There Are No Simple Solutions to Complexity

October 8, 2017Kathy Jourdain Leave a comment

We want it to be simple. We groan under the weight of the increasing complexity we are experiencing – at work, in life, in our communities and in political environments. We bemoan the fact there are no silver bullets even while we continue to search for them.

Not only do silver bullets or simple solutions to complex issues not exist, but when we try to apply any we have come up with, they do not work. We end up in a situation where fixes fail or backfire loops emerge. Fixes that fail is when the solution we apply backfires and the problem or issue still exists either in its original form or worse. Unintended consequences spin off increasing the complexity of the circumstances we have been attempting to address.

Examples of unintended consequences abound but one example from our Worldview Intelligence work is with a health care client we work with in the US. The client piloted a new approach to patient care in six of its more than two hundred clinics across three states. Including one of these clinics in the pilot put its relationship with two other nearby clinics in jeopardy – a relationship they had invested years in building to create a common patient experience – because the one clinic was now operating differently.

So, if simple solutions do not exist, how do we find our way forward? One way is to illuminate the complexity, the relationships and the underlying patterns. Working with a Nova Scotia client recently that has a strong reputation Nationally and Internationally for the work they do, where they work in numerous coalitions and collaborative relationships to accomplish their mandate, they were invited to map their system and relationships.

Mapping shows the messiness and the complexity of the system. It illuminates what people try to hold in their heads, resulting in less stress and greater capacity to address issues and plan.

The map showed the dynamic complexity of their work. A surprising outcome to them was that in making the complexity visible, it reduced the sense of overwhelm and stress many of the staff felt, untangling the complexity and offering clear ways forward in their work planning, including identifying meetings, who needs to be involved in which conversations to which degree.

Worldview Intelligence explorations do not necessarily reduce the complexity, but by illuminating it, shows ways to address it and then change the outcomes.

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.

Worldview Intelligence is Essential for Anyone Working in Community

June 24, 2016June 24, 2016Kathy Jourdain 2 Comments

The framework of Worldview Intelligence is exciting to Jaime Smith, not just because of the academic rigour and research that supports it, but also because it provides a different way to think about your own worldview and to think about community engagement. She is reflecting on what it truly means to bring diverse perspectives into a room and how to frame those needed conversations in more meaningful ways. She offers that learning with curiosity and letting go of judgment, although simplistic, offers who new opportunities for listening and learning.

And, she received an unexpected gift – a revelation. Another consultant in the program, from another country, mapped out her social system and it mirrors Jaime’s own – a fabulous insight into her own networks and work.

Chaos, Order and Control are Worldviews at Play In Mergers and Acquisitions

May 28, 2016May 29, 2016Kathy Jourdain 2 Comments

(This post was inspired by generative conversations between Jerry Nagel and Kathy Jourdain as we think (often) about our Worldview work, our Art of Hosting back ground and our clients.)

Mergers and acquisitions are known to have a high failure rate – anywhere from 50% to 83% or even 90% depending on which report you read. A 2010 McKinsey and Co. report indicates more attention needs to be paid to culture and that better leadership is needed in the integration of cultures. A 2015 Europe Business Review article notes that trying to bring large groups of people together under one mission is hard enough. The complexity ramps up when there are multiple branch offices, especially when working across borders with different systems that are already in place in different locations. This is where the structured approach of Worldview Intelligence opens up the exploration of what could work best as those pre-existing cultures find new ways to work together.

One of our clients is a health care delivery enterprise of about 30,000 employees currently in two states in the US. They have grown significantly in the last decade through mergers and acquisitions. The original company was founded in one city and the mergers have resulted in three main campuses in two states and three large cities with very different local cultures. They are in the midst of standardizing systems across the enterprise and, not surprisingly, are bumping into a few challenges along the way.

We introduced their Academic Affairs team, with people from all the campuses, to Worldview Intelligence with individual, organizational and social systems explorations. The social systems exploration was particularly revealing for their communication and relationship across campuses.

They were asked to consider each of the cities they were located in as a social system. Participants from the lead campus comprised one discussion group and the other campuses created a second discussion group. Both groups were asked to use the Worldview Intelligence framework to think through their cities as a social system, the impact of that social system on their campus and vice versa, the impact of the campus on the social system. They already knew the cities had different cultures but had not previously thought so intentionally about how those cultures were formed, the influences on their histories, the realities they experience now, the futures they aspire to or the shared values. Nor had they thought about how the social system might influence interaction and relationship between the enterprise and the community.

One thing became clear: the worldviews of each city – its history and current reality in particular – have a strong influence on the individual campus. And that influence was not well understood or considered when standardizing the systems and processes across the enterprise because it operates invisibly in the background.

Reflecting on our work with this client, got us to thinking about this well known pattern from the Art of Hosting Conversations That Matter: the chaordic field – essentially about the relationship between and perception of chaos, order and control in merger and acquisition processes – essentially worldviews in play.

The mergers create chaos – between different ways of doing things, financial management systems, patient processing systems, internal communication systems, and the mishmash of cultures – which already exists to some extent within each campus let alone across campuses. It only makes sense that standardization of systems and processes across the enterprise is needed to bring consistency to reporting, to patient interaction and record keeping.

