Government: Transparent, Collaborative, Participative

On Friday, along with millions of other federal employees, I received a memo from Obama stating that government shall be transparent, collaborative, and participative. This is very exciting news and promises to maximize social media, such as blogging. Of course, everyone has heard by now that Obama is also the first blogging president.

Conceptually, I really support and understand the idea of things becoming more transparent, collaborative, and participative. I'll admit I'm not an expert at most social media platforms, but I consider myself an early adopter. I'm taking time to become more familiar because this seems to be the way of things. But, as open and adaptive as I like to think I am, I'm still experiencing resistance and confusion around how to fully realize the next era of effective communications.

I'm experiencing uncertainty around a number of big questions. Let's start with transparency. Who exactly should be transparent and how transparent should one be? I love the idea of having close to real time data in line-by-line transactions on the web where any American can go and see how the dollars are being spent. And I love the idea of reading blogs written by executive leaders. In both cases, people don't have to actually read either of these -- simply knowing its available increases the perception of being trustworthy. Let's take the case of Forest Service leaders blogging. I've been advocating this for a couple of years now. I want to hear weekly updates about what the Chief of the Forest Service has been doing, who she met with, what conferences she attended, etc. I want to hear her reflect upon the trends and dynamics she witnessed. I want to feel like I'm sitting in her office when the light bulb clicks on and she realizes that there is a connection between what she saw on Monday and what she felt on Wednesday.

But that's not how blogging is going in the agency. So far it's been very sporadic. The few blogging executives seem to post once every few months and when they write it seems white-washed and safe... like all the other internal publications. It's easy for me to understand why: it's scary to be that open! The reason why transparency builds trust so quickly is that transparency requires vulnerability!

I'm no executive, and there aren't 35,000 employees being reminded that there's a blog they could check out. Yet I'm still experiencing fear and resistance around this new media. Intuitively I know that we humans are striving to actualize new forms of networked intelligence and collective consciousness. I know that my own knowledge is only as valuable to the collective as it is accessible to the collective. And yet I am having a miniature identity crisis in the process of making myself accessible to the collective!

All in one week I've been asked if I had a FaceBook profile... by a professional contact, a spiritual friend, and my sister-in-law. I don't have a FaceBook profile because I can't figure out how to relate to each of these three kinds of contacts as myself. My sister-in-law could care less about the professional jargon-laiden side of my life. And my colleagues could be uncomfortable if exposed to something about my spiritual beliefs. What's really ironic is that I want to just be one person! I want to feel safe being who I am... without that jeopardizing my effectiveness.

But in order to be an active participant in this vibrant and dynamic web of connection, community, and co-creation, I absolutely must put myself out there. And if I want to feel whole and honor my whole self, should I put it all out there? I must not be the only person who is trying to balance all of this.

I believe that it is a travesty of human experience that we are discouraged from being our entire selves in the work place. It is yet another form of fragmentation which needs to be healed in order for us to achieve our highest potentials as individuals and groups. I advocate for a balance in the 5 dimensions of well-being: mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, and social. Emotional wellbeing, for example, finally entered the workplace in a more meaningful way when Daniel Goleman's work on emotional intelligence became popular in the mid 1990s. Physical wellbeing has been supported by employers for considerably longer because of the clear linkages between health and productivity. Mental wellbeing is an unspoken requisite for becoming and remaining employed. Social wellbeing is left to the individuals and differs greatly depending on personality types and the culture of the organization. Spiritual wellbeing is generally not touched by a 10 foot pole within organizations. There are good reasons for (and plenty of scar tissue around) the separation of church and state.

I don't really have a good way to conclude this post... other than owning the fact that I'm standing on the edge of a precipice and I won't be able to lead others into a new era of effective communication until I'm willing to leap into the uncertainty myself.

