3 Questions That Kill Collaboration

What does he/she really mean?  What is she/he not saying? What are his/his real motives?

What these questions all have in common; the presumption of something hidden, the undercurrent of a lack of trust, and most importantly the time considering dealing with them take away from getting work done.

How many times have you been in conversations and got the sense that the listener(s) were running you through a mental MRI machine because they mis-trusted your words and/or body language, and were not taking what you were communicating at "face value?"  How often have you been in conversations and did the same to another speaker?  How often have you been involved in hallway conversation after a meeting where people were trying to "get to the bottom" of what was said in the meeting?


There is no shortage of literature / evidence about the role of trusting relationships has on performance / productivity in work / team / group settings.  Yet, as Larry Prusak, in The One Thing That Makes Collaboration Work points out, trustworthiness is rarely explicitly rewarded in most organizations. 

Of course, if you are thinking appreciatively, you could see these questions, if asked explicitly, as an opportunity to improve collaboration. Provided you can ask them in a non-threatening way and provide some positive reinforcement, and that they they are answered honestly.

Challenge yourself as well.  If you find you are asking these questions of others, consider why, and if they are warranted. Perhaps a bit of time invested in relationship building prior to critical meetings could improve the value of the interaction in them. 

Anyone who has taken a presentation skills course, or any good presenter, will know that varying how your speak - changing tempo, tone, pitch - and using movement - expressions, hand gestures, walking - are good strategies for improving the listener's experience. Ever wonder why? In this video, Daniel Levitin talks about the early origins of music - alterations in pitch and time - for communication that pre-dates language, the primitive parts of the brain affected by music, and the links between language and movement. So, increase the appeal of your presentations, and even your conversations, by incorporating some foundation elements of music. Daniel Levitin is a James McGill Professor of Psychology, Behavioural Neuroscience, and Music at McGill University (Montreal, Quebec), and author of "This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession" and "The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature." and has some serious music production "creds" with some noteworthy bands.

"Smart" Meeting Participation

Chris Corrigan's blog post Titled Helping Participants Learn led me to Johnnie Moore’s Weblog: Facilitation for participants, which led me to Steve Davis's post / book excerpt titled 12 Acts of Courage to Change Meetings for Good.

I love the notion that effective meetings are not solely the chair/facilitator's responsibility, and their are always more participants than meeting leaders. Meeting participants need to be accountable for their own action/inaction in meetings. I know in a lot of the meetings I attend, I wish more participants would:

• "Keep your group on target by avoiding tangents."
• "Realize and express your truth in service to the group."
• "Transform conflict into a spirit of collaboration."
• "Be curious, observant, and patient."

I think perhaps Davis' book This Meeting Sux, 12 Acts of Courage to Change Meetings for Good might be a great employee handout.

Key Collaborative Behavours

Reflecting on a number of meetings I've been involved in the last few months, I'm realizing that three key behaviors are required for effective collaboration (and just plain old good teamwork):

Limit your airtime.
There are many people who always monopolize the time available in meetings and consume the vast majority of airtime with their (on the positive side) ideas, enthusiasm and excitement, their (on the negative side) assertiveness, aggressiveness, and sometimes ego. If you want to be collaborative, and contribute to a collaborative environment, give others the time and opportunity to contribute to the conversation.

Invite contributions.
More than just allowing time/opportunity to contributions, an invitation is a very powerful device for encouraging participation. Questions like "What do you think?" "How do you feel about... ?" "What would you do about...?" when asked genuinely/sincerely, will draw out perspectives worth considering, even from the most reluctant of participants.

Chose the right time and tone for critique/criticism.
One of the easiest ways for smart people to demonstrate they are smart is to look for, find and point out faults in logic, ideas or plans.  At the wrong time, criticism, in particular if it's harsh, can completely stifle creativity/innovation, in particular in the early stages of idea generation and exploration. As I'm sure most of you have seen, withering criticism can also create a climate that discourages more introverted people from sharing their thinking. So, defer critique and criticism to later in the thinking process, once the ideas are generated and will articulated. Then, when it is time to analyze and think critically, do so in a positive tone and "on the same team" as others, exploring the thinking objectively for gaps within the context of the conversation.

