask the right questions at the right time, and the infrastructure for tapping into its own collective intelligence for responses.

In both biological and social systems, the quality of the nervous system affects the quality of the intelligence that flows through it. Organizations have better chances to grow healthy and robust nervous systems — with requisite flexibility — if their members are connected and motivated to realize their full creative potential in support of the joint enterprise. If participants have easy and convenient ways to share what they know, the accelerated flow of knowledge lets the organization act with cat-like reflexes in the face of rapid changes in its environment.

The stage of evolution of a given nervous system — both in biological and social organisms — defines how effectively it can perform the following four functions.

• Communication: Facilitating the exchange and flow of information among the organizations’ subsystems and with its external environment.
• Coordination: Effectively coordinating the actions of the subsystems and of the whole.
• Memory/Knowledge Management: Storing, organizing, and recalling information as needed.
• Learning: Guiding and supporting the development of new competencies and effective behaviors.

Each of these activities is vital to the performance and evolution of the organism, be it biological or social. The biological ones have seamlessly integrated these functions in their repertoire of capabilities. Millions of years of trial-and-error have paid off!

Social organisms such as corporations don’t have the luxury to wait that long. If they are to survive and meet the challenges triggered by the current waves of epochal transition, they quickly need to enhance their nervous systems. Only then can they respond to their volatile strategic options with increased agility.

But having an adequate intelligence infrastructure isn’t enough to maintain a community at the leading edge over the long-term. The sustainability of social organisms also requires the exercise of systemic, collective wisdom.

Wisdom. Wisdom refers to our effective use of intelligence, as evidenced by our capacity to alleviate suffering and increase joy in human and organizational systems. As Verna Allee noted in Knowledge Evolution, “Wisdom is . . . a highly creative and connective way of processing knowledge that distills out essential principles and truths. Wisdom tells us what to pay attention to. Wisdom is the truth seeker and pattern finder that penetrates to the core of what really matters.” Systemic wisdom can help with intuiting the long view, understanding systems in the context of their larger whole, and anticipating future crises.

To thrive, an organization must have both the wisdom to ask the right questions at the right time, and the infrastructure for tapping into its own collective intelligence for responses. Organizational wisdom thus plays a key role in dealing with two essential aspects of the new marketplace: the “attention economy” and the “experience economy.” The concept of the “attention economy” derives from the fact that we’re living in an age in which we are continually inundated by information. The competition for people’s attention has reached a fevered pitch. Time and attention are scarce resources; learning to use them wisely has become a valuable personal competence.

In the current conditions of galloping “complexity multiplied by urgency” (as described by Douglas Engelbart, the pioneer of augmenting human intellect with computers), only wisdom can effectively guide our decisions on how to invest our attention, both individual and organizational. Wisdom helps us find a balance between focusing on current tasks and on long-term priorities by offering the power of perspective. It provides us with the ability to take a step back, view the larger picture, and determine what is really important and what is really at stake.

We can also view today’s working world through the lens of the “experience economy.” Customers are looking for more than products/services; they want to have a memorable experience of buying and using those commodities for achieving their aspirations. B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, authors of The Experience Economy (Harvard Business School Publishing, 1999), describe this phenomenon: “No matter how acute an experience, one’s memory of it fades over time. Transformations, on the other hand, guide the individual [and the organization] towards realizing some aspiration and then help to sustain that change over time. There is no earthly value more concrete, more palpable, or more worthwhile than achieving an aspiration. Nothing is more important, more abiding, or more wealth-creating than the wisdom required to transform customers. And nothing will command as high a price.”

Where does the wisdom to create this kind of transforming experience reside in an enterprise? How can we notice it and cultivate it? We used to think of wisdom as a hard-earned quality of elderly, white-haired men and women. The emerging field of knowledge ecology opens the possibility of nurturing wisdom as a distributed quality of human communities.

What Is Knowledge Ecology?

What is “knowledge ecology” (KE) and how can it help us to boost organizational knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom? KE is a field of theory and practice that focuses on discovering better social, organizational, behavioral, and technical conditions for knowledge creation and utilization. It is an interdisciplinary discipline that draws on the best of current thought and action, including knowledge management; communities of practice; businesses as complex, adaptive systems; organizational learning; and the hypertext organization. By integrating these and other ideas, KE seeks to help organizations achieve unprecedented breakthroughs in performance while nurturing and enhancing people’s capacity to reach their highest aspirations.

KE operates on the principle that the best models we have for designing systems that create, sustain, and foster organizational learning and development are natural “learning organizations,” like a rainforest or the human brain. KE’s primary area of study and domain of action are the design and support of self-organizing knowledge “ecosystems,” in which information, ideas, insights, and inspiration cross-fertilize and feed one another, free from the constraints of geography and schedule.

According to the 10th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, an ecosystem is “the complex of a community of organisms and its environment functioning as an ecological unit in nature.” The simplest form of a knowledge ecosystem consists of

• a network of conversations — face-to-face or virtual — contributing to and informed by
• rich knowledge repositories.

Knowledge ecosystems, just like biological ones, are self-sustaining, self-regulating, and self-organizing. They have permeable boundaries through which they can interact with other ecosystems. In a natural ecosystem, the higher the diversity of species, the more robust the community and the more fit for longevity. The same applies to organizational ecosystems.

To visualize a knowledge ecosystem, picture the waves of ideas, requests, and offers that move through your awareness each day as bundles of color-coded lights that link you with your coworkers, customers, and coaches. Play with the colors, if you wish. Then imagine an animated flowchart with small circles representing all the employees in your organization. Arrows of different sizes and colors link the circles to indicate the length and form of each contact — phone calls, memos, reports, meetings — in a single day. Finally, think of this network of contacts as a web of distributed intelligence, comprised of all the members of the enterprise and all the ways in which they create value for other members, the enterprise as a whole, and its stakeholders.

For any organization to have all of its members share what they know with other stakeholders in a limited timeframe, it must “electrify” its network of conversations; that is, link its people networks and computer networks. This kind of “electrified” nervous system can then serve as the infrastructure necessary for a community to self-organize and improve its collective intelligence effectively and consistently.

Practitioners of KE maintain that in knowledge ecosystems, people networks create knowledge networks supported by technology networks (see “The Triple Network”). By “people network,” we mean the members of the organization, their communities of practice, and their company’s customers and other stakeholders, as well as the ways in which they organize their collaboration. By “knowledge network,” we mean the web-like connections between productive ideas that people in organizations generate in the normal course of work.

