I have been interested in collaboration for a long time, in parallel with my passion around sustainability.  What I have noticed is this: as people become empassioned about the “big” topics, and become empowered internally to make change, they naturally reach out to others.  Visionaries have realized that the only way they can really make a difference on these urgent, important issues (health; climate change; sustainability; the financial system; I could go on…), is that they must work together to make their vision happen.

This struck me so forcibly that last year (2010), I led a workshop called “Leadership Skills for the Visionary Collaborator.”  That day, along with 25 people who were leading change all over Sonoma County, we explored what leadership skills were specifically needed to lead effective collaborations – both within organizations, as well as between organizations.

For me, 2012 will be a year of exploring “what it takes” to be a visionary collaborator.  Many of my ideas are based on the leadership development training we already do at Global Genesis.  I am delighted by this topic; I feel that with a greater attention to the personal strengths and skills these visionaries bring, the more effective they can be.

And these days, the human race needs us to be effective.  Desperately.

So, what is a visionary collaborator?  How are they different from other types of leaders?

The visionary collaborator may be a CEO working with his suppliers and distributors  to set industry standards, like Jeff Mendelsohn at New Leaf Paper has done in the Paper Industry; they could be a set of non-profit leaders working together on enormous topics like Health, or Climate Change, like my colleagues at the Sonoma Valley Health Roundtable or the North Bay Climate Adaptation Initiative.  Or they could be  green champions in organizations, progressing change amongst various departments or throughout the organizational hieararchy.

Their task is made challenging, unique, rewarding and powerful because they are visionary, they are leaders, and because they know they must collaborate to be able to create their vision.  And they are both influencing change as well bringing their own original thoughts to the table, while navigating a group that must answer to multiple loyalties.

There is a classic diagram that we use in teambuilding, of many arrows pointing in opposite directions.  The task for the visionary collaborator is to help align those arrows in generally the same direction.    To state it simply, s/he is a person with original ideas about the future who is working with a group of unaffiliated people to achieve a common goal.  To do that they must use leadership, or  what I define as “the process of influencing others towards a specific goal(s). “

In essence, the visionary collaborator is honing her/himself to be an effective partner – one that others will flock to because they are trustworthy and able to create results.

I have been noticing that in this world, which is in crisis in so many ways – economically, environmentally, and socially – that collaboration has been an avenue for robust and extremely creative solutions to form.  Check out this interesting coalition as a start -

I have a belief that these skills can be taught, developed, and improved on over time – that leaders aren’t born, but are created.  That doesn’t mean they don’t have their own innate styles and strengths that can be brought to bear in these situations.  In fact, I would argue that given the complexity of collaboration, it is important to have a variety of styles and strengths for a collaboration to produce real, long-lasting results.

Here are some of the qualities that must be developed by the visionary collaborator:

1)      Self and organizational awareness.  One must be very aware of one’s own strengths, weaknesses, assets and liabilities; this awareness essentially allows one to partner fully with others.

2)      Ability to Achieve Results: These collaborators must be courageous, credible, urgent and tenacious.

3)      Ability to Cultivate  Relationship: These leaders must bring their own brand of patience, diplomacy, and consideration.

4)      Attention to Collaboration:  Finally, these unique people must be open, aware, empowerd, and discerning for their collaboration to succeed.

Over the next year, I will be exploring both qualities and skills that the visionary collaborator needs to succeed.  I will also look to many of my contemporaries in thinking about what makes a collaboration work, how to structure to succeed, and how to use the strengths that the individuals in the group bring to bear.  May it be a year of fruitful collaboration!

It also talks about the qualities that enable employees to respond effectively to “being left out”:

Five particular qualities enable employees and executives alike to minimize the threat response and instead enable the reward response. These five social qualities are status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness.

DailyGood: Managing with the Brain in Mind.

Six Key Lessons on Mapping Out a Business Case for Sustainability Initiatives | GreenBiz.com.

I picked up the Complete MBA for Dummies a couple of weeks ago, curious as to whether one could actually get a Complete MBA through reading a 414-page (including the index) book. While I can’t answer that question, I was struck by the first chapter. They said that the thing each organization needs to be prepared for, to expect, to relish, is… (drum roll please)…

The Prospect, the Countenance, the Reality of Change.