Presencing Institute

I just joined the social network community at the Presencing Institute. I haven't really blogged about this topic yet. The introductory book to the topic is Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society by Peter M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, Betty Sue Flowers, 2004. The second and much more beefy tome is Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges by C. Otto Scharmer, 2007. Both books are described here: http://www.presencing.com/research-publications/books.shtml

My profile page in the Presencing Institute Community is: http://community.presencing.com/profile/ToniStafford

I'm still learning the best ways to link up each of these various social media tools.

The Transpiral Model of Development

Many organizations, when faced with making large changes, focus on the objective aspects of the system such as process, policy and procedure. Leaders and consultants alike frequently underestimate the importance of the human experience of change. Successful organizations recognize the importance of engaging employees as whole people rather than merely a pair of hands. The Transpiral Model provides a framework for assessing, understanding, and supporting the needs of people as crucial elements to the success of an organization.

Today’s knowledge workers switch employers frequently to actualize their fullest career potential. Organizations which do not value employees as whole individuals do not retain expertise. In order for an organization to maximize its fullest potential, it must support individuals in maximizing their fullest potentials. Psychologist Abraham Maslow described a Hierarchy of Needs (the bottom triangle in the diagram on left) or steps which an individual must take in order to achieve self actualization. The Transpiral Model builds on Maslow’s work and addresses the steps needed to achieve group and organizational actualization.

According to Maslow (1999), an individual addresses his or her needs in order of priority, beginning with basic physiological needs. Before an individual can achieve a great work, such as painting a masterpiece, he or she must have adequately addressed the needs for food, shelter, developed nurturing relationships, and must have positive self-esteem. Maslow reminds us that self actualization is not a static state, but rather something toward which one strives throughout life. Professionals in today’s labor market have achieved some degree of self actualization in order to have graduated from higher learning institutions.

Tuckman (1965) identified the popular model for the formation of groups in organizations: forming-storming-norming-performing. The Transpiral Model (shown on the upper left) combines Maslow’s Heirarchy with Tuckman’s developmental sequence (middle triangle) and then adds steps toward group actualization (top triangle). More than the ability to work together, group actualization is a state of high performance.

In order for a group such as a team, and organization, a business, or a community to actualize its fullest potential, it must meet the requirements defined in the top triangle of the model. The group must have financial accountability and be fiscally solvent in order to achieve its fullest potential. The group must be secure, meaning that there are no threats to individual safety or to the safety of the group. This security could be physical or psychological. Psychological security of the group blends into the next level of group actualization, respect. Respect is important especially during decision making. Respect leads to trust. Groups frequently function without perfect trust, but in order for a group to achieve its fullest potential, trust is crucial.

When a group is financially stable, when all the members are physically and psychologically safe, when there is enough respect to facilitate effective communication and decision making, and when the level of trust is such that individuals may act on behalf of the group without taking time to ask permission; only then is it possible for a group to achieve its maximum potential. As with self actualization, group actualization is not a static end state. Rather its reached in peak moments. Peak moments provide the group with feedback on how to strengthen the preceding steps to actualization in order to sustain actualization for longer and longer periods.

The Transpiral Model is my original work and it earned me a Master of Arts from Prescott College in 2005. It is my intention to make this work available to anyone who is interested. In addition to periodic blogs I will explore both traditional and non-traditional venues for publication. You may contact me to request a free ebook of The Transpiral Model of Social Change.

Hope Over Fear

I am both proud and awestruck by President Obama's words yesterday. I am very hopeful as I read and re-read the words of his Inaugural Address. And even though, according to The Economist, Obama has an 80% global approval rating, he only recieved 53% of our votes.

While I feel inspired to write about many aspects of my experience of the Inauguration and the state of the world, what I'm drawn to explore today are the dynamics of duality. There are examples of extreme polarity and duality every where we look. Night and day, black and white, republican and democrat, Christians and Muslims, and hope versus fear.

It is easy to be caught up in an "us versus them" mentality. As soon as we draw a line in the sand to discriminate self from other, we begin building a wall which impedes connection, understanding, and collaboration. We inherit these walls from our families and communities, often without question. The gap of fear and distrust between Christians and Muslims, for example, is said to go all the way back to the falling out of two brothers, Cain and Abel. With the descendants of Cain becoming today's Muslims and the descendants of Abel becoming today's Christians.