Unprecedented synergies and creative breakthroughs occur when enabling technologies offer new ways of forming meaningful connections. “Technology network” in this context includes all of the technological means that support communication and collaboration for knowledge creation, sharing, and utilization, ranging from e-mail to video and web conferencing to virtual worlds.

Knowledge communities co-evolve with their shared body of knowledge, and with the protocols and tools for upgrading that knowledge. Organizations pass an evolutionary test when they learn to adapt to and drive innovations in technologies, markets, and organizational design by increasing individual and collective intelligence. The smarter we become as individuals in managing our personal learning processes, the more we can enhance our organization’s collective intelligence. The smarter we become as learning communities, the deeper will be the pool of the collective intelligence that each of us can tap into, thus enhancing our individual intelligence. The two interconnected spirals drive each other ever higher. Companies like Hewlett-Packard and Lucent have found that the “triple network” of people, knowledge, and technology is vital to this process.

The Practice of KE

At the heart of knowledge ecology is the art and science of gleaning meaning and value from productive conversations. This practice represents an art in that it involves the sensitive, spontaneous realm of human relations. It is a science in that it relies on the best of today’s new technologies for bringing people and their ideas together across time and space. KE offers a framework for enhancing an organization’s capacity to learn faster by linking these two seemingly disparate facets of organizational effectiveness (see “The Duality of Conversations and Knowledge Bases”).

How does an organization begin to incorporate KE into its daily activities? Perhaps the first step is to ensure that the corporate culture recognizes the synergy between personal growth and expression and organizational productivity. Management must encourage listening, dialogue, participation, openness, inquiry, reflection, sharing, collaboration, and learning as expressed through mission statements, reward systems, and actions. Every member of the community — whether an organization as a whole, department, community of practice, or team — must feel included in the process and have the means to contribute as an equal participant.

Restricting any member’s contribution to and use of the ecosystem reduces its vitality and capacity to support emergent action. Fortunately, technology offers myriad options for enabling community members in different locations to conduct effective, efficient, and enjoyable knowledge-sharing, collaboration, and coordination of action. “Virtual space” technologies — such as conference calls and videoconferencing, which allow “same time/different-space” meetings — fill the need when speed of action is important and the community needs to process and evaluate simultaneous input from multiple sources.

When conflicting schedules prevent concurrent participation or when continuous access to the community’s shared intellect is crucial, the “virtual time” technologies of e-mail, electronic bulletin boards, and computer conferencing support “different-time/different-space” meetings. In this case, the host computer receives and holds everyone’s input, allowing community members to access the documents at any time of their choice and convenience — , “anytime/anywhere” communication.

The seamless integration of real-time conversations held in a meeting room and those held in the virtual realm is another crucial need. Teams that meet both in-person and on the electronic network need to discover and agree on the best mix of these and other media — telephone, fax, email, videotape, and so on — for completing each of the major tasks that they need to collaborate on.

A computerized system for managing the community’s knowledge assets and memory must provide easy access to shared documents and lessons learned from the past. A well designed system is not merely a repository of files and archives; it also includes the rationale and assumptions upon which actions were based so they can be examined and improved for more effective future action. The system should also indicate where specific organizational memories are located and should be indexed in a logical and easy-to-use manner.

A system has yet to be created that provides all the features that good gardeners of corporate knowledge ecologies would want to have. However, there are many knowledge systems vendors with helpful products. The challenge is to anticipate the set of features that you’ll need in six months or a year. Collaborative scenario-planning, “future conference,” and other processes for anticipating and co-inventing the future can help you design systems to meet upcoming needs.

KE’s Value Proposition

Dysfunctional knowledge ecologies cost organizations much more then well-functioning ones. When information is placed in a database where it is seldom accessed because the details have been separated from the context in which they occurred, companies lose time, money, and valuable insights. When employees hoard working knowledge —  either intentionally or because the organization doesn’t have an infrastructure for individuals to share what they know — it results in lost productivity by triggering the “reinventing the wheel” syndrome, “The same result is produced by hoarding failures. As long as a culture makes people hide their ‘mistakes,’ it pushes others to fall into similar erroneous experiments” (as my colleague Holly Blue Hawkins put it). In each case, the organization’s collective intelligence is squandered and stunted, leaving the company more vulnerable to the whims of the marketplace.

KE is a perspective that responds to the need to nurture systemic wisdom with emerging interdisciplinary insights into the organization and operation of living systems. Corporate knowledge ecosystems are complex adaptive systems. Their power exists in the flexible and evolving relationships among the elements of the system, which interact in complex and often surprising ways. KE provides a framework, tools, and practices for crafting and sustaining evolving webs of relationship in which we can embed and preserve the knowledge that emerges from social activity. In today’s knowledge-driven economy, the highest payoff investment that any business can make is in improving its practices, tools, and methods for creating and sharing new knowledge (see “Improving Organizational Performance”).

Think about your organization. Does it have a collective intelligence, or is it merely a collection of individual intelligences? Organizations that succeed in these times of accelerating change will be social organisms with the collective intelligence to guide them through turbulence and transformation — and the wisdom to take the long view and let it inform the strategic choices of the present. The companies that succeed in achieving repeatable wins in fast-shifting market conditions will be those that have learned to increase value to all stakeholders by leveraging the power of people, knowledge, and technology. These wisdom-driven businesses will easily provide the highest quality products, the highest quality work experience for their members, and an energizing context for societal evolution in the new economy.

George Pór is a pioneer of Knowledge Ecology and the founder of Community Intelligence Labs, a network of change agents dedicated to eliciting transformation by mobilizing the intelligence and wisdom of the whole organization. George is also the convener of the Attention Leadership Circle, an intercorporate research alliance focused on developing better practices and environments for augmenting attention resources of organizations, their leaders, and free agents. Meet him at http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/who/george.shtml.

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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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In this new context, managers must develop a different mindset. They need to deal with a high level of unpredictability and accept the incompleteness of our knowledge base. Moreover, they need to act on the fact that the key differentiating factor between success and failure will be the ability to learn collaboratively with others — both within and outside of their organizations.

Why collaborative learning? In the current business climate, no one person or organization can bridge the chasm between present levels of skills and knowledge and the level of understanding necessary to take advantage of breaking technologies. The challenges of the global economy require that we join with customers, vendors, competitors, and partners from other industries to share insights. Organizational survival into the next century may well depend on our ability to configure collaborative arrangements within and across organizations — quickly, flexibly, and with a clear learning strategy. Companies that cannot network with others to share key knowledge — using the latest technology — will fall hopelessly behind their rivals.