It was, to say the least, very confirming.

The truth of it, in these days, with the rapidity of change, the complete turnover of technology (where did the analog system go?), most businesses, non-profits, and everyone else are aware of the need to be prepared for change.

And yet, we still have trouble adjusting for change, building for it, preparing for it. Oh, maybe at the beginning of an organization’s life, when everything is being created, it is easier. Structures are malleable, and people are open. But, as Terry Taylor says…

Nothing Fails Like Success.

Success breeds satisfaction, rigidity. And while we don’t need to imitate Mao with a Cultural Revolution (aka purge) every 10 years, we do need to keep the learning curve fresh for ourselves. Keeping the Learning Curve – essentially, the ability to innovate, fresh is one of the key reasons that so many large organizations have attempted to create smaller entrepreneurial organizations within.

So, how can you design an organization so it is fully ready to surf the wave of change?

How can you ready your people? How can you predict curves and swoops of change, and take advantage of it through strategy and precise action?

The Reconfigurable Organization:

A fantastic book, Designing Dynamic Organizations, suggests the Reconfigurable Organization as a strategy. It says that there are five components to organizational design, and how you handle each of them will directly impact your ability to maneuver change – and have negative consequences if you fail to do so.

The five components of organizational design:

1. Strategy – The strategy for the organization must be integrated into the organizational design. The direction of the company – its goals, its vision, the reality of the economy, environment, and market must all inform how an organization is designed.
2. Structure - The authors refer to the structure as the home, the body of the organization. How functions are organized, and how roles are defined, will have a subtle and not-so-subtle impact on how energy in the organization is channeled, how work is accomplished, and on the focus of the organization.
3. Processes and Lateral Capability - Specialization of function, while it has its obvious strengths, naturally creates boundaries and barriers to collaboration. This can be overcome by looking at the interpersonal communication networks, informal and formal, the technological networks, and by specifically naming integrative roles that, as the authors point out, form the “glue” of the organization.
4. Reward Systems - How people are rewarded signifies how the organization measures success. What types of results and behaviors is the organization looking for? How can it encourage those by what it measures, incentivizes, and discourages?
5. People Practices – Depending on what the organization needs, the skills, competencies, and resources of its people could significantly change. How you are selecting, developing, and what you are giving feedback on should evolve in tandem with the how the organization evolves.

The authors make the point that if any of these pieces do not reflect the organization’s current needs, it could lead to confusion, friction(inability to execute), gridlock (no collaboration), internal competition, and low performance. Any of these problems sound familiar?

Their solution? The Reconfigurable Organization – an organization that by its very design is ready to change and evolve with the organization’s needs; that encourages collaboration and execution. They point out -

If change is constant, why not design the organization to be constantly and quickly changeable?

The Reconfigurable Organization is characterized by…

• Active Leadership
• Knowledge Management
• Learning
• Flexibility
• Integration
• Employee Commitment
• Change Readiness

Designing Dynamic Organizations walks you through the process of organizational re-design, discussing everything from focus groups to the design process. They are thorough, accessible, and really intending the group for leaders and practitioners, pointing out that top leaders and HR Directors will find this very useful. It is the best book I have found on looking at how an organization can be designed to meet the needs of its most fundamental asset – its people.

How Ready for Change is Your Organization?

It is useful to think first about the work of Ichak Adizes, who wrote The Corporate Life Cycle in 1988. He notes that similar to biological systems, organizations are “born,” they learn, they peak, then they (can) fade. He talks about the Business Function of Organizations, and how the needs of the organization change over time. He also talks about how by understanding where your organization is, you can figure out how to give it the “nutrients” (my words) it needs to re-energize.

The Corporate Lifecycle, by Ichak Adizes (1988)

This slide to the side summarizes his ideas. When an organization is in the early stages, it is merely focused on performing services. “Just do it!!” is the idea. As an organization matures, it becomes more and more necessary to focus on how the service is being provided. After that, the organization is looking to be one step ahead of the curve – how can we anticipate the competition. Many best practices have been established in the organization, but the organization must not rest on its laurels. Finally, the organization moves on to integration – whether through vertical or horizontal mergers, externally, or through looking to its people, and thinking about their long-term success.