"Check-in" for common understanding.
We all view what happens around us differently, thanks to our DNA and our experiences that create the mental models and filters we use every day. Just because something is written, illustrated, or presented on a PowerPoint slide, don't assume that everyone shares the same understanding. Do your self a favor - test for common understanding about key ideas and concepts before everyone walks out of the room. Ask people questions like "What does that mean for you?" "Explain in your own words.. " "How does this apply in  your context.. ?" "If you had to explain this to someone else, how would you.. ?"  If you are doing the presenting, use illustrative examples to ensure everyone is "on the same page."  Simply asking people "Do you understand?" is not really a good test for common understanding.

Limiting. Inviting. Timing. Checking-in.

"Who Will Care When I'm Gone?"

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Ottawa Canada, War Memorial

I was reflecting on a series of conversations I had a while back with a work colleague (let's call him "Lloyd") who was soon to retire. He had agreed to be the focal point of a proof of concept "knowledge transfer" approach.

Lloyd was a long serving employee, and was involved in a number of the organization's key functions and major corporate initiatives. He was a very good communicator, very well respected, and was able to think objectively enough to contribute to the design of how he was going to share his knowledge.

First, he and I had a series of conversations reviewing his career, experiences, accomplishments and some interesting key learnings.  Within the context of the organization we identified 5 key "knowledge domains."  We then identified 2-3 thought leaders in each domain, and I sent these people a number of probing questions intended to uncover what they thought they would like to learn from Lloyd in their respective knowledge domains. Using the responses to these questions I began to design a series of "talk show" like events, one for each domain, which would feature a host, Lloyd, and guests, all of whom would have a conversation in the knowledge domain, seeded by the preliminary questions received from the thought leaders. Anyone in the organization could attend in the audience.  After the conversation was well started on the stage, anyone in the audience would have the opportunity to ask questions and get involved in the conversation. (Dare I say Johnny Carson meets Jerry Springer?)

I was also planning on recording these events, segmenting them, and making them available via our intranet at some point on the future (I was also working on promoting the creation of a section on our intranet for "legacy pages" - profiles, histories, interviews (videos / transcripts), projects, documents etc. for retirees.

Part way through the design of the talk show events, Lloyd came to me and said that he had changed his mind, and no longer wanted to participate. I was stunned, given how active he was in the conversations / process to that point. Of course, I asked him why.

He told me he was reflecting, in large part because of my probing, on his experiences in the organization and concluded that no one would care about what he had learned or had to say. Despite my best efforts, I could not convince him otherwise.

Clearly, there is a direct relationship between the degree to which people choose to volunteer what they know, and the recognition / appreciation they will received for their effort.

Emergence of Social Business Design

I’ve long been a fan of the work of XPLANE for visually explaining complex concepts and ideas. I recently received a broadcast email from them announcing their acquisition by the Dachis Group. (Dachis has also acquired Hinchcliffe & Company, and Headshift.)

“Social business design” is a fundamental element of the Dachis Groups’ offering and approach to serving its customers. They define it as “Social Business Design is the intentional creation of dynamic and socially calibrated systems, process, and culture. The goal: improving value exchange among constituents .“

Now, I'm sure you've all heard of “social engineering”, which often has negative connotations linked to individual, group our large scale manipulation. Social business design is, by contrast, more closely linked to what Ram Charan refers to as “Shaping the way people work together by leading the social system of your business” in his book KNOW-HOW :The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't.

(It also sounds remarkably like facilitation in the context of organizational development / management consulting in an emerging social networking / “Enterprise 2.0” context.)

I find this a very interesting, and exciting, development. I’m looking forward to seeing how this concept evolves.

Is this the new “knowledge management?”

Important Things Facilitators Should Know About Adults in a Group Settng

Does anyone doubt that a facilitated workshop of virtually any type involves learning? Hopefully not. So if you have a room full of adults who are learning as part of achiving a shared outcome, it is a good idea to have an understanding of the adult as a learner.

In the mid '80s when I joined a training company, the VP Education made it a point of ensuring that I had a good grounding in andragogy and adult education popularized by Malcom Knowles in the 1970s. Since then, and in a number of roles throughout my career, including management consulting, change management, facilitation training, developing e-learning strategies, marketing and communications, I've always tried to keep adult learning in mind, and have regularly refered back to 30 Things We Know for Sure About Adult Learning, written by Ron and Suzan Zemke, and publised in a number of trainining related magazines.

Many of these "things" should have a direct bearning on workshop design and the presentation of new learning content leading up to any analysis, cause analysis, decision making and planning etc..

Another good reference is The Adult Learner, Some Things We Know by Robin Fogharty and Brian M. Pete. They explore the adult learner in a change context.

A Living Library

Stumbled across an interesting story on CBC News about The Living Library - "an innovative method designed to promote dialogue, reduce prejudices and encourage understanding." - where people can check out "living books" (other people) that are representative of and have experienced specific stereotyping / common prejudices. A great concept / approach, and I wonder if it can be implemented inside an organization.  It does have much in common with mentoring, but I can also see it as a possible extension of Library services - connecting the right people with each other about a topic. (Though maybe I'm being seduced somewhat by what the above initiative is titled.)

Value of Facilitation in Emergent Collaboration / Crowdsourcing

In The Crowd Is Wise (When It’s Focused), a NY Times article by Steve Lohr, the author makes a pretty good point: "Evidence suggests that crowdsourcing succeeds when it’s designed for specific tasks — and when the incentives attract the most effective collaborators."

Would indicate to me that even in the brave new world of Enterprise 2.0, some form of facilitator  is required ensure that great ideas are generated, and that the right ideas are acted upon to yield meaningful results, all within a resontable timeframe.

(Thanks to Peter Z at Cognitive Potential for pointing me to the article.)

Combining Collective Intelligence

I just stumbled across an interesting website created by IDEO called Patterns. For those few who don't know, IDEO is widely known as a permier design and innovation company, thanks in large part to articles in BusinessWeek (2004), Harvard Business Review, and a 60 Minutes segment, now available on YouTube.

IDEO has an interesting premise for their Patterns site:

"PATTERNS are how we capture and share some of the common insights we see bubbling up across projects, as well as out and about in the world. They are a foundation for intuition. A way to elevate insights to the level of cultural impact. And a way to tap into IDEO’s collective intelligence to do better work for our clients—even faster."

Their current issue/topic, titled Designing for Life's Changes, has good succinct stories about change, and a plain-English 5 step action framework. This along with their past

I wonder what process they use to identify, discuss, decide and capture the insights and stories that they expose on their site - it could be very useful in other settings when the importance of understanding overall trends and patterns is made extremely difficult by busy schedules and siloed work.

Fun with Archetypes

For a recent project management community of practice meeting I was asked to facilitate an "ice breaker" activity for the group. Having read and heard about some of the great work that Dave Snowden (Cognitive Edge), Patrick Lambe (Straights Knowledge/Green Chameleon), Shawn Callahan (Anecdote) and others are doing with narrative patterning, fables, archetype creation, I thought I'd facilitate a fun, short exercise to create a archetype of a project manager in the context of the community members' organization.

I certainly didn't follow any of the specific detailed processes as modeled by the experts above, given that I only had about 10-15 minutes on the agenda. I instead I simply:

• introduced the concept of an archetype
• showed the session participants a few examples of archetypal expressions to provide a picture of the desired outcome
• formed small groups of twos and threes
• asked the small groups to discuss, capture and present their observations of project managers (whether real or tongue in cheek) in areas such as social style, behavour and manerisms, posture, actions, speech patterns, appearance, how they interact with others, what they think and value etc.

It was fascinating watching what happened. Stories naturally emerged and were shared throughout the exercise. The energy in the room was palatable. Time flew for everyone - what was to be about 15 minutes of an ice breaker ended up filling the entire hour allotted for the meeting.

And the combined results of all the groups not only painted a clear and unique picture of a project manager in the organizational context of the PM community, but also some important and noticeable characteristics of the cutlture within which they function as a discipline.

 I think I'm going to keep this type of exercise in my "back pocket" for reuse in the future.

Strategic Partnering In Corporate Administration from the "Ground Up"

Despite all the promise for more democratic, collaborative organizations predicted in much of the management literature today, stove pipes / silos still exist, often deeply ingrained in the fabric of corporate culture. Internal service groups (ISGs), such as human resources, IT, audit, communications, facilities, finance and so on genuinely look for ways to improve how they collaborate with their partners, but efforts often fall short. Pressures to focus on narrow departmental work group outcomes/objectives, affinities aligned with technical expertise, difficulty communicating due to lack of common language, mismatched workflow and planning processes, and vertical rather than horizontal / group rewards and recognition are only some of the barriers to effective internal service partnerships.

ISGs exist to enable business / management processes / practices, and support managers and staff in fulfiling their roles and responsibilities in these areas. But because of partnership and collaboration challenges across the service groups, staff and manager workloads are often added to rather than reduced, and the value ISGs deliver to their customers, and to each other as partners and customers, is less than desired.

There is a lot of good literature about stratetic planning processes, but there is one necessary element I would like to point out - the definition of "we."

It's no surprise that ISGs need to be part of the strategy development process, and not just recipients of the final strategy document, to have a clear understanding of where their customers are heading and why, along with current needs and challenges they face.

Each ISG does their best to be "at the planning table" and engage in strategic conversations with their customers. The challenge is that ISGs often compete for that valuable chair at the table. They compete for attention to sell their solutions and /or draw attention to services, for funding the projects that are sold and the services they deliver, for more attention during the projects and associated change management initiatives, and for validation of benefitis realization after the projects are complete.

Imagine, instead, redefining "we," how people refer to the group that they belong to / have affinity with, to be larger than their specific ISG or discipline.

Imagine, in over simplified terms, a planning process that looks a bit like this.

The ISGs assemble integrated / multi-discipline planning teams (an new "we") who participate directly in customer planning processes and workshops. The IGS team hears first hand about the trends / external forces the customers are considering, challenges and opportunities in the current state discussed, and strategic direction decided.

In the context of the workshops the cross-discipline ISG team has the opportunity of asking clarifying questions and building collective understanding of the customers' position - and of course everyone hears the question and participates in the ensuing discussion. The ISG team then works together as a group to create, test and position draft joined-up solutions in the workshops as part of the customers' strategic plan.

Then all the ISG teams come together with their leadership teams to form a larger "we" and blend their commitments and findings from the different workshops into a set of operational and strategic plans that establish clear linkages of collaboration, cooperation and partnership and joined-up accountability for management, acitivies, results and performance measures across the ISGs. (A colleague of mine calls this part "dukeing it out for the customer.")

In this approach, synergies of group work are leveraged in developing shared understanding and making common sense of the customers' views, developing innovative collaborative solutions and proposals, respecting customers' scarcity of time and attention, serving mutual customers efficiently and effectively through partnership based on process and practices and not lip-service, and making best use of available corporate funding.

Some organizations I know of are taking a participative/collaborative approach to internal service planning and delivery, and I'm sure there are lots more out there. With increasing complexity of the world we work in, I think that horizontal / collaborative sense-making, planning, delivery, reflection and action are the keys to ISG success.

The Neglected Human Element in Web 2.0

Most of the talk around "Web 2.0" rarely touches on the human element. There is lots of rhetoric about the promise and potential of emerging social / collaborative technologies, but no one connects these as tools that enable human processes / practices. There seems to be an underlying assumption of "build it and they will come" or "give the group these technologies and magic will happen."

I think this is a problematic and potentially costly assumption.

Example. Wiki technology enables a group of people to jointly create and edit a document, track who made what changes, and have a related on-line discussion about the document/content. A much more productive tool than using only Microsoft word and those ugly revision marks.

But without common purpose and motivation to contribute, the required skills and knowledge to contribute, agreement to basic ground rules and processes, clear decision making around what content stays and what goes, and a transparent, agreed to arbitration process in the case of irreconcilable conflict -- all the basic things guide group work even in the absence of technology - the tool in and of itself is ineffective and desired outcomes will not be reached.

Related to this idea is that the word "collaboration" has become a generic term to refer to ANY form of interaction between individuals and groups. Yet there are multiple forms, including consulting (asking for input), co-operating, coordinating.

In each one the motivation, process and outcomes are different than real collaboration, which can be defined as exchanging information for mutual benefit, and altering activities, sharing resources, and enhancing the capacity of another to achieve a commonly agreed to outcome through an agreed to process.

Common, explicit understanding and agreement about the outcome / goal, and HOW a group will interact together is important for establishing roles/responsibilities and rules to govern the interaction, and the choice of technology or tool.

I think when "collaboration" is used generically it leads to multiple interpretations and assumptions, which causes breakdown in processes/practices and prevents groups from achieving their potential.

Adding technology in the mix only multiplies the risks.

Mysterious Art of Collaboration

In a recent presentation about linking knowledge management and the Balanced Scorecard, a colleague pointed to "focussed dialog" as necessary for any effective business planning / management framework and process. Part of the conversation turned to the general observation of how a lot of planning and management activities arrange for the right people to be in the right room for the right reasons, but there often seems to be an implicit assumption that when the doors close "magic" happens - productive conversations take place, issues & problems are well identified, cause is effectively determined, decisions well made, and innovative thinking takes place.