The Practice of Collaborative Learning

What is collaborative learning, and what does it entail in practice? Collaborative learning is the process of generating new knowledge and capability that occurs when two or more people explore key business issues together, with the goal of fulfilling organizational needs and continually building their ability to work and learn in tandem. The practice of collaborative learning moves relationships beyond the mere exchange of information that characterizes most project teams or corporate partnerships. Collaborative learning begins at the individual level. For it to take root in an organization, employees must first develop a collaborative mindset and a collaborative skillset.

A Collaborative Mindset: Seeing New Opportunities

Individuals who adopt a collaborative mindset maintain an active awareness of the collaborative learning potential in every business transaction. They possess an openness and keen interest in others’ perspectives, and develop the ability to gather resources to experiment with and implement new ideas. These employees realize that their own tacit knowledge — when combined with a colleague’s tacit knowledge — may hold the key to a new innovation. Therefore, individuals working from this orientation constantly seek opportunities to explore collaborative potential with partners, coworkers, and even those who seemingly have no direct connection to the business. They leave themselves open to serendipitous opportunities for new partnering that may arise on airplanes, in shopping malls, or in other environments that we typically do not think of as supporting learning.

But a collaborative mindset at the individual level is not enough. To foster this same mindset on an organizational level requires that a firm understand the learning and data acquisition styles of partner organizations. Then the firm must deliver information and knowledge in forms that partners can use. This activity can be as simple as providing a list of the organization’s commonly used acronyms, or as complex as opening the company’s intranet to partners so that they may understand the firm’s inner workings.

When companies become aware of the potential in collaboration, knowledge-generating opportunities arise both by conscious design and by chance. For example, a manager at one firm gave a presentation to a partner company, knowing that a dissatisfied customer sat in the audience. By working from a collaborative mindset, this manager openly engaged the customer in recounting the problems he had experienced with the product and made a commitment to remedy the situation in front of the audience. Over time, this collaborative stance led to a new partnership with the now satisfied customer and resulted in several joint projects, including one at a major airport. Working from a collaborative mindset means continually seeking opportunities to build on existing relationships, and turning neutral or negative circumstances into advantageous ones.

A Collaborative Skillset: Spanning Boundaries

In addition to developing a collaborative mindset, individuals need to build a set of competencies that let them cross boundaries between groups and companies, learn from others, and disseminate that learning throughout their organizations. The six “boundary-spanning skills” described below provide managers with the tools they need to work more productively with others — within and outside of the organization — and to create and manage the knowledge gained through those interactions (for a boundary spanning competency model, go to www.pegasuscom.com/model.html).

Double-Loop Learning. The usual approach to a new experience or piece of data is termed single-loop, or adaptive, learning. (These concepts derive from the work of Chris Argyris.) Single-loop learning occurs when we alter our actions based on new information but we do not question the assumptions and beliefs concerning that data. We see an example of this in how organizations typically handle failure. Analyzing the “lessons learned” from a particular problem may be valuable, but it often results in a list of do’s and don’t’s — single-loop learning. This technique doesn’t delve into the assumptions that brought about the shortfall, nor does it seek to change the system created by those assumptions. In double-loop, or generative, learning, when we encounter failure, we explore our assumptions and commit to behaving differently in the future. Developing skill in double-loop learning involves increasing our awareness of the filters and suppositions that we use to interpret reality, and acting on this insight.

Communication (Dialogue, Feedback, Listening). Effective boundary-spanning relies on hearing, understanding, and empathizing with others. This ability involves listening not only to others but also to ourselves to uncover hidden biases. The practice of dialogue, as first defined by physicist David Bohm, can help. Dialogue supports divergent communication, in which a group allows a stream of viewpoints to flow through the conversation without feeling a need to reach a set conclusion. It also teaches us how to listen to others without judging them. Another component of boundary spanning communication is the capacity to give and receive feedback. This challenging skill helps us to see beyond our own view of reality and improves our ability to communicate with others. Tactfully done, feedback conveys potentially ego-damaging information in a neutral and helpful way. Mediation. As organizations continue to move toward flattened hierarchies, they have less need for traditional management techniques. Instead, they must help their workers learn to influence their peers in productive ways. In particular, mediation capabilities let parties go beyond political maneuvering and a winner-take-all attitude to achieve alignment through a focus on shared interests.

Systems Thinking. Systems thinking provides the essential backdrop for understanding the cause-and-effect relationships between organizations and their larger environments. This perspective highlights the functioning of the system as a whole, rather than the discrete parts that make up that system. The systems thinking toolbox — which includes causal loop diagramming, systems archetypes, stock and flow diagrams, and other tools — provides a powerful methodology for surfacing barriers to change, identifying leverage points for effective action, and building new connections.

Peer Learning. Peer learning is a vital and, in many cases, the most effective form of learning. Traditional corporate learning models involve either in-house classroom training or university courses. These methods emphasize the transfer of theory and case studies from the expert to the student. In current business practice, however, learning must take place “just-in-time,” with theory and practice developed in parallel and all players taking part in problem-solving activities. The concepts of self-directed work teams, 360-degree feedback, and communities of practice all support the increasing relevance of peer learning.

Cultural Literacy. Research shows that success in managing relationships with individuals from other cultures hinges on flexibility, openness, sensitivity, tolerance, curiosity, the ability to handle stress, and a sense of humor. Even armed with these skills, people can still fall victim to their own cultural values and assume that their perspective is the right one. This attitude can spawn unexpected conflict. To work successfully on a global level, organizations must continuously build awareness of cultural differences among employees and help them develop a level of comfort working across cultural boundaries. Such awareness emerges primarily from actual interactions with members of other cultures; it cannot be acquired from books and lectures, no matter how engaging or insightful.

A Collaborative Environment

By combining a collaborative mindset and skill set, managers acquire the skills and flexibility they need to move their organizations forward. As a result, they can inspire individuals to cross boundaries, learn from others, and disseminate that learning through-out the organization (see “The Collaborative Learning Cycle”). Such boundary spanning activities give workers access to business expertise in the moment — and can lead to rich, new insights.

However, there is another prime ingredient necessary for collaborative learning: the organization must support and sustain a collaborative environment. Organizational consultant Edward Marshall defines a collaborative environment as consisting of:

• A Collaborative Culture: a set of core values that shape a business’s behavior, including respect for people, honor and integrity, ownership and alignment, consensus, trust-based relationships, full responsibility and accountability, and recognition and growth
• Collaborative Team Processes: including team formation, management, self-sufficiency and renewal, and closing processes
• A Collaborative Structure: support for collaboration from human resources and information systems
• Collaborative Leadership: the ability to recognize many leaders, not just one; these leaders fulfill a number of functions, such as facilitator, coach, healer, member, manager, change agent

How can an organization bridge the gap between individuals’ development of a collaborative mindset and skillset and the company’s development of a collaborative environment? One way is to form an internal learning group. Drawn from various divisions and levels within the company, such a group focuses on building collaborative capability — and deriving business results from that enhanced capability — within the organization.