Overcoming the walls of our own judements and discriminations requires an expansion of consciousness. To put it another way, in order to see beyond the walls of my own self I must become aware of that which is not-self. I must not only become aware that which feels alien to me, but I must also begin to find some basis for connecting with or understanding something or someone that is on the other side of the fortress that is my paradigm.

How exactly, then, do we choose Hope Over Fear? President Obama spoke at length over this, and I believe that the responsibility for meaningful transformation belongs to each individual.

We are witnessing the decay and demise of all the major systems on the planet, including the global economy, education, human health and wellbeing, society, and every ecosystem on earth. To a systems thinker, the failures of these interdependent systems provide valuable feedback that a course correction is needed. In Chaos Theory, turbulence precedes a jump to a new level of order. The turbulence itself is caused by a rapid and chaotic oscillation between two poles in the trajectory of a system.

I think it's worth taking a minute to break this concept down for you. A trajectory is simply the direction in which the energy of the system is moving. If you're walking north on a hiking trail then the path you've walked is your trajectory. When you come to a fork in the trail you're faced with choosing east or west. Until you lock-in on one choice, your energy waffles back and forth between east and west. Those moments of indecision don't cause too much discomfort when you are just hiking... but when an entire nation is waffling back and forth between republicans and democrats every 4-8 years, there is considerable turbulence. Each time the pendulum shifts "we" feel hopeful and optimistic while "they" feel fearful and afraid.

Case in point: last October I received a widely forwarded email which claimed that Obama was the anti-christ. There are good and honest people out there in the world who are truly afraid that this election heralds the end of days and that we will soon experience a full blown apocalypse. Interestingly enough, I recall that a number of Gore supporters had the same judgements and fears when Bush was elected.

While I am clearly a democrat and am most certainly feeling much more hopeful about the world today than I have in the past several years, it's useless for half of the country to feel hopeful if the other half is fearful. It only causes more turbulence.

Therefore, any one of us who truly wants to make a difference in the world, and who truly want to achieve world peace, must begin to tear down the walls of our judgements. We must cease to define others by how they differ from us. We must seek always to connect with and understand anything and anyone which feels alien, foreign, or threatening.

If you are a democrat, please reach out to your republican neighbors. Begin by sharing a meal together, not by lecturing or brow-beating. Spend time appreciating the things you have in common - loving your children, working hard, doing the right thing, and faith in something higher than the self. This is one thing you can do to work for peace. This is how we choose hope over fear. We cannot afford otherwise.

Change: Are you Weary or Savvy?

These days the only constant is change. For some of us that leads to stress and uncertainty. For others change is an opportunity and a time to be creative. Let’s think about that for a moment. In an organization, first, a change is announced. Then there’s planning and implementation. Then, as the change is assessed we learn that there are more things to change, so the cycle continues, like a ball rolling down a hill (see the blue loop). For those of us who are change weary, we feel stressed when more change is announced and our morale and productivity suffers. And since change keeps happening, we just feel worse and worse (red loop).

But what about those people who see change as an opportunity? When change is announced they think creatively and trust that they will find a positive outcome. This helps them avoid the downward spiral of stress. While they are scanning the horizon for their next steps, their creative thinking helps them turn a change into an opportunity.
Are you change weary or change savvy? Which group of people is probably having more fun at work? Which group of people do you imagine feels healthier? Believe it or not but you have a choice. You can choose to have a negative experience of change, or you can choose to have a positive experience of change. Stay tuned to this blog to learn how to change your experiences and reactions to change and other stressful situations.

Home Grown School

My husband, Steven, and I live in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas with our two young children, Forest and Raven. We moved here about 4 years ago. I work for the national headquarters of the Forest Service, in a program called Enterprise. Because I serve the entire agency, I can live anywhere and work from an office in my home.

