Leadership is not rocket science

"This has happened before and it will happen again"

In reading a post in Jim Clemmer's blog, I was reminded of this saying from one of my favourite shows.

As Jim outlines with 4 key quotes, The turbulence and uncertainty the world is experiencing is not new.  It happens in times of significant change.

When complex systems (such as our society) evolve, they don't do it in a progressive or linear fashion.  The buzzword for the evolution that these systems undergo is bifurcation.

When the system is in chaos, two distinct ‘paths’ of evolution appear.  One leads to the breakdown of the system, and the other to ‘breakthrough’ into a new state that is resistant to the chaos that began this rapid phase of evolution.

So many of our current systems are breaking down and are unsustainable - businesses, our health care systems, our education systems, how we treat the planet, you name it.  The way that we behaved before led to this chaos.  What is starting to emerge are new ways of being and doing, as I discussed in my last posting.

Right now, both the 'old' way and the emerging way are all around us, creating even more confusion.  Our desire to 'hang on' to the familiar and our uncertainty about what is emerging to take its place are keeping us from letting go of what we know. And that's part of the journey.

Yesterday I was on a call as part of a hosting team for an Art of Presence retreat we're holding in Greece in May.  We were discussing the difficulty people are having in committing to this work because it is so leading edge.

Because of the economic uncertainty, they're being held accountable for more results.  They also know that they need to engage people in new ways, and many are stretching themselves with development opportunities like training in the Art of Hosting Meaningful Conversations.

However, it's harder for some to justify a retreat where you're investing time to be still enough to clear the clutter outside to better tap into the deeper wisdom you have  within you.  And yet, the cause of much of the ka-ka we're experiencing - the heart of the 'old' way - is just 'doing' without taking time to connect to our inner wisdom, without tapping the wisdom of all those around you.

It takes courage to go to the edge, and that's fine. Everyone has to go when they're ready.  The Art of Hosting - the 'DNA of the learning organization - was way out there not long ago.  And the people who need to be there will be there.

And the fact that more and more people and organizations are understanding that they need to deepen their skills in areas such as the Art of Hosting gives me great hope.  That's part of slowing down, engaging others, finding new ways.  That's what will let us choose the right path through this time of chaos and bifurcation.

Because "this has happened before and it will happen again."

That's my 2 cents. What do you think?

Transforming health care by growing collaborative care

Over the past 2 years I've had the honour of working with a project championed by the College of Registered Nurses of Nova Scotia seeking to move collaborative care (health care professionals working as integrated teams) from happening occasionally to widespread practice.  Here is a video that captures the journey to date:

Working Together: Moving Interdisciplinary Practice from Theory to Action from Ravi Tangri on Vimeo.

Infusion of Leadership

Over the past couple of postings I've been sharing my thoughts about the Infusion event hosted by Capital Health.  Here I'd like to share some insights about the last half-day, where we were supposed to be going up the second side of the U to realize a new model/prototype for leadership.  I say supposed to, because I think, in some ways, that we were just getting to presencing as we left.

Late in the morning of the last day, we were asked to surface themes that had emerged and were called to crystallize a prototype of what it would look like if those themes came into fruition.  There were some good ideas there.  Some pushed the boundaries, some didn't, but as we discussed them, I felt an increasing discomfort arising among the participants.  Some people spoke of not pushing the boundaries enough.  Some said we'd done enough reflecting and it was time to act and do something.  it was really quite interesting.

What it felt like to me was that we had been in a fairly polite area, and as this conversation evolved, we started dancing to the edge, towards where it was really uncomfortable.  We didn't cross over into it - nobody seemed to want to really push us over, but we danced on the edge.

A few of the comments as we went around connected some dots for me.  One person at the program had floated between groups, gathering ideas and coalesced them into her own concept.  We had craft supplies there to model our prototypes, and she took a blob of play-doh clay and started sticking straws into it with notes on them about what would be required of a prototype.  The clay was the foundation - the beliefs, the values that we came from, and the 'pieces' of the initiative on the straws emerged from and were supported by that foundation.

Interestingly, she found that her foundation didn't hold up the straws, so she had to add more clay and build up the foundation, a beautiful metaphor, I think for what happens in so many organizations. We get so busy doing things and initiatives, and we don't have the time to go into the foundation - the 'messy' stuff: feelings, beliefs and values.  Then we wonder why doing the 'things' doesn't work.

In fact, one person spoke up and said that the organization had the systems and processes the sculptor spoke of, and they weren't doing the job.  And that to me, said it all.  People were too involved in the doing the things and systems, and not enough time had been invested into building the foundation.

So what is this foundation?  It's a number of things.  It's honoring who people are and where they're at.  It's understanding and working to live within the values.  It's understanding what beliefs get in the way and what beliefs make it happen.  It's understanding and knowing your own beliefs, values and sense of purpose, which I'm exploring further in this post in my blog on personal leadership.  It's the 'messy' stuff of human beings which takes time to do and which requires us to show up as human beings, not just as our roles, and this is something that is not in many models of leadership, and is very challenging for people to do period.

One of the participants at the Infusion event spoke of how we need to honour where people are at - their pain, their anxiety, their perspective.  This, to me, is the start of that foundation.  Then we have to support people in connecting to their own personal leadership, because most people don't really know what's important to them and what motivates them - in our society we don't usually make time to do that.  We're too busy being human doings to be human beings.

Once individuals (especially leaders) have greater clarity on their personal leadership, then you can really discuss what are the organizational beliefs and values that you want to live.  What does it look like?  What does it mean?  Who's living them?  Who's not?

That's the foundation.  That's the 'messy' stuff.  That's what we don't invest the time to do.

The challenge is that we still have to do our day-to-day doing as we're remembering how to be human beings.  But I think that challenge is far less than our fear of going into the 'messy' stuff.  That's just a cop-out.

I really have to give kudos to the design/hosting team for the Infusion event.  That was a challenging job, holding that space with all those powerful minds, hearts and opinions, and you did it wonderfully.  From the logistics to the connection between the hosing team to the crafting of the questions and process, and the actual hosting of the event, my hats off to you.

My greatest kudos go to you for not trying to wrap things up in a neat package at the end.  It wasn't neat - it was still messy, and that's a good thing.  I disagree with the people (interestingly all male) who spoke up and said we'd had too much female energy and it was time to have some balls and act.  That's jumpint the U.  That's the fear of going into the messy stuff.  I think this process is just getting into presencing, to the heart of the issue - we've barely started - and to allow it to realize its true potential, you have to give it its time.  Congratulations on letting it be messy.  That takes courage.

Infusion Day 2

Well, today finished the Infusion Event I've been blogging about, coordinated by the Capital Health District in Halifax (and thanks to visual recorder Susan MacLeod for her permission to use her wonderful images and harvests from the incredible seeds of discussion in my blogs).  What an amazing confluence of leaders and thinkers from around the city and around the continent focused on what world class leadership could be and look like (and on a day, when the rest of the world is focused on which leadership will emerge south of our border).

What an interesting journey today was.  We moved into the bottom of the U, and I'm not sure we came up the other side - yet.

The bottom of the U is about presencing - sifting through all the  'stuff' we've gathered to find what are the root factors driving it all - what are the root issues (as opposed to the symptoms) to focus on.  It's also about purpose and passion - what part of this is your personal passion and connects with your personal purpose, and what surfaces as your collective sense of purpose to move forward.

We started the day by exploring what 'big insights' had come from 'sleeping on' all we'd done yesterday.  I posted (potentially incoherently) my insights from yesterday in an earlier posting.   As I discussed this with a couple of other participants, I concretized some thinking.

If what we need to do is as simple as we realized yesterday (and as I've seen in many such conversations), why is it so hard to live it when we go back to the 'real world'?  My 'aha' this morning was that we run into a conflict with our beliefs about what we're expected to do and what makes success.  They stop us dead in our tracks from changing.

In our society, your importance and worth is often governed by how busy you are and how stressed you are and how much you have to do.  The more stressed you are and the more you have to come late to meetings and leave early (to go to other meetings, of course), the more important you are and the more value you're providing.  We wear stress like a badge of honour.

It's into this world that we bring these ideas of creating space for reflection and engaging people and taking the time to listen.  Is it any wonder none of that (or certainly little) seems to stick?

To shift the culture, we have to go into the 'messy' stuff of dealing with beliefs, values and feelings.  We have to honour, as a friend of mine suggested, the anxiety and pain people are feeling.  We have to engage people in discussions that explore what our beliefs and values mean, and what we're doing that supports them and what we're doing that says that we don't really believe in them at all.

Our values are not what's written on the pretty plaque on the wall - our values are what we see walking down the halls.

If we're not living them - which is a constant challenge and journey even for truly values-driven organizations like Gore - they're not worth anything.  The only values that matter are the ones we live.

We have to be able to challenge people when they're not living our values - all the way up to the CEO.  We need to recognize those who are living them.  And we need to hold people accountable for living them.  But to do all that we have to get in to the messy part of what they mean and what they mean to each of us in day-to-day life.

And the other piece to that is that we, as individuals, have to be clear on what our own core values and our own personal sense of purpose is - and that's a whole 'nother conversation which I'll step into tomorrow in my blog on personal leadership.

There's more from today, but I'll come back to that - my brain is getting a little fried.  I'll finish off with a picture of Susan MacLeod and her visual harvest of this afternoon's work.  Great work on your part, Susan, and on the part of the whole hosting team.  Bravo.

Infusion Event Tuesday Morning Harvest

Here is Susan's harvest of this morning's work at the Infusion event:

 

Infusion Event for Capital Health

Capital Health, our major health district in Halifax, Nova Scotia has begun a quest to explore what it would take to create a world-leading haven for people-centered health, healing and learning. Today and tomorrow they are running a 2-day Infusion event, where they are inviting leaders from within their organization, across Halifax, and indeed across North America to infuse their wisdom and to co-create what  leadership that matters and makes a difference could look like.  I'm fortunate enough to be one of the attendees, and I'd like to share a little of what's happening and some of my insights, and I'll be sharing some of the graphical harvests and artwork prepared by Susan MacLeod, a member of the hosting team for the event.

The Infusion event was designed using the Art of Hosting Meaningful Conversations as its operating system, and it was a joy to be a pure participant of an event like this (as opposed to one of the hosts).  The design also follows the U-process, a proven process for large-scale change and leadership in complex situations.

After a check-in circle with the 60+ participants, we moved into a world cafe.  The first round of cafe asked the question, 'what time is it in the world?' to set the context for what's needed today.  The next rounds explored what leadership is being called for in this time, and what's required to bring that forth.  We were then asked what themes and patterns we saw, and the graphic recorder harvested the following from our feedback:

 

I've been in or hosted discussions like this and many similar themes arise.  We need to create the space and take time.  We need to engage all the players in co-creating the way forward, and then build the structures to support it.  We need to start from a clear sense of purpose and from the principles we want to live by, and then, later get to the structures that are required.  The leader has to let go of trying to control. 

What's amazing is how easy it is for people to surface all of this.  We have the wisdom among us, and all it takes is putting aside our blackberrying for a short while to surface what we already know.  The challenge is keeping this slower pace and insight with us when we leave environments like this.

Once this came out, a discomfort passed over some of the participants, as a need to know 'how to' do all this surfaced.  I've seen this reaction before - a need to 'jump the U', when the essence of the U is that you need to go through not knowing how things are going to work out.  This response, however, often surfaces in this type of discussion.

Over the day and in the closing circle a lot of comments arose about how simple this really might be - it's not rocket science, after all.  There were also comments about how, for significant change to happen, we had to go through a time of discomfort or disturbance, which comes from stepping away from what we know to learn new ways.  These two thought streams gave me an fresh insight/perspective. 

What we're talking about here really isn't rocket science.  It really is simple.  All the things that are being called for in leadership are what came up in the cafe including what I mentioned above - letting go of control, start from purpose, engaging all players and so on. 

I've always thought that the resistance to discomfort was the resistance to learning tough new concepts and new ways of thinking and of dealing with complexity.  What occurred to me today is that, in our busying and blackberrying world, we crave complexity.  Workload and stress and complexity are worn as badges of honour - you're not important if you're not stressed and dealing with tough problems.

My great insight was that maybe our resistance is not to complex new ideas, but rather to the fact that what is being called for from us is simplicity, and what we have to let go of is the complexity and our self-importance that comes from it.

I don't know if this is true or not, but it's certainly an interesting perspective to sit it.  What do you think?

Co-Creating Futures - The Art of Hosting

Here is a video where stewards and practitioners of the Art of Hosting Meaningful Conversations explain the Art of Hosting and how it is core to solving the tough and complex problems we face today.  The video is about 35 minutes long.

 

For more videos and resources on co-creative leadership and the Art of Hosting, go to LeadershipTV.net.