Creating connection at the team level requires individuals to consciously connect first to themselves. The leadership literature confirms that emotional intelligence, presence, and influence all require self-awareness – as does connection.

Connection starts with your inner dialogue

We all have an inner dialogue that goes on in our mind, commenting on our experiences in the world moment-by-moment, situation-by-situation, person-by-person. It is so natural, so much a part of our “self,” that we rarely even hear the content or notice the impact it has on our actions. Tim Galloway calls it “Self 1”, Freud might say it is a product of the superego, and neuroscientists are beginning to believe it is an aspect of our consciousness. Regardless, mastering our inner narrative can change how we interact with the world and enables connection at a deeper level.

Full disclosure, this is not easy! I first became aware of the inner dialogue in 1985 listening to my mother after she had a mild stroke. She lost much of her ability to edit her inner dialogue, so we heard it as it happened. Wow, who knew? But then, wasn’t I also having a similar, but different, dialogue with myself? Equally enlightening was to observe how her inner dialogue created a self-fulfilling relationship with the world.

A Journey of a Million Miles

Tuning into your inner dialogue is a big step toward self-awareness. How critical, judgmental, blaming, or positive, praising, and playful is it? Connection with others requires that we be positive and see them as worthy of a deeper interaction. Since most of us operate as part of a team let’s start with how we can connect on that level.

Our inner narrative takes in all that we perceive during our interpersonal interactions – remember that includes the 90% non-verbal communication that is registering somewhere and showing up in our inner dialogue. “That was really stupid” can be directed toward another or ourselves. Either way it damages our ability to connect and react or interact positively. If this happens to you, “Mind the Gap!”

Biology of Business

Neurologically there is a gap between our physical (body and senses) processing of the environment, our brain’s interpretation of events (which collects all the body stuff and compares it to experiences from our past), and our conscious perception of the thoughts and feelings that tell us what is going on (the meaning we attach to any particular moment). In this gap multiple, if not millions, of possibilities exist simultaneously until they collapse into one “actionable state.” Simply stated, we have a choice in how we interpret and react to each encounter, and “Mind the Gap!” helps us identify the choices we are making.

Imagine a team meeting in which numerous ideas or opinions are flying around the room. Our tendency is to quickly assess (judge) the ideas and/or speakers based on our…what? Where does this come from? The brain bases it on our past experience, the body bases it on our reaction to the non-verbal, and our mind takes in all this and comments on it. Only when we “Mind the Gap!” can we create an internal dialogue that chooses to connect.

Let’s turn this meeting into one that “contextually welcomes connection.” Start the meeting with a check-in. For example, ask a question: Tell us one thing about your life that we would never guess? Or, What one or two words describe how you feel this moment? This creates the container for the meeting by: allowing everyone to leave what they were doing and come fully into this new space, reconnect with themselves (become embodied) before they have to connect with others, and express to the group who they are and how they are at this moment (creating the possibility for correct interpretation of their comments and actions, especially the non-verbal ones). The check-in, listening to others and determining my own, begins the connecting process. We now have the opportunity to interpret others correctly and respond with compassion even when we disagree.

With the check-in over, leaders (both formal and informal) have the responsibility for setting the pace of the meeting. Is it slow enough that connection can be maintained? Or, has it turned into a rapid fire, conversational shoot-out? Phrases, such as: “How interesting, tell us more”, “I wonder…” and “Let’s explore that further before we move on” provide the team with a chance to “Mind the Gap!” – keeping the conversation non-judgmental and people connected.

Be clear about where you are in the conversation. Is this a dialogue that is slow, reflective, and able to generate innovative ideas? Is it dialectic, where thesis and antithesis battle each other to create a better idea (synthesis), which must be hard on the problem but soft on the people? Or a discussion – action orientated, decision making, and assigning tasks and responsibilities. When team members are having different conversations at the same time without being aware of it, connection is impossible.

Close the meeting with a check-out. How is everyone feeling, what did they take away, what insight did they have? This confirms the connection that was established and prepares the team for an even deeper connection the next time they meet or as they work together between meetings.

Last fall I wrote a blog on connecting that struck a chord with one read who wisely noted:

“Being connected may just be the tip of furthering anything, even with ourselves…the real work comes in relationship.

Do you suppose that the connectivity is the driving force/thread that maintain the relationship with our groups/teams? What is beyond connectivity?”

What great questions! To reconnect with the conversation, remember that it arose from the idea of replacing Tuckman’s teaming concept (Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing) with one more suited to today’s turbulent and interdependent world: Connecting-Engaging-Acting in the context of Continuous Performance. This model is built on the work of organizational psychologists Kenwyn Smith and David Berg[1].

Connecting is very personal, an experience of your “self”, the “other” person(s), and the “link” that connects you. Out of this the first concept of systems arises: Systems emerge from the dynamic relationships and interactions between their parts (people).

