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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Is that a good thing? Well, it depends on the quality of the meeting. Educational professionals concur that most of the time they spend in “meeting mode” could be better used otherwise. Are we to conclude, then, that meetings should be abolished? On the contrary, an understanding of systems and learning suggests that meetings can and should be powerful vehicles of positive change, leading participants to common understanding that results in authentic engagement and alignment.

A Systems Perspective

The fault is not in the meeting form itself but in our approach to meetings. According to Fred Kofman and Peter Senge (in Learning Organizations: Developing Cultures for Tomorrow’s Workplace, edited by Sarita Chawla and John Renesch, Productivity Press, 1995), “the main dysfunctions in today’s organizations are actually by-products of their past success.” As a culture, we have become accustomed to going to meetings that are rarely interesting, much less opportunities for learning and community development. Nevertheless, those poorly constructed gatherings have managed to move us forward as schools. Any hint of doing away with or dramatically changing them is often perceived as heresy, heard as “that’s not the way we do things here.”

As a culture, we have become accustomed to going to meetings that are rarely interesting, much less opportunities for learning and community development.

The solution? Looking at the school district from a systems perspective. In a systems worldview, as we move from the primacy of the pieces to the primacy of the whole, each meeting provides an opportunity for participants to develop a collective understanding of their connectedness and interdependence. As people evolve from focusing on self to focusing on self as a member of a larger community, the purpose of meetings shifts from solving problems to creating, from defending absolute truths of the moment to achieving coherent and collective interpretations of what they want their school to be.

Gone are the gripe sessions, the meetings that take place simply because it is the appointed time for the appointed group to convene, and the gatherings that subtly pull a subsystem (department, grade level, staff sector) off the track of established vision and mission. Participants no longer come to the table with the traditional burning questions: How is my job to be redefined today? or How can I use this meeting to get what I want within the system? Instead, every meeting within the entire school district centers on aligning people’s efforts to help achieve the system’s vision and mission.

This new meeting paradigm enables leaders to steward the system rather than control it. Instead of poking around in unfolding educational and administrative processes, the facilitator clarifies and aligns the action of the group. Time is redirected from typical “administrivia” and ritual actions to the development of shared meaning, as each participant experiences personal learning through conversation. This shift enables meeting leaders to “identify problems that can best be addressed through collective action and then involve others in finding solutions” (Liebman and Friedrich, “Teachers, Writers, Leaders” in Educational Leadership, 65(1) September 2007). The leader of such a meeting is now a community agent helping to align his or her group with the system’s goals and facilitating the design of methods for achieving those goals.

A FOCUS on Conversational Leadership

To make this shift, in school systems across the country, district and school-level leaders regularly engage people in results-oriented, focused meetings based on a communication model called “conversational leadership,” a phrase to my knowledge coined by Carolyn Baldwin, an elementary principal from Winter Haven, Florida. Conversational leadership (CL) uses multiple learning tools to develop a common understanding and aligned action in an organization. The philosophical foundations of this approach lie in Malcolm Knowles’s adult learning models, the total quality work of W. Edwards Deming, Peter Senge’s learning organizations, Edward Schein’s ideas of process consulting, leadership philosopher Robert K. Greenleaf’s servant-leadership, and effective communication theory.

Using the conversational leadership model, the designer and steward of each meeting is responsible for helping to achieve the organization’s desired outcomes through learning. The successful meeting, then, will have as its particular outcome some type of personal or team structural change — i.e.,a change in thinking, acting, or interacting. As this change occurs, the group becomes realigned with the system’s goals, identifying and committing to methods it can adopt to help achieve those goals. As each and every meeting is focused on supporting the success of the system as a whole, the meeting leader — whether teacher, principal, PTO president, or curriculum supervisor—crafts and stewards the meeting in alignment with the system’s mission and goals.