It is easy to see this pattern in an organization I have been a part of for the last several years, the Sustainable Enterprise Conference. The process that it took to get the conference to be the success it is now very much mimics the path that Adizes notes.

2005: The conference started when Robert Girling, a friend and colleague, went to a large conference in Marin called Bioneers, and came back with the idea of having a conference in the North Bay. He invited a number of people to come brainstorm with him – community activists, Sonoma State & Green MBA professors, business people who were interested or working in sustainable business. I was in that organizing meeting, and ended up being the “Director” for the conference, organizing the efforts of the many volunteers over the course of the next several months. In April, 2006 we thought we would get 150 people – we were shocked when we “sold out” at 220, turning people away.

That year, there was a huge learning curve – and boy was it a rock & roll roller-coaster as we learned about sustainability, how to run and market a conference, how to work together, and clarified, over the course of time, what our true purpose was. In terms of the Adizes model, we implemented systems as we could – but really, the focus was on producing that one day. We had to prove the “business” of the conference was a success.

In 2007, the second year, I was director again. We decided to expand the conference to two days, and to increase our number of targeted guests. That year, I became much more organized; we structured the work differently; there were many more volunteers who had much more ownership. My job became more manageable as a result, although I found myself working much harder as volunteer coordinator than I had the first year. When I compare that year to the Adizes model, we were clearly in stage 2, Administer. Systems became much more important; we didn’t want to “reinvent the wheel”. We were much more focused on fine-tuning.

In 2008, I decided that it was time for people who had a different set of skills to take the director-ship. As a group, the Steering Committee had decided it didn’t want to rely on volunteers as much; it wanted professionals to take the helm on logistics, coordinating sponsors once we had made contact, and otherwise managing the flow of the conference. So, we hired two “co-directors” of the conference, Deborah Grace Kraft & Stacey Ward, and one marketing director, Ryn Longmaid, in addition to our steadfast webmaster Oren Wool & graphic artist Alana Jelinik. These people brought specialization in detail & event management, in marketing; and Oren & Alana were benefiting from having worked in their capacity in previous years. The team took the “Administer” stage of the Adizes model to a new level; writing policy, clarifying decision-making processes; establishing strong working relationships.

As we prepare for 2009, we are clearly in the Entrepreneurial stage, with forays into the Integrative Stage. We are attempting to figure out what is “cutting edge.” Particularly now that “sustainability” and “green” are mainstream words, the question is, how do we help our local enterprises continue to push and challenge their own edge.  We are also re-examining our organizational structure, something we do every year, formalizing different committees and roles that are greater than function, and speak to the purpose of the conference.  More on that later.

Where is your organization?

In the next article, we will talk about how knowing where your organization is can help you design systems that will help you work most effectively and efficiently.

The Leader of Influence

Covey's Circle of Focus

In the post, Tactics for Leading Change, I made the argument that a Leader’s most effective long-term tool is that of influence. Influence, while being a less direct route to making change, has a much larger impact.

The tool shown here is modified from Stephen Covey’s “Circle of Focus” first described in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The Circle of Focus contains anything whose behavior you can directly control. This includes you, your dog (possibly), your small child (before they begin walking, maybe), and, for a very short time, anyone who you are able to exercise direct power and authority over. I say a short time, because if you have to exercise direct power and authority for long periods of time, you are likely engaged in a power struggle which can tend towards dysfunctional, passive-aggressive behaviors.

So, lets say that the Circle of Focus contains, essentially and most functionally, you. The Circle of Influence contains anything that you have some degree of, well, influence, that directly affects you and thus warrants you exercising your influence. Typically, you must work with others in this circle – you can’t effectively get the outcome most beneficial to you without the help of others. Thus, we spend much of our time in the Circle of Influence.

Finally, the Circle of Concern contains everything that concerns you, but that you don’t have any control over. There are times, particularly in the short term, when it is important to realize those things – that realization can bring a lot of relief.  IE, your children may do what they do; the polar bears may die; China may soon take over the world in carbon; etc.