Becoming aware of the whole system, the team, and how “my self” is impacted by it is the first challenge of connection. Every member has a choice to connect or remain detached during every interaction with others in their team. We normally don’t recognize our interactions as discrete choices; we just experience the dynamic of connecting. Over time, and with each team member, we establish a degree of connectedness or detachment. Looking at the whole, this is the team’s “culture.”

This continuous interplay forms the process of connecting, a process that both initiates the “teaming cycle” and completes it (each culminating Action creating a deeper sense of connection within the team). As Smith and Berg note:

The paradox of involvement explores the relationship between involvement and detachment, observation and experience. … Can there be involvement without withdrawal, or do the two spring from a common source of what it means to belong?”

Let’s look deeper into this dynamic to understand what is required when we give up part of our individual freedom to merge with the collective.

I took this concept to the Knowesys[2] team, a small idea incubator, for reflection. We structured our conversation as a polarity map,[3] first asking what our Greatest Hope and Deepest Fear was when facing the polarity of involvement and detachment.

• Greatest Hope: That diverse contributions will fuel the emergence of startlingly creative outcomes!!
• Greatest Fear: There is no reason for the collective (ie team) to exist!!

With this as context, let’s further explore the dynamic of involvement-detachment to help us manage the connecting phase of teaming. Remember in polarities you always have both poles operating and as leaders our responsibility is to manage the dynamic flow, both positive and negative, between them.

So that we can end on a positive note, let me first present our understanding of the negative aspects of this polarity. When involvement and detachment are taken to extreme they both produce attitudes and actions that can, and will, lead to dissolution of the collective. If we are overly attached as a team, groupthink replaces group thinking, a subtle but critical line in the sand that leaders (and team members) need to watch out for. When that happens we become too emotionally invested in the ideas of the collective and closed to the individual diversity that generates high-performance. Blind spots, increasingly critical attitudes, becoming unwilling to listen to each other, and rigid boundaries drive the dynamic away from involvement and toward detachment.

On the other hand when team members are overly detached, forcing the team to the negative aspect of this pole, there is a lack of commitment to the group’s decisions that stalls progress. When no one feels accountable to the collective, passion dissipates, outcomes become WIIFM, and focus is lost.

We can all agree that these are two places in the dynamic we want to steer clear of. But what are we navigating toward? The positive aspects of the two poles are where, in the words of Smith and Berg, both “personess” and “groupness” show up, where the parts and the whole are experienced. This then, explains the Third Concept in systems thinking: The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, often far greater.

What do these two poles contain? When we are involved we are passionate, engaged, and learning. Distributed leadership moves the team forward and the role of the self (personess) is to drive team action – we think of this as generative ego involvement. In this context, the team is willing and able to take appropriate risks as a collective; no one is out on the skinny branches alone.

In addition, positive detachment ensures that independent thinking is valued and there is a general openness to alternative ways forward. With greater participation, the team can leverage its diversity – making lateral associations, sensing weak signals in the environment, and then using these to synthesize new ideas and paths forward. With this increased ability to reframe the situation, the group can be “startlingly creative.”

As Smith and Berg observe: “When one learns how to deal with one’s groupness, the importance of individuation fades, and, through its fading, individuation is realized. …members learn to accept their groupness and the group learns to accept the importance of its members.”

How is that for a paradox?? Next time more on connecting.

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[1] Smith, KK and Berg, DN. Paradoxes of Group Life: Understanding Conflict, Paralysis, and Movement in Group Dynamics. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1987.

[2] Knowesys is composed of consultants Julie Denomme, Tom Woodman, Cindy Weeks, Don Johnston, Bruce Flye, Tom Roy, and myself.

[3] Barry Johnson, http://www.polaritymanagement.com

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By: Kristin Keffeler

Many of us thrive on it–the rush that comes with feeling that we’re conquering our world, accomplishing more in each day than the Average Joe. We have a love-hate relationship with the pressure—oscillating between craving the stimulation of managing concurrent tasks and sizzling with the mental overwhelm of the demands on our attention.

When did our ability to fracture our attention across time and space become such a badge of honor? A perceived trait of the successful? Is multitasking really such a beneficial skill to cultivate?

The Value of a Fast and Nimble Thinker

There’s no doubt that the best and brightest are able to handle multiple inputs, shift gears quickly when necessary, and be nimble enough to jump into whatever task or problem is in need of attention. There is also no doubt that this constant “channel changing” mode of operation takes its toll—physically, emotionally and mentally.

What genius is lurking in the depths beneath your darting thoughts and chronic distractibility?

