Rethinking Complexity

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The Rethinking Complexity Team

Facilitating a Hijacking

I have a sweet spot for facilitating groups to do any kind of work—strategy, visioning, daily business, new product development, planning—you name it. I love to be in the thick of it—helping leaders, groups, teams, boards, or collectives get better results than they think is possible.

Recently a group brought me in to facilitate a series of meetings. The group's committed, well-intentioned, and sincere. They come together to support the well-being of the organization and they will do what it takes to ensure things go well. There are no hidden agendas or surprising power plays. It doesn't get much better than that.

The Elephant Landed in the Middle of the Room

Well, almost. At the last meeting, there was a big fat elephant in the room that showed up unexpectedly and it took over the energy in the room, filling it with tension for a bit. It was a perfect example of an amygdala hijack. What is that? You might ask. Let me explain how it showed up then I'll explain what I know about the science. And please remember I'm an amateur who's just really interested in brain science.

The elephant plopped in the middle of the room when someone asked the general manager—or GM—a question. It was a request for more information about staffing and operations. The GM snapped, “Operations are not your responsibility. They are my responsibility. You don't need to know what is going on. That's my job.”

“Every time I ask about it, you freak out,” the questioner muttered. The elephant started flapping his ears at this point.

What Are You Willing to Let Go—to Grow?

Years ago, I taught an undergraduate course in the humanities.

In that course, I’d customarily begin with a discussion about the evolution of human endeavors, concentrating unsurprisingly in the humanities, which inevitably required scene-setter discussions explaining just what “humanities” means.

After the “define humanities” talk, I would proceed to “evolution” as a term in its sense as progressive change.  In that discussion, I usually presented a rather rudimentary algebraic equation:

Nature and all things natural are inherently good. Change as part of human experience is ultimately natural. Therefore, change is good.

In achieving this ultimate good, I offer the familiar concept that we need to let go of what makes us comfortable, of those mindsets and assumptions that have set us in our ways.  If we can let go, perhaps we can ascend to new levels of understanding and being; we can learn to transform; and transform through learning.

Building Cultures of Partnership and Peace: Four Cornerstones

How can we end the cycles of violence and injustice that cause so much suffering and misery? Is a more peaceful and equitable world really possible? If so, what would it actually look like?

My research over several decades has focused on these questions. They are questions deeply rooted in my own early life experiences, when my parents and I narrowly escaped from Nazi Europe. Had we not been able to flee, like most of my relatives, we would almost certainly have been killed in the Holocaust.

As I grew up, I looked for answers to these questions in books and universities. But I never found satisfactory ones.

I wasn’t aware at that time that studying social systems would become my life’s work. By the time I did, like many of us, I saw that our present course is not sustainable. In our time of nuclear and biological weapons, violence to settle international disputes could be disastrous for us all. So also could our once hallowed “conquest of nature” in an era when advanced technologies are causing environmental damage of unprecedented magnitude.

I saw that a grim future awaits my children—and all of us—unless there are transformative social changes. But transformation from what to what?

Your Performance Management System "Meets Expectations"

To: Management
From: A concerned employee

Subject: Performance Management

Well, it’s that time of year again. The leaves are changing color, the kids are back in school in their new shoes, and I’m preparing to meet with my boss to have a year’s worth of behavior summed up in a two-or three-word euphemism that will determine my future income and career potential. Yep, it’s performance appraisal season.

If I’ve had a successful year, the boss will give me a rating of "meets expectations." A rating, I’m told, that should lift my spirits; after all, expectations around here are quite high, and meeting said "high expectations" is no small accomplishment. Then why does it not feel very good? Perhaps we should rename the rating: "Enthusiastically Meets Expectations!" or perhaps "Meets Expectations Unlike They’ve Ever Been Met Before!" Otherwise, call me crazy, but many employees might be tempted to look at "meets expectations" as a mediocre evaluation.

With all due respect, dear management, here’s the deal. This system called "performance management" doesn’t do anything to help performance and is pretty darn unmanageable. I’ve reached a stage in my life where I’d prefer to receive feedback about what I do rather than be graded on a curve. This time of year, we all seem to be focusing more attention on working the system than doing the work the system was designed to measure.

I think it’s high time to evaluate the system that is used to evaluate us. How, I wonder, would the performance appraisal system itself hold up under the scrutiny it imposes on the rest of us?

Complex Change Calls for Cross-Sector Collaboration

I had the opportunity last week to help facilitate a session for non-profit, business, technology, education, and media leaders who came together for the inaugural summit of ConvergeUS.

