Why Asking Someone to Change How They Work May Not Be as Simple as You Think

September 30, 2016September 30, 2016Kathy Jourdain 3 Comments

It happens all the time in work environments. The organization wants or needs to change – the way it works, delivers service, makes its products, is organized. Often this point is missed: change is not just about the mechanics of what is to be changed, it is about the people. People make up and deliver our systems and processes. Most people say they don’t mind change, but they don’t like being changed. Even when it “makes sense”. Because “makes sense” depends on your perspective.

Anais Nin - We don't see things as they are

When we are looking for efficiencies at work, we are often asking someone – or several someones – to change the way they work. To take on new responsibilities or to give up part of your role. It seems to make sense in the grand scheme of things. It is integral to the change working. If we are leading the change or innovation, when we meet resistance we often don’t understand why. What we are asking often seems like a simple request.

conversation-one-on-one The challenge we meet is that many of us identify with our role. It forms part of our identity. We think we are simply asking people to change the way they work when we might actually be challenging the way they see themselves. We might be challenging their very sense of identity. And when we feel our identity is being challenged or threatened, psychological research tells us that we respond as if our very life is being threatened. Instead of being open to change, we dig in our heels and overtly or covertly resist being changed. We become more attached to our role or our identity.

Worldview Intelligence offers personal explorations that help us understand our own worldview, where it comes from, what influences it, what values and beliefs are fundamental to who we are. It illuminates typical responses, ingrained human patterns, of how we respond to challenges, how we filter information in and out, how our sense of identity shapes our responses, how we become entrenched in our point of view when we feel compelled to defend it. When we can bring curiosity to the exploration we become aware of what is important and why and then we can become conscious of the choices we are making. The very exploration opens up the possibility for each of us to expand our own worldview and be more open to possibility.

For those of us who are responsible for leading change or asking our people to change, understanding that simple requests might have deeper implications allows us to think about how we approach another person or whole department, their role, their work and what is needed to bring about the changes that we need or want rather than becoming frustrated or combative which only serves to make us less effective in our leadership.

Silos, Communication Breakdown and “I Don’t Know What You Do”

August 27, 2016August 27, 2016Kathy Jourdain Leave a comment

It seems no matter what the size of the organization we work with, we typically hear these three complaints: “We work in silos.” “We don’t communicate well.” “I don’t know what you do.” This seems equally true of an organization that has 30 employees relatively co-located or 30,000 employees spread across many sites across a large geography.

It can be a frustrating experience for leadership teams intent on breaking down those silos, improving communication across the organization and wondering why people just don’t talk to each other to discover what they do to hear the same challenges emerge time and time again. Because these issues are not one off. They can’t be solved with that being the end of the story. They need constant attentiveness.

There is no magic bullet. Ever. So, what is a leadership team to do? Keep these challenges in their sights and invest in the time and opportunities it takes to bring people together to talk to each other, to strategize together how to work across silos and be in conversations about what people do and how they contribute to the overall work of the organization.

We have been using Worldview Intelligence in a variety of settings with our clients. The program surfaces these age old complaints with a framework that provides a new lens of discovery, different language to enter into the conversations, a way to illuminate the hidden dynamics or patterns of behaviour within the silos and the organization overall and ways to think about a shared future that honours the individual workings of departments while making sure all are moving forward in alignment.

It is an iterative process. The same framework offers the opportunity for many different often interrelated explorations, including personal, professional, departmental or team, organizational and social systems.

Worldview Intelligence Explorations – An Iterative Process

The personal exploration is a leadership practice as individuals become aware of the lenses through which they see the world, work or community and learn how to invite other people to share their perspectives and influences on how they see the world. It is a heart centered exploration as people first turn curiosity and compassion inwards toward their own journey and then outward toward another. It invites genuine listening and learning to really understand how life experiences, including day-to-day reality, are different. This is particularly true when people from different cultures are learning from and about each other and it is also true for what might be considered more minor differences like coming from a different community in the same city or region.

The professional exploration offers people the opportunity to understand how the views of their profession influence their own professional views. This includes everything from educational influences to the patterns and practices of the profession overall. It provides insights into communication challenges and points of tension with other professions or even within a profession. Within health care, for example, the different medical professions often experience points of conflict around scopes of practice and delivery of health care. Examining the worldviews of each of the professions offers insights and reminds people of the points of connection between them, offering new ideas, thoughts and strategies about how to communicate with the well being of the patient at the center.

The departmental and team explorations invite members of a team to reflect on the history of the department and team, even prior to the current composition of the team, how they think about and live into the future and the practices they use with each other and external to the team to get work done. It can illuminate how they treat each other and others outside the department, offering the opportunity to be intentional about their relationships.

When departments and teams share their worldviews with each other the resulting insights are often surprisingly dramatic and simple at the same time. The exploration surfaces things that can be blindingly obvious once illuminated but hidden until that time. Within an organization this could be the result of different leadership styles or perspectives on the future, it could be the lingering influence of conflictual relationships or any number of other scenarios. Across an organization, particularly one geographically dispersed, the location of a department or unit can have a significant impact on how they function and it is often unacknowledged until the system is mapped and explored.

Once departments or units across an organization share their worldviews with each other, the elements of a shared worldview can be elicited. The organization does not need a singular worldview, but worldviews across the organization should have elements that are common. An organization benefits from a diversity of views and learning how to draw out the greatest potential in addressing the issues and challenges the organization faces. The alignment across worldviews can be strategic and intentional as the organization moves forward on issues that are pertinent to its work and its future well-being.

Understanding what comprises the social systems of departments, units or the organization overall provides an opportunity to explore how to create consistent policies and practices across the organization that are also flexible enough to be responsive to local circumstances and influences.

When an organization takes the opportunity to collectively enter a worldview exploration, it also enters the conversation about how to work across silos, communicate more effectively because people are learning from and about each other and what they do. It is an iterative process. In one way it is simple. In another way it is difficult because it takes time, focus and strategic thinking to ensure ongoing attention to the age old issues. And it is important because these age old issues get in the way of getting work done.

The Unwritten Rules

October 31, 2015October 31, 2015Kathy Jourdain 2 Comments

People the world over have played the game of Monopoly and I would hazard a guess that almost everybody plays by at least one unwritten rule – accumulating money in Free Parking that a player “wins” when they land on it. How many people were surprised to discover this “rule” is not written in the rules? And yet, it is a common practice of play. The question two of my kids raised was, “How does this happen the world over, generation after generation?”

It is a great question and a beautiful illustration of what happens in families, places of work and social systems. There are the rules and then there are the rules. The first set of rules is written the handbook, in policies and procedures, in personnel manuals. You won’t find the second set written down anywhere but they guide behaviour just as surely, and even more so, as instructions do. And the things we don’t talk about – in a family, organization or social system’s reality or history can often have more power and influence than the things we do talk about. They influence dynamics and lived patterns and they generate unexplained or seemingly unexplainable behaviour.

This is one of the places where Worldview Intelligence has an impact. Through an exploration of some or all of the six dimensions, using powerful questions from those dimensions and bringing healthy doses of reflection and curiosity, hidden dynamics become visible and can be talked about in compassionate, non-threatening ways.

Workplace cultures are self-perpetuating and organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they are getting. Attempts to make changes are often met with failure because of this. The stories people tell, often without thinking about them, are one way that culture gets communicated and shared in an organization.

Worldview Intelligence offers a structured approach to illuminating the stories, dynamics and patterns that people are often silent about. It invites people to become more conscious and intentional about the stories they want to tell, behaviours they want to perpetuate and patterns they want to have flourish and thrive. It offers a chance to “rewrite” the unwritten rules and to do so collectively.

How Open is Your Organization to a Multiplicity of Worldviews?

April 12, 2015Kathy Jourdain 11 Comments

When you look at this image, what do you see? Do you see someone looking straight at you or do you see a profile — or perhaps something else even?

Take a good look. Can you eventually see there is another perspective, another view? Once it comes into your awareness, it is possible to hold both views at the same time or to alternate back and forth between both views.

What about this second image? Do you see the old woman or the young woman? They are both there. If you are only seeing one, let your vision soften and the other may come into view.

You may say these pictures are only optical illusions and bear no relevance to anything other than a bit of fun. From our Worldview work, we would say, these pictures visually represent a dynamic that often comes up in conversation, dialog or debate at work, at home and in other settings. Sources of tension and even conflict arise when an individual or a collective (group, organization, community) sees things in a certain way and are convinced that it is THE way to see the world, the issue or the challenge. So convinced there is only one true view that other perspectives are not welcomed, invited or entertained as possible. Coming from an entrenched point of view, the debate often becomes polarized and personalized by dismissing another person or their point of view, becoming defensive about our own point of view or becoming attached to things needing to be a certain way.

Much of the origin of these dynamics are hidden or unnamed. We think we can make our point by using facts, imagining that facts are immutable – and yet, the fact is there is a young woman in that picture – and, there is an old woman. If you only see one of the facts, you may do everything in your power to try to make someone else see it too. Instead of bringing curiosity to the possibility that there might be two possibly opposing “facts” that are both true, we become entrenched in our point of view. Sometimes we become identified with our point of view – another way that the argument becomes personalized.

A worldview exploration helps ascertain what the source of conflict or tension might be by an exploration of components of worldview – something in how we see or interpret current reality, historical patterns or stories that influence current reality, the way we imagine or interact with the future, all reveal something about the worldview of individuals and organizations that might help us find common ground or points of connectedness to move forward on what matters. Understanding value systems and core commitments, illuminating the practices and methods by which we bring our worldview to life individually and collectively and understanding what informs our knowledge or how we know what we know, again individually or collectively, can also provide entry points to common understanding on issues that matter to us.

What are ways that you invite other points of view, or worldviews, into your conversations? How does your organization deal with alternative and even opposing worldviews when they appear? Do you even know if there are alternative worldviews? If there are voices that remain silent when dominant worldviews are expressed, you might not even be aware there are different perspectives. How do you know if there is a dominant worldview? If there are no alternatives offered to the perspectives that are already in play, that perspective may be a dominant worldview. That might be okay and it might not, especially if it is being expressed unconsciously in the organization. Your workforce could become more progressive, more creative and more engaged when there is room to voice and work with a multiplicity of worldviews at any given time and especially on the issues and questions that are most important to the evolution, sustainability and ongoing livelihood of your organization.