Tapping Your Genius

In the book The Attention Revolution—Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind, author B. Alan Wallace explores the potential of a mind practiced in sustained focus. He writes,

“… geniuses of all kinds excel in their capacity for sustained voluntary attention. Just think of the greatest musicians, mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers throughout history–all of them, it seems, have had an extraordinary capacity to focus their attention with a high degree of clarity for long periods of time. A mind settled in such a state of alert equipoise is a fertile ground for the emergence of all kinds of original associations and insights. Might “genius” be a potential we all share–each of us with our own unique capacity for creativity, requiring only the power of sustained attention to unlock it? A focused mind can help bring the creative spark to the surface of consciousness. The mind constantly caught up in one distraction after another, on the other hand, may be forever removed from its creative potential.”

Makes you think twice about answering emails on your Blackberry during your next project brainstorming meeting, doesn’t it?

Cultivating the Focused Mind

Chronic mental stimulation (agitation?) is such a common and expected mode of operating that, for many, it can be uncomfortable to even experiment with “uni-tasking.”

Interested in exploring what genius of yours may be skirting the edge of your distracted mind? In the next two days, challenge yourself by selecting a project that is begging for your attention. Shut your office door. Turn your email off. Let your phone go to voicemail. Now, commit to yourself that you will focus solely on that project for 1 hour. Notice what happens in that hour—is your heart rate lower? Do you work more rapidly? More creatively? With more satisfaction?

Hmmmm… maybe it’s worth creating more uni-tasking time in your day.

If you don’t answer my next call, I’ll know what you’re doing.

Kristin Keffeler, MSM, is a business development and leadership coach who specializes in supporting entrepreneurs and business leaders who are ready to focus their innate drive for high performance and differentiate their services in the market by building the courage and capacity to bring their Big Ideas to life.

I write this blog struggling not to make it sound too academic. The subject is a topic many organizational thought leaders speak about and is foundational to implementing any of the new sciences of leadership. It also sets the stage for some upcoming topics, allowing you to understand and apply them in a much deeper way. So, here we go!

Systems are Webs of Relationships

Throughout this conversation, two visual metaphors help to imagine the organizational systems that exist all around us: the body of any living organism and the web of a spider (the observer stands at the center).

Systems, like all living organisms, are composed of parts and wholes. Parts are events, behaviors, functions (like marketing), people, or even ideas. The parts are arrayed with no particular design or logic except the relationships they have to the other parts, which can be local or global, virtual or co-located. These relationships are what make the system and establish its boundaries.

Often, when the system is hidden, we discover it when we discover the relationship that exists between two of the parts. I was recently talking with a consultant about her work and how she could apply it to healthcare. Many of her ideas and practices sounded familiar and, after looking over her website, I discovered that she is part of an intellectual system that has emerged from the Boston area (Harvard and MIT) over the last 20 years.

First Concept: Systems emerge from the dynamic relationships and interactions between their parts.

Let’s take the example of a team, a system we all participate in. The behavior of each team member (part) has an effect on the overall behavior of the team (whole). This is pretty easy to feel even if we can’t put our finger on why it happens. What we feel is the emotional system that has emerged from the interpersonal relationships between the team members. You have probably also noticed that some people are more strongly impacted by the behavior and ideas of an individual than others, they have a stronger connection within the overall system. In this way, systems can be balanced or out of balance. For those of us on the east coast who stayed up late to watch the Oscars, Monday morning we had a system out of balance due to lack of sleep.

Second Concept: All parts of a system are connected and interdependent.

One property of systems is that the system (the whole team) has an impact on each part (individuals). We experience this as team culture, identity, and context. When part of our team faces a challenge, the whole team experiences anxiety, concern, or tension. When success comes to even one individual, we all celebrate. Our connectedness leads to our interdependence: the behaviors of the parts effect the whole and the behaviors of the whole effect the parts. No one is exempt from being impacted by the system and the system is the result of the impact it makes on us.

Third Concept: The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, often far greater.

Every time I talk with groups about what makes a great team the word synergy comes up. In any system, the parts gain some of their properties (vitality and integrity) from the whole system. When one part of the system is separated from the whole, it loses something. We see this all the time in our organizations, we take a member of a high-performing team and put them somewhere else in the organization to take advantage of their abilities, and the team falls apart or the person’s performance is average in their new position. No surprise, they and their team were a product of the system. It may appear to us that one person was a standout star but that is seldom the whole story. If we want what “they” have, as leaders we need to figure out what the system is doing not what the parts are doing.

Fourth Concept: Every system has characteristics or properties that none of the individual parts have.

So leaders, how can you create the conditions for healthy, vibrant, and creative systems within your organization or team? Let me leave you with two quotes to ponder, how can your actions reflect this idea?