These groups begin by assessing the organization’s level of support for collaborative efforts. For example, one company found that workers failed to share technical information across departments because they didn’t understand the firm’s policies regarding intellectual property. In this case, the organization provided additional training to help employees work through these concerns.

Internal learning groups cultivate boundary-spanning skills and practice collaborative learning themselves in addressing the company’s business challenges. For example, a small West-Coast chemical company experienced communication barriers after merging with a lab on the East Coast. Management assembled a group consisting of members from each of the merged entities to address issues of collaboration. This team put together a personnel directory and a compendium of technical success stories from both firms. In addition, it designed a plan for an organization-wide session to inform employees about the merged organization’s new accounting processes, lab procedures, technical competencies, and customer care approaches. In the process, the group discovered pockets of people who were interested in exploring collaboration. Encouraged by this finding, it began to support ongoing experiments in collaborative learning, such as periodic meetings of project managers to exchange knowledge and practices.

These internal learning groups also play a central role in disseminating new knowledge throughout the organization, using tools such as after-action reviews, internal publications, and intranets. The sharing of cutting-edge tools and ideas with other teams creates value because it improves processes and hones collaborative skills. For example, the learning group of a Fortune 500 company experimented with the use of e-meeting software and disseminated that knowledge throughout the company through the technical staff. Finally, the learning group members experience an enhanced degree of interdependence, which steps up collaboration — and performance — even further. The group’s process both begins and ends with a reassessment of the organization’s collaborative learning capability, at an increasingly fine-grained level of inquiry.

Forming a Learning Network

Once the internal learning group has completed some successful projects, it will likely encounter barriers to moving the organization to a fully collaborative environment. These barriers often take the form of inherent conflicts between espoused beliefs, such as “We are a collaborative company,” and core values, such as “The individual is who counts here; watch out for number one.” One way to surmount these barriers is for the group to participate in a learning network (see “The Learning Network” on p. 1), drawn from the work of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Edgar Schein on the learning consortium.

A learning network is a cross-organizational forum in which internal learning groups from diverse organizations can explore challenges together. Group members come together on a regular basis to give and get feedback and create new knowledge. The interaction among the parties sparks behavioral changes that create value for each organization. This is because outsiders may have a more objective view of an organization’s operations and strategies than do those who are involved in the firm’s day-to-day operations. For example, when an information technology company’s learning group presented a new project for a Web-based internal instructional system to the other members of its learning network, someone from another company asked how it would implement the program in countries where Internet access is limited. This query served as powerful feedback for the presenting group.

For a learning network to succeed, the organizations involved must decide how to deal with differential power among the stakeholders; define the network’s mission, goals, and norms; involve dedicated and trained participants; develop a level of trust among individuals and organizations; and assume a win-win orientation. Each member group engages in a process of experimentation, application, and dissemination of knowledge within its own organization. The network member groups then meet regularly to share knowledge and to engage in collaborative projects across organizations. These projects can take the form of joint research, standards setting activities, experimentation, problem-solving, or peer-teaching seminars. Interdependence and trust strengthen when network members follow through on commitments, provide feedback, and come to new insights together.

The ongoing support and vitality of internal learning groups is central at this stage. To create value within their home organizations, member groups in the learning network must capture and transfer learnings from the network’s cross-organizational programs. They can do so through ongoing activities that link internal groups’ projects to the network. This might include visits between companies, the design of collaborative spaces — both physical and Web-based — for network activities that are broadly accessible to members, and frequent face-to-face and virtual meetings, both internal and cross-organizational.

For instance, the Collaborative Learning Network is a consortium of seven companies from a variety of industries dedicated to understanding how collaborative learning can enhance organizational performance. Its members have engaged in a series of monthly virtual seminars over the past year that link semi-annual face-to-face meetings. Network members have found that experimenting with virtual processes for cross-firm communication has directly helped their business units build expertise in collaborative tools. Below are some findings from these joint experiments:

• For virtual meetings, simple tools like phone conferencing, e-mail, and Powerpoint presentations shared on the Web work best. These tools are standardized across organizations and platforms.
• Synchronous meetings, whether face to face or virtual, garner more consistent participation than more open-ended, asynchronous methods, such as Web-based discussion boards.
• Information overload is at best irritating and at worst debilitating. Networks must find a balance between “push” (e-mail, phone, print) and “pull” (Web sites, scheduled events, conferencing) methods of information exchange.

Of course, companies must receive a return on their investment in collaborative processes. Questions to pose in assessing learning network results include: What has been the bottom-line impact of new sources of learning? Have new applications of technology emerged from the network activities? If so, are they now producing profit or cutting costs? Has senior management acted on any feedback received through the learning network’s activities? If so, what has been the outcome?

Each learning network will have a natural life cycle. Once the initial period of activity has concluded — as agreed at the outset — the network members need to enter a closing or renewal phase. If the network chooses to disband, then the participants should schedule a formal closing meeting to celebrate the network’s achievements. Members might also document the network’s experiences in some final form, such as a learning history. As a final outcome, members could assemble a core group of mentors willing to guide other individuals in each organization who may wish to initiate their own learning network (see “Forming a Learning Network”).

Bringing It All Together

If used skillfully, collaborative learning can improve work performance; heighten strategic awareness; enhance responsiveness to changes in the marketplace; and foster more productive relationships with customers, vendors, and other stakeholders. It can also encourage teams to experiment with fresh approaches for addressing problems and for working and thinking together. By combining collaborative awareness and skills at the individual, group, firm, and inter-firm levels, organizations can effect significant and lasting change. In this challenging climate, we all need to develop powerful new models of partnership and learning. Collaborative learning offers a structured way for organizations to quickly adapt to the needs of a changing business environment — to the benefit of individual employees and the organization as a whole.

Dori Digenti is president and founder of Learning Mastery, an education and consulting firm focusing on collaboration and learning. Over the past 20 years, Dori has worked with business, academia, and government to develop cultural literacy, learning capacity, and collaborative competence. She has written the Collaborative Learning Guidebook (1999), as well as articles for Reflections: The SoL Journal, the Organization Development Journal, and other publications. Dori is webmaster for www.learnmaster.com, www.collaborative-learning.org, and a forthcoming Web site on the work of Edgar Schein.

