levers

While the old saying - there is no 'magic lever' - does seem to hold true at some level, I have come to look at things a little differently. My current sense is that:

Everything is a lever if you look at it the right way!

All this is really saying is that every situation contains a pathway out; a particular route that will lead to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The real challenge that lies before humanity today is to become masters at seeing that pathway through all the other clutter that gets in the way or obscures our vision of what really matters!

And while there may be no single lever, starting to see the potential lever in every situation and learning how to use it (or them) in the best possible way could be, in its own right a kind of magic lever. Just as with a regular lever, this means knowing what it rotates around, how that connects it to everything else, whether it should be pulled or not, and what, exactly, it will take to get that lever moving.

We need methods and anti-methods for our madness!

visions, dreams, problem-solving and change

So, I’m pretty sure that I’m not saying anything new here (I have been thinking about it for a while and have taken inspiration from numerous sources and even woven it into my own practice)… but it does kind of strike me as being rather important… here it goes:

• Vision-driven change is completely different from problem-solving-driven change.
• For the most-part, people are uncomfortable with moving away from problem-solving
• Vision-driven change requires an understanding of the problems but, instead of beginning with the problems, begins with tapping into people’s dreams, unearthing them, sharing them, building common dreams and then catalyzing collective action around these dreams
• Vision-driven change and problem-solving-driven change are not mutually exclusive… but putting the vision gives a better context for the problem-solving
• Vision-driven change is all about creating new realities – this gives a real sense of moving forward towards something that is desirable rather than simply away (or aside from) something that is bad
• Problem-solving change is all about trying to get out of slippery holes – getting out of one doesn’t mean that you haven’t fallen into another
• Vision-driven change is holistic, and presents an inclusive and clear goal that people can both relate and aspire to
• Problem-solving change is fragmented, and often fails to consider how one problem is linked to the next – it also often encourages looking for solutions at levels that are far beyond people’s grasp

I have nothing against problem-solving. What I do lament, however, is the striking absence of vision-driven change. We go into a place and focus first and foremost on what the problems are. I even heard a very senior, experienced staff member (perhaps a little too old now?) say that one of the jobs we do is to show people dreams… as if the people didn’t have their own dreams before we turned up!?!? I was a little bit taken aback at this and wondered about the extent to which we may take ownership for people’s dreams and, correspondingly, perhaps, the extent that we fail to really tap into the potential of really engaging people voluntarily in taking action to realize their dreams…

One thing is for sure: the dream-based leadership workshop that we conducted in Delwara – which included an exercise for linking people’s own actions to the realization of their dreams – worked! Within a few days, a Muslim lady – a local leader – was out and about in her neighbourhood trying to collect money from each household to cover the cost of getting the neighbourhood cleaned on a regular basis. And just the other day, I was translating for a volunteer studying the relationship between women and water in Delwara, and two women quite clearly recounted: “it’s not that we didn’t have dreams before the Citizen’s Forum was established, it’s just that we didn’t have a way of realizing them”.

This is an urgent plea to not let ourselves start trying to possess other people’s dreams and to focus instead on trying simply to listen to, know and understand them, to get people to own up to having them and to cultivate a passion for realizing them – both individually and collectively!

I sincerely believe that these dreams are the source from which any glimmer of hope for positive social change emerges. As such, they are worthy of unfathomable respect.

half full or half empty... the muddle continues

It's way past my bedtime but I feel compelled to write. Failing to follow on from my last blog, this is a return to a lingering question of growingly nagging proportions: appreciative inquiry - is it a biased way of looking at things and does this make it somehow less useful or worthwhile in the broader endeavour to make positive change in the world?

This question first began to move beyond being a simple blot on my landscape to a kind of subject for inquiry after reading an article by Dave Snowden. A recent blog post by Dave Snowden got me thinking about this again. He wrote:

One of my real concerns here is the frequent conflation of Cognitive Edge methods with NLP and that other current popular method Appreciative Inquiry (AI). Now there is a big difference. My concern about AI is that it privileges one type of story over an other. Why should anyone tell people what type of stories they should tell? Despite my disagreements I can respect its practitioners and see that it has utility in constrained circumstances. [He then goes on to talk about NLP - for which he clearly has less respect than he does for AI]

So, the question that I am really grappling with is: in what contexts does applying Appreciative Inquiry makes sense? Or even better, where does the role of purpose fit in to the whole practice of story-work?