If each part of a system is made to operate as efficiently as possible, the system as a whole will not operate as effectively as possible. The performance of a system depends more on how its parts interact than on how they act independently of each other. Russ Ackoff, Creating the Corporate Future

…the performance of an organization depends more on how the parts work together than on how they work separately; if you optimize the performance of the parts, you systematically suboptimize the performance of the whole. …the job of leaders is to manage the interactions of the parts, not their actions. Ray Stata, Chairman, Analog Devices

I recently read an article on personal health that included the Mayo Clinic food pyramid. Hummm, do you suppose that a leadership pyramid impacts organizational health?

The two foundational sections (fruits and veggies for those of you who are interested in personal health as well) for leaders wanting to positively impact organizational health and well being are, I would argue (drum roll): Creating Reality and Coaching (Figure 1.)

Creating reality, establishing the contextual landscape, is the concept that leaders set the stage, create the container, and generally help the organization frame how it perceives the world. Call it organizational culture, the emotional system, or leadership presence, how you show up, interpret events and react to them sets the tone for the group you lead. It is very difficult for an organization to operate outside of the “reality” perceived by its leadership.

Remember “leadership by walking around”? Well, one thing leaders can do when they walked around is coach those they encounter. For leaders to intentionally create reality, they have to get out and talk to people. After hello and some small talk, what better than to have a coaching conversation? This is not a 30-second elevator speech. A coaching conversation at the base of the leadership pyramid needs three or four good questions that establish common ground, explore the landscape, course correct if needed, and create the reality you desire. For example:

• What are you curious about these days?
• What keeps you up at night?
• What about our company excites you the most?
• Who else I should be talking to?

If you have time, make up your own questions based on what you are curious about, what keeps you up at night, and what excites you the most about your company.

Moving up the leadership pyramid, we’ll come back to the circle at the end, we enter the zone of carbohydrates – leadership that provides the organization with energy. Purpose. Vision. Goals. I lump these three together to take advantage of their synergy.

• Purpose (why we are here) needs direction (Vision) and just enough structure (Goals) to keep people aligned. When your Purpose Mojo is working organization wellbeing is high, people are jazzed, and the energy is palpable.
• Vision supports all levels of the leadership pyramid – go west is the only direction needed when core principles are in place (Purpose) and people know where they are relative to each other and “west” (Goals).
• Goals allow us to measure our progress as we undertake intentional change, i.e. achieving our Vision. In today’s VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) goals have a much shorter life span. For example, if the budget is going to change, and whose isn’t, goals have to realign and adapt to the reality that exists.

Protein is the next layer, the nutritional element that builds new structures – from enzymes to bones and muscles. In the leadership pyramid this layer is where innovation drives change and builds the future. It takes a while to see the effects of this layer, but without enough high quality protein (innovation and change) the whole organization becomes malnourished, unthrifty, and susceptible to dis-ease. As you fuel your organization with innovation and change, pay attention to the structures you are building and how they impact function – a runner would be slowed down by the muscles of a weight lifter and a ballerina would not get off the ground with an additional 20# of fat.

Which brings us to the next layer of the pyramid – energy dense fats. These are fuels that pack a whollop and, in excess, can topple our diet. In the leadership pyramid, this layer is the executive team. Building your executive team (or your key colleagues and advisors) is about finding the healthy ones and weeding out those that clog the organizational arteries. Think a light dipping oil verses Crisco. The “Mediterranean” Diet of this level establishes a team that is positive, has complimentary strengths, and integrity.

Sweets are at the top. They tempt us while reeking metabolic havoc on our blood sugar. A good sweet is a delight, savored, the experience drawn out, eaten a bite at a time. The top of the leadership pyramid is strategy; well made it goes a long way and is enjoyed by everyone. Leaders who spend an appropriate amount of time on the rest of the pyramid create the right sweet (strategy) for the meal (from creating reality to building their team).

So what is that strange circle in the middle of the Mayo Clinic Food Pyramid? The wise folks in Rochester, MN realized that a food pyramid is incomplete without exercise, which they placed in the base to indicate its value. For the leadership pyramid the circle is Self Care – the work you do to keep yourself strong, healthy, happy, energized, and rejuvenated. If you as leader don’t take care of your self, your organization will be on a yo-yo diet – chasing you from heroic feats to complete exhaustion. The leadership pyramid is complete when you replenish and are focused, present, and fulfilled.

James Carse has written a wonderfully provocative book on the nature of our interactions in the world[1]. His work is particularly relevant now, during the Solstice season, when all seems to pause, reflect, refocus, and, with the increasing light, return to growth and activity.

Leadership Quiz

– I approach leadership as a game to be won, with clear rules, goals, and opponents.

– I approach leadership as a game to be played with others in order to advance the play through our collaborative work and ensure its continuity over time.

If you picked the first, you are not alone. In fact, this is the leadership model that has been in play for the last 50 years at least. If you picked the second you are also in good company. Your peers are the trailblazers of the Internet world and Gen X corporate leaders. In either case, we are facing a world in which Finite Play (defined by option 1) limits our abilities to respond to the challenges and surprises 21^st Century leaders confront daily. The answer to this conundrum is not to jettison Finite Play, but rather to embed it into an Infinite Game.

Finite Games

Finite Games have three characteristics that I feel are key for leaders to understand, least they overuse this form of interacting with the world.

• Finite Games come to a definitive end. For example, promotion, profit, or beating your competition in market share. Like sports, these are games in which everyone can agree on who is the winner.
• This leads to the second important aspect of Finite Games: The rules and procedures are externally defined. This means that the rules cannot be changed during the course of play. Hence, these games are slow to adapt to changes in the environment or changes of context, both of which are important in business today. Additionally, the rules are different for each type of Finite Game. For example, leaders who are awesome on the shop floor may not do well in the home office, and promoting expert leaders into roles that require the people skills of a generalist can cause problems. Rule makers can also remove players at any time, especially when they are no longer needed for the game, very common during downsizing.
• Finite Games have definitive boundaries. These boundaries are designed to limit the players involved based on their skills, knowledge, and expertise , which are specific to the game being played. Hard boundaries produce silos, the rigidity of hierarchical organizational structures, and the inflexibility of jobs, roles, and titles (not my problem syndrome).

Infinite Games

In my mind, Infinite Games are where leaders can really shine, but they are inherently paradoxical and require an open, inquisitive mindset.

• Infinite Games are played for the purpose of continuing the play. These are the corporate games led by visionaries, strategic wizards, leaders who navigate turbulence, embrace surprise, and manage paradox by engaging with the game as it unfolds. Leaders who play Infinite Games transform organizations and develop (not just promote) those around them.
• The rules and procedures of Infinite Games are internally defined. As the environment and context in which the game is played changes, these change as well. In fact, the rules of Infinite Games are designed to deal with specific threats that would end or limit the game. This creates a system that is adaptive and resilient – encouraging learning and enlarging the pool of players to meet the demands of the situation.
• Infinite Games have soft, semi-permeable boundaries. Players form networks (formal and informal) and actively enroll others who can contribute. Players can self-select, coming and going as the game changes and the need for their skills and talents changes.
• Infinite Games can contain Finite Games. This changes the way the Finite Game and its players are perceived by leaders.

infinite players… enter into finite games with all the appropriate energy [but] without the seriousness of finite players. …For that reason they regard each participant in finite play as that person playing and not as a role played by someone.“ James Carse, emphasis the authors

Integrating the Two

Carse’s book presents a view in which ceaseless change is met with the continuity generated by Infinite Games rather than discontinuity generated by Finite Games. Leadership in this model is fluid, engaging our humanity and creativity in a form of play that can hold the rigidity of Finite Games and still advance the overarching Infinite Game. To blend the two requires a leader that, in the words of psychologist Edwin Friedman,

can shift [their] orientation… from one that focuses on techniques that motivate others to one that focused on the leader’s own presence and being.”[2]

Look back at the characteristics of Infinite Games; they fit with Friedman’s assertion that leadership is an emotional process rather than a cognitive process. To lead an Infinite Game requires one to have clarity about themselves and their own emotional processing. This allows them to manage their own reactivity when others around them are anxious and uncertain. To be sure, this is not easy. But neither is it available to only a few, any leader can improve their capacity for being present and connected to those around them.

This brings us back to the Solstice – the end of exhale … the pause before drawing a fresh new breathe of air. Is 2012 the year you begin playing the Infinite Game of leadership?

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[1] Carse, James P. Finite and Infinite Games. Random House, New York. 1986.

[2] Friedman, Edwin H. A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of Quick Fixes. Seabury Books, New York, 2007.

Design Thinking is qualitatively different from other thinking styles. Regardless of how you use Design Thinking it communicates in unique ways, weaving together visual, verbal, and kinesthetic knowing. In this way thoughts, ideas, imaginings, AND planning, product concepts, and even goals become NeuroIntegrated^® – inviting the whole human system (body, brain, mind, language) into the work.

