Diversity: Crafting the Questions

In order to conduct a thorough exploration of the Civil Rights System in the Pacific Northwest Region of the US Forest Service, we will be hosting a number of focus groups and dialogue circles. The success of each conversation, and ultimately the project at large, begins with identifying just the right questions to ask.

I propose the following Four Levels of Listening, from Otto Scharmer, as a model which can steer our project team both in the development of questions and in providing us with a shared language to use when planning the process for our focus groups and dialogue circles. Also, this model can help us to assess the depth of the information gleened in each session.

According to Otto Scharmer's work, Theory U, there are four levels of listening. At level one listening I hear you through the filters of my own attitudes and beliefs. As I listen I compare what you are saying with what I already think. I seek to either accept or reject your words based on whether or not they confirm my own judgements. At level one listening, what you say to me does not fit in with what I already believe, I will reject your words and I may even reject you.

At level two listening I have stopped my internal thinking and am simply hearing what you say. Because your words aren't passing through the filter of my own attitudes, I am willing to change my mind based on what you've said. That's why Scharmer calls it the "Open Mind" phase.

At level three listening I have become emotionally hooked on what you are saying. Some how during the course of conversation I experienced an empathetic connection to the words. Now I'm not only listening with an open mind, but an open heart as well. When you're chatting with co-workers at the water cooler, and the conversation switches from football to someone's recent cancer diagnosis, the listening leaps from levels one and two to level three. You can feel the shift in the room. You'll notice that when an entire group shifts to level three, some people will even place their hands on their hearts for a moment.

Level four happens the least frequently but provides the most memorable experience of conversation and connection. When I am in a group and we are all engaged at this depth, I feel like the very forces of creativity and innovation are passing through us. I find that the words which move through me in these moments represent completely new ideas. I'm often startled at the clarity afforded in these moments of being "in the flow" with others.

As we craft our key questions we'll need some questions which specifically target each level. Here's an example:

If we trust the model and agree that the greatest learning occurs at deeper levels of listening, then it becomes strategically important to drive the group toward conflict and debate (level two) in order to reach levels three and four.

What do you think? What are the really hard questions? What sorts of debates stand between our intention and our collective learning?

Diversity: An Invitation to Dive Deep

I have recently been invited to apply my systems thinking and mapping skills to the area of Civil Rights and Diversity. The Pacific Northwest Region (Region 6) of the US Forest Service has a new civil rights director. She has been involved in the application of systems thinking to the exploration of the agency's safety culture. That work, lead by Dialogos, has touched many employees in a very significant way. As a result, systems thinking and mapping is gaining in noteriety in the agency.

My role, which is only just beginning, will be to sit in circle, hold deep conversations, quietly notice the patterns and dynamics, and then draw a map of the complexity.

In preparation for our very first meeting, which is next week, the director asked us to ponder what the project means to us. This was a very difficult question to answer. Perhaps because a core aspect of my role is to be present while groups of people co-create meaning and understanding, and I can't possibly anticipate what meaning I will participate in creating.

I feel as if I'm arriving at a beautiful and serene lake. In my approach I can see the brilliant blue surface reflecting the light of the sun. I have no idea how deep the water is or what lies beneath the surface. I only know that in order to be safe I must tread gently. As I prepare for this deep dive, of which I will dedicate one week per month for the next six months, I review what I have learned about myself and diversity thus far. I scan my herstory for clues as to what the exploration might reveal.

My scan reveals to me a tenderness, a vulnerable place within my core. There is only one thing of which I am certain: this exploration will expose me to aspects of my thinking which are subconscious or perhaps even unconscious. How do I know that? Because I too was socialized into a system of disparity and oppression. The simple act of growing up in a small town in Oklahoma has exposed me to generations of misinformation, fear, and even hatred. Within the boundaries of my awareness I have been thoughtful and even an activist. But in order to stretch the boundaries of awareness I must dive into this lake.

On more than one occassion I have observed the appearance of a thought in my mind which is ugly and shameful. I'm grateful to have even noticed. When this happens it gives me pause and I explore what lies beneath the thought. In most cases I realize that the thought is a judgement with which I am not actually in agreement in the present moment. So how is it that I have thoughts with which I don't agree?