However, the trick to this circle, is to be expanding the Circle of Influence into that Circle of Concern. Thus, much of Sustainability change is about helping individuals, companies, governments, non-profits, know that they CAN do something that will positively impact the environment, future generations, and their global community.

Working in your Circle of Influence

There are books and books written on how to “Increase Your Influence NOW!” and “Be a More Influential Person!” They describe mainly tactics – not fundamentals – for increasing your influence, including trading favors, complimenting the right person, putting your best foot forward. And while these tactics may be helpful when used wisely, they are like dust in comparison to a person who is filled with integrity and character, whose results and competence are trusted, and who shows discernment in how they exert and increase their influence.

So, how do you expand your Circle of Influence? Here are a few fundamentals.

1. Know Thyself. The fundamental lives on. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses, seeking feedbackand making appropriate changes, knowing your values and vision for your personal life is where you have to begin. Starting from there, you will attract people and build respect because of your clarity.

2. Be Trustworthy. If you say you are going to do something, do it. Live to your commitments to yourself and to others. By doing that, you build trust which you can draw on when you need it most – making a change for something you believe in.

3. Exhibit Competence & Follow-Through. Trust does not come without Respect. Let me repeat – Trust does not come without Respect. In our intellectually driven, outcomes-oriented culture, respect comes when people show they “can get the job done.” Doing whatever it takes to be really, really good at what you do, whether it is developing skills, exhibiting willpower and perserverence, or being clear about what you can and can’t do, delivering results based on competence and character is the fastest way to build respect.

I am a huge fan of a book written by Stephen Covey’s son, Stephen M. R. Covey, called The Speed of Trust. There, he talks about how business happens much faster – and I would add that change happens much easier – when there is trust. He also discusses how people can build their own “trustworthiness”, through exhibiting character, integrity, competence, and results, and gives some keys to developing trustworthiness yourself. Highly recommended read.

Using Influence to Create Change

Back to change. A leader who wants to make a fundamental change – whether or not this leader has authority – can do so by weaving a wide web of influence. Building trust amongst your community (professional, personal, and everything in between) builds your influence.

In a sense, you have built up, over time, the slow way, a sort of “Influence bank account.” Stephen M.R. Covey goes so far as to call it a “Trust Account.” So how do you spend it?

A few tips on Creating Change by Using Your Influence:

1. Choosing your battles. In this world, discerning which battles are worth taking on is an important one. Battling everything and everyone to get your way (or the way of a select few) can pay off if there are results. But if the strain of the risk is too great, and it doesn’t “pan out” (a reference to the might risky business of panning for gold) it can actually break down people’s willingness to follow you when they most need to.

2. You have to spend it to make it. Building “social capital” by making introductions, helping people out, taking risks on changes you and your team believe it actually builds trust not only in your team, but also in the organization at large. Because you are choosing your battles, you develop a reputation for taking thoughtful risks – and when you believe strongly that something needs to change, people will pay attention because of that.

3. Keep your eye on what’s best for the collective, and make sure it stays there. As soon as people know that you are promoting self over the collective, they will begin to question your motives. If your “trust account” is high, that is not a big deal, particularly if you are transparent about it. But the greater the change you are proposing, the greater the need for a large “trust account”, and the more you need to keep an eye on promoting the collective over the self.

Next post, we will talk about how an organization can be designed to innovate and work with change effectively.

Death of a Good Woman

It has been several weeks since I have last posted. For good reason – summer work travel notwithstanding, my grandmother, Donna Brown, passed away suddenly on July 27. She had been showing her age – 78 – for the last few months, but was such a delight to be around, with hearty laughter, irreverent jokes, great stories, and the best hugs, that we only noticed it vaguely. In retrospect, we had had to help her down steps more and more; she couldn’t walk very far; she fell for the first time several weeks before; she was out of breath quite often. I think the first real sign of her age was her pacemaker, implanted a couple of years ago; and at the end, that artificial heart was all that held her together. Until that too couldn’t quite do the job; she slipped away that Sunday around 9:30 pm, her family singing her Amazing Grace.