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Breakdowns in human interaction and communication play a pivotal role in organizational life. In the case of Monsanto and American Home Products, the CEOs of the two companies had very different approaches to leadership. One spent his lunch hour playing basketball with employees. The other refused to move to the company’s new headquarters, preferring to stay in touch with key employees by email. The two leaders gradually began to question each other’s motives and moves. For instance, when one of the chairmen recommended a candidate for CFO, the other circulated a memo asserting that this man would never fill the role. Each felt that the other was undermining him and the company. They eventually proved unable to work together, and the merger fell through.

Sometimes apparently successful mergers also quickly show signs of strain. Eight months into their venture, Citigroup, the new amalgamation of Travelers Group and Citicorp, fired James Dimon, the man who acted as peacemaker between, and was assumed to be the heir apparent to, this firm’s two co-chief executives. Dimon was widely respected; his departure came not as a result of poor performance but, as one manager put it, “corporate politics.”

Executives interviewed later said that the collapsed Monsanto and American Home Products deal was “not in the best interests of the shareholders” and that Dimon’s surprising exit “was the best thing for the business.” Yet this kind of talk covers up more honest accounts about what happened. According to reports, the leaders in each of these situations hit awkward conflicts about a range of substantive issues: ultimate control in a “co-CEO” scenario, membership of important executive teams, and the timing of integrating disparate cultures and businesses. In the end, these people failed to find a way to talk and think together effectively to resolve these difficult issues.

Although we all may not be dealing with strained or failing multibillion dollar corporate mergers, we are probably quite familiar with such difficulties in communication and trust and the way these can dramatically affect organizational performance. So how do we create environments that can transform these difficulties into successes?

This article explores how “dialogic leadership,” an approach that has evolved from the core principles from the field of “dialogue,” can lead to the creation of environments that can dissolve fragmentation and bring out people’s collective wisdom.

The Concept of Dialogue

In the new knowledge-based, networked economy, the ability to talk and think together well is a vital source of competitive advantage and organizational effectiveness. This is because human beings create, refine, and share knowledge through conversation. In a world where technology has led to the erosion of traditional hierarchical boundaries, and where former competitors (such as Exxon and Mobil) contemplate becoming bedfellows, the glue that holds things together is no longer “telling” but “conversing.”

The term “dialogue” comes from Greek and signifies a “flow of meaning.” The essence of dialogue is an inquiry that surfaces ideas, perceptions, and understanding that people do not already have. This is not the norm: We typically try to come to important conversations well prepared. A hallmark for many of us is that there are “no surprises” in our meetings. Yet this is the antithesis of dialogue. You have a dialogue when you explore the uncertainties and questions that no one has answers to. In this way you begin to think together – not simply report out old thoughts. In dialogue people learn to use the energy of their differences to enhance their collective wisdom.

Dialogue can be contrasted with “discussion,” a word whose roots mean “to break apart.” Discussions are conversations where people hold onto and defend their differences. The hope is that the clash of opinion will illuminate productive pathways for action and insight. Yet in practice, discussion often devolves into rigid debate, where people view one another as positions to agree with or refute, not as partners in a vital, living relationship. Such exchanges represent a series of one-way streets, and the end results are often not what people wish for: polarized arguments where people withhold vital information and shut down creative options.

Although it may make logical sense to have dialogue in our repertoire, it can seem illusive and even a little quaint. Yet the fact remains that every significant strategic and organizational endeavor requires people at some stage to sit and talk together. In the end, nothing can substitute for this interpersonal contact. Unfortunately, much of our talk merely reinforces the problems we seek to resolve. What is needed is a new approach to conversation, one that can enable leaders to bring out people’s untapped wisdom and collective insights.

Human beings create, refine, and share knowledge through conversation.

“Dialogic leadership” is the term I have given to a way of leading that consistently uncovers, through conversation, the hidden creative potential in any situation. Four distinct qualities support this process: the abilities (1) to evoke people’s genuine voices, (2) to listen deeply, (3) to hold space for and respect as legitimate other people’s views, and (4) to broaden awareness and perspective. Put differently, a dialogic leader is balanced, and evokes balance, because he can embody all four of these qualities and can activate them in others.

An old story about Gandhi illustrates this concept well. A man came to Gandhi with his young son, complaining that he was eating too much sugar. The man asked for advice. Gandhi thought for a moment and then said, “Go away, and come back in three days.” The man did as he was asked and returned three days later. Now Gandhi said to the boy, “You must stop eating so much sugar.” The boy’s father, mystified, inquired, “Why did you need three days to say that?” Gandhi replied, “First, I had to stop eating sugar.” Similarly, dialogic leadership implies being a living example of what you speak about – that is, demonstrating these qualities in your daily life.

Four Action Capabilities for Dialogic Leaders

The four qualities for a dialogic leader mentioned above are mirrored in four distinct kinds of actions that a person may take in any conversation. These actions were identified by David Kantor, a well-known family systems therapist (see “Four-Player Model”). Kantor suggests that some people move – they initiate ideas and offer direction. Other people follow- they complete what is said, help others clarify their thoughts, and support what is happening. Still others oppose – they challenge what is being said and question its validity. And others bystand – they actively notice what is going on and provide perspective on what is happening.

Watching the actions people take can give you enormous information about the quality of their interactions and can indicate if they are moving in the direction of dialogue or discussion. For instance, in a dialogic system, any person may take any of the four actions at any time. Although people may have a preferred position, each individual is able to move and initiate, to follow and complete things, to oppose, and to observe and provide perspective. None of these roles is better or worse than the others. They are all necessary for the system to function properly. As people recognize these different roles and can act on this recognition, they begin to create a sequence of interactions that keeps the conversation moving toward balance.

In a system that is moving away from dialogue, people generally get stuck in one of the four positions. For instance, some people are “stuck movers”: They express one idea, and before that idea is established or acted upon, they give another, and another, making it difficult to know what to focus on. But perhaps most revealing of non-dialogic interactions are the ritualized and repetitive interactions that people fall into that systematically exclude one or more of the positions.

In the Monsanto merger process, for instance, the two CEOs became locked in a dynamic where one would initiate an action, and the other would oppose and neutralize it, leading the other to push back even harder. The conflict eventually escalated to the point where it sabotaged the deal.

An intense move-oppose cycle between two high-powered players like this one often prevents others from fulfilling their roles as “bystanders” and “followers.” The bystanders, who can see the ineffective exchange, often become “disabled,” imagining that no one wants them to identify what is happening. So the knowledge they carry is lost. At the same time, people who might otherwise be inclined to follow one side or the other to help complete what is being said tend to stay on the sidelines, for fear of getting caught in the cross-fire. The result is that the interaction remains unbalanced.