Each meeting begins with ground rules, which can be posted and referenced as needed. We recommend FOCUS (each of these items is defined and explained below):

F: Follow the learning conversation guidelines (see “Five Guidelines for Learning Conversations”)

O: Open with Check-in and CPO (Context, Purpose, Outcome)

C: Clarify each agenda item with CPO

U: Use Closing-the-Learning-Loop protocols

S: Support safe space

Begin with a simple check-in procedure, inviting each participant to make a short statement that bridges the gap from their previous task/experience to the one at hand, ending with “I’m in.” Once participants have been reminded of the ground rules and have centered themselves, the leader provides a quick but essential overview to put the meeting in the context of the larger picture: How does today’s meeting fit into our larger, ongoing efforts and vision? He or she then states the purpose of the meeting (which should never be “because it’s the day of the month we always meet”) and tells participants exactly what outcome they can expect.

Context: How this meeting/agenda item fits into the overall mission/vision

Purpose: What common understanding or shared meaning we intend to develop

Outcome: What we will each know or be able to do when the meeting concludes

Some examples of context might be:

• An incident involving student rights has occurred that needs our attention.
• We are three months out from our ten year accreditation filing deadline.
• The Board has requested our input on a matter of policy at its next meeting.

Using those three examples, a purpose statement might be:

• I want to share the details of the incident and build consensus for a response.
• Today we’ll look at our timeline and make course corrections.
• I want your opinions on this matter to help me make a recommendation that represents your interests.

Finally, with those purposes in mind, the outcome might be stated in one of these three ways:

• At the close of this meeting, each of us will know the Board’s position and how we can support it.
• By the end of the meeting, we’ll have identified a handful of target areas and the steps we’ll take, collectively and individually, to bring them up to speed.
• I hope to have a rough draft of my recommendation, with your help, before we adjourn.

Once the CPO is clear, the leader can engage the participants through conversational learning techniques, clarifying for understanding as needed. Some organizations devote numerous meetings and retreats to truly mastering the concept of “learning conversation.” The leader’s efforts to confirm for common understanding are critical in developing shared meaning that leads to purposeful action. She does so by closing the learning loop — inviting participants to share their understanding about the information presented thus far. And, through it all, the facilitator must work to create a safe space, a team setting that promotes forthright sharing and discussion because participants feel comfortable and trusting.

Groups often apply three steps of this four-step process over and over throughout the meeting, bringing each topic of interest through the stages of learning conversation, clarity, and confirmation. When all business has been concluded, it is important to invite participants to assess the meeting’s effectiveness for the purpose of improving on the process at the next meeting. Such a protocol, in partnership with a new understanding and appreciation of the meeting as a valid way for a system to learn and grow, can turn your gatherings into meetings that matter.

One Voice

Once all the leaders at all levels within the system are able and willing to use conversational leadership to facilitate meetings that move the system toward its goals, the system begins to speak with one voice. That does not preclude disagreement. Vigorous disagreement among leaders using learning protocols does not damage effective communication. Conversely, disagreement allows for learning and enhances understanding, which leads to shared meaning. Sincere disagreement should not be construed as disloyalty or as a threat to the system’s unity. Difference of opinion marks an opportunity to deepen understanding, enhance the quality of working relationships, and accomplish alignment. Disciplined meeting conversation is one of the answers: “If we cannot talk together, we cannot work together” (William Isaacs, Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together, Doubleday, 1999).

Through conversational leadership, participants are gradually able to recognize the interdependence of the varying subsystems and appreciate the value of constructive interaction with others. The steady stream of documents for approval disappears from the regular agenda as the “approval” syndrome becomes inconsistent with proper delegation. Everyone does his or her own work instead of pretending that endlessly supervising the day-to-day action of others is a meaningful contribution.

Meetings no longer aim at managing individuals or incessantly redefining operational details. The executive team learns that what it previously thought was “monitoring” was merely wandering around in the presence of data. Meetings no longer focus on complaints. Problems are expected to be resolved locally; if not, the issue is viewed as symptomatic of a system flaw. All players get to “have their say,” but they maintain the priority of the school’s performance outcomes and common mission.

More meetings are spent learning diverse points of view regarding the heart of the school’s responsibility —  supporting and nurturing the student body by projecting future needs and garnering wisdom for long-term decision making about performance results and structures. On a daily basis, teachers learn from one another through conversation with their peers; this becomes the predominant meeting structure. Gone is the preoccupation with what schools do in favor of clearly defining what schools are for. Finally, leadership becomes visionary, focusing on the shared dreams of the community, because it is no longer forged in a flurry of trivia, micromanagement, and administrative detail.