It seems that Dave's approach is concerned with eliminating any kind of bias into the 'inquiry' or story-eliciting process. Now, I may be just fuddling my way through, but it seems to me that any process of gathering stories will need to have some kind of a purpose (am I missing something?) - whether it is simply to generate a database of contextualised organisational happenings from diverse perspectives (why would we want this) to something more overt like enabling an organisation to become more effective at what it does (e.g. by becoming more responsive to its clients needs, learning more effectively, improving leadership and communication patterns, etc.).

I recognise that I may have the wrong end of the stick (please point this out if I do). I also recognise that the very process of surfacing a question or purpose for 'inquiry' itself may require an inquiry in its own right... But even this sense that 'something needs to be done' will be informed by some kind of nagging notion that... well, there is something that needs to be done... about something!? Hmmm...

But Dave's critique focuses not so much on the subject or purpose as the 'type of story' - i.e. in the case of AI, this would be the story of what worked and what were the conditions that led to this thing actually working - a positive take. I suppose, the point is that it makes good sense to look at what isn't working and how things end up not working -because this might tell us what we ought to avoid doing.

In various articles of Dave's that I have read, he talks about using the story of the chap who discovered that latitude could be calculated simply by using a clock as a way of getting people to feel comfortable about telling stories of times when good ideas were scrapped because of bosses with old-paradigm world-views... Now isn't this as much an attempt at telling people what kind of story to tell as doing an AI would be?

So is the point that we should ask people to tell all kinds of stories - the good, the bad and the ugly? How do we decide how we should lead the questions? It seems that we have to elicit a certain type of story - at least in a number of situations - in order to get at the juiciest bits which may not respond to a simple question like 'tell me about leadership in the organisation' - it just seems way too vague - and therefore liable to elicit a vague series of answers that have to be gradually probed to get to the depth by gradually making it more specific (e.g. by using the latitude example).

The other tendency that I have observed is that people love talking about negative stories. Huge amounts of staff time go into ranting about problems, complaining about things, etc. My sense is that this tends to breed a negative mindset and can be very counterproductive. Just imagine if some more of this time was spent by people having constructive conversations about how to solve problems, or for sharing knowledge and experience, coming up with new initiatives and so on... Now wouldn't this lead to a dramatic increase in effectiveness? Perhaps I am completely missing the point!? What if bosses could listen to stories about times when their staff had really felt able to perform and deliver change?

In the end, I suppose that both the positives and the negatives are essential. It seems to be as important to know what we can do as it does to know what we shouldn't do. But when we are on the move, and we don't have vast resources to put in place high end knowledge management systems (as in the case of the NGO where I am working in India), might not an AI allow us to get rather a lot done - even if only in such constrained circumstances?

In any case, I have resolved to take this question with me into my practice and really have a go at unearthing all manner of stories - positive and negative - with the hope that I can begin to get a sense for what all of this adds up to...

...indeed, the journey's only just begun!

This appreciative inquiry thing is rather interesting. Although I had the sense that I wasn't quite managing to do what I ought to be doing, I think that I somehow managed to pull loose ends together and tie them up with a neat little bow. Thanks are due to the appreciative commons through which various ideas about how to present what had come out were made available. The feedback I have gotten so far on the appreciative inquiry and the presentation I made based on it, has been, for the most-part, very positive. Not only the (verbal) feedback though… People seem to have a little bit more spring in their step - though of course its far too early to tell whether (a) this is just because of my own perception; and (b) it is going to last.

In any case, some reflections. First, although I obsessed about what I was doing, it seemed a little bit too easy. It seemed as though I didn't have to do anything. Now, this is also nonsense - because I was working until midnight for several days during the run-up to the annual camp… But that was also due to other reasons.

Once the data had come in and once we had done our group work of analysing the data and converting it into themes and values with their quotes and stories to back them up, it was just a matter of figuring out the provocative propositions. I feel that I didn't do this properly. Somehow, it seemed to be too much a matter of me just piecing the statements together, one after the other… Yes, I did spend a night in the office with some of my workgroup looking at these statements but the word-smithing was mostly me… and that felt like a problem at the time.

Anyway, the first time it got air-space was at the meeting of the sanchalak mandal (the executive committee) meeting - the day before the camp was due to start. It was generally appreciated but there were some tensions and questions: the expected ones - where is the negative stuff? Why focus just on the positive? But you haven’t told us how we are performing in relation to these values (which I very, very clearly stated was in no way my objective whatsoever)? And all the associated points that back up the idea of dwelling on problems… (and the image - shown above - taken from Yes!andSpace (hat tip) didn't seem to help so much as aggravate the idea that things were one-sided, too positive… it triggered the response: "if we only focus on the positive and future things, we are not learning from history - so we will end up just repeating past mistakes" - which indicates that the whole concept of the appreciative inquiry had not been properly digested by the audience).

