• The battlefield was more complex than originally anticipated. Remember that documentary with Robert McNamara – The Fog of War? He lists 11 lessons from the Vietnam War one of which is: “Our misjudgments of friend and foe, alike, reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.”  I misjudged the the history, culture and politics of the organization in which I work. There were more “stakeholders” involved than I ever imagined; there was a “history” of negative results and repercussions emanating from those negative results that I was not fully aware of; and the importance of the organizational message outweighed the importance of the learner’s experience.
• My intentions were not clear. I intended to create a better learning experience for new joiners. But what was my intention for my team? I was
  not clear on those intentions. Had I been more aware of *who* was actually on the team, and making connections with them, then it probably would have helped to a certain degree.
• I didn’t want this battle and therefore cared less about it. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be in this space called on-boarding, therefore, I cared less. This impacted the two items listed above.
• There was simply too much going on in my working life. This is the usual excuse — I was overworked. Nothing new, most people who have jobs are overworked. So what I need
  to do is create space to reflect — daily or weekly — so I can control the emotions associated with being overwhelmed, and I don’t get lost in frustration.

The biggest learning for me —  I just have to be clearer on what projects I choose to be involved in, and which ones I choose not to be involved in, to the extent that I have a choice: don’t choose leaderless projects where you have the responsibility but no power. That is the definition of frustration.

Most organizations look like the seaweed picture in this post (a.k.a. Orbiting the Giant Hairball). Most organizations are a giant mess of tangled STUFF, in which people get tangled anytime they try to change anything or do creative work. How does one keep creative integrity and not get tangled and trapped?

The keys for me are: reflection, get clear on intentions, and be concious of the battlefield.

Unfortunately in this one, both I and the learners lost. The organization got airtime for it’s messages. People get to say “I consulted the right parts of the seaweed pile.” But the ultimate goal of the organization — retention and engaging new joiners in a positive way — gets lost.

We often do not get voluntary participants. People are forced to come to programs and consequently, it undermines the implementation of other game mechanics. How do we overcome the challenge of voluntary participation?

My response:

• First, there’s an assumption that participants DON’T want to go to training — I think they do. I think their work gets in the way. If they had their druthers, they would volunteer to come, but the system they are a part of (aka, their work environment), prevents/hinders/discourages them from doing so. If it’s choice between learning and utilization, utilization wins (particular to professional services.) Examine the SYSTEM they are a part of.
• Motivation comes from goals. Perhaps if were to get clear on the learner’s goals, we could more clearly map to motivation. If they don’t know their goals, their motivations will be fuzzy, IMHO. If their goal is to figure out their goals, then even that helps.
• The tension in most learning, as was noted in Joe’s post, is that is about the “message” that the organization wants their employees to learn/regurgitate/live. So absolutely, there are training situations where there is a need for compliance and people are forced to go. We look for ways to make those trainings more palatable (like gamification) rather than stating quite clearly, in this GAME of WORK, here are the rules. This is what you must know to survive and thrive. If your goal is to keep your job, guess what, you gotta play by these rules.
• The medium in which this message is given (yes I’m channeling McLuhan, he is Canadian after all) usually kills the motivation (yes, I’m thinking death by powerpoint)
• The challenge is the capture the energy in a forced training situation. Where is the energy? In onboarding (new hires or acquisitions), the energy has to do with anxiety of joining a new organization. The motivation is to understand the lay of the land – expectations, tools, etc. How does one channel the energy into something positive — either connections with each other, with their new organization, or voicing/airing concerns in a safe way. This is not new.

I think with gamification and voluntary participation we are perhaps asking the wrong question. It’s not just about the individual but the system they are a part of. Use gamification, but use it in a way that makes the experience more authentic — bring in randomess and the gaming aesthetic it creates rather than a point system. Allow rules that channel and focus the energy in the room — rules that open up the experience rather than shut it down by someone “telling” you what to do. Create teams that support collaboration rather than competition.

Gamification can be useful with the right framing.

I had an opportunity to interview Edie Seashore and Michael Broom, two organizational development gurus who have individually and collectively been doing OD stuff for years. They have a workshop coming up Sept 23 in San Francisco.

Here’s the interview on the BAODN blog: http://baodn.blogspot.com/

If you’re interested in the workshop, here’s the link: Sept 23 – BAODN events page

Love to hear your thoughts on the connection between OD and learning.

If you’re like me your first reaction is — NO WAY.  You’re skeptical, you may get this feeling in your gut that makes you cringe. You’re thinking — love does not belong in the workplace, it’s personal, it belongs at home. You have a vision of people in loose, flowing clothes running around hugging each other. With flowers. And other stuff. (Ok, maybe that’s just me.)

But something made my critical mind pause.

The Pygmalion Effect

The Pygmalion Effect describes how people act in accordance to the expectations you have of them — whether these expectations are conscious or unconscious. If you think people are stupid, guess what? — they can read your mind and act that way. This effect has been demonstrated in the classroom, at home, and at work. (Related effect — the Galatea effect > the expectations we have of ourselves.) Furthermore, a positive mindset from a leader can produce powerful behavioral effects, even in the absence of auditory or visual contact (references below). Whether you are leading employees or students — your mindset matters. Call it good will, call it focusing on the positive — or simply call it love.

Appreciative Processes

Ever heard of Appreciative Inquiry? It’s a type of inquiry that envisions a future that focuses positive relationships and collaboration, building organizations based on what works rather than trying to fix what doesn’t. Appreciative Processes improve systems by amplifying what’s working — identifying what people do best.

Think about how we approach most work — FIX THE PROBLEM. Do a gap analysis. Figure out what people need to learn, figure out what mindsets we need to change, usually ending up with the question — how do we fix our PEOPLE?

Appreciative Processes combine the Demming approach with Appreciative Inquiry — figure out what processes  make a difference and use an appreciative mindset to bring out the best in people. Use Appreciative Leadership to create a culture of systemic change and continuous improvement.

Back to LOVE

Ok, so here we are — back at the idea of love in organizations. When we think about creating an environment that:

• Focuses on what people and organizations do well
• Focuses on strengths,
• Allows people to do their best everyday
• A place where people enjoy being and where they enjoy each other

That’s a organization that uses love.

If it makes you feel better to call it something else, go ahead do so. But just remember, you’re losing the energy of a very powerful word.

Just try this — go about your work constantly thinking — “I love this place, my work, and the people I work with.” Try it for just ONE day. See what difference it makes.

Learn More…

• If you’re interested in learning more — come to a workshop on “Releasing the Power of Love in the Workplace”, by Roger Harrision sponsored by BAodn on June 9, 2010 in San Francisco. [Link to workshop]
• Accessing the Power of Love in the Workplace, by Roger Harrision, Ph.D. [Download PDF document here]
• The Appreciative Leader and Appreciative Change Processes by Gervase R. Bushe, Ph.D. [Download PDF document "aplc" here]. Or visit www.clearlearning.ca
• Pygmalion & Galatea effects

One of my biggest struggles right now is how to get my spouse to clean up his “stuff” in the living room. I’ve tried to set boundaries, command, cajole, bribe — all to no avail. What I really want to do is go in there and throw all that “stuff” in the recycling bin. But then again, I value my relationship… and that might not go over so well.

How do I influence him and get him to do what I want?

This question is not so different from what I hear from some trainers and educators. How do I influence my learners? … and get them to want to be there, want to learn, do what’s good for them, do what I want? Ok, maybe the way that last phrasing is a bit manipulative, but essentially it’s the same question. How do I shift and influence behavior?

Small acts of commitment

Get people to make small acts of commitment, and that will lead to larger acts of commitment, according to Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. So what does that mean exactly?

An experiment: a volunteer asked  homeowners to put a 3″ sign in their window stating “Be a Safe Driver”.  Most complied. A couple weeks later, another person came to their door asking them if they could put a house-obscuring billboard on their front lawns with the words “DRIVE SAFELY”. A full 76% of the people who had agreed to the small sign, then agreed to the large billboard. A control group, people who had never been asked to put the small sign in their window, refused 83% of the time. What happened?

Small acts of commitment can lead to larger acts of commitment. Small acts of commitment can alter self-image (“I am a publicly minded person who cares about safe driving.”) When self-image is altered, we adjust our actions in the world to be in-line with our self-image.

Small acts of commitment for learners

Some of these small acts may already be familiar:

• learning contracts
• writing down goals for learning session (or merely even copying down goals…)
• raising hands in answer to a question affirming the reason one is at the session
• testimonials after the session
• videotaping people at the beginning of the session re: goals
• agree to have them act a certain way for a short period of time (examples: blog, but only for a month; eat healthier, but only for a week; hand over your Blackberry, but only for an hour)
• let them know that there will be a report out on what everyone is doing differently (learned/changed behavior) 2-3 weeks after session is over
• have them construct an ideal learning persona for the group
• Give out small prizes for the “best” answer. If prizes are too big, individuals won’t be doing to get the best answer, they’ll be doing it for the prize. It’s about the person owning their actions.

These small acts seem trivial, but it was  by small acts that American PoWs were broken down by their Chinese captors in the Korean war and willingly collaborated. This had never happened to a large extent before. What did the Chinese do? They had they write essays or statements on what was bad about America, even if the PoWs  just copied them out. And they offered small prizes for the best essays.

Choose small acts that help create the self-image you want people to have.

Back to the “stuff” in the living room

So what small acts of  can I come up for my stubborn spouse?

• create a list of what needs to be done to make a clean living room
• work together on cleaning up the stuff, but just for an hour
• take a picture of living room to put on Facebook to show to our friends
• have a big party so BIG that the living room *must* be cleaned up

I’ll let you know how it goes. If you have any suggestions for learners or for my spouse, let me know. Hopefully he won’t read this post and launch a counter-strategy.

My mother’s kitchen

As an adult, I’d go back to visit my mother’s house, and one of our biggest arguments was over her kitchen — more specifically, the organization of her kitchen. I could never find anything — which is not unusual for a visitor, but more importantly I couldn’t learn how to find anything and had to ask her for help every single time. Drove me bananas.

The cooking oil would be under the sink. The spices would be with the pots. There was nothing useful in the pantry. The flour, sugar, eggs (she had 2 fridges) and baking trays would be in a different room. What kind of logic was this??? I would reorganize her kitchen. She would get furious. Arguments would ensue. After a few times, I gave up.

Only just recently, I realized her logic — the mental model of her kitchen.

You see, I organize according to category — like things with like things. Dry food items here, spices there, pots under there, vegetables here. She organized according to function.

What function would require cooking oil under the sink? Well, she had a huge burner ring outside for deep frying large batches of stuff. The burner was outside on the patio, