Explanation and transformation

Thibault Brière, a corporate philosopher, stated recently that 'explaining is convincing people to do things they have not chosen'. He went on to show that choice is a fundamental driver of change, in that transformation succeeds when it results from a freely made decision to change. This raised a question: when change becomes necessary in an organization, how can the possible options be communicated to those who must change if 'explaining' is ineffective? What does it mean to communicate when one's aim is to precipitate a choice that is aligned with the common goal?  

I started to think about the nature of explanation and its role in corporate transformation, process optimization, the dreaded 'change management', etc. I looked at schools for inspiration. 

In schools, explanation is the favored mode of communication - and we are not afraid to call it that. When they 'explain', successful teachers in reality empower students to access knowledge - they make  knowledge available to their students while adopting a respectful posture towards knowledge. This implies that knowledge exists outside of the teacher, in a space between the students and the instructor, from where they can pluck it with the right learning tools.  

This makes intuitive sense; the Pythagorean theorem is Pythagoras' original brainchild, not any particular math teacher's. In this way, the teacher's ego is not part of the communication or explanation: she is a vessel who presents a greater truth - her explanatory skill comes from setting goals (find the length of the hypotenuse) and in presenting ideas and tools to lead students towards that goal (theory, drawings, textbooks, potential applications, exercises, etc.). Importantly, she sets her students on the path to using this theorem in its many advanced applications beyond planar geometry. 

This is in contrast to teachers who impart knowledge to passive students. These teachers are under the misguided impression that knowledge comes from them, and that they must transfer it to their students. They 'explain' the material, which is to say that they talk about formulas and rules rather than ideas and concepts. Students also retain this information, to be fair, but they cannot 'own' the concept - it remains the teacher's - and they might not be able to use it in more advanced settings. 

What, then, to make of the above observations in the changing corporate environment?  

Every organization seeking to improve itself attempts large and small transformations. Often, management will identify a new path to the future - more or less democratically, with or without external help, etc... These (path & future) must then be 'explained' to those who will transform themselves with the goal is that they will become 'engaged' and the transformation self-sustaining.  The new path can be as simple as changing the way a task is performed or as ambitious as upending the business model. The more ambitious the path and/or profound the changes, the more challenging and crucial the 'explanation' will be. 

Consider, as above, a company that experiences a crisis and must identify a path to salvation and success (the new goal). The crucial 'explanatory' moment comes at the root of the new path, when he company ventures into new territory to seek its new goal. The solution to the crisis usually emerges from a period of soul searching and can spring from a number of sources: 

• a collective exercise within the company
• an outside consultant's prescriptive report
• the CEO
• members of the executive team
• members of a special 'transformation' team
• a combination of the above, etc...

Unfortunately, independent of its provenance, the management team (or the CEO) might be tempted to claim ownership of the solution for any number of reasons:  

• to revel in the sheer joy of having found a brilliant solution
• to satisfy its collective ego
• to compensate for its lack of self-confidence
• to justify its existence
• to cast its collective self in the role of corporate savior

Whatever the reason, we have a situation akin to the teacher who doesn't realize that she didn't invent and doesn't own the Pythagorean theorem. This is particularly true because the solution to the company's crisis most likely involves the creative and clever combination of existing and new ideas, some of which might come from other countries or industries, and therefore only appear to be new. 

If the solution is presented as having sprung, fully formed and Athena-like, from the cranium of the almighty CEO - plus or minus the executive committee - it's unlikely to gain traction. The rank and file cannot own the solution: it is not theirs to seize, understand, manipulate, and revise or expand upon. The CEO and top management are essentially saying: "we know what's good for you, and we will now magnanimously explain it to you", treating employees like children and depriving them of initiative or ambition. There can be no common ground, no room for an expanded understanding of the concepts underlying the solution, and nowhere for each member of the organization to carve out a unique understanding of how following this new path will solve his or her problems.  

This type of explanation leaves the staff with one of two options: submission or resistance. Neither is a positive dynamic on which to build a collective future.  

On the other hand, management can present the solution to the crisis as an idea larger than any individual or small team: an idea that exists in the space between the individuals that make up the company; an idea from which they can take the concepts that they need to reach the new goal, individually and collectively. Because this solution can be shared by all equally (it is owned by none), individuals, small groups, and indeed the whole organization, can make it theirs in the most appropriate way, as suits their activities. 

This is easier to do if the solution emerged from a respectful, positive, and collaborative process, but if the solution did come from a small group, it must be presented as an owner-less idea - a theorem of sorts. The staff then need help grasping the impact of the theorem on their daily activities and acquiring the skills to implement it. They can also expand on the solution, proposing innovations and taking initiative, since they are not challenging the idea's owner. 

Much like later mathematicians used the Pythagorean theorem to explore new kinds of mathematics, so employees can share the common elements of the solution, and find individual, unique, and innovative ways to follow it to collective success. The confusing concepts that might need clarification and the uncertainties inevitably associated with change can be addressed both collectively and individually, through exercises, training, and problem solving, much in the same way that a classroom of 13 year olds might collectively teach themselves that a2 + b2 = c2 under their teacher's leadership - and remember it for life.

Discussion or Dialogue. Value or Waste?

A few days ago, I was asked to talk about the future of “social relations & dialogue” during a seminar with human resources executives and trade union representatives. I chose to highlight the confusion often made between dialogue and discussion....and to show that this confusion is revealing deeper organizational issues.