• Design Thinking communicates the value participants bring to their work. By making visual/kinesthetic what people struggle to articulate, Design Thinking can explore non-conceptual ideas. Least this sound too intellectual, before Sony the “Walkman” was a non-conceptual idea – there was no concept in the market of a radio that you wore as a headset. Before Napster, music was a physical product that you bought from a store. Kindle and iPad went way beyond books-on-tape to create a whole new venue for self-publishing (not to mention the digital books they created). All great breakthroughs, and here I use the word “all” comfortably, began as a non-conceptual desire for something that didn’t yet exist. Then, as the inventor, designer, or imaginer worked to give form to that desire a new concept was born. Design Thinking is the midwife of this process.
• Design Thinking communicates the value that surrounds the product or service offer. Let me use a personal example of this. I have been a crackberry for years. The last one I had was the Storm, RIM’s answer to the iPhone. It was a dreadful experience – I couldn’t type, my Pearl was gone and I couldn’t navigate, the value that previously surrounded the phone was gone. I traded this experience for an iPhone, which emblazoned this point forever on my mind. Wow, I get it!! I may be the last to get on the Apple bandwagon, but this is Design Thinking that produces value at its best. And the apps are a very small part of it. Experiential consultant Lou Carbone, author of Clued In and founder of Experience Engineering, is a master at finding and amplifying the hidden value in the contextual design of hospitals, schools, business, and retail stores. When was the last time you evaluated that aspect of your business.
• Design Thinking communicates persona, meaning, and character. Today consumers are faced with so many good product and service choices that they can choose to buy where values and beliefs align. Does your persona reflect back to your clients what they perceive to be their best attributes? This is not the same as good market segmentation -this is more like being a best friend. Lou Carbone is aligned with Lockwood when he advocates moving “from delivering a haphazard, undifferentiated customer experience to an intentional, highly signature experience based on how customers want to feel.” This is the underlying force that drives the consumers desire for corporate responsibility and sustainability, a monster wave that all businesses will have to ride sooner or later. If you are looking for opportunity, white space, places to innovate, start here. Amazon has a persona that is like a friendly librarian, recommending books that I might like based on my tastes and those in my virtual “book club.” Lately they have moved into Internet marketing for cities, which I don’t want. Even their unsubscribe text reflected the persona that keeps me buying books on line. It was so different than most that it caused me to pause and reflect on the fact that someone took the time to craft even that small public communication. This is Design Thinking carried out across multiple levels of contact. An example to track for your own learning is how the Apple persona changes with the death of Steve Jobs – or will it? Can the Design Thinkers at Apple communicate that their mojo lives on unchanged? We’ll see.

To conclude this mini-series here is a list of books that will have you thinking like a designer in no time flat:

Design Thinking – Thomas Lockwood

The Design of Business – Roger Martin

Change by Design – Tim Brown

The Paradox of Choice – Barry Schwartz

And one I haven’t read yet – a Kindle Collection of three books

Understanding collaboration begins with the definition of the word itself. Collaboration requires more than telling each other what we are doing (communication), is more involved than planning our work together (coordination) and it is also different from its most common substitute, cooperation (working or acting together for a common purpose or benefit). The definition I am using comes from the on-line source, Dictionary.com:

Collaboration: to work one with another, especially in a joint intellectual effort

Today we work in a world that requires collaboration because we are being called to think and act together as a collective. Collaboration is a struggle without the glue of clear common purpose and benefit (cooperation), the ability to plan face-to-face and with time to explore consequences and contingencies (coordination), and being co-located or even in the same time zone (which impacts communication), conditions that usually existed in the past.

Our communication is no longer that of lengthy letters, salons, and slow days of collegial contemplation and inquiry. We tweet and twitter, email, voice mail, socially meet on-line, have three concurrent meeting booked at work, wildly multi-task and communicate while driving, eating, playing – all the while wondering why real collaboration remains just out of reach. Check out any successful design company, they stress a collaborative style that is the equivalent of full body contact compared to that we see in Fortune 500 companies. How can we achieve this without wrinkling our suit? You guessed it – Design Thinking.

• Design Thinking links your business to your stakeholders, especially your customers. Lockwood points out that design thinking is built on the concept of community – not job description, raw accountability, and silo departments. Community is not something that most business folks think about beyond corporate responsibility. Community, Peter Block and Meg Wheatley write eloquently on this subject, is a way of being together that recognizes all the stakeholders and the value they add to the work. Community identifies who your collaborative partners are and then invites them into the conversation. When we are aware of the community of practice (see Etienne Wenger’s work here) that supports our immediate work, we become aware of where the knowledge and expertise resides within our organizations. Using the graphic representation of Episodic Thinking (Figure 1), we can see how design thinking takes us on short periods of divergent exploration or quick periods of co-creation with key stakeholders without loosing track of the sequential backbone of the project or process.

• Design Thinking uses rapid prototyping for products, processes, and ideas to unleash creativity and collaboration. Synergy is the name of the game in design thinking, consider every idea, product, or process half-baked when presented and suddenly someone can improve on it. When business operated solely in the simple and complicated domains of knowledge management, we could take our time and rely on “invented here” to guide us. Well, the world is now complex and in the words of Pixar cofounder Ed Catmull (HBR September 2008, p 65): “complex product development [requires] creativity [that] involves a large number of people from different disciplines working effectively together to solve a great many problems.” Rapid prototyping for Pixar occurs in the safe space of give-and-take conversations with the “brain trust;” eight directors who come together to support, challenge, and provide feedback to the team requesting their help. Catmull also points out the half-baked nature of rapid prototyping at Pixar, each day teams present their unfinished work to each other. This “liberates people to take risks and try new things because it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time.”

