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.

The post Flexing a Different Conversational “Muscle”: The Practice of Dialogue appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

A shared commitment to act toward a compelling goal.

Why do I like it?

• First, it emphasizes that strategy is about action – not about analyzing, forecasting, writing papers, filling out forms, compiling spreadsheets, but about action.
• Second, it speaks of a shared commitment – the kind of commitment that management needs so that they continue to act as a team, even when things get tough.
• Third, it recognizes the importance of a compelling goal – the objective, that, when realized, brings vision into reality.

I recognize that the statement makes no declaration about what the goal should be or about what actions should be taken, but I ask that you ride with that gap for the moment — all will be revealed in due course. I also recognize that are many ways of building a shared commitment to act and of defining a good strategy. Scenario planning, which I will focus on, is just one of them.

Gods, Gamblers, Grinders, and Guides

All organizations have their own dominant beliefs, and top managers have their own styles. Some people believe, for example, that it is possible to predict the future (if not in general, then at least as far as their own organizations are concerned); others prefer to believe that the future is uncertain and that the journey into the future is one of exploration. As regards style, some leaders exercise very strong control, while others seek to empower those in their organizations (see “Four Leadership Styles”).

Strong, controlling leaders who believe they can predict the future are much like gods: Not only do they know what they want, they know best, too. You don’t have to read Homer to learn that any mortal who incites the wrath of an angry god soon has an uncomfortable time. Such leaders need no tools and techniques to formulate a strategy: They know. From time to time, they might actually be right.

Strong, controlling leaders who are less certain of their powers of prediction often behave like gamblers: They place a bet that the future will evolve in a certain way and, if it does, fine; if it doesn’t, well, let’s throw the dice again and see what happens a second time. Gamblers, too, need few tools and techniques, but they might like some financial analyses to give them a feel for the odds.

Empowerers who believe they can predict the future are convinced that, somewhere out there, the “right” strategic answer exists, if only they can find it. These are the grinders, managers who are forever grinding away on more analyses, more research, more numbers. These people love tools and techniques, with their five forces, their value chains, their PERTS, and their SWOTS.

In many cases, the most successful leaders may be those empowerers who choose to serve as guides: They seek to carefully steer their organizations through the uncertainties that the future will inevitably bring. How can they steer the safest course? Well, to do so, they need a map. The problem is that no such map can be found, for maps exist in space, not in time.

It is in this last arena that scenarios can help, for scenarios are stories describing how the future might evolve. Scenarios therefore do a similar job in time to that done by maps in space. But because the future might evolve in many ways, there are many possible scenarios, each of which represents one possible view of what might happen over the next five, 10, or 20 years. Importantly, the emphasis within each scenario is not on the internal aspects of the business, but rather on the external context in which the business might operate; robust scenarios depict the future in terms of politics, economics, sociology, demography, technology, and industrial structures.

By imagining what such a future might be, you can test whether or not a particular strategy for your own business will be beneficial, should that future indeed come to pass. And by explicitly recognizing that there might be several different futures, any one of which might happen, you can test your strategy against each and see if some strategies are more robust than others. In essence, scenario planning is a form of simulation: It is the business manager’s equivalent of the jet pilot’s flight simulator. The scenarios project you and your organization into the future, and provide a realistic, rich context in which you can examine whether or not particular strategies – the development of new products, the entry into new markets, or whatever – are likely to be successful.

Scenarios also serve to heighten your understanding of risk, so that when you put your strategy into action, you will be much more aware of how changes in the external environment are likely to impact your business. Then if you notice that the world is in fact evolving in a direction for which your strategy is less appropriate, you will be able to change course easily and quickly, far more so than your competitors, who may not have noticed what is going on, or, if they have, may continue for some time in a state of denial.

But how does scenario-based strategic planning – to give it its full name – actually work?

Scenario-Based Strategic Planning

Scenario-based strategic planning comprises two principal activities:

• First, the development of a small number of scenarios – say, up to five – each of which describes a different view of how a future world might look.
• Second, the agreement on a strategy – a set of actions that the organization is committed to take.