Granted that some of this magic must take place, or we would not have the many successful organizations we've seen in the public, private and NGO sectors. It safe to say, then that in many cases the opposite is true and there are ample opportunities for improvement?
A few very interesting blog entries have touched on the topic of collaboration:

• Just what do you mean by 'collaboration' - Jack Vinson


• From the team at Anectode: Collaboration's resurgence, Developing a Collaboration Capability Requires more than Wishful Thinking, Collaboration Conditions, Three Types of Collaboration, Why People Don't Use Collaboration Tools
  
  Some thinkers/writers have drawn the distinction between collaboration and other forms of interpersonal/group interaction:


• From Dave Pollard - Will That Be Coordination, Cooperation, or Collaboration?
• Leo Denise, in this article titled Collaboration vs. C-Three (Cooperation, Coordination, and Communication) , Arthur T. Himmelman in his article titled Collaboration for a Change (Collaboration Defined: A Developmental Continuum of Change Strategies, and in Collaboration: What Makes It Work from the Wilder Research Center.

I think that for people to collaborate effectively they need the following:
A) Common understanding of what is meant by collaboration and what distinguishes it from other forms of interaction
Himmelman has some good basic, incremental definitions:

• Networking - Exchanging information for mutual benefit
• Coordinating - Exchanging information for mutual benefit, and altering activities to achieve a common purpose
• Cooperating - Exchanging information for mutual benefit, and altering activities and sharing resources to achieve a common purpose
• Collaborating - Exchanging information for mutual benefit, and altering activities, sharing resources, and enhancing the capacity of another to achieve a common purpose
• Co-Evolution - An interesting term I stumbled across after discovering "Beyond Partnerships" report on the Really Learning web site, it defines Co-Evolution as "... the ‘deepest’ form of partnership. It can consume considerable time from key players, so it is not for the fainthearted! It should, therefore, not be attempted if one of the other forms is more appropriate. It requires new thinking, new insights, new generosity about opportunities or problems, and these problems or opportunities are as yet unarticulated or not understood. As the outcomes aren’t at all clear, neither party can simply pursue their existing goals; they will need to be prepared to develop new goals as they become apparent. Thus it will be important to be able to examine assumptions, invert thinking, acknowledge where things (or thinking) have gone wrong, and where partners may need to let resources go in order to achieve the greater good. "

Dave Pollard also defines collaboration as "... finding the right group of people (skills, personalities, knowledge, work-styles, and chemistry), ensuring they share commitment to the collaboration task at hand, and providing them with an environment, tools, knowledge, training, process and facilitation to ensure they work together effectively." A fairly holistic view.
B) A reason to collaborate - where there are issues / problems that cannot be tacked by a single group acting alone.
C) Defined, explicit, facilitated group processes roles and responsibilities for fundamental processes - planning, cause analysis, decision making, issue identification & prioritization, and innovation / idea generation.
E) A collaborative attitude (you could call this principles / values), which I suggest comes directly from Roger Schwartz' work on Facilitative Leadership, specifically:

• seek to collect and share valid information. Valid information includes all the relevant information you have on the subject (whether it supports your position or not)
• seek to encourage free and informed choice so that people agree to do things because they have the relevant information and because they believe the decision makes sense, not because they feel manipulated or coerced into it.
• seek internal commitment to the decisions, which often flows from the first two values—with this level of motivation, people will do whatever is necessary to implement the decisions.
• value compassion, which means temporarily suspending judgment in order to appreciate others’ perspectives. It means having empathy for others and for yourself in a way that still holds people accountable for their actions rather than unilaterally protecting others or yourself.

Robert Hargrove's work in Mastering the Art of Creative Collaboration includes a Collaborative Model that points to key collaborative behaviours including:

• designating new possibilities, seeking creative & entrepreneurial results
• building collaborative networks and new patters of relationships and interactions
• showing authenticity and vulnerability
• showing attitude of learning, and equating success with questions
• balancing advocacy of views with inquiry into own and others' thinking
• listening to understand others
• acknowledging talents and gifts of others and providing an enabling environment

Collaborative-oriented competencies in areas such as active listening, written & verbal communications, coaching, facilitation, negotiation, empathy, analysis, synthesis, creativity, and too many to go into here.
I think that improving how people interact, both the processes and the way people work together (approach, attitudes, principles, values), are fundamental to meaningful success in knowledge management. Its also fundamental to ACHIEVING success in KM and any other change initiative.
And yet, it seems to often be the last thing considered. I expect that's because, since we humans are involved, it's complicated, challenging, time consuming, frustrating, difficult, often requiring somewhat different skills and perspectives.
But in terms of outcomes, the rewards are "priceless."
(BTW, Collaboration: What Makes It Work from the Wilder Research Center includes a Collaboration Factors Survey/Inventory that is well worth a look.)