Successful meetings in schools and school systems, at all levels and for all purposes, can become significantly more effective and productive if they follow a carefully tested protocol. A good meeting is highly structured in its core processes, but fluid in nature, welcoming and encouraging participation. Ironically, the more carefully structured the meeting, the easier it is to invite dialogue and allow meaningful conversations to take their course. Following the format outlined above, meetings will achieve clear communication and common understanding — something vitally important in today’s educational institutions.

Raymond D. Jorgensen, Ph. D., consults, facilitates, and conducts workshops for public and private school systems, city and county governments, hospitals, banks, branches of the military, physicians’ offices, and a variety of private businesses. He spent 30 years in private and public schools as a teacher, coach, department head, collegiate faculty member, and school administrator. Ray holds an M. S. in Teaching and wrote a doctoral dissertation on learning organizations and organizational change.

For Additional Reading

Brown, Juanita. TheWorld Café: Shaping Our FuturesThrough ConversationsThat Matter (Berrett-Koehler, 2005)

Caine, Renate Nummela, and Geoffrey Caine. Education on the Edge of Possibility (ASCD, 1997)

de Geus, Arie. The Living Company: Habits for Survival in aTurbulent Business Environment (Harvard Business School Press, 1997)

Gardner, Howard. Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People’s Minds (Harvard Business School Press, 2006)

Schein, Edgar., “Dialogue and culture,” Organizational Dynamics (1993, autumn)

Senge, Peter, et al. Schools That Learn: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (Currency Doubleday, 2000)

Sergiovanni, Thomas J. Building Community in Schools. (Jossey-Bass, 1994)

The post Meetings That Matter: Conversational Leadership in Today’s Schools appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

By following these simple guidelines, you can make the time you and others spend in meetings satisfying, build productive relationships with your partners, and ultimately create rewarding outcomes. And isn’t that why we schedule meetings to begin with?

Deborah Reidy (deborah@reidyassociates.org), president and founder of Reidy Associates, has worked with many kinds of organizations since 1977. Along with her work as a consultant, she founded several businesses and was director of training for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation. For additional resources, go to www.reidyassociates.org

The post Facilitating Constructive Meetings appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

• An epidemic accelerates in proportion to the number of people exposed, which in turn increases the likelihood that the epidemic will spread even further.
• Downsizing is likely to reduce an executive’s ability to generate revenue (not just costs), which in turn decreases profits and increases pressure to downsize yet again.
• Acts of violence perpetrated by one party in a war stimulate acts of revenge by the other party, which in turn lead to violent retaliation by the first party and an ongoing escalation by both sides.

Although people are easily caught in vicious cycles, they often do not see these cycles as endless spirals and do not know how to escape the dynamic.

This article:

• Describes an easy way to identify vicious cycles that people are caught in;
• Explains a four-step process to transform this dynamic into an engine of success instead of failure;
• Will expand your thinking beyond simple vicious cycles to enrich your understanding of common problems and identify specific interventions for complex systems.

Doom Looping

One easy way to identify vicious cycles we are caught in is called “doom looping,” originally developed by Jennifer Kemeny. Doom looping has four steps:

1. Identify a problem symptom that concerns you because it seems to get worse and worse over time. For example, your symptom might be morale problems.
2. Identify three immediate and independent causes of the problem symptom. For example, three immediate causes of morale problems might be a difficult manager, lack of career opportunities, and job pressures and stress.
3. Clarify three immediate and independent consequences of the growing problem symptom. For example, three immediate consequences of morale problems are turnover, quality problems, and performance issues.
4. Finally, show how at least one of the consequences exacerbates at least one of the causes. The connection might be direct or indirect. For example, the consequence of turnover is that it increases workload for key personnel, which in turn increases job pressures and stress, thereby increasing morale problems and turnover even further (see “Vicious Cycles”). This dynamic is a vicious cycle or, in systems thinking parlance, a reinforcing feedback loop.

VICIOUS CYCLES

One easy way to identify vicious cycles we are caught in is called “Doom Looping.”