I tried an array of methods for explaining the principle and ended up using the kind of analogy that I don't usually feel comfortable using in front of people in high posts (because I worry that they will be degrading). I said: "If I want to know how to get to Delhi from here and you tell me - 'don't go to Ahmedabad, don't go to Kota, don't go to Jaisalmer, don't go to Bhopal' and so on it doesn’t really make it much easier for me. However, if you tell me - 'this is the road to Delhi' then I can set off along it more easily and with greater confidence." Which seemed to work a little - though I didn't ask for feedback to confirm this.

Anyway, I conceded enough on the basis of our discussions to incorporate a question that would give people the space to talk about what Mustafa (on of the structure consultants) called 'the shadow behind the values'… And this was a very interesting part of the whole event for me. Things were happening fast, there were pots and pans banging in the background (so it was necessary to make quite a lot of effort just to hear each other) and we'd just eaten ice-cream (which was very nice indeed). Everyone had just been sitting in the presentation looking and listening (to varying extents). And now we had to talk about performance in relation to the values.

It took almost one hour to get the group to move out of the comfortable silence on the topic of where we were failing to live the values. It took coaxing. It took trust-building, no doubt made more difficult by the presence of Sachin - a representative from PLAN who funds us. To get around this I eventually got the bright idea of getting Sachin to share his own experiences from PLAN. When it came up that they've been having their own challenges (all organisations do y'know!) people got a little bit more open.

After wrestling with conceptual clarity and getting over the fact that it isn't easy to talk about these things - especially as they may be personal, we got into a fairly heated discussion about the values. Some individuals became a little bit too garam and had to get up and cool off. Others sat cold as stones. Various stories came up of ways that leadership had not been sensitive, ways that the organisational system wasn't supporting workers' contribution to change, ways that there wasn't openness (of which the one hour it took to open up was the most striking example)…

The energy was fairly tense. I was doing some fairly active facilitation - though I can't recall many of the specifics - but almost as much energy as went into opening the discussion to the deep dark well of 'what ain't right' went into trying to pull the group back out to the world of 'what we gotta do then'… Eventually we did this and ended up with some suggestions that we then pooled with four other groups who had been talking on the same subject. We were able to compile together from across the various groups into a presentation that pretty much captured everything that need to be captured. This got presented the following morning and seemed to go down relatively well… This is basically what it recommended at the end:

How to take the values forward:

• Start with yourself: be the change that you want to see
• Use the values as a basis for staff performance evaluation
• Create time and space for dialogue on these values amongst staff
• Improve organisational systems so that they support the practice of these values
• Establish a system for grievance redressal involving staff from all levels of the organisation
• Take this conversation forwards

I suppose this means we are at least thinking in the right direction…? Of course, there's a lot more fleshing out to be done... Given the discussion we had the following day (mentioned at the end of my last post), I suppose, means that we are actually doing something about it all? And to think this is only the beginning!

One of my lingering questions though... was the negative patch useful and important? Did it add or subtract from the discussions we had? This is something I will need to ponder on and explore as I continue on my adventures!

And the journey goes on...

Well, today, I'm sitting on the other side of the mountain. The annual camp is over. It was brief. Very brief indeed! And there was less space for dialogue than I might have liked. But the dialogue we did have was, for the most part, pointing in the right direction. In line with the framework that we've been using, there were three main components on the agenda - (1) strategies; (2) structure and (3) culture.

Each of these sessions started with a presentation and was followed by an open discussion (except for the the values one due to time constraints) and a panel.

For strategy, an organisational level perspective was given - highlighting the cross-cutting social issues that Seva Mandir sees itself as struggling with: an absence of trusteeship and too much spectatorship and complicity - issues as relevant internally as externally. It was made clear that Seva Mandir's concern lies with society more than it does with the government: for Seva Mandir, the government is a part of society. It then went on to flesh out the key strategies that Seva Mandir would be pursuing across different program areas to address these.

The structure presentation was made by some consultants and focused on the question of where Seva Mandir wanted to apply more of its 'energy' (a catch all for everything from manpower and resources to capacity, power and attention). While the model (based on ...) was rather confusing because of its ambiguities, abstraction and technical jargon (that people couldn't easily relate to Seva Mandir), it did play the important function of generating dialogue - largely with the intention of seeking clarity.

The culture presentation was based on the appreciative inquiry (AI) that we have been working on over the course of the last few months. This involved an incredibly brief section explaining AI followed by a presentation of 8 core values backed up by quotes from the appreciative conversations we had over the last few months within Seva Mandir and ended with six provocative propositions based out on these core values.

Based on these, the following sub-themes emerged as subjects to be taken forwards in group discussions: (1) how does change take place (and what is our role in this); (2) what are the desired roles and linkages between Seva Mandir, the community, the panchayat and the government; (3) what are the strengths, weaknesses and suggested improvements to the organisation's structure; (4) where do we stand in terms of living up to the organisation's values, what causes us to fail or live up to them, and what can we do to further cultivate our values within the organisation?

Four groups of up to 20 people participated in the discussions on strategy, structure and culture for not quite enough time. However, the basic sense of what mattered emerged in each of the discussions and presentations were prepared on each topic for the following morning. The need for continued, more extended and deeper dialogue on all issues - especially on structure and culture - came up as very important concerns.

The event wrapped up with thought-provoking ideas from Rajni Bakshi that helped to situate Seva Mandir's efforts within the international context - putting a special emphasis on environmental issues, broader economic development issues, consumerism, communication, dialogue and the need to cultivate spaces and individuals who can help to bring about a broader based social change.

All in all it went quite well. There is no doubt in my mind that we could have benefitted from more and longer conversations - possibly in smaller groups and with more of an explicit action focus built in - i.e. a kind of "this is what we're going to do" rather than a "these are things that we could do"... But the sense of a commitment to doing some of these things is present nonetheless.

This revealed itself the following day when a large body of staff gathered at Seva Mandir to celebrate the founder's birthday and do shramdan (cleaning of the office). At the end of this, there was a good discussion amongst members of the Seva Mandir community on such issues as maintaining cleanliness, how to become more environmentally friendly (someone was commissioned to lead this process), ensuring that suitable facilities (from hygienic water coolers to motor-cycles) were available for the staff and also discussing problems associated with delays in the purchasing system that held up getting work done. All-in-all a promising start for round 2 (of what exactly?)...

Now, it would seem, the focus of efforts will be on operationalising the kinds of changes that we have been talking about - helping people change their patterns of behaviour and relationships, develop more empowering organisational systems and ensure regular and open dialogue on values and structure, etc. This is long-term stuff...

In the meanwhile, I will need to get busy with looking at how to put together the organisation's 6th Comprehensive Plan document which means another round of discussions, thinking about targets, indicators and budgets and fleshing out strategies wherever this may be required... Back down to the dirty work!

Teetering toward the big day

Today I read a brilliant harvest of a workshop in which a diverse group of people tackled the question of how they could move towards a 'Person Centred Culture'. As I scanned through the material, I found myself deeply inspired and connected with what came out. I will not try to paraphrase it but you can read the whole article here.

Over here in Seva Mandir we are engaged in the preparation of our 6th Comprehensive Plan. One important part of this is exploring our oragnisational culture. The discovery and dream phases of our Appreciative Inquiry have now pretty much reached completion. A small group of us will sit together next week and try to craft the 'provocative propositions' (statements about what the ideal organisation would be like based on what people have been surfacing). The plan is that when we get to the annual retreat (coming up in about 9 days - horribly close by!) we will present the major findings of our appreciative inquiry along with the provocative propositions.

These provocative propositions will then provide the basis for group discussions. The group discussions will have a set of guiding questions that aim to take the group from understanding what it (the provocative proposition) actually means (from diverse perspectives) to figuring out what concrete steps can be made at individual and organisational levels to make it real. After the group work, people will be able to take a break and reflect, go for a walk or chat with their colleagues... Then dinner and some relaxation.

The following morning the groups will present what they have come up with on each of the identified themes. And then we will see what we have got on our plate :) I am still not completely sure about how this is going to work and I have half a dozen naggling concerns to deal with. Is this all too pre-planned and do we need to build in more space for open topics (a la open space)? How will the little groups be facilitated and what preparation will be required for this? Will there be overall support for the process and what is coming out of it?

I realise that we can't do everything with the limited time we have... So more than anything, this is going to be about securing the optimal usage of our time - having contributions that lead us further in the right direction. And like I've mentioned before, this is my first time... ;)