Meeting Rules

David Meiser, author of numerous books (my favourites being the Trusted Advisor and First Among Equals), started a conversation on Meeting Rules. Funny how making meetings more productive seems to be a recurring theme and common problem in organizations, despite the volumes of information and proven practices available out there.

In the blog entry, David asks: "What meeting rules would you propose?"

In my comments, I suggested that the MOST IMPORTANT RULE, maybe the only one is "We will respect each other and ourselves."

Meeting organizers should respect participants by creating an environment that maximizes participation and contributions, and minimizes unnecessary negative impact on workloads - by being clear and explicit about outcomes, objectives, roles, responsibilities, preparation required, meeting structure and underlying process.

All meeting participants should respect each other by:

• "being there" - being cognitively present in the meeting and focused on contributing to outcomes, and yes, that means turning off cell phones and Blackberry's .. perhaps every meeting room / meeting organizer needs one of these - http://www.phonejammer.com/cell-phone-jammer/p2jbz-r.asp
• tabling all relevant information to enable everyone to make fully informed choices and decisions
  listing to others' opinions and ideas for value, and not just criticism - balancing advocacy with inquiry
• being productively candid, and discussing the "undiscussable"

These are a blend of a few principles found in Roger Schwartz' "Using the Facilitative Leader Approach to Create an Organizational Culture of Collaboration." and some of the principles in that video FISH! that you may have seen a few years back.

Another Reason Why KM is more than just IM

On the Anectode blog, Daryl referenced an interesting Star Article by Louise Brown titled The fine art of (not) lecturing. In it Brown references criticisms of the typical lecture model used in post-secondary education by Nobel laureate Carl Wieman, leader of the $2 million-a-year Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative for improving science learning.

The article references some interesting points:

• people don't remember what they don't pay attention to
• short-term memory can only process four ideas at a time - reduce the load and stimulate the brain
• vigorous interaction – the guessing, answering and arguing and persuading – stimulates protein in the brain, which in turn helps anchor ideas into long-term memory
• we remember only those things we think have meaning at the time, and ignore everything else (Ever re-read something months or years from the original read only to take away a whole new understanding? I certainly have.)
• we can remember only seven items at a time and can process only four ideas at once

Given the relative truth in these statements, and the old axiom in the facilitation world that "the brain falls asleep 2.8 seconds after your posterior does," I wonder why lecture based "training," with a typical talking head at the front of the room, is still often equated with effective learning. Why so many corporate communication, or "change management" programs focus on pushing information, presuming that once communicated, it will be consumed, understood, accepted and duly acted upon. And why groups often resist efforts to facilitate the interactivity necessary to generate mutual learning in support of problem solving and decision making into meetings and workshops.

If you at least notionally agree that knowledge is created through active learning in context, supported by quality, relevant content, then it is critical for the exchange / transfer of knowledge to be highly interactive, with active engagement by the learner in the process. Passivity is counter productive.

Sounds a bit like adult learning 101, doesn't it? At least it seems to be the common ground for collaboration between human resource management and knowledge management.

Cognitive Barriers to Collaboration

I attended a management seminar earlier in the week, hosted by master storyteller Frank Rambeau, to verify the alignment of the seminar's core principles with those of collaboration and knowledge work (and fortunately they were), and of course, to reinforce, remind, and learn as well. It's hard to move ahead if you don't have the basics right, or if you unconsciously develop bad habits!

The workshop focused on the need for managers to create a highly collaborative, participative"climate" that encourages staff to contribute to business outcomes, and enables their staff to develop and succeed, as opposed to a mechanistic approach to directing and controlling actions and behaviours in simplistic, rather Pavlovian (or in some instances Machiavellian) ways. Some of the core competencies referenced were collaboration, facilitative leadership, and good communication based on empathetic listening. (Hey.. where did all that cheering come from!)

Much of the discussions was about what managers should do to create the right climate for knowledge work, and what they, or should I say "we", often do that gets in the way. We are all "our own worst enemies" at some time or other are we not, often acting in ways that defy all logic and overwhelming evidence to the contratry?

Have you ever wondered, after a particularly unproductive meeting or conversation, why people have difficulty working together / collaborating? Why people can hear / read the same thing and take away a different meaning? There are many reasons, but in the context of collaborative work, "cognitive biases" play a major role in disconnecting and derailing even the best of communications, information and knowledge sharing intentions.