Change. Whether it is in your family, in your team, in your organization, the psychological ramifications of change are powerful, subtle, and themselves temper a person, as much as the event itself.

We have all been riding, as the days have gone by, the roller coaster of change. When I first received the phone call that she was in the hospital, I had every belief that she would end up fine. I found out later that my cousin Kenny, who had sent Grandma to the hospital via ambulance earlier that day, also thought she would get better.

Then, that Sunday, after hours in the Intensive Care Unit, and for a variety of health reasons, it became obvious that she wasn’t getting any better, and never would, and the decision was made to put her on comfort care. That conversation was challenging – many of us were grieving, some were facing anxiety, a couple of us were in denial, and angry that the family was not doing more to save her.

The Process of Transition

The Process of Transition

This has been a challenging couple of years in my family – Grandma was the third person in our close circle who had passed on in the last 18 months. As a result, I have gotten more and more accustomed to managing change – I have come to expect the wave of emotions sweeping myself and those around me; I have started to look for the joy in the situation, as there always is; I have been able to help others accept what is happening as well. As the graphic above makes obvious, it is very possible to get “derailed” from the natural process of change, into denial or hostility. Even more common is to get “stuck” in a certain feeling – the nervous feeling of guilt that never quite goes away; the fear or anxiety around the future; the depression. The model described above is a take-off from Dr. Kubler-Ross’ work on grief and transition; she wrote her book On Death and Dying in the 1970s, and her thinking was an enormous contribution to understanding transition and change of all types.

Vision… a tricky subject. Why? Because of its proximity to the mystic. After all, a vision is created in the mind’s eye. And what is the mind? Millions and millions of processes about millions of processes that coalesce into strands of thought. But I digress.

What is a vision? Put simply - it is an articulation of a direction. More complexly, it is the full description of a place and actions in time and space that is not yet created. The seeds of a vision may be in one person; it may be in the conversation between several.

A friend of mine, another facilitator, said that he was posed with an interesting challenge when he had to help a group with a blind person “Create a Vision.” Even the word “vision” was out of access to this person. He worked through it by asking questions about how it would feel, taste, smell; what action would stand out; how people would treat each other. This actually turned into an advantage – they had to become much more descriptive with how they described their direction.

The most successful visions are ones that are visceral – we can feel them in our bones. As facilitators, we help groups create visions by placing them as much as possible in the shoes of the future organization or person they want to be, with questions like, What are you seeing, hearing, doing, thinking, feeling, in the year 2018? The seeds of vision are typically deeply personal; they come from the hopes and belief systems of the individuals. Typically, circling to the vision is the best way to begin; understanding personal values and motivations creates common ground upon which building a vision can become much easier.

As Charles M. Schwab once said, “A man to carry on a successful business must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing.“

The job of a good facilitator is to draw out personal visions, to help the group see the common ground between those visions, and then to build that vision on that ground. To help them see – and build – “the whole thing.”

A few components of a great sustainability vision:

- Uses vivid, active language Bill Gates’ famous vision of the 80s sustained their company for many years – A PC on Every Desk.

- Includes triple bottom line elements – its vision for the company’s impact on the planet, on the people (both internal and external) and on the company’s long-term sustainability.

- Is attainable – but is a stretch. What makes a vision worthwhile? It is an appropriate stretch for that group. Americans, in particular, love a challenge.

- Is compelling. To be compelling, the vision must be based on the values of that person, group, or organization. It must be something “worth sacrificing for.”

- Paints a bright future. Long-time practitioners in Appreciative Inqury have said that people are like plants – they turn to the light. Painting a bright future turns our minds to the light.

- Stems from personal visions. Visions carry their most power when they ignite the power of the imagination. How do you ignite imagination? Very often, by taking a moment, and letting your mind create possibility. Back to that mind’s eye – the best way to ignite your imagination is to give it enough breathing room, enough oxygen, enough space to let your vision of the future unfold. We have to let go of “doing” for just a moment, let our active minds sit, and let the deeper layers unfold. I like to take groups to the beach and give them a bit of reflection time.

Do you have a sustainability vision for your organization? Let me know!

Great question!

Part of this question is answered by the qualities that the leader actually possesses. Talking about sustainability or any other change won’t be effective unless the change agent is trusted by the people she is trying to influence.

Influence, by the way, whether you have authority in an organization or not, is the only capital that really works to create long-term, behavioral change. Letting go of any ideas you may have about being able to enforce a change is helpful in this process – after all, as a colleague of mine, John Springer says -

You can lead by Inspiration, or Desperation. Which do you choose?

But back to strategies for change. We will talk more about leadership later.

The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook by Peter Senge et al., (a classic work on systems thinking in organizational development) makes the point that leaders want to create the commitment and focus that a shared vision can bring to an organization. Building a Shared Vision can do just that.

Bryan Smith’s article in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook discusses 5 starting points for building shared vision. He notes that different organizations should start at different places, given the practical realities of where different companies are. (The following is a direct excerpt from his article, on p.314.)

1. Telling: The “boss” knows what the vision should be, and the organization is going to have to follow it;

2. Selling: The “boss” knows what the vision should be, but needs the organization to “buy in” before proceeding;

3. Testing: The “boss” has an idea about what the vision should be, or several ideas, and wants to know the organization’s reactions, before proceeding;

4. Consuliting: The “boss” is putting together a vision, and wants creative input from the organization before proceeding;

5. Co-creating: The “boss” and “members” of the organization, through a collaborative process, build a shared vision together.

He makes the point that before proceeding, you should objectively assess where your company is, and then make a plan for how to move to the next stage.

Figuring out Where You Should Start – A Case Study

I have a client who is transitioning from one leader to another leader. The old leader had a fairly traditionalist model; he asked people to do what they should do, and expected that they follow through with what he asked them to.

The new leader had a very different idea; while he wasn’t entirely sure how, he knew that he wanted his staff to work as a team; to be self-motivated to improve the company. We started with an executive team teambuilding, and from there, discussed how to help his whole company work differently.

He had a vision of teamwork – but had to go about it differently depending on who in the company he was working with. With his executive team, we had spent three days together building trust and respect, co-creating a vision for the company, agreeing on strategy. We then spent many months working together as a team over time. With them, he used a combination of testing, consulting, and co-creating. The Executive Team wanted strong leadership from him, as they had received in the past, but still usually wanted to consult – a significant change from how it had been in the past. But as the Executive Team itself became stronger, they also became stronger, more creative leaders with their own staff, and likewise more attached to co-creating together as an Executive Team. Now, they negotiate about when they will co-create, when they will consult with the leader, and when the leader will test with them, but reserve the right to make the decision.

But the company leader also wanted to change how the rest of his staff would work together. And the rest of the company was more accustomed to a strong authority figure who governed mostly through telling, as opposed to a leader who was willing to share some of his authority in exchange for increased creativity and commitment on their part. For his staff, this leader spends some time telling, a lot of time selling, and has been making inroads to testing and consulting, with specific individuals or committees, at specific times. Quite a bit of his tactic has been to negotiate the boundaries of collaboration over time, so that both he and the company get what they need to keep the company running. Some initiatives have worked well; some are still a work-in-progress.

So, how does this translate to creating a successful change initiative?

As a change agent, depending on the authority you have, you will have to assess for yourself who is ready for co-creating, and who is not. There are many factors that influence how someone is ready – the level of trust, the expectations and history between the parties, how willing the different parties are to negotiate their needs. It is a risky thing for a leader to allow his authority to be handed over to the decision of the group. In fact, in this case, there was a point when the Executive Team and Company Leader handed its authority over too quickly, without thorougly laying out the boundaries of what they needed to make sure the company stayed on track as a whole. Everyone ended up unsatisfied with the results, and the leaders had to back-track to telling. Fortunately, enough trust and respect had been built up at that point that the loss wasn’t nearly as significant as it would have been the year before.

Both the leader and the group have to be ready for co-creating. Both have to be practiced at asking for what they need, as well as giving in return.

However, there are ways to fast-track to co-creating a vision. Next posting – how do you create a vision? And how can you fast-track it to achieve long-term commitment and focus?