Managing "complex" environments (a new take on the old Cynefin model)

I recently heard a talk on managing complexity which made good use of the Cynefin model (pronounced Kin-eh-vin) originally developed by Dave Snowden. I'm told that Dave was always at great pains to say it isn't a simple 2x2 model. But now, by incorporating something about the brain, I'm going to modify it to make it exactly that. Sorry Dave!

The horizontal dimension is about the predictability of the environment - predictable at one end and unpredictable at the other. Without defining the other dimension, Dave produced a model which had four domains (plus the central area as a fifth domain).

My insight when listening to the talk was to realise that the other dimension was all about the type of thinking needed - whether it needs to be "Fast" or "Slow" (per Daniel Kahneman). At one end we have pure Fast (System 1) thinking. At the other we have not just Slow (System 2) thinking, but both Fast AND Slow - ie a mindful approach. My new version of this model is therefore shown below:

Why I found this insight helpful was that it made me understand how difficult it is in Complex and Complicated environments if we are NOT mindful, ie we lose our System 2. If we get threatened by the unpredictability of Complex environments, System 2 is closed down, and they seem (and soon become) Chaotic. And if tiredness or overload causes us to switch off System 2 in Complicated environments, we can treat them as if they were Routine (or Simple / Obvious) - with inevitably bad consequences.

So the mechanisms for approaching each environment appropriately are our usual ones involving awareness and mind management:
(a) be aware of your internal state (Is this a time to keep your System 2 on - ie be mindful?)
(b) recognise the predictability of the situation (Is it full of "problems" or are they "dilemmas"?)

Very pleased to have been reminded of a neat model - please google it to find out more...

Understanding our 4 worlds

My last post prompted some questions - great to get a response BTW - about my focus on the "inner world". It prompts me to say something more about the four worlds model - a really helpful way of clarifying where you are focusing your attention at any time.

The model comes from Ken Wilber and, like much of his work, is beautifully simple. It is a classic 2 x 2 model which captures everything within 4 boxes by considering two divisions. One is the division between what is external and what is internal, the other is between what is collective and what is individual. The diagram shows the end result and gives examples of what might be in each box if you were using it to look at everything which relates to behavioural change.

For the individual: the external world contains those things that everyone can see - the skillls, knowledge, physical characteristics etc; the internal world contains what cannot be seen, but affects how the external world is seen - the assumptions, beliefs, biases etc.

For the collective: the external world is similarly about what everyone in the collective organisation can see - organisational structures, explicit rules / regulations and policies, targets and measures (KPIs) etc; the internal world is about shared beliefs that cannot be seen - orthodoxies and prejudices, culture and "unwritten rules", values and expectations etc.

 

My experience is that when seeking to make changes people often give too much focus to the external world that they can easily see and too little to the inner world - both personal and organisational - that is more difficult to access and more uncomfortable to address.

Don't straighten out conflict

As an ex-consultant I love 2x2 models, because the good ones have an instant visual impact - you literally see things differently once you see the model. One I have used for a long time is the Thomas Kilmann conflict model, but just a couple of weeks ago I found a way to give it even more visual impact. I realised that people often see conflict one dimensionally, ie it is a straight line with "I win" at one end and "You win" at the other. Inevitably they end up stuck at the mid-point, which is essentially "Nobody wins". To see conflict differently, imagine bending that line to make two axes. As soon as you do this, you open up the space for the collaborative "Win-Win". It's nothing new in concept, but the visual imagery of "bending the straight line" is a great trigger thought.

Are you a "push" or "pull" leader?

I was recently supporting the observer team on a programme where groups of consultants worked for a whole day on a business simulation exercise. There were many learning points, but one that set me thinking was about the assumption, which virtually all the participants made, about how a leader should lead their team. This assumption was that leaders should try to lead by rational persuasion.

This is undobtedly a useful approach, but it has limitations. So I shared with them, and will now share here, a simple 2 x 2 model of influence styles, which in this context can also be called leadership styles. One dimension distinguishes between "push" and "pull". The other distinguishes between "rational / impersonal" and "emotional / personal". So we get four styles (or families of styles):

Rational push: These are the "Persuading" styles - eg "You should do x because ..."
Emotional push: These are the "Requesting" styles - eg "I want you to ..."
Emotional pull: This are the "Attracting" styles - eg "Imagine how you'll feel when you've done x!"
Rational pull: This are the "Exploring" styles - eg "How would you deal with x?"

Too often we get stuck in the first, and far too seldom do we use the others - particularly rarely the last two. And yet here are two good reasons for trying them. (And yes, I realise I'm using a rational push approach right now!) Firstly, push approaches inherently tend to produce a defensive push back. And the harder you push the harder the push back. So these approaches often result in stalemate. The pull approaches are inherently less likely to produce resistance. Secondly, the emotional approaches produce connection via the right brain and limbic, whereas the rational approaches primarily involve the (non-connecting) left brain. That's why a leader who can clearly communicate an attractive vision will create the most strongly connected followers.

So try flexing your influence / leadership style. You might be amazed how much less effort it takes to pull rather than push!

Re-drawing the situational leadership model

More and more these days I try to use experiential or "Right Brain" approaches in my coaching, in order to directly work at the limbic rather than neo-cortical level. But there are some 2x2 models I do use which actually fit this approach, because it is the visual message (rather than the analysis) in the model which is important and the visual speaks to the limbic.