• Design Thinking and Design Teams generate organizational resilience. When collaboration becomes the way we work and Episodic Thinking is a core competency, organizations can harvest adjacent spaces in the market, capture value outside of the product offer, and close the gap between customer and company. Agility, the result of organizational resilience, is the foundation for sustainability. Consider that both the jobs and the products we take for granted today didn’t exist 10 years ago. Who can predict what is needed for even the 5-year future? Without Design/Episodic Thinking our ability to be proactive in the volatile world we face is severely limited.

Next week the third aspect of Design Thinking: Communication.

Last week I had the opportunity to hear Thomas Lockwood speak about design thinking at the ODN Conference in Baltimore. His ideas support those of others writing on this topic as well as Cairn Consulting’s Situational Thinking. To start let me reinforce his comment that design thinking is not the same as “design,” the former being a mindset the latter a work process. In Situational Thinking, design thinking links the linear and non-linear mindsets. I call it “Episodic Thinking” because it alternates between left and right brain cognition. Episodic Thinkers are contextually aware of their situation, which allows them to adapt their thinking style quickly and experiment by taking small actions. From Tom’s talk I distilled three additional key attributes of design thinking that highlight how they link together the two ends of the Situational Thinking Continuum:

• Design thinking is strategic (covered this week)
• Design thinking is collaborative (November 22^nd)
• Design thinking communicates (November 29^th)

Design Thinking is Strategic

• Design Thinking identifies the right problems and asks the right questions about them. This mindset opens us to the entire conversation continuum (See Figure 1) – dialogue, dialectic, and discussion. Strategy begins by identifying the right challenges and questions, and understanding them through dialogue. After exploring the complexity of the situation (divergence), we can test our assumptions and options with dialectic conversations and move to action (convergence) knowing that our tactics have emerged from the breadth of our conversation and the depth of our understanding.

• Design Thinking seeks unarticulated needs by seeing the whole system. The story Tom told was the design of Swifter^®, a product that I have never liked. What is curious to me is that now that I understand the design thinking that drove its development, I will begin to use it! So, while the design mindset was instrumental in creating a product that saved time, reduced water consumption, and improved the cleanliness of the home, I am not sure that the promotion of the product contained the same mindset. This points out that design thinking must be used throughout the product development and commercialization process.

Rule of Thumb: Design/Episodic Thinking should be employed anytime you are moving from linear to non-linear thinking (How do we innovate the process of washing the floor?) and from non-linear to linear thinking (How can we make homeowners aware of the design benefits of Swifter^®?).

• Design Thinking harnesses abductive logic in order to adapt to constantly changing market environments. Design Thinking encourages innovation by understanding the practical value of the product as well as its contextual and experiential value. This bundled value is achieved using abductive logic (Figure 2). I loved the way Tom explained abductive logic, placing it between the deductive logic of business tactics (100% Reliability) and the inductive logic of pure design (100% Validity). This provides a way for leaders to understand and use it.

• Pure business logic, deductive in nature, seeks to be 100% reliable – measurable, repeatable in many different environments and situations, predictable, consistent, and having a low degree of variability. Importantly, reliability does not imply validity; you can reliably measure the wrong thing.

• Pure design logic, inductive in nature, seeks validity – disambiguation, understanding the need beneath the need, the extent to which a product, service, or idea corresponds to a need or desire in the “real” world (i.e. that of the customer). Design requires experimentation, contextual research, prototyping, co-creation, and fast failure. It seeks to tailor product to customer need and is best for niche markets or personalized customers.

• Abductive logic recognizes multiple causes or explanations for situations, challenges, and environments (lumped together we could call these “reality”). This expands use and benefit beyond niche or personalized needs. Using hypotheses generated through observation, abductive logic tests for validity and reliability using action research – small steps that encourage feedback from the “reality” being tested in order to integrate the responses into the next prototype. In this way we can orient ourselves within the current reality, picking the best option for moving forward and eliminating those that are less desirable.

Design / Episodic Thinking uses inductive and deductive logic to gain validity for the widest range of target customer possible in order to increase reliability. The iterative process is abductive; it links successive approximations of “reality,” rapid prototyping your way forward. From physics we can borrow the idea of the wave-particle duality – our multiple and varied options exist as a wave of potential actions, which only collapses when we choose one to act on (particle). In a sense abductive logic only partially collapses the wave, keeping us connected to all the possibilities available to us while maintaining agility and resilience.

Next week the second aspect of Design Thinking: Collaboration.