The quality and nature of the specific roles can often cause difficulties. For example, opposers are generally branded as troublemakers because they question the prevailing wisdom when people would prefer to have agreement. For this reason, others often tune them out. This failure to acknowledge the value of the opposer’s perspective leads them to raise their voices and sometimes increase the critical tone of their comments. In such cases, people hear the criticism, but not the underlying intent, which is almost always to clarify, correct, or bring balance and integrity to the situation.

A dialogic leader will often look for ways to restore balance in people’s interactions. For instance, she might strengthen the opposers if they are weak or reinforce the bystanders if they have information but have withheld it. Genuinely making room for someone who wants to challenge typically causes them to soften the stridency of their tone and makes it more possible for others to hear what they have to say. Reinforcing and standing with those who have delicate but vital information can enable them to reveal it. The simple rule here is: Pay attention to the actions that are missing and provide them yourself, or encourage others to do so.

Balancing Advocacy and Inquiry

One central dimension in a dialogue is the emergence of a particular balance between the positions people advocate and their willingness to inquire into their own and other’s views. Professors Chris Argyris and Don Schön first proposed the concepts of “advocacy” and “inquiry” to foster conversations that promote learning (see their book Organizational Learning, Addison-Wesley, 1978 for a fuller explanation). In the vast majority of situations, advocacy rules: People are trained to express their views as fast as possible. As it is sometimes put, “People do not listen, they reload.” They attribute meaning and impute motives, often without inquiring into what others really meant or intended. This was evidently the case in the merger situations described above. Bellicose advocacy stifles inquiry and learning.

The four-player model further reveals the relationship between advocacy and inquiry (see “Balancing Advocacy and Inquiry”). To advocate well, you must move and oppose well; to inquire, you must bystand and follow. Yet again, the absence of any of the elements hinders interaction. For instance, someone who opposes, but fails to also say what he wants (i.e., moves) is likely to be less effective as an advocate. Similarly, someone who follows what others say (“tell me more”) but never provides perspective may draw out more information but never deepen the inquiry. Thus, the figure “Balancing Advocacy and Inquiry” reveals another way to track the action in a conversation and offer balance into it.

Four Practices for Dialogic Leadership

Balanced action, in the sense named here, is an essential and necessary precondition for dialogue. But it is not sufficient. Dialogue is a qualitatively different kind of exchange. Dialogic leaders have an ear for this difference in quality and are constantly seeking to produce it in themselves and others. I have found that there are four distinct practices that can enhance the quality of conversation. These four correspond well to the four positions named above.

For instance, you can choose to move in different ways: by expressing your true voice and encouraging others to do the same, or by imposing your views on others. You can oppose with a belief that you know better than everyone else, or from a stance of respect, in which you acknowledge that your colleagues have wisdom that you may not see. Similarly, you can follow by listening selectively, imposing your interpretation of what the speaker is presenting. Or you can listen as a compassionate participant, grounding your understanding of what is said in directly observable experience. Finally, you can bystand by taking the view that only you can see things as they are, or you can suspend your certainties and accept that others may see things that you miss. In order to make conscious choices about our behavior, we need to become aware of our own intentions and of the impact of our actions on others.

There are four practices implied here — speaking your true voice, and encouraging others to do the same; listening as a participant; respecting the coherence of others’ views; and suspending your certainties. Each requires deliberate cultivation and development (see “Four Practices for Dialogic Leadership”).

Listening. Recently, a manager in a program I was leading said, “You know, I have always prepared myself to speak. But I have never prepared myself to listen.” This is because we take listening for granted, although it is actually very hard to do. Following well requires us to cultivate the capacity to listen – rather than simply impose meaning on what other people are saying. To follow deeply is to blend with someone to the point where we begin to participate fully in understanding how they understand. When we do not listen, all we have is our own interpretation.

Equally important is the ability to listen together. To listen together is to learn to be a part of a larger whole – the voice and meaning emerging not only from me, but from all of us. Dialogues often have a quality of shared emergence, where in speaking together, people realize that they have been thinking about the same things. They are struck when they begin to hear their own thoughts coming out of the mouths of others. Often decisions do not need to be made; the right next step simply becomes obvious to everyone. This kind of flow, while rare, is made possible when we relax our grip on what we think and listen for what others might be thinking. In this situation, we begin to follow not only one another, but the emerging flow of meaning itself.

Respecting. Respect is the practice that shifts the quality of our opposing. To respect is to see people, as Humberto Maturana puts it, as “legitimate others.” An atmosphere of respect encourages people to look for the sense in what others are saying and thinking. To respect is to listen for the coherence in their views, even when we find what they are saying unacceptable.

Peter Garrett, a colleague of mine, has run dialogues in maximum security prisons in England for four years. He deals with the most serious, violent offenders in that country on a weekly basis. Together, they have produced some remarkable results. For instance, prisoners who will not attend any other sessions come to the dialogue. Offenders who start off speaking incomprehensibly and who carry deep emotional wounds gradually learn to speak their voice and to listen. Peter carries an unusual ability to respect, which reassures and strengthens the genuineness in others. This stance enables him to challenge and oppose what they say, without evoking reaction. I asked him to share the most important lesson that he has learned in his work. He said, “Inquiry and violence cannot coexist.” True respect enables genuine inquiry.

Suspending. When we listen to someone speak, we face a critical choice. On the one hand, we can resist the speaker’s point of view. We can try to get the other person to understand and accept the “right” way to see things. We can look for evidence to support our view that they are mistaken and discount evidence that may point to flaws in our own logic. This behavior produces what one New York Times editorial writer called “serial monologues,” rather than dialogue.

On the other hand, we can learn to suspend our opinion and the certainty that lies behind it. Suspension means that we neither suppress what we think nor advocate it with unilateral conviction. Rather, we display our thinking in a way that lets us and others see and understand it. We simply acknowledge and observe our thoughts and feelings as they arise without feeling compelled to act on them. This practice can release a tremendous amount of creative energy. To suspend is to bystand with awareness, which makes it is possible for us to see what is happening more objectively.

For instance, in one of our dialogues with steelworkers and managers, a union leader said, “We need to suspend this word union. When you hear it you say ‘Ugh.’ When we hear it we say ‘Ah.’ Why is that?” This statement prompted an unprecedented level of reflection between managers and union people. Our research suggests that suspension is one of several practices essential to bringing about genuine dialogue.