Transforming Vicious Cycles

Once you have identified a vicious cycle, you can look for where to break the cycle and ideally transform it into a positive engine of growth. This involves four steps:

1. Identify at least one link in the vicious cycle that is governed by people’s beliefs or assumptions instead of hard-wired into the system. This is a link that can be broken. To clarify this link, ask, “Is this cause-effect link inevitable, or can it be influenced by changing how people think and behave?”

   Example: “Do morale problems necessarily have to lead to high turnover?” Here the answer is “No,” because the existence of morale problems could just as well stimulate the active engagement of your best people—the ones most likely to leave first when things get bad—in turning around the organization. By contrast, once turnover occurs (especially of good people), the workload of key personnel is likely to increase and, as a result, so will job pressures and stress, and then morale problems. These links are more hardwired into the vicious cycle.

2. Redirect the causal factor in the weak link by creating a new goal. Ask, “What do we want to accomplish when this causal factor appears?”

   Example: “We want to establish a highly effective organization led by our best people at all levels.”

3. Clarify the corrective actions required to bridge the gap between where you are and the new goal.

   Example: “In order to increase morale and achieve the goal of an effective organization led by our best people at all levels, we will ask these people to reassess the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities and lead task forces to capitalize on the most critical areas.

4. Implement reinforcing actions that sustain the new momentum. Because managers tend to be pulled by multiple demands, they often take their attention off of a new initiative once it appears to be moving forward. In order to ensure that the change in direction is sustained, it is important to implement actions that reinforce this direction over time.

   Example: The task force leaders can benefit from individual coaching and team learning meetings that enable them to overcome organizational resistance, deal with surprises, and increase each others’ effectiveness. This process should be followed by timely implementation of their recommendations and adjustments in the organizational infrastructure to support new ways of working.

Addressing More Complex Dynamics

Because vicious cycles are relatively easy to identify when things go wrong, we are tempted to see them everywhere we look. However, focusing on many vicious cycles tends to confuse people and limit their ability to identify effective interventions. There are two ways to make sense of multiple vicious cycles and key in on high-leverage interventions:

• The first is to simplify multiple vicious cycles by identifying the four to seven variables that people believe are most critical to the problem. Next, depict how these variables interact with each other by drawing no more than two or three loops. Once you have simplified the number of loops, use the above method for breaking and transforming vicious cycles to develop an intervention strategy.
• The second approach is to recognize that vicious cycles tend to disguise and dominate more complex dynamics. These dynamics can often be depicted initially as systems archetypes. Archetypes provide a rich, comprehensive explanation of what is happening while still being easy to understand. In addition to providing clarity that is both sophisticated and accessible, systems archetypes enable people to target more specific high-leverage interventions.

Example: If a vicious cycle is created when people use a quick fix to reduce a problem symptom, draw the “Fixes That Backfire” (also known as the “Fixes That Fail”) archetype, and apply interventions for producing a sustainable solution (see, for example, Systems Archetypes Basics: From Story to Structure by Daniel H. Kim andVirginia Anderson, Pegasus Communications, 1998). If one or more vicious cycles increase dependence on a quick fix and undermine your ability to implement a more fundamental long-term solution, show the “Shifting the Burden” archetype and use interventions designed to support this solution.

Other dynamics where vicious cycles tend to dominate include:

• Success to the Successful—one part of the system performs better and better over time at the expense of decreasing success of another part;
• Accidental Adversaries—the unintended consequences of actions taken by two potential collaborators undermine each other’s effectiveness;
• Competing Goals—efforts to achieve too many goals for too many different parties reduce their ability to accomplish any goal satisfactorily;
• Escalation—two parties continuously amplify their activities to defeat the other without ever achieving a sustainable advantage.

In sum: Identifying vicious cycles is often a great place to start applying systems thinking to chronic, complex problems. At the same time, people can often gain richer insight and even greater leverage by testing for and depicting the systems archetypes that produce these cycles.

David Peter Stroh is a principal of Applied Systems Thinking and founder and principal of www.bridgewaypartners.com. David is an expert in applying systems thinking to organizational and social change. You can contact him at dstroh@appliedsystemsthinking.com.

This article is adapted with permission from the Applied Systems Thinking Library. © Applied Systems Thinking 2006

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