Dr. Carol Mase is a consultant, coach, and small business manager. Contact her at 215.262.6666 and visit www.CairnConsultants.com for more information.

Last week I worked with a group of telecom executives navigating Adaptive Change, change that is complex and unpredictable. During the check-in and check-out the challenge of connecting came up. So, close your door, ignore the phone, and let’s explore connecting.

Connecting with others requires that we first connect with ourselves. This means being present and mindful, fully embodied in the moment. When connected to ourselves we tap into our positive core – our strengths, positivity, and deep trust – which allows us to engage with the world from a stance of curiosity, inquiry, and experimentation. In a mindful state we are open to new ideas and perspectives[1]. Positivity broadens our perceptions so that we see more possibilities and are able to imagine solutions to challenges that arise[2]. Being present and embodied we are in touch with our emotions and intuition as fleeting internal and external signals help us make meaning of the situation[3]. In this way we are poised to embrace the future rather than relive the past.

If connecting with ourselves leaves us aware, resourceful, and resilient connecting with others allows us to do something exceptional with all that energy. Connecting with another person is fundamental to creating WE[4]. Without the inclusiveness of connection we operate as two independent agents, able to coordinate our activities and cooperate but little else. Connection generates interdependence, a sensitivity to bidirectional feedback, and the ability to collaborate (literally, to work with another, especially in joint intellectual effort). So connecting with others creates a space for doing, thinking, and relating that did not previously exist. Without connection interactions collapse into WIIFM- What’s In It For Me.

What happens when teams connect?

The Tuckman model of team development – Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing – has lost its usefulness. The world of work is too fast paced, change is continuous, and performance is the context not the outcome of teams. Two pieces of research on group dynamics and performance fill the vacuum created by this conceptual loss.

Team Dynamics – Synthesizing the research of Kenwyn Smith and David Berg[5] we can replace the Tuckman model with a virtuous cycle of team development that operates in the context of performance: Connect-Engage-Act. Connection creates the relationships that are strong and healthy enough to withstand the strain of opposition and conflict (most often of ideas) within the group. Connectivity reflects how attuned and responsive team members are to one another[6]. Strong, healthy connection with another person(s) promotes openness, empathy/compassion, and the integration of differences, which ultimately leads to trust. Connection allows the diversity within the group to be used to achieve goals, perform different functions, and survive as a coherent system over time.

Team Performance – Connectivity also drives performance. Based on the research of Marcial Losada[7] team performance has three bipolar dimensions – positivity/negativity ratio, self-focus/other-focus, inquiry/advocacy – all driven by a single control parameter, connectivity. High-performing teams (determined by profitability, customer satisfaction ratings, and 360^o evaluations) had higher connectivity (they were more attuned and responsive to each other), focused their attention on the needs of others as well as self, asked questions as often as they defended their personal point of view, and had positive interactions three times more often than negative interactions (positive language included: support, encouragement, or appreciation; negative language included: disapproval, sarcasm, and cynicism). Low and moderately performing teams all had lower connectivity and, as a result, imbalance in the other three dimensions of performance.

Leadership Learning

Everyone has the opportunity to practice connection thousands of times a day. Use these to become Masters of Connectivity. Here’s how:

• Before getting out of bed connect with your body, your feelings, and your intentions for the day. Get out of bed feeling connected and grounded rather than scattered and rushed.
• Quick Connections: At the grocery store, toll booth, gas station, or restaurant connect with the person serving you. Really see them, connect with a comment that lets them know you see them, watch for feedback, that they suddenly see you, and see if they connect back. Feel the link between you spring into being. How did your body respond? How did theirs change? What nonverbal cues did you pick up that indicated the connection? Don’t evaluate your connection, that makes it a performance and not a true connection, just keep doing it and watch what happens over time.
• Deep Connections: Take a moment to reflect on your comfort zone for connectivity. How deep can you go – with yourself and with others? What is your response when someone tries to connect more deeply than this? What would allow you to go deeper? How can you practice this?

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[1]Langer, E. J. Mindfulness. Perseus Books, Reading, MA. 1989.

[2]Fredrickson, Barbara. Positivity. Crown Publishers, New York. 2009.

[3]Strozzi-Heckler, R. The Leadership Dojo. Frog Ltd. Berkeley, CA. 2007.

[4]Glaser, J.E. Creating WE. Platinum Press, Avon, MA. 2005

[5]Smith, K.K. and Berg, D.N. Paradoxes of Group Life: Understanding Conflict, Paralysis, and Movement in Group Dynamics. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1987.

[6]Fredrickson, Barbara. Positivity. Crown Publishers, New York. 2009.

[7]Losada, M. and Heaphy, E. (2004) The roles of positivity and connectivity in the performance of business teams: A nonlinear dynamics model. American Behavioral Scientist, 47(6), 740 – 765.