The way I explain this to myself is that a great deal of my thinking was programmed in as I participated in society. I have seen a black man, for example, and had the thought "Be careful." Then paused and challenged the thought and saw it as ridiculous. Why be any more careful around a man simply because of his skin tone? It has nothing to do with the man before me. It has everything to do with the messages which saturate the world in which I live. It is the voice of my college roommate, a jewish girl from Philadelphia, who cautioned me against getting gas on Broward Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale one night because every patron was African American. It is the voice of my great Aunt who hissed obscenities. It is the voice of some ancient ancestor who perhaps felt he had to compete with people of color in order to have enough food for his family.

As I circle the lake and climb over the boulders which represent that which I have already learned about diversity I can't help but wonder what lurks beneath the surface. What thoughts are yet so unconscious that I've never glimpsed them? I set the intention to be gentle with myself and my ancestors, I draw in a deep breath, and I slide my left food along the sun baked boulder and into the cool water.

Honoring Multiple Perspectives

It seems to me that there are a number of wicked problems facing the world today. There are challenges in the area of environment, economy, and society that are so exceedingly complex that no one person, or no one perspective, could possibly provide a useful solution.

Take, for example, the possibility of land managers collaborating on how to respond to climate change accross a particular landscape. Climate change is definitely a complex and controversial issue. There are myriad perspectives including

• The climate is not changing in any significant way, it has always been variable
• The climate is changing and it is part of a larger natural cycle
• The climate is changing and it is caused or exagerated by human activities
• The climate is getting warmer
• The climate is getting colder

How much agreement is necessary in order for people to collaborate on designing livable solutions to today's challenges?

In any particular region, land is managed by a number of different stakeholders including tribes, federal, state, and local government agencies, corporations, non-profit organizations, families, and individuals. Each of these groups has its own unique set of priorities and objectives for how and why the land should be managed. Even if all the land owners in a region agreed that it was strategically important and mutually beneficial to collaborate on a project, and even if they agreed upon what the challenges were, and even if they agreed upon what the solutions were, it would still be complex to balance the multiple missions, multiple objectives, and multiple organizational policies, in order to collaborate effectively.

But when collaboration is really the only solution to a problem, we can't simply ignore it due to the complexity and the challenges.

Lately I've been attempting to map the complexity of the multiple perspectives on climate change. The effort has been deeply transformative for me, and I wonder if sharing some of my own learning would be of service to anyone else. I'm hoping to have the time to blog a little more frequently than I have of late. My intention is to try and find ways to share something large and complex in small and easily digestible chunks. Even if it doesn't prove to be of value to anyone else, it will certainly be a useful excercise to me.

Transforming the National Recreation Program

I'm in Salt Lake City attending a meeting on Sustainable Recreation in the US Forest Service. A small group of members of the Recreation program at the national, regional, and forest levels of the organization have crafted a National Recreation Strategy to replace an outdated strategy (I think the last strategy was crafted in 1988). The small group has worked for 2 years and is very excited to share the work with a larger group.

There's much passion and energy for this strategy because it's centered on principles of Sustainability and Community Engagement through Recreation and Tourism (CERT). There are a number of specific goals and objectives, but to say it in a nutshell... It's all about the Forest Service engaging with communities to have meaningful dialogue around how together to create balanced and long term health for people, profits, and the planet.

I've been providing some consultation and facilitation to the smaller group and today was the first day of a very complex meeting in which we shared the National Recreation Strategy, Sustainable Recreation, and CERT with a wide group of employees from around the country. We had about 20 people in the room, about 10 people on the telephone, and another 20 people on a video conference. It was trying and complex to mix the media, but absolutely necessary for a sustainability conversation to include low carbon methods for connecting.

I feel the day was a resounding success. We wrapped up the phone and video portion about 1.5 hours before the end of the day so that those of us who were present in the room (here in Salt Lake City) could process everything and begin to wrap our heads around things like...

1. What does sustainable recreation look like?
2. How might our lives be different when we've fully embraced the new National Recreation Strategy?
3. How are we going to share this experience with our leaders and our employees when we get home?
4. How can we foster transformation rather than paying lip service to a plan which is quickly shelved?