At the local summer solstice party in 2007 there were a group of us mom's sitting on a quilt and talking about our kids. Between the 4 moms we had a total of 7 kids, 4 of them all the same age. The conversation got around to schooling and what our plans were. One mom, Laura Daly, shared that she'd always dreamed of starting a school and that she'd even studied early childhood development in college. Then I shared that Steven and I had a dream of starting a non-profit organization and that one of our ideas was to have a school/community center which would provide education for both kids as well as adults.

It could have been one of those "wouldn't it be nice if..." conversations, but because I'm an organizational developer I siezed the moment and gave a quick sales pitch about how we REALLY could do this. I offered to facilitate meetings and guide the group through the various processes.

It's now 1.5 years later. Our strategic plan is about 80% complete. On Friday we elected the director of our board and agreed to begin filing papers for our 501-3c. The local American Legion has agreed to let us hold the school there when we open up this August. The four families who've been in on the planning process have really worked hard to get this far. I'll have to see if I can post our brochure and/or strategic plan. In the mean time, here's some excerpts from the executive summary of the strategic plan:

Vision:
By Fall of 2009, Leslie Creative Learning Cooperative, a 501-3c non-profit organization, will open its doors to 12-15 students. Our facility will be eco-friendly with multiple learning environments which encourage holistic development and self-initiated learning.

Mission:
LCLC is a non-profit elementary school which provides affordable holistic education to children in Northern Arkansas. Our mission is to enhance the child’s natural ability to realize his/her highest potential. Our developmentally appropriate environment supports alternate learning styles. At LCLC we partner with parents and students to craft an individual learning plan about which each student can be passionate. Our goal is to create a partnership between children, parents, teachers, the school, and the community.

Educational Philosophy:
At LCLC we believe children learn best in an environment in which they are actively involved in their education. Children learn when they are excited about the subject and inspired rather than required to learn. We feel children learn best when the curriculum is both developmentally appropriate and centered on their individual learning style. Learning is enhanced when children are in a multi-aged classroom in which they are able to learn from and teach each other.

At LCLC we recognize that the parents are their children’s first educators. Diversity and individuality are respected, encouraged and supported in our democratic approach to both curriculum and decision making. We feel the process of learning is just as important as the subjects being taught. LCLC strives to place learning in both a local and global context.
Teachers partner with parents and students to design an individual learning plan which is tailored to the student’s interests and developmental needs. Parents elect part time or full time attendance so that a portion of the child’s learning happens in the home. We strive to create a learning community which not only supports the learning of each individual student, but also provides students with opportunities to collaborate.

Whenever possible the individual learning plans of the several students blend with communal projects. Communal projects are designed to provide experiential and integrated learning. LCLC communal projects are not only relevant to the developmental needs of the students, but also to the development of the community at large. Examples might include a coop school garden and farmers market.

I will periodically blog about the work to date and the next steps. If you, reader, should happen to find this blog post because you are dreaming of creating a school, please feel free to contact me and I will share our materials and experiences with you. Afterall, one of the best ways to change the world for the good is to start by giving the next generation of leaders the best education possible.

Why Wellness is Crucial to your Organization's Success

You probably know that stress related issues are the leading cause for sick days. But you may not know about the important connection between attitude and performance.

When you're under stress, the graph of your Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is a jagged and herky-jerky squiggle (the red graph on left). But when you're feeling a positive emotion, the graph of your HRV is a smooth and even sine wave (blue graph on left).