As the original campus – the leading worldview in this case – organizes to address the chaos, they want to bring order to the systems and processes. What they perceive to be order gets perceived as control by the newer or non-lead campuses in the system. And it is a natural tendency for people to resist being controlled – real or perceived.

Without having the language and framework of Worldview Intelligence, it is hard to name the issues that influence acceptance of standardization or even to pinpoint exactly what the challenges are. With the ability to look at many aspects of influence inside the campuses as well as the impact of the community or social system the campus is part of, it gives rise to new questions. What is the level of standardization that allows for consistency across the enterprise and responsiveness to the social system each campus resides in? And, what is the level of engagement across the enterprise that will bring an alignment of worldviews into a sense of order rather than to be perceived of as attempts at control? If individuals or departments in each campus are engaged differently in the process of standardization – where they feel they have more voice or influence – they are more likely to feel the original intent of bringing order rather than that the lead campus is trying to control everything in ways that do not make sense on the ground in a different social system.

To the right of chaos, in this framework, is where the worldview exploration leverages many perspectives and allows many views to co-exist across the enterprise – which is what gives vibrancy to each campus. The chaordic field offers the opportunity to make visible the worldviews at play, allowing an intentional exploration that leads the way to cross-campus alignment on higher order issues and allows for greater consistency and thus efficiencies across the entirety of the enterprise.

The Academic Affairs team is now actively using the dimensions of the Worldview Intelligence framework explicitly and implicitly as it strategizes its work, communication and relationship on a go-forward basis.

Program Participant Reflections from 2015

January 10, 2016Kathy Jourdain Leave a comment

Are you, like so many others who are inquiring, curious about how Worldview Intelligence programming is being received? As we prepare for our 2016 offerings, we’ve been reviewing comments and feedback from participants in the 2015 programs – both open enrolment and internal to client organizations and from a variety of the places we’ve been. This includes large and small communities; large and small organizations; professional associations, universities, health care organizations; in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia. We share a few participant reflections in this post.

From the personal exploration.

“Each conversation I was in was different and had a different tone. I am in search of deeper meaning of my worldview, looking at the influences and how they have impacted how I see the world. I am understanding more the power of taking time to learn a bit about the person I’m working with – honouring their history that is so important to them and their worldview.”

“Recognizing others’ path to their worldview can help you appreciate or deal with their worldview while recognizing and appreciating your own path.”

“The Worldview Intelligence inquiry has really enabled me to look at myself and my leadership growth in completely new ways.”

“What is really resonating with me is the idea that we have different worldviews, but many of us believe there is a Truth, a right and a wrong. When we come up against other people with their view, being able to acknowledge it is an essential step to moving forward.”

“Our Worldview is reinforced by the people around us. This makes it harder when our worldview is challenged because it comes as a surprise. When we hang out with people with similar worldviews we are more likely to believe our own worldview and to believe it is the way the world is.”

“We brought our whole selves to the conversations, even conversations about triggers which is a very vulnerable spot for many of us and we could do it with humor.”

“Worldview is organic and fluid, it has personality and attitude.”

“Worldviews are socially constructed. It is easy to forget most everything is like this. Maybe some things are not sacred. I could be more thoughtful about it.”

“I do a lot of thinking about these things. The format you’ve brought is different and helpful.”

“You don’t realize the levels of this work. I woke up this morning wanting to be more open today.”

“I am recognizing the importance of nuance in all of this – things are not so simple. To really hear someone else’s perspective, I need to set aside own perspective, at least temporarily.”

From the Organizational exploration

“Adaptive leadership, cultural competence and crucial conversations – they are all together in worldview and worldview gives a common language and words to verbalize what is unspoken. This gives us greater understanding as a group and more mechanisms for accountability.”

“ I have more ways to look for other people’s perspective and a greater understanding that everyone on my team might have something of value to contribute.”

“I am thinking about collisions of worldviews. We have a strong union in this organization. I have been inserted into this space. I will use my understanding of worldview to try to influence that space more strategically – to encourage everyone to let their thinking brain catch up to the reacting brain.”

“I am thinking about the projects we’re working on and the departments working on them. Worldview will let me step back to be more open minded about their experience and what their worldview of our department might be – which will help us move the markers together.”

“Worldview is about transforming differences into progress but the progress we envision based on our worldview might not be that same way for others. Learning how to be open to that could change the conversation. We influence people through ourselves, our own humility and integrity to get those important conversations out. These worldview practices are to live by and be intentional about. More natural is more authentic.”

“Yesterday opened up sight where I didn’t have any – especially at work – exposing what I need to see. I am filled with gratitude. Thank you for showing me this so I can change it.”

From the Social Systems exploration

“Standardization has become a tell (people what to do), where it could be a strength.”

“We are on a push for standardization across our region but what does that mean? We need a common core that allows uniqueness. Today, I broadened my perspective on each region. There isn’t always just one answer.”

“We are going so fast we haven’t stopped to rewrite history together across the various parts of our social system.”

“Worldview systems can change fast – but maybe they need a catalyst.”

“We have been having Ground Hog Day Discussions. The Worldview framework is exactly what we need to take us out of that and into new territory.”

“I have been searching for tool to think differently about the communities we work in. I can introduce the Worldview process and framework to help more voices be heard.”

What will our 2016 explorations bring? Maybe you want to discover it for yourself or your organization?

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