The confusion. We often think that we have opened a dialogue when, in reality, we have just started a discussion: the traditional debate between discordant opinions (management Vs unions or staff Vs line) is simply a discussion, i.e. a negotiation between specialized solutions advocated by dissenting parties. To open a real dialogue, you must add one more dimension: inquiry, exploration: what are the deep and essential questions laying behind or beside the advocated solutions? Dialogue combines  the assertion of your own opinion with the common search for “the” core question(s) that we all can agree on. When there is agreement on the question, the "fight" for solutions takes a quite different turn, becoming a collaborative and productive quest.

This turning point is key to a company's transformation or stagnation. 

We privilege discussion because we fear the uncertainty and the loss of control that dialogue creates with its unexpected questions and the unknown solutions it may lead to.  Therefore we tend to devote time to discuss at length our choice of familiar  solutions (how?), leaving no room for re-checking the changing reality, exploring problems and learning to adapt (why & what?). Dialogue is part of the learning process. It needs time, space and overture to uncertainty and doubt: finding, recognizing and facing together the issues and problems ahead of us, understanding their root causes, experimenting solutions, sharing and capturing the learnings, all these learning steps are built on dialogue, our way to learn from each other. 

How to embed innovation in your organization?

This was my topic last week, speaking to a group of executive MBAs during a seminar focused on entrepreneurship. 

Innovation is a new and relevant answer to an important question. But once you have deciphered the "Mystery" of unnamed or unknown desires  leading to your unique Offer, when you have found your entrepreneurial Heuristic pattern  and finally designed a robust and attractive Algorithm, exit innovation; you enter the daily “raison d’être” of all businesses: reproducing  the formula, the solution, at the lowest cost and the highest profit, as long as possible. Even though we all know that in the future we'll have to make changes we are not willing to reopen everyday the Pandora Box of Inquiry.

Keeping innovation alive in an organization built for execution implies that essential questions, emerging or unknown are "routinely" identified and "processed" to keep  creating and implementing innovative solutions. A "double-bind" challenge.

Over a few decades of management practice, I tried to overcome this "double-bind", eager to combine the chaos of questions with the dull order of repetitive solutions. 
Amid some successes and numerous failures, I eventually discovered three essential "ingredients", tightly linked to each other.

First, People: Do you see them -do they see themselves - as the prime source of innovation or just silent performers of pre-established processes? I engaged my "authority" to allow everyone to be a potential "author", not just a docile instrument or scape goat for every problem; I went on suppressing information barriers and hierarchical walls, facilitating dialogue and initiative, giving time and space to breathe, think and relate, even introducing Art to the shop floor!  But along the way, I discovered that this "humanistic" and inclusive approach was incomplete: good intentions, great values, deep empathy and inspiring declarations are short-lived if not rooted in reality by a strong purpose.

Purpose is the second ingredient of embedded innovation: if we - the people- are the key to innovation, we must work together on it, addressing and solving the quintessential question- the what and the how of our "raison d'être"- which will keep  us ahead of the game. But in business,unlike school, problems and  issues are not given, they emerge,or not, are solved, or not, reinforcing or destroying the organization's life expectancy. We need to be on the outlook, open to discovery, ready to learn and unlearn to innovate. For this, we took the "organizational learning" road: fighting mental models entrenched in routine, valuing curiosity, fueling team learning, world cafés and open forums to develop collective intelligence. But I discovered that if our learning purpose was key for innovation, it was difficult to "engrain" in everyone's activity, everyday: our learning moments were mostly off time and off site; besides,too often we were not addressing the real issues: we were learning what we wanted to learn, not what we needed to learn. 

We were missing the discipline (everyday learning for everyone) and the alignment (addressing our "raison d'être": better customer value at a minimum waste); we were missing a common "innovation & execution" Practice, the third ingredient: learning tools,  rites and behaviors which are helping people to find and solve the right questions, leading to wiser solutions and frugal innovations. We developed this practice rooted in daily respect for people as authors and constant focus on the purpose of "necessary" learning. Young startups and reputed leaders call this practice "Lean". A practice for people with purpose.

To be or not to be: is it the Question or the Solution?

After a recent board meeting, I had a chat with the CEO; he was concerned about finding ways to improve his company’s operational excellence. I pointed out a few links between his quest and the strategic issues that he had brilliantly presented during the board. His answer was  quick and sharp: these are two different subjects. 

I could hear that there was no room for questions on the operational side: only flawless and repeatable execution was expected. The core and essential queries were reserved for the yearly ritual event: the executive committee strategic seminar.

He was right: leaders are often seen as heroes, bravely leading their troops through  unknown territories but delegating to their managers the boring and daily pride of delivering impeccable results.

Leaders own the big questions. Field managers must deliver reliable answers and competitive solutions.

But, in the real world, we have all attended -or even led- endless meetings debating around the “best” solutions and refining their implementation process, only to discover afterwards that these perfect solutions were useless as they were not addressing the right issues. We have also shared or built strategic visions followed by detailed strategic plans* to discover, in the course of action, that they were inadequate or not implantable.

Is it smart to separate questions from solutions? If so, where is the parting line? Strategy vs operations? Leaders vs operatives? If not, what is the way?

A few days ago, in his Gemba coach chronicle, Michael Ballé raised this issue, comparing Ford and Toyota systems: “the Taylor/Ford approach emphasizes the typical solutions (...).Conversely, Toyota’s emphasis in on the typical problems(...). In the end it all comes down to what problem you’re trying to solve.”

Our main challenge is therefore not to separate questions and answers, problems and solutions and let everyone -leader & operative- be the owner of both. This is the sure way to be kinder to the problems and wiser for the solutions.

* http://hbr.org/2014/01/the-big-lie-of-strategic-planning/ar/1