What are cognitive biases? I generally define them as ways of thinking that, singly or in combination, are limiting, or inappropriate, for a given circumstance or context. (It may not be technically accurate, but it works for me.. )

As an example, the a common critique of having "having blinders on", can be linked to one of the cognitive biases called "anchoring", which is basically to use a past event, or a single piece of information, to make a decision, ignoring broader valid information.

Being told "we don't do it that way here" in the context of resisting change, can be associated to a "status quo bias".

Take someone who says, in reflecting on a recent event or outcome, "I knew that would happen all along!" If they didn't / couldn't have predicted the outcome in advance, yet tell themselves they did, they're likely exhibiting "hindsight bias."

When I look at a more extensive list of the various biases (for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) I certainly wonder how we humans get anything done!

And that's only the start! Imagine what can happen when an individual unconsciously defaults to their "home" type of reasoning (e.g. deductive, inductive, abductive, fallacious) when a situation calls for a different one, or when conflicting types of reasoning implicitly held by participants collide in a meeting or conversation! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasoning)

For me, different ways of thinking and viewing the world represents a never ending challenge to collaboration, but also a never ending wealth of possibility and potential.

Courage of Constructive Candor

In his exploration of facilitation, and facilitative leadership, Roger Schwartz describes and promotes what he calls a "mutual learning model", adapted from work by some acknowledged thought leaders in learning. This learning model can also form the foundation of good collaboration, as Schwartz presents in his article titled Using the Facilitative Leader Approach to Create an Organizational Culture of Collaboration, which he currently makes available on his web site.
When you examine the model, even superficially, there are some interesting elements (e.g. free & informed choice, share all relevant information, discuss the undiscussables) that point to the need for something I call "constructive candor."
It is very hard to collaborate effectively unless everyone involved speaks their mind - but in a way that is productive, contextual, and leads to the agreed upon outcomes.
If you've heard people ask "May I be brutally honest?" - that is not what I'm referring to. Someone being brutally honest is often commenting on something unrelated or overly tangential to the shared objectives, promoting their own agenda, or not willing to take a few minutes and be "un-brutal".
On the other end of the spectrum are people who are not candid at all for a number of reasons, ranging from: fear of repercussions or consequences - often unknown or unpredictable; being ill equipped to respond to a reciprocal challenge or tirade; appearing incompetent in front of colleagues, subordinates, or supervisors; wishing not to disclose a personal agenda (or failure).
Have you ever been to a "collegial" meeting with a number of well meaning people who have wide ranging pleasant, conversations, accomplished nothing, only to immediately launch into a series of one-on-one and small group bilateral conversations about the same topic? I would say there is not a lot of constructive candor going on, nor a lot of collaboration.
Constructive candor takes courage. The courage to do it, because it has significant payoffs in collaborative work. The courage learn and practice doing it, in particular for those who feel it's "not in their makeup." The courage to be persistent at it, since falling back into old habits is all too easy. The courage to live with the personal consequences of candor, which often are not so bad if it's truly constructive.
The bottom line is that if candor is constructive, it generally benefits people, and people certainly don't mind being benefited.

Forget "Just The Facts"- Gimme the Knowledge!

I recently came across reference to a famous line from Sgt. Joe Friday on the 1950s series Dragnet, typically used when he was interrogating people. "I Just Want Facts 'Mam, Just the Facts" (or something like it) .

Many of us are preoccupied with information and data - facts and figures, dates, numbers, financial results, lists of accomplishments and that's all good but what about the "knowledge" behind it? The rationale, the thinking approaches, considerations etc. - the stuff more easily shared in conversation and stories, and rarely if ever captured.

I was reviewing my notes from Richard McDermott's KMWorld 2006 presentation, in which he shared some interesting perspectives and some good practical ideas on sharing deep knowledge and expertise.

He broke down knowledge into three types:

• Specific knowledge of systems, tools, clients, structures, contacts etc. - useful but degrades over time. Experts build this knowledge through intimacy over time.
• Analytic knowledge, gained through sensemaking of experiences - guidelines, processes, cookbooks - in essence "scaffolding" through which to understand the knowledge domain
• Intuitive expertise - the ability to handle situations, exceptions and quickly improvise in real time

He elaborated a bit on defining expertise as the intuitive ability to use experience to solve problems. It is embedded in experience and doesn't use decision trees or pros/cons - experts can't often describe how they know. When faced with a situation, experts size it up, intuitively applying various models and looking for clues - then they identify possible actions, go through a mental rehearsal, and examining potential outcomes - then they take action (sounds a bit like a good chess player, doesn't it?) .