Co-Chaired by TechNet’s CEO, Rey Ramsey, and Twitter’s Co-Founder, Biz Stone, ConvergeUS drives technology-based breakthroughs for critical social problems and thus accelerates social innovation. ConvergeUS—the non-profit arm of TechNet—is a bipartisan, political network of technology sector CEO’s and senior executives. It was founded this year to mobilize corporations, academic institutions, and other nonprofits to leverage technology to create positive change on critical issues facing American society.

The goal of this organization is to bring together dedicated people across sectors who can identify systemic challenges within our society, who can define ways to address them applying technological approaches, and who can work collaboratively to achieve sustainable and ideally transformative change. To meet this goal, each year ConvergeUS will identify no more than three problem areas to concentrate its resources and reach out to people in business, government, social services, media, and education who have an interest in collaborating to design and implement change.  They also intend to apply research methodology to build a methodology that can be duplicated in many areas.

Collaboration Isn't Easy

It is clear that collaboration is a necessity in navigating today's complex work environments where ambiguity and change are constants.

What is not clear is how to make collaboration part of an organization's culture and the default behavior pattern for leaders.

One possible solution comes from Morten T. Hansen's 2009 book, Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid The Traps, Create Unity, And Reap Big Results.

Hansen has been studying collaboration since the 1990s and offers a clear model for thinking about and managing collaboration.

He makes it clear that collaboration is fundamental to successful strategic execution; he emphasizes that collaboration must be part of the overall vision in order for improved results to be sustained.

To be an effective collaborative leader, Hansen asserts that three elements are necessary: redefining success, involving others, and accountability.

The Collective Voice of a Leaderless Group

As leaderless mobs of angry, unemployed 20-somethings continue to march on Wall Street this week picketing against big business and the federal government, my thoughts can't help but drift back to the pages of Marvin R. Weisbord's 2004 book, Productive Workplaces Revisited: Dignity, Meaning, and Community in the 21st Century.

They return specifically to the chapters of the book that discuss the work of Eric Trist, Fred Emery, and the Tavistock Institute in 1950s London.

At the time, Tavistock's study of groups in organizational settings had picked up where Kurt Lewin and the National Training Laboratories (or NTL) had left off a decade earlier, following Lewin's death in 1947. Unlike the researchers at NTL, Tavistock researchers weren't interested in becoming active members of the groups they studied—a method that Lewin called action research.

Oh, no.

At Tavistock, researchers were more interested in stepping back and letting a leaderless group find its collective voice all on its own.

A Different Kind of Leader: Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Steve Jobs broke all the rules of leadership and management.

He was an erratic micromanager; a brutal force to be reckoned with at meetings, often eviscerating staffers for their "bozo ideas"; and typically shrugged off his associates' suggestions in favor of his own gut instinct.

"He never mellowed, never let up on Apple employees, never stopped relying on his singular instincts in making decisions about how Apple products should look and how they should work," New York Times columnist Joe Nocera told Forbes in August.

The world—both online and off—now mourns the death of this atypical, innovative leader, who lost his battle against pancreatic cancer today at age 56.

Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. They're all aglow on many a Mac tonight with quotes, notes, icons, and news stories honoring Jobs and his unique approach—the same approach that made him both a tyranical dictator and a creative genius, an image that became seared with the Apple brand indelibly.

Conscious Evolution

We are at the portal of what systems scientist Béla Bánáthy called the "fourth generation" humans.

What distinguishes this fourth generation from its predecessors is evolutionary consciousness, according to Bánáthy, a professor emeritus at Saybrook University until his death in 2003.

Bánáthy defined evolutionary consciousness as the knowledge and awareness of how we get to a point in our human history from the perspectives of our consciousness, our cognition, and our social systems.

We are the first generation of humans that have access to concrete information regarding the human trajectory and the knowledge of where this trajectory can lead unless we decide to consciously participate in the evolution of our planet.

To make this concept clear, we need to start with the first three human generations identified by Bánáthy and other social scientists.

Kodak's Final Act: An Ode to Theory Z

On Sunday, The Financial Times reported that the recent drop in Eastman Kodak’s share prices may be the final, overt sign that the photography giant is nearing its end.

For a company that spearheaded innovation—in 1885, founder George Eastman invented roll film, which benefited the motion picture industry and inventor Thomas Edison—the only sign that may be left that Rochester, NY, was once the home of something great sits midway down East Avenue where the George Eastman house sits.

In the late 19th century, Eastman sparked up an idea and a patent before dashing to market. A blue-chip, global enterprise once valued at an estimated $200 billion is now a pale contrast of its former self. On Friday, Eastman Kodak shares were valued at an estimated 54 cents per share, losing half of its value in a single day.

So what happened? Kodak competitor Fuji is still profitable and cash flow is healthy.

The answer may be in Kodak’s embedded culture of over-greatness. Over-greatness is a pet name I have given to the phenomenon plaguing Kodak—when a majority of people in an organization are feeling and acting over-inflated to the point of insularity.