Why does this matter? Reasearch conducted by the Institute of HeartMath(R) has demonstrated that important bodily systems, such as the autonomic nervous system and the hormonal system, take cues from the heart. When you are feeling a negative emotion such as stress or frustration, your incoherent HRV triggers the production of cortisol which has been linked to conditions such as

•Accelerated aging (Kerr et al., 1991; Namiki, 1994)
•Brain cell death (Kerr et al., 1991; Sapolsky, 1992)
•Impaired memory and learning (Kerr et al., 1991; Sapolsky, 1992)
•Decreased bone density; increased osteoporosis (Manolagas, 1979)
•Reduced muscle mass (Beme, 1993)
•Reduced skin growth and regeneration (Beme, 1993)
•Impaired immune function (Hiemke, 1994)
•Increased blood sugar (DeFeo, 1989)
•Increased fat accumulation around waist / hips (Marin, 1992)
•Obesity (Marin 1992)
•Diabetes (Nestler 1992)
•Hypertension (Shafagoj 1992)
•Heart Disease (Barrett-Connor 1986)
•Cancer (Bhatavdekar 1994)
•Alzheimer’s (Nasman 1995)
•HIV-related disease (Wisniewski 1993)

When we're stressed, not only are we more susceptible to injury and illness, but we also cannot think as clearly. Stress impairs both memory and creativity. AND, stress is infectious! One grumpy person in an office, complaining at the water cooler, can quickly multiply into many grumpy people.

I consider myself an expert on this subject as I have two certifications from HeartMath, LLC. But you don't have to take my word for it, there are lots of books, webinars, and papers on the subject. I'll add what I can to this blog and provide links for the rest.

I'm committed to growing healthy people, healthy teams, healthy organizations, healthy communities, and a healthy planet. That's why HeartMath resonnates so well with me. I'm truly grateful to all the folks at HeartMath for the good they do in the world.

Be a Good Neuron - Start a Blog

The Forest Service, like so many organizations, is struggling to find ways to communicate more effectively. At present we're relying on emails, newsletters, intranet sites, meetings, and conference calls. We're innundated by irrelevant information in our inboxes so often that in order to survive we have to tune most of it out. Then we miss the pieces of news which were really crucial.

For the past 100 years the agency has gone through phases of both centralization and decentralization. The next phase of development is struggling to emerge - networked intelligence. My good friend and colleague Faye Fentiman says "intelligence is widely distributed in organzations - one brain per person." Each brain has an amazing depth of unique knowledge which is currently only barely tapped.

Think of it this way. There are 35,000 hard drives each with huge volumes of information, but none of them are networked. There's no way to Google a topic and find anything valuable because each hard drive is encased inside a skull and there are no wires connecting them. Some people call it a knowledge management issue, others call it a communications issue.

There may not be wires from my head to yours, but there are connections and channels of information and influence between individuals. They're called relationships. The more trust and commraderie between two people, the more freely they share their knowledge. The collection of relationships throughout the agency are social networks.

True networked intelligence requires a healthy and vibrant web of interconnected social networks which allow for the unimpeded flow of knowledge throughout the organization. What's interesting to me is that intelligence within one brain also requires a network, a neural network. In your brain there are neurons which fire electrical impulses. Think about your mom for a minute. Everything which comes to mind about your mom can be called a thought construct. Each thought construct is a network of neurons which fire in tandem while you are thinking about that topic. These neural networks, like all networks, are self-organizing. That means that sometimes you can spontaneously realize there is a connection between two or more formerly separate thought constructs. When that happens we describe it as a light bulb going off in our heads, which is fitting since the neurons connect via electricity. When you get a new idea or insight it is said to look like a lightning storm in your brain - it's the flash of thousands of neurons firing in conjunction for the first time - the birth of a new neural network.

If I record my ideas, theories, experiences, knowledge, etc. in my blog and if others do the same, then by Googling I can find and connect with other people around the topics which interest us. Over time as these connections multiply, a network is born. In the knowledge management world it's called a Community of Practice.

The Forest Service is only just entering the world of Social Media. We can Wiki, and executive leaders can blog. I've recently heard that blogging will open up to any employee, provided the supervisor agrees to monitor the blog. I'm choosing to blog outside the fire wall now, and when the opportunity arises, I'll have a duplicate blog on the inside. The reason I think it's important to do both is that I want to participate in dialogue both internally as well as with my external peers.

Even if no one ever reads these posts, it's helpful to me to process and record information in this way.