And offered suggestions for transfer in for each of the types:

• To transfer specific knowledge, organize files, add metadata where useful, make existing knowledge more accessible
• To transfer analytic knowledge, articulate basic work processes, develop guidelines, decision frameworks etc. which will help people think.
• To transfer intuitive expertise, unearth how experts see the world and how they think

Richard suggested that one of the best ways to transfer expertise is through a "true master class", where the learners present their problems/ dilemmas, and think aloud about them - the expert listens and also thinks aloud - questions back and fourth draw out experts' lived experiences and allow learners to draw on them and build their own.

He reinforces that to build expertise, practice is critical. Learning through practice can include master classes, visiting masters coach on projects, collective reflection on different ways to approach a situation, simulations, serious games, cases and mini-cases.

If you'd like a simple experiment to try the "master class" approach, here is a simple "judgement-laden" example that I've tried with some very good success and feedback - improving fair and equitable application of managerial discretion in the context of corporate / business policy.

Many policies in a corporate environment are fairly straight forward and prescriptive, often based on legislation. Others are far more open to interpretation.

1) Bring together three groups in to a room

• the key policy makers / "owners" who are intimately familiar with the policy, the policy framework and rationale, organization context, and likely awareness of how the policy is being regarded and applied across the organization
• experienced mangers, who have much experience, good and bad, in the interpretation / application of the policy
• a full spectrum of less experienced and new managers (from inside our outside the organization) with varying degrees of experience with the policy, and a need to learn more

2) Compile and present a number of real-world scenarios and examples, in a succession of increasing complexity.

3) Have mixed break out groups consider each scenario and come up with a group decision on the application of policy discretion.

4) Have each group present their decisions (facts), and most importantly, also have them also share and elaborate:

• their thinking approach / process and why they used the approach
• considerations and non-considerations and why they were such
• contextual factors and external forces and why they were considered "in play"
• assumptions and what they thought were facts in evidence
• commonalities/convergence and conflicts/divergence during the group discussions

This is the "knowledge", or as Richard describes it, the "intuitive expertise." This simple approach exposes the experts viewpoint and thinking process in an interactive, dialogic way in the context of a meaningful issue / problem (or reasonable facsimile of one).

Final notes ..

I understand from Richard that he is working on an article based on the concepts from his KMWorld 2006 presentation. Watch out for it, it will be a good one.

And I see a strong synergy with the four quadrant model that Tom Davenport articulates in his book Thinking for a Living, and the concepts in Dorothy Leonard's book Deep Smarts.

Linking Facilitation and Experiential Learning

A colleague of mine recently attended a facilitation course I suggested to her, held by Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) Associates. She was talking about it, raving about it actually, and mentioned something she learned.

In the workshop, which is built on a foundation ICA calls the Focused Conversation Method, facilitators are coached through learning about and applying 4 important types of questions:

Objective - Begin with data, facts, external reality
Reflective - immediate personal reactions, internal responses, sometimes emotions or feelings, hidden images, and associations with the facts
Interpretive - meaning, values, significance, implications
Decisional - Bring the conversation to a close, eliciting resolution and enabling the group to make a decision about the future


I was coincidentally working on a document where I was linking experiential learning, (a feedback loop) to the using knowledge circle of learning before, while and after doing, as outlined in the Collison / Parcell book Learning to Fly.

So when I look at all three together, it strikes me that what Chris and Geoff were outlining was a practical approach to experiential learning in organizations. And when you look at both in the context of facilitation, blend in a bit of Ed Schein's Process Facilitation and Agyris' Double Loop Learning, it would appear that effective facilitation is the core competency / foundation for organizational learning and the creation of environments that support effective knowledge exchange. (Since they talk about the 4 stages of learning in the book - from unconscious incompetent to unconscious competent, maybe that's what Chris and Geoff were getting at in the book and I missed it - my bad.)

So what does this mean?

Make facilitation a core competency throughout the organization by:

• explicitly including the skill in corporate competency profiles and dictionaries
• providing the opportunities, and ensuring everyone has the basic skill set to participate effectively in facilitated sessions or participative / collaborative work
• training managers across the organization on facilitative leadership and equip them to coach others, and ensure performance agreements reinforce appropriate effort and behaviours
• have a core group of skilled facilitators who can conceive, design, and run workshops of all types, and who have good relations with external facilitators to broker services on those few occasions when a true outside perspective is required
• ensure the core group of facilitators have access to resources, external networks and experts to ensure their skills and knowledge are always evolving