I'm ever so grateful to have not been the facilitator of the meeting. Lyn Wiltzes (sp?) from Seattle was the facilitator and did a remarkable job.

I'm feeling very jazzed. I feel like I'm in the right place at the right time and part of something BIG. Something with Purpose and Meaning. I feel this frequently at Forest Service meetings, which is probably why I fall in love with the Forest Service all over again every time I meet new employees or see a new and magnificent landscape. I'm so grateful to be a part of this organization and I'm grateful to have had all the amazing experiences I've had the past 9 years.

Hopefully I'll have time and energy to capture my reactions to day 2 of the meeting. I have the feeling that of all the things in which I've participated, this one is worth capturing for posterity.

The Importance of Contracting Gracefully

I often find myself advocating a natural systems perspective for organizational development. I frequenly am heard saying that "effective organizations are flexible and organic". I just recently had an "ah ha" moment around this:

In organizations, expansion implies success and contraction implies failure. To my systems thinking mind, expansion and contraction are just opposite forces or directions and are neither good nor bad. Only our experience of a this shift in movement is good or bad.

In order for an organization to truly be flexible and organic it must be capable to both expand and contract in a graceful and nimble way. Scaling up to serve an increase in demand is mathematically no different than scaling down in times of decreased demand. Why should scaling up feel like success to the people involved while scaling down feels like failure?

An organization is not just a math and physics equation, and contraction is not just movement in the opposite direction of expansion. The numbers of positions, for example, represent people who are concerned with paying mortgages and putting children through college. How then, can the organization become graceful in contraction?

I certainly don't have all the answers for this. This post is about exploring the topic in hopes for taking some of the sting out of the experience of contraction, both for indviduals and the organizaton.

Let's look at an example from the Forest Service. The Forest Service Enterprise Program is a group of small intraprises, or internal businesses which serve agency units via a signed work order agreement. Enterprise units don't receive appropriated funds in the annual agency budget, but rather sell goods and services to traditional agency units in order to cover all their costs.

The health of the ~17 Enterprise units is bound together in the agency's accounting system. If an Enterprise unit does not cover its costs and accrues a deficit then the team may be disbanded. The employees of the disbanded unit are placed in other positions, or sometimes exit the agency altogether. One core strength of the Enterprise Program is its flexibility to help a National Forest, for example, scale up for a particular project and scale back down when the project is over. Within the culture of the Enterprise Program, expanding one's Enterprise unit by increasing the number of employees and increasing the revenue is a mark of success.

However, if a unit is unable to cover its expenses (for any number of reasons), then a deficit accrues, the unit is a candidate for being disbanded by the Enterprise Steering Committee, and the unit's employees are at jeopardy of loosing their positions.

In our culture, this disbandment is interpreted as a failure. The leader of the unit has invested much time and energy in attempting to create a successful venture. It is personally dramatic to realize that the venture is not sustainable. There is also a personal sense of failure for the indivudual employees, especially if they were engaged in working hard to "turn it around" for a number of months before the disbandment. (I have first hand experience with this, I'll write about it in a separate post). It is all quite painful.

But what if there were another context, another connotation for disbandment of an Enterprise? What if Enterprises with deficits were responsible for coming forward and recommending that they be disbanded, rather than living in fear of a heavy hand coming down on them? What if struggling Enterprises were seen as courageous and heroic for choosing their own disbandment? One success of Enterprise is that it is a choice-based organization. Individuals choose to start units, why shouldn't they choose to end them?

It should be seen as courageous because of the risk and uncertainty involved in volunteering to have your box erased from the org chart. It should be heroic because a struggling unit which drags on and on is only increasing the deficit which is actually a burden on the entire program due to the interconnections in the accounting system.

Could being viewed as courageous and heroic take some of the sting out of the experience for the individuals? I believe it would. That was my own experience. Would shifting our cultural connotation from "failure" to "heroism" facilitate a more graceful contraction? Afterall, if an organization is going to be flexible and organic, they must exhale as effectively as then inhale.

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.

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.