As indicated by “Scenario Development and Strategy Formation,” the process of scenario development is divergent and strives to embrace as broad as possible a view of how the future might evolve, in order to encompass the future’s inevitable uncertainties. This is done through a series of group workshops, supported by research, and the gathering of expert opinions. The purpose of the scenarios is to provide a series of backdrops against which different strategies can be assessed. Questions such as “Should we enter the [whatever] market?”, “What are the risks of making [whatever] investment?” and the like are tested against each of the scenarios. Participants assume that, yes, they do enter that market, and that, yes, they do make that investment, and then imagine that they and their organization are projected into each scenario 10 years into the future. They can then assess, using “projected hindsight,” whether or not those decisions were “good” or “bad.” By exploring various decisions against each scenario in this way, team members can then determine that set of decisions that they collectively feel most comfortable taking now and therefore converge upon an agreed strategy.

The following pages describe the process in more detail. First, we need to introduce and define three terms that have a special role in scenario planning: worlds, levers, and outcomes.

Worlds. A world is a comprehensive description of the context in which a business operates. Worlds are therefore described in terms of (often long!) lists of adjectives and adjectival phrases, describing all aspects of the world of interest, including the political, social, economic and regulatory structures, nature of market competition, technology, and all the rest.

SCENARIO DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGY FORMATION

The process of scenario development is divergent and strives to embrace as broad as possible a view of how the future might evolve, in order to encompass the future’s inevitable uncertainties. The purpose of the scenarios is to provide a series of backdrops against which different strategies can be assessed. By exploring various decisions against each scenario in this way, team members can then determine that set of decisions that they collectively feel most comfortable taking now and therefore converge upon an agreed strategy.

The most familiar world is today’s world, and an important part of the scenario planning process is to come to a shared view of just what it is. Different people see different things, and some lively workshops can be run focused on describing today’s world. Ultimately, any description of today’s world must pass the Martian Test: If the description were e-mailed to a group of Martians approaching Earth, on stepping out of their saucer, they must be able to recognize where they have landed.

If today’s world is defined in terms of a long list of descriptive phrases, then, by definition, a different world must have a different list. A major milestone in scenario planning is to generate a small number of different worlds – three to five is usually sufficient – that have self-consistent descriptions. These worlds should be significantly different from one another, and from today’s world.

Some of the different worlds might appear favorable, others harsh; some may appear to be relatively likely, other less so; some might be desirable, others positively repulsive. At the moment, though, such issues aren’t important; all that matters is that any different world must be believed to be, in principle, possible.

Levers and Outcomes. Levers represent the actions and decisions that managers can take. For example, managers can determine product range, target markets, staffing levels, skills, investments in infrastructure, level of R&D, location of manufacturing sites, amount spent on advertising, and so on. At any time, each lever has a setting – the numeric amount associated with that lever.

Outcomes represent the commercial results of the organization: levels of sales and profit, reputation, share price, market share, staff morale, and so on. At any time, each outcome has a numeric value.

Fundamentally, the job of strategic management is to determine the levers and assign their settings, so as to generate desirable outcomes. As every manager soon learns, however, levers are not directly connected to outcomes; there simply is no lever to allow managers to directly control profit, market share, or share price. Rather, the levers that managers can actually pull are only indirectly, and sometimes rather loosely, coupled to the outcomes, and managers act in the belief – or hope – that by cutting costs here and increasing staff there, shareholder value will be increased. To make matters worse, time delays occur before any change in a lever setting begins to take effect.

This process is, as we all know too well, very complex. A powerful tool in taming this complexity is system dynamics modeling. This kind of simulation goes far beyond the typical spreadsheet and can handle loosely coupled variables, time lags, and feedback loops. (For a more complete definition of system dynamics, go to http://www.systemdynamics.org.)

The Rules of Innovation

Many people feel that inventing new worlds is difficult, fearing not only that they lack the expert knowledge, but also – and far worse – that they just don’t have the imagination. In fact, inventing new worlds is easy and a lot of fun, provided, of course, that you do it in the easy, fun way – and that is to borrow from the techniques of innovation.

Briefly, two of the key rules that make innovation deliberate, systematic, and safe are:

• Rule No. 1: Don’t try to leap directly into the unknown – start from something or somewhere you know well.
• Rule No. 2: New ideas are best generated not by waiting for lightning to strike, but by challenging assumptions and asking, “How might this be different?”

A simple but nonetheless startling example of these rules in action is the familiar nine dots puzzle (see “Nine Dots Puzzle”). There are two questions:

• How can you join all nine dots with four straight lines, without taking your pencil off the page?
• And if that is too easy, how many different ways can you find of joining all the dots with just one line?