Voicing. Finally, to speak our voice is perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of dialogic leadership. “Courageous speech,” says poet David Whyte in his book The Heart Aroused, “has always held us in awe.” It does so, he suggests, because it is so revealing of our inner lives. Speaking our voice has to do with revealing what is true for each of us, regardless of all the other influences that might be brought to bear on us.

In December 1997, around a crowded table in the Presidential Palace in Tatarstan, Russia, a group of senior Russian and Chechen officials and their guests were in the middle of dinner. Things had been tense earlier in the day. Chechnya had recently asserted its independence through guerrilla warfare and attacks on the Russians. They had shocked the world by forcing the Russian military to withdraw and accede to their demands for recognition as an independent state. The Chechens were deeply suspicious of the academics and Western politicians who had gathered everyone in that room; the Chechens feared that they were Russian pawns intent on derailing Chechen independence. The Russians, for their part, were fearful of adding further legitimacy to what they considered a deeply troubling situation.

And yet, despite all this suspicion, after a few hours people began to relax. At the first toast of the evening, the negotiator/facilitator of the session stood up and said, “Up until a few days ago, I had been with my mother in New Mexico in the States. She is dying of cancer. I debated whether to come here at all to participate in this gathering. But when I told her that I was coming to help facilitate a dialogue among all of you, in this important place on the earth, she ordered me to come. There was no debate. So here I am. I raise my glass to mothers.” There followed a long moment of silence in the room.

Dialogic leaders cultivate listening, suspending, respecting, and voicing

It is in courageous moments like these that one’s genuine voice is heard. Displays of such profound directness can lift us out of ourselves. They show us a broader horizon and put things in perspective. Such moments also remind us of our resilience and invite us to look harder for a way through whatever difficulties we are facing. When we “move” by speaking our authentic voice, we set up a new order of things, open new possibilities, and create.

Changing the Quality of Action

Dialogic leaders cultivate these four dimensions – listening, suspending, respecting, and voicing — within themselves and in the conversations they have with others. Doing so shifts the quality of interaction in noticeable ways and, in turn, transforms the results that people produce. Failing to do so narrows our view and blinds us to alternatives that might serve everyone.

For instance, in the Monsanto merger story, the CEOs did not seem to respect the coherence of each other’s views. Each one found the other more and more unacceptable. Although we do not know for sure, it seems likely that they did not reflect on perspectives different from their own in such a way that enabled them to see new possibilities. The paradox here is that suspending one’s views and making room for the possibility that the other person’s perspectives may have some validity could open a door that would be otherwise shut. By becoming locked into a rigid set of actions, these leaders ruled out a qualitatively different approach — one that they could have made if they had applied the four dialogic practices described above.

Dialogic leadership focuses attention on two levels at once: the nature of the actions people take during an interaction and the quality of those interactions. Kantor’s model is a potent aid in helping diagnose the lack of balance in actions in any conversation. By noticing which perspective is missing, you can begin to reflect on why this is so and quickly gain valuable information about the situation as a whole.

Dialogic leadership can appear anywhere, at any level of an organization. As people apply the principles outlined above, they are learning to think together, and so greatly increase the odds that they will build the expansive relationships required to build success in the new economy.

William N. Isaacs is the president of Dialogos, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based consulting firm, and is a lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. This article is drawn from his new book, Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together, to be published in May 1999 by Doubleday.

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Kegan, a professor of education, and Lahey, a psychologist specializing in adult development, refer to our powerful inclinations not to change as “dynamic equilibrium,” which they define as “a system of countervailing motions that maintains a remarkably hearty balance, an equilibrating process continuously manufacturing immunity to change.” (Those of us steeped in the language of systems thinking will recognize this description as a balancing process.) According to the authors, much as we might protest to the contrary, the status quo fills some hidden need that ultimately takes precedence over our impulse to change.

Surfacing the inner contradiction between the desire to change and the need to maintain things as they are is difficult, because a web of tightly held assumptions keeps us from seeing this gap. But studying the factors that contribute to our “immunity to change” can serve as a rich source of transformational learning and ultimately lead to lasting results. To facilitate the process, the authors spell out what they call a “new technology for personal learning” built around different ways of talking to ourselves and others (see “A ‘Technology’ for Personal Learning” on page 9).

New Ways of Talking

These seven novel “languages” are tools that “gradually introduce you to your own immune system, your own dynamic equilibrium, the forces that keep the immune system in place, and the possibilities of transcending it.” The first four languages work on the internal or personal level; the final three operate on an interpersonal or organizational level. According to Kegan and Lahey, “The forms of speaking we have available to us regulate the forms of thinking, feeling, and meaning making to which we have access, which in turn constrain how we see the world and act in it.” By moving through a series of inquiries, the reader begins to shift from “NBC (nagging, bitching, and whining) talk” to possibilities for transformational change.

In contrast to other approaches that focus on the positive, the authors believe that it’s important to start by paying attention to people’s complaints, because they represent untapped potential and energy. The first step (which corresponds to the first “language”) is to reframe “what we can’t stand” to “what we stand for.” Readers record these commitments and other responses on a chart, which forms a map of each person’s “immune system.” The second step involves reflecting on what we’re doing that prevents us from fully realizing our commitments. Doing so is more than just accepting blame or fixing a problem; it involves learning from the issue in order to truly change the way we think, so that over time the problem “solves us.”

In the third step, readers identify the deep-seated, unspoken commitments we hold that conflict with our stated goal. For example, someone who articulates a commitment to communicating more openly and directly at work may also be tacitly committed to not being seen as the “Brave Crusader” or “Miss Holier-Than-Thou.” Kegan and Lahey emphasize that the self-protective impulse embodied by the competing commitment is a normal, powerful human motive, and not a symptom of weakness or ineffectiveness. But unless we bring it to light,

Unless we have the courage to examine and update our veiled assumptions, we’ll be trapped in a cycle of déjà vu all over again and again and again.

our efforts to change will be futile, and we will remain in the thrall of the dynamic equilibrium that keeps the status quo in place.

The fourth step is to explore the “Big Assumptions” embedded in the competing commitment. Most professional development activities are corrective rather than transformative, because they don’t help us to explore and dispel the fears and myths that we accept as truths. These “truths” are often assumptions consisting of dire consequences that might result if we take actions to forward our goal; for example, “I assume that if people did see me as a Brave Crusader . . . then I would eventually be completely shunned, have no real connections in my office other than the most formal and functional, and actually I’d find work a nightmare . . .” With the dread of this kind of outcome, no wonder most of us have a hard time adopting different behaviors.