So I was really pleased the other day to hit upon a way of re-drawing one of the very well-known 2x2 models (which I haven't used much up to now) so that it makes this visual impact. The model I'm talking about is the classic "Situational Leadership" model. To refresh your memory, it has axes for "Directive behaviour" (low to high) and "Supportive behaviour" (low to high) and shows the leadership style moving over time along a path from right to left through quadrants for Directing, Coaching, Supporting, and Delegating along a sort of humpbacked hill. Not much visual meaning for me in that!

So, for a client where I thought this was a very relevant model, I re-drew it with the emphasis on the person you are leading. I replaced "Directive behaviour" with "Competence" (the reason you do or don't need directive behaviour) and "Supportive behaviour" with "Confidence" (the reason you do or don't need supportive behaviour). The result is below.

You get the same quadrants and the same path, but re-positioned. This time it is a U-shaped curve, left to right, with an obvious visual link to the change curve. It's easy to see the obvious potential for backsliding if you simply re-explain rather than coach when things go wrong. And, best of all, if you draw a wavy water line, you illustrate perfectly the results of a sink or swim approach to delegation!

"Feeling good" or "Doing well"

Back to posting after a long August break and a frantically busy first two weeks of September.

On Friday, I had a great example of how a powerful conversation can be triggered by just a tiny prompt - if it is the right sort of prompt. I was coaching a small group in a breakout from a more structured learning programme for global account managers in a large consultancy. As usual as part of group forming, I asked them to share the answers to a few key questions, which I deliberately make a right brain rather than left brain exercise, by asking them to use pictures, stories, metaphors etc rather than simply stating facts.

One specific thing I asked them to do is plot themselves on a graph which has "feeling good" and "doing well" as its two axes. "Doing well" represents the felt sense of success - how well am I doing. "Feeling good" represents the sense of how much I enjoy what I'm doing - not just my sense of satisfaction in success, but how I actually feel. This echoes the end of coaching assessment model I have adopted (see earlier posts), but that's not the main reason I focus on these two dimensions up front.

The exercise typically has two powerful impacts. Sometimes the visual picture of where they are on the "feel good" scale is startling - bringing new consciousness of something they'd usually rather not think about. Sometimes it is simply helpful in opening the conversation about the relevance of emotions in business. On Friday it was the latter which dominated, and because of the level of experience of the participants it quickly led into a much deeper discussion about the impact of negative emotions on performance (see the work of David Rock) and also about new ways to frame conversations with their teams about performance.

Obviously, I can't say much about the specific content without breaching confidentiality, but the flow of connected ideas led from there to some helpful new insights (for me as well as for the group!) about the role of the global account manager in dealing with the emotions of both their teams AND their clients. Which is exactly the outcome we were all hoping for. Brilliant!

At last... a better measure than ROI

For me, the highlight of the AC conference this year was a talk by Dr Anthony Grant, a guy who specialises in research around measurement of coaching outcomes. It was great to here someone with academic credibility be as scathing about ROI as I am!

But unlike me, he could not only explain why ROI was a spurious measure, he also had a better suggestion - the Demonstrated Value (DV) approach. This involves looking at how coaching has shifted the coachee along two axes - one dimension about goal attainment, the other about the individual's sense of well-being (ie confidence, energy, etc). Incorporating well-being as the second dimension seemed to me an extremely elegant way of articulating what I've always felt was an important part of coaching.

So that in itself was helpful. What was even more helpful were the ideas about measuring along these two dimensions before and after coaching. On one axis you can use a simple goal attainment scale (ie a 1-10 rating). On the other axis you could use a similar subjective scale, or he suggested various well-validated scales from the world of mental health.

I am starting to to use this approach to see how it works for me in practice. Anyone got any good tips from their own experience?

The power of the emotional win-win

Returning to coaching this week, I also found myself returning to a favourite model in discussions with a coachee, the Thomas-Kilmann model for collaboration (usually referred to rather negatively as a conflict model). I thought I'd share my own particular way of using it.

It is a fairly simple 2x2 grid created by the interaction of two dimensions. One dimension refers to your desire to get what you want (Low to High). The other refers to your desire to give the other what they want (Low to High). Draw it out to see what the grid looks like. Collaboration requires a High desire in both dimensions.

It is usually helpful for people to see visually that you can only reach this quadrant by considering both dimensions. They then recognise how often they are working only in one dimension. We often believe we are thinking about what the other person wants, when in fact we are considering only what they don't want about what our proposal. So far, so good... but still a bit "Management Effectiveness 1.01"!

What I have found to be most useful about this model is that it doesn't just apply to the actual problem or decision on which you need to collaborate (or over which there is conflict). It also applies to the emotional desires of each party. So ask yourself what do I want emotionally from this interaction? Maybe that is recognition of my intelligence or expertise. Maybe it is respect for my status. Notice how little these depend on the actual outcome of the interaction. And what do they want emotionally? The neuroscientific research suggests that emotional wants (or maybe needs) are actually more powerful in causing conflict than any rational or cognitive disagreements. And just paying attention to this emotional win-win opens up new possibilities for finding a mutually positive way forward.

So my tip for today is think about the Thomas-Kilmann model, but specifically applied to emotional wants and needs.