Most people tackle the first question by picking up a pen and drawing various alternatives; they usually don’t even know where to start with the second question. But then most people don’t know the two rules of innovation. Picking up a pen, drawing, and trying to solve the puzzle by trial and error breaks the first rule – you’re leaping into the dark. The first rule says “Let’s understand all we can about the nine dots.” There are nine, they are in a square array, they are an inch or so apart, and they are about a quarter-inch square. The second rule says, “Challenge the assumptions.” Is the shape the dots form a square? What would happen if the dots weren’t an inch apart? They might be a mile apart or close together. But if they were close, I could wipe a felt-tip pen across all nine at once. So, if they’re an inch apart, I need a thick pen – maybe a paint roller. Ah yes, that’s it, a paint roller. And the puzzle is instantly solved.

Inventing New Worlds

The easiest way of inventing new worlds is therefore to apply the two key rules of innovation defined above. In the context of scenario planning, if we follow Rule No. 1, our starting point is something we all know well indeed, namely, today’s world. In fact, we take the time to define today’s world not only to build a genuine, deeply shared view of where we are, but also as a springboard to innovation.

One observation about today’s world might be that “the current industrial structure is consolidating.” Rule No. 2 requires us to challenge assumptions and ask, “How might this be different?” How might the industrial structure be different? Well, perhaps it will concentrate even further into a global monopoly; perhaps it will fragment as a result of government intervention; perhaps new entrants will come in on the back of a new technology.

Applying Rule No. 2 thus results in many alternative possibilities. As a group begins to list these potential futures, people start associating characteristics together, so that a small number of self-consistent worlds emerge, each with its appropriate set of descriptions. Created by a process of deliberate challenge and deliberate and systematic innovation, these descriptions will be very different from today’s world. When you are in the middle of the process, it can appear to be something of a muddle, with hundreds of post-its all over the walls. But rest assured that it works: The human mind is quite adept at seeing patterns. Just as the solution to the nine dots puzzle emerged, seemingly out of nowhere, so the process of challenge, coupled with the interactions of a group and the human ability to see patterns, will create a compelling series of new worlds.

“Scenario Planning Summary” forms the heart of a scenario planning exercise. Each column represents a different world, the first being today’s world. The often extensive descriptions of each world are incorporated in the first row. The levers are named in the title box of the second row, and the corresponding lever settings are identified in the appropriate column. Similarly, the outcomes are named in the title box of the third row, and the outcome values, for the defined lever settings in each world, are assessed and entered into each column.

The question then becomes, What are the lever settings and what new levers might be required to give favorable outcomes in as many of the worlds as possible? Once the most favorable set of levers and lever settings have been determined, then your strategy is that set of managerial actions required to move the levers from their current settings to the desired ones.

Testing the Levers

By now, you will have:

• Defined today’s world.
• Defined up to five alternative worlds.
• Defined the levers and the outcomes.
• Seen how the lever settings in today’s world generate today’s outcome values.

It is at this point that the scenarios themselves are written, each scenario being a vivid story describing how each of the alternative new worlds evolved, in its own particular way, from today’s world. Well-written scenarios capture your imagination and are powerful vehicles for communication and training. Immersing yourself in the scenarios builds “a memory of the future,” so that as time passes and the future becomes reality, you recognize what you see. But the scenarios themselves are not the end of the exercise: The purpose of the scenarios, and the alternative worlds they describe, is to form a context in which your business might operate in the future.

To test out this method:

• Imagine that the levers and their settings are the same as in today’s world. What will the outcome values be in the different worlds? Are they favorable or unfavorable?
• If the outcome values in any alternative world are unfavorable, what would the lever settings have be to give rise to favorable outcomes? Do you need to invoke any new levers?

This process is best carried out through group discussion; it can also be supported by modeling and specific, well-focused analysis. The objective is to examine how robust different lever settings are to future uncertainty. Suppose, for example, you decide that the current lever settings give favorable outcome values in just one of the alternative future worlds. That analysis implies that, if you leave the lever settings as they are and that particular future does indeed come to pass, your business is likely to be successful. But if the future were to evolve toward any of the other worlds, things might not be so rosy.

Turning Scenarios into Strategy

As a result of the exploration of the lever settings in the various worlds, you will discover one of a number of things, for example, that:

• The current levers, and their settings, are indeed robust under future worlds, or
• The current levers, and their settings, are not robust under future worlds, or
• Some different lever settings are robust under many of the future worlds, including today’s world; or there are no lever settings that work well under many worlds, but several clusters of settings that work well in some worlds but not others; or there are no generally safe lever settings – each world has its own.

These insights are guides to strategy. How so? Let’s go back to our definition of strategy: a shared commitment to act toward a compelling goal.

A shared commitment to take what specific actions, toward which particular goal? Well:

• The goal must be defined in relation to one or more of the worlds, and
• The actions must be to move existing levers to new settings or to deploy new levers.

The process of strategy development is therefore that of deciding which levers need to be placed at what settings. And the strategy itself is the set of actions you decide to take to move the levers from their current settings to their new ones.

Scenario-based strategic planning has the objective of providing a framework to enable managers to make strategic decisions (see “The Scenario-Based Strategic Planning Process”). These decisions can relate only to levers and their settings; managers, quite literally, can do little else. As we all know, the problem with resetting the levers is that some of them are difficult to reset; some, once reset, cannot be reversed to their original settings; many require a long time to reset; and, once settings have been reset, it may be a long time before the results are actually achieved—time during which the world is fast evolving, often in such a way as to make the new settings no longer fit for their originally conceived purpose.

THE SCENARIO-BASED STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS

Scenario-based strategic planning has the objective of providing a framework to enable managers to make strategic decisions. As such, it comprises a number of activities, beginning with defining today’s world and the range of actions that managers can take to creating scenarios of different possible worlds to testing levers in different settings and, finally, identifying effective actions.

But the levers must be reset from time to time. Doing nothing, and so betting that the world will stay still, is often a worse bet than taking a gamble on one particular future. The process is exciting, challenging, stimulating, exhausting, amazing – and, most importantly, it works.

Dennis Sherwood is the author of nine books, including Seeing the Forest for the Trees: A Manager’s Guide to Applying Systems Thinking, Smart Things to Know About Innovation, and Unlock Your Mind. For 12 years, he was a consulting partner with Coopers & Lybrand and was subsequently an executive director at Goldman Sachs in London, a partner in Bossard Consultants, and vice president of SRI Consulting. He is currently with the Silver Bullet Machine Manufacturing Company. Dennis was educated at the Universities of Cambridge, Yale, and California, and is a Sloan Fellow, with distinction, of the London Business School. He is a well-known speaker at conferences, has written many journal articles, and has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s programs In Business, Shoptalk, and Nice Work.

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Metaphors for Change

American schools are under intense scrutiny and pressure to improve. Superintendents face enormous and unrelenting demands, but also have many opportunities to effect change and benefit kids. The Fieldbook offers superintendents a welcome chance to stop and think, understand their roles as leaders of learning, frame their views, and plan their actions in the face of rising crises. Two sets of metaphors in the book are particularly helpful.

First are the seven “commonplaces,” or stakes in the ground, of school leadership. The authors caution that “you cannot be a fully effective superintendent unless you master them,” so they devote a chapter to each.

• Superintendents must skillfully lead their schools in addressing seemingly intractable problems; this means much more than just managing school operations.
• Superintendents must effectively lead within a governance structure that includes diverse participants from school boards to unions.

Superintendents face enormous and unrelenting demands, but also have many opportunities to effect change and benefit kids.

• They must understand standards and assessments inside and out, period.
• They must move into the sensitive arena of race and class, bringing people and resources together to close achievement gaps.
• They must actively develop competent principals and constantly remind themselves that the most important work in schools happens with kids in the classroom.
• Superintendents must learn to collaborate with other agencies beyond the school walls that also serve kids.
• Finally, superintendents must engage their communities in their schools with an outreach philosophy that is more partnership than public relations.

Each of these items is a huge challenge; none can be ignored. Fortunately, the authors give readers a chance to think about them and learn from the experience and straightforward suggestions of others. They outline the skills that every superintendent must master and at the same time put the demands of the job into perspective.

Another set of metaphors describes school districts. Every organization has an implicit image of itself that has developed over time. These mental models shape how the school district functions, views its responsibilities, and responds to change. The authors describe eight distinct school district metaphors. For example, some school districts function as machines, with traditional hierarchical structures and expectations. Others are emerging learning organizations, with an emphasis on interdependence, collaboration, and adaptation to change.

Readers will recognize their home district in these descriptions, but this is much more than an academic exercise. Superintendents must understand these unspoken images in order to know how issues arise and, more importantly, how to craft solutions that will be accepted and work in their particular context. Each kind of district has its own patterns for dealing with the seven commonplaces of leadership, and each has different expectations for the role of the superintendent. Thus, it behooves the savvy superintendent to understand the playing field.

Learning to Improve Schools

The Fieldbook is a practical reference, designed to be kept handy and consulted as needed. The book’s format makes the new ideas it offers accessible and appealing to different learning styles. Each chapter balances theory and research with first-hand stories and tried-and-true suggestions from superintendents in the field. There are tables and charts for quick review, as well as many pertinent sidebars with references for further information. The authors include cautions about common pitfalls and controversies, along with specific tools and strategies for managing conflict and keeping a personal balance in a difficult job. Each chapter concludes with probing questions for reflective practice.

An early chapter on leadership includes a section on creating a learning organization. Through this process, a district embraces a common language and develops a collective intelligence to create its own future. The Fieldbook briefly describes Senge’s five disciplines of organizational learning—personal mastery, shared vision, mental models, team learning, and systems thinking— as they apply to improving learning in schools. It provides brief descriptions of the tools, ready to use: systems thinking to look beyond events to the patterns, structures, and mental models driving behavior; the “ladder of inference” to surface underlying assumptions; and dialogue to enhance learning conversations. Each concept is illustrated by a story told by a different practitioner.

Systems thinking tools come up again in the chapter on standards and assessment. Readers glimpse the underlying problems in improving student performance through the lens of the “shifting the burden” systems archetype. The “quick fix” of focusing on improving test scores undermines the longer-term goal of sustaining learning improvement. Here, systems thinking tools lend a richness to the discussion and a refreshing new approach to an old problem.

Superintendents who use the Fieldbook as a guide can become effective leaders of learning. Although many of the thornier issues discussed may have a higher profile and greater urgency in large urban districts, there is sound advice and affirmation for forward-thinking leaders everywhere.

Davida Fox-Melanson is the retired superintendent of the Carlisle Public Schools in Carlisle, MA. She is now an education consultant who also supervises interns in school administration certification programs at the university level.

Debra Lyneis served on the school board in Carlisle. She is now at the Creative Learning Exchange, helping teachers develop and publish K-12 curriculum materials using systems thinking and system dynamics, available online at www.clexchange.org.

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The assumption implicit in this tactic is that change is done to the organization, not by it. People must be convinced of the need for working differently and, if management does not clearly communicate the reasons for it, they will resist it. This model may work in situations where the shift involves introducing systems and processes that do not require a fundamental transformation of people’s attitudes, ways of seeing the world, and modes of working.

FAILING TO CHANGE

Leadership teams often rely on “telling and selling” large-scale change initiatives to the organization (B1). While this approach may initially seem successful, over the longer run, it undermines employees’ commitment to the change process (R2). The more successful tact would be to include employees from the beginning, what we might call the “engage and shape” approach (B3).

But unfortunately, as shown in “Failing to Change,” when instituting large transformational change initiatives, organizations often fall prey to a “Fixes That Fail” archetype. It begins when the leadership team uses the “tell and sell” approach to introduce a wholesale change of the way the organization does business (B1). They often promote these changes using newsletters, handy reference cards, posters, coffee mugs, and perhaps even a video. Workers initially seem enthusiastic, but over the longer term, fail to fully embrace the new routines (R2). In response, management looks for ways to strong-arm employees into adopting the change, an approach that usually dooms the initiative to failure.

So, is the instinct to communicate that underlies the “tell and sell” approach wrong? Of course not— how else can we achieve our goals except by passionately sharing them with others? But gaining employees’ genuine commitment requires a more authentic, interactive way of speaking and listening than we’ve practiced in the past. As shown in “Failing to Change,” the fundamental solution is for leaders to change how they communicate and what they communicate about (B3). They must work with employees to build a shared vision of the organization, its opportunities, and its challenges, as well as to plan a set of purposeful actions for creating the organization’s future. Only when employees have been included in the process and feel their ideas have been heard and respected will they embrace and contribute to the change. We might call this approach the “engage and shape” philosophy.

“Engage and Shape” Philosophy

As Gary Hamel points out in his work on strategy creation and core competencies, the way to unlock new ideas about an organization is to create conversations across boundaries that involve distinct experiential, technical, and philosophical perspectives. Through engaged conversation comes shared meaning. From shared meaning comes alignment of purpose and fundamental buy-in.