Once we articulate these assumptions, we can then begin to dismantle them by looking for experiences that cast doubt on them, exploring how we came to hold them, and testing them in safe settings. These incremental changes in our thinking can ultimately lead to large shifts in our sense of the possibilities available to us and the actions we can consider taking. As Kegan and Lahey state, “Even small changes in our Big Assumptions can have big implications for permanently altering our once-captivating equilibrium.”

“Language Communities”

After introducing the steps outlined above, the authors offer three additional languages for improving how we interact with others. Through these novel ways of talking, interpersonal problems and conflicts become a curriculum for transformational learning on an individual and group level. By identifying a collective problem, creating an agreement about how to handle it in the future, monitoring when the agreement is kept and when it is violated, and exploring these violations in the spirit of learning, teams can create lasting changes in the ways in which they think and work together.

Throughout this book, Kegan and Lahey emphasize the importance of engaging in this work with a partner or through building a “language community” in order to inform and sustain the change process. They also forward the notion that effective leaders at all levels of an organization must recognize that supporting the transformational learning of others is a key part of their jobs. But perhaps the most important idea that permeates the authors’ work is that, in order to combat and overcome chronic problems, people must change not just what they do, but what they believe. As difficult as that may sound, unless we have the courage to examine and update our veiled assumptions, we’ll be trapped in a cycle of déjà vu all over again and again and again.

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Our first response to any given situation often comes from emotion. Why? Because the part of our brain that processes emotions develops earlier that the parts that deal with logic and reasoning. As we mature, the rational brain often tries to override the emotional brain, like a big sister or brother who “knows better.” The result of this inner struggle is stress, which spills over in the way in which we conduct our dealings with others and undermines our effectiveness and sense of well-being.

A simple tool I call “Eye of the Needle” can help integrate the rational and emotional parts of the brain, helping us avoid stress and harness more of our brainpower to focus on solutions. This approach integrates a communication strategy developed by management theorist Chris Argyris called the “left-hand/right-hand column” with the work of neuroscientist Candace Pert on emotional memory. By identifying the parts of a conversation that remain unspoken and the feelings that underlie those responses, we can better integrate our emotional and logical response so that we communicate completely, speaking the whole truth in a state of mutual respect.

Here are the steps:

1) Think about a recent conversation that did not go well; that is, you left it dissatisfied, uneasy, or downright disturbed. Now draw a vertical line down a sheet of paper. Write “RH” at the top of the right-hand column and “LH” at the top of the left-hand column.

2) In the right-hand column, write what you said and what the other person said. Transcribe the conversation as if you were copying it from a tape recording.

A simple tool called “Eye of the Needle” can help integrate the rational and emotional parts of the brain, helping us avoid stress and harness more of our brainpower to focus on solutions.

3) After you have completed the right-hand column, write in the left-hand column what you were thinking but didn’t say during the conversation.

4) When you have finished these first steps, write the answers to these two questions at the bottom of the paper: Why didn’t you say what’s in the left-hand column? What might have happened if you had said those words?

5) Read what you wrote in the left-hand column. Where in your body do you feel a reaction? People often answer, “like a punch in the gut,” “tightness in my chest,” or “tenseness in my neck or shoulders.”

In her research on the brain and body memory systems, Candace Pert discovered that 98 percent of our memory is stored outside of our brains; it is chemically bonded in peptide receptors, distributed throughout our bodies. Since the emotional center of our brain is fully developed when we are born and the logical/rational centers do not mature until much later—late teens or early twenties—most of the memories we have are emotional, from experiences that happened when we were 3 or 9 or 16 and have nothing to do with the current situation. But these memories are fast, because the neural paths from emotion to consciousness are so well traveled. Emotions become triggered before our more rational thoughts can override them.

A key to effective communication is to realize that what we are feeling is within us, not in the external situation. If we try to supercede the emotional response with reason, we experience anxiety and send out a dissonant signal, which the other person “reads” and interprets to mean that our words don’t “ring true.” So the key to success is to bypass both the old emotional response and the overriding rational response by integrating the two in a spirit of mutual respect.

6) Think of a time when you were completely at peace. Maybe you were simply driving along a highway with a beautiful view. Maybe you were in your favorite chair, quietly resting. Fully feel the sense of peace and serenity. Where in your body do you feel it? Most people will say, “in my heart” or “just behind my breastbone.”

7) In that feeling state of mind, use a pencil or pen to draw a thin oval, like the eye of a big needle, around the vertical line that separates the left-hand and right-hand columns (see “Eye of the Needle” on p. 8). Imagine “threading” this needle with the words you might have spoken—words that completely honor and respect how you think and feel, while also honoring and respecting the other person. What might you have said that would have accomplished these goals? The act of physically drawing the oval around the vertical line gives a visual and tactile reinforcement for the new pattern you are creating. Write those words on a piece of paper. Then say them out loud. What part of your body resonates when you say those words?

When people begin to use this tool, they find it useful to go through the full process several times a week. Over time, they begin to feel that their conversation is more authentic. With practice, their skill improves, and they don’t always feel the need to write out the left-hand/right-hand columns. To prepare for a particularly challenging conversation, many people benefit by grounding themselves in a sense of peace and serenity and letting the words flow from there, unrehearsed. There will always be challenging conversations. But as we become more practiced at linking our thoughts and feelings, those conversations become much easier.

Many of us lack the skill to integrate our emotional and rational selves simply because we haven’t practiced doing so. If you feel uncomfortable in a conversation, say something like, “I’m feeling uneasy and I don’t know why. I’d like to stop this conversation and come back to it when I’m clearer so I can give you my best thinking.” Go to a quiet place and write out the left-hand and right-hand columns; then, “thread the needle” with the words you would like to say. When you are ready, rejoin the conversation.

EYE OF THE NEEDLE

The “Eye of the Needle” integrates a communication strategy developed by management theorist Chris Argyris called the “left-hand/right-hand column” with the work of neuroscientist Candace Pert on emotional memory. By identifying the parts of a conversation that remain unspoken and the feelings that underlie those responses, we can better integrate our emotional and logical response so that we communicate completely, speaking the whole truth in a state of mutual respect.

Using Eye of the Needle as a tool enables us to integrate emotion and reason, eliminating the stress response and resulting in wisdom. Emotion is real. It cannot be ignored or overridden without a price, which is eventually illness. But giving full vent to emotion destroys relationships, which is also unacceptable. The power of truth comes through threading the needle—honoring emotion and reason as valuable human assets, honoring the other person, and honoring each of our unique needs and traits.

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