How can leaders effectively engage the workforce in sharing, exploring, and aligning their unique perspectives in order to contribute to the enterprise’s larger vision? The “engage and shape” philosophy offers a framework for understanding what is involved in the process. It starts with the following assumptions:

• Developing visioning skills throughout the organization is more effective than imposing a vision on the organization from above.
• Leaders can’t and shouldn’t have all the answers up front. But they must create the overall direction and allow employees to take the initiative forward in their own way.
• No one can predict the outcome of engaging employees and asking them to shape the future. Leaders will have to relinquish some control over the direction the change initiative takes if they wish to move from merely consulting employees (, “telling and selling”) to capturing their hearts and minds (, “engaging and shaping”).
• Change involves a long journey. We can have some idea about and therefore plan for the first leg of the journey, but it’s difficult to know what might be behind the first or second or fiftieth hill! The implication of this fact is that the planning process has to allow for emergence, agility, and course correction.
• Formal project management involves breaking down projects into components that can then be managed. But dynamic organizational and cultural change takes place in the complex interplay of components. Therefore, leaders need to adopt a holistic and systemic approach to managing that takes into account the complex whole.

Having productive conversations around organizational change is a key process in the “engage and shape” approach, but many managers do not have the patience or interest to develop skills in the discipline of dialogue. Nevertheless, the kind of conversation needed to effect transformational change doesn’t happen by magic. Good conversation involves a set of talking practices and people who can facilitate these conversations. It requires enough time to ensure sufficient alignment around why we need to change, what we should change into in order to secure certain outcomes, how we will go about achieving the change, and how we will handle the inevitable surprises and miscues that might come up during the process.

To make the shift to “engage and shape,” groups can follow a series of four conversational practices that guide the change process and serve as an entry point to a more comprehensive use of dialogue (see “Four Conversational Practices”). These practices provide hard-pressed, action-oriented, and outcome-focused managers with a way to manage conversations in the context of open-ended, less tightly planned but ultimately more transforming ways of achieving change.

FOUR CONVERSATIONAL PRACTICES

A series of four conversational practices can guide the change process and serve as an entry point to a more comprehensive use of dialogue. These practices provide hard-pressed, action-oriented, and outcome-focused managers with a way to manage conversations in the context of open-ended, less tightly planned but ultimately more transforming ways of achieving change.

Just recently, the Ministry of Defence in the United Kingdom used these practices to create high-performing integrated project teams for the acquisition and in-service support of military equipment. The team leaders became skilled practitioners in these tools and techniques, despite initial misgivings that this was “yet another change program that will surely go the way of all the others nowhere.” In a short time, they were able to show immediate benefits in terms of creating a new quality of involvement in and buy-in for the new process among staff members. The group ultimately achieved a series of stretch goals that might not have been possible otherwise.

Managing the Four Conversations

The key to achieving employee engagement in actively shaping change is to iteratively manage and follow a sequence of conversational steps. Before beginning, the group should discuss and decide on what kind of listening would be appropriate (see “Automatic vs. Generated Listening” on p. 4). At the same time, participants should agree to other, more familiar ground rules, such as every contribution is valid, let the speaker finish, suspend assumptions, and so forth.

Overall, the group will seek to explore and build on contributions rather than broadcast their own views in an unconnected way. When people compete to secure airtime, the resulting conversation remains superficial and does not build an evolving meaning. It is particularly important for more senior managers to listen to junior managers rather than correct them or talk over them. Likewise, the kind of decision-making that emerges should be consensual and inclusive.

Note that, when managing conversations about change in organizations, it’s important to clearly distinguish among the past, present, and future. If people are unable to see how their actions in the present are driven by their perceptions, and that their perceptions are created by their past experiences, they will be unable to create a distinctive future that is different from the past!

Conversation for Engagement and Alignment

Once the ground rules have been established, the first step in the change process is to identify and build shared commitment among team members by ensuring that everyone is mentally “in the same place.” Most important is to find out what people are currently committed to regarding the issue, purpose, or objective. In this instance, a commitment means a deeply held belief, an expectation about what should happen, or an explicit aim or purpose located in the future. Failing to openly discuss and acknowledge people’s current commitments means that they will emerge at a later stage and possibly undermine the progress made.

To conduct a conversation for engagement:

• Begin by encouraging participants to say what is on their minds, be it related to the issue at hand or something else. This activity is a way of getting people present in the room and encouraging everyone to speak.
• Surface everyone’s individual concerns in relation to the issue being addressed. Capture these on a flipchart to reexamine later in light of any joint commitment developed by the group to see how well it encompasses individual concerns. Take care to ensure that participants do not simply complain. If they do, try to bring to the surface the underlying causal expectation that the symptomatic complaint is based upon. Another caution is to avoid blame. Blame is based in the past, and any engagement or alignment must be founded on a commitment based in the future.
• Explore people’s commitments and capture them on a flipchart. Rarely do concerns or complaints exist without an underlying commitment to something; for example, complaints about a new change initiative may reveal team members’ underlying desire for senior leaders to recognize innovations already happening in the organization. The best way to begin to understand the differences and similarities in people’s perspectives, and to move to alignment, is to ask them to describe what the future outcome would be if the commitment were realized.
• Once all people’s current commitments have been surfaced, come to agreement on an overall commitment with regard to the issue. This process can be challenging. A helpful way of achieving alignment around what the group wants to achieve is to simply focus on the outcome, benefits, or value that they will create, ideally in measurable terms.

Managers often skip this phase because they don’t deem it “action oriented.” They also often believe that everyone already knows what the problem is; they just need to sort it out. But limiting the time spent or the quality of conversation will only restrict the achievement of the end result. Without engagement and alignment around an overall purpose, the group’s effort to explore possibilities for the future, evaluate their feasibility, and enact any plans will be half-hearted.

A conversation for engagement and alignment will often lead to a clear commitment to producing something that the group doesn’t have the faintest idea of how they will go about achieving. This is a healthy sign! The term given to this sort of commitment is “generating a stand.” A stand is a commitment to building a future that is demonstrated through everyday actions:

• It provides stability during turbulence.
• It allows the group to declare “breakdowns,” that is, instances when people’s words and actions are not based on realizing the stand. Team members should be free to point out to colleagues or their managers when they observe a “breakdown” that is not in service of the goal.
• It provides the basis for coaching and being coached.
• It represents a breakthrough from the past.

In our experience at the Ministry of Defence, the most successful teams were those that had strong alignment around a compelling stand. All other elements then tended to fall into place naturally. Typically, the stand would include high-level stretch targets as opposed to hard targets. Participants believed hard targets to be tough but achievable. Stretch targets, on the other hand, were deemed “over the horizon.” Their purpose was to provoke out-of-the-box thinking and unprecedented action.

In the Ministry of Defence, such stretch targets focused on the performance, time, and cost elements of procuring military equipment; for instance, procuring a new frigate and bringing it into service in half the time, for the same cost, but with greater capability than the current version. Even if a stretch target is not achieved, more often than not, committing to it ensures outcomes that are far greater than merely committing to a hard target. But in order to really commit to such a goal, employees need to participate in the planning process and trust that they won’t be penalized for falling short of what is a highly ambitious objective.

Conversation for Shaping the Future

This second conversational practice on the road toward breakthrough change involves imagining what things could be like in the future. When I worked with a client in the financial services industry, the aim was to transform the role of human resources into that of a true business partner. When the HR managers engaged in a conversation for shaping the future, they imagined a tomorrow in which the HR function genuinely influenced business results.

A key tool for this conversation, borrowed from Soft Systems Methodology, is the construction of a “root definition” for the activity that needs to be changed or addressed. A root definition is a structured description of a system that clearly spells out the activities that take place (or might take place) in the system being studied. It has three parts: what, how, and why. The “what” is the immediate aim of the system, the “how” is the means of achieving that aim, and the “why” is the longer-term aim of the purposeful activity.

Root definitions follow this format:

A system to ………………………… by ………………………… in order to ………………………….

For example, a root definition for creating breakthrough procurement performance at the Ministry of Defence might look like this:

In this root definition,

• The what is “to procure military equipment”;
• The how is “by using integrated project team processes and ways of working”; and
• The why is “to deliver the equipment within the budgets and time frames established at the outset of the project, ensuring enhanced capability to the military end users.”

This is one of many root definition that could be constructed for the activity of military procurement. The root definition should be internally consistent; for example, the “how” must describe a process which will (or should) result in the “what,” and so on. A common mistake is to include more than one purposeful activity in a single root definition.

Participants must also talk and think about the various roles that individuals and groups take on in the system. The categories (abbreviated as “CATWOE”) are:

• C (Customer): Who would be the victims/beneficiaries of the purposeful activity?
• A (Actors): Who would do the activities?
• T (Transformation Process): What would happen?
• W (Weltanschauung): A German word loosely meaning “worldview,” what view of the world makes this definition meaningful?
• O (Owner): Who could stop this activity?
• E (Environmental Constraints): What constraints in its environment does this system take as given?

For the root definition given above, the following is a possible “CATWOE”:

• C: Military end users
• A: Integrated project team (IPT)
• T: IPT processes and ways of working
• W: That multi-functional teams will be better at procuring military equipment than the current silo-based structure
• O: The Ministry of Defence
• E: The performance, time, and cost parameters set out at the start of the procurement

The process of trying out different transformation processes (T) and worldviews (W) in the discussion often promotes innovation. Ultimately, the task is to conclude this conversation with an agreement on one or two root definitions that can be taken forward into the next conversation.

Conversation for Feasibility

This step involves testing the possibilities and ideas developed in the conversation for shaping the future against key criteria, including:

• The original stand
• The feasibility of implementing the new ideas (how do the ideas compare with the current real world and what value will be created by implementing them?)
• The things that need to be in place in order to reach the stretch targets
• Initial plans for the early stages of the breakthrough journey and outline plans for the whole journey
• The projected return on investment

A useful technique in this conversation is to draw a conceptual model of the root definition on a big whiteboard. A conceptual model is a simple diagram showing the links between components of the designed future based on the ideas in the root definition (see “Conceptual Models” on p. 6). It is not a causal loop diagram in the conventional sense, because it is a representation of the future arising from the commitments and ideas flowing from the conversation.

The diagram shows the key activities described in the root definition and how they link together as a coherent system. Playing with different options and comparing them with the current reality helps to identify the benefits that might be derived from implementing the ideas captured in the root definition. Once again, this conversation is most effective when the previous conversations have been thoroughly explored and when participants:

• Listen generously and explore each others’ points of view
• Bring to the surface and challenge their assumptions
• Constantly check back to their original commitments and stands
• Are focused on the outcomes sought
• Try not to recreate the past

CONCEPTUAL MODEL

Conversation for Action

The aim of the conversation for action is to bring to life the conceptual model identified in the previous conversation. This step is critical; unfortunately, managers seldom conduct these conversations well. The principles behind a conversation for action fall into two categories:

1. Participants must make requests of other people.

Here it’s important to be explicit about who is having the request made of them, what is being requested, and by when. The individuals who are having requests made of them have three possible responses:

• Accept the request.
• Reject the request.
• Make a counterproposal, that is, undertake the requested action but on a different timetable or propose a different action.

2. Participants can choose to make promises to other people by offering to do something specific by a particular date.

Although this process seems simple and straightforward, think back to management meetings that have failed to result in meaningful actions. Nearly always, people fail to follow up because team members haven’t rigorously handled conversations for action. This oversight often occurs because the group suffers from a lack of commitment, honesty, or trust. For instance, people may attend meetings because they do not want to miss out on anything, but when the group agrees to do something, no one assumes responsibility for taking it forward.

This conversational discipline brings clarity to the “something” as well as a genuine commitment to taking it forward. The final step is to identify accountability for different tasks. Participants will have developed high levels of trust because they have all been involved in the rigor of the previous conversational steps. The will all be on the same page regarding what they want the outcome to be. If any or all of the previous three stages have been handled in an incomplete way, the conceptual model will remain just that, conceptual.

Application of the Disciplines

At the Ministry of Defence, breakthrough change has been achieved in an environment that had previously been hostile to innovations. One hundred and fifty integrated project teams (IPTs), employing some 5,000 staff members, were established over an 18-month period. This process in itself was seen as a major success, particularly in light of team members’ alignment around robust plans. Many IPTs have already achieved their hard targets, and a significant number have made good progress toward their stretch targets. The UK National Audit Office has highlighted this case as an example of successful change.

Leading change is about adding value to the business by engaging people in finding new ways to operate. The only effective way to draw people into the process is to improve the quality of our speaking and listening. It is through improved conversation that aligned action takes place. In this sense, language is indeed the house of being and doing. The techniques described here are a good way to start improving the quality of our conversations for business benefit.

Robert Bolton is a director of Atos Origin Consulting, formerly KPMG Consulting in the United Kingdom. He specializes in transformational change in the UK public sector, particularly in the area of defense. He is also a visiting lecturer in strategic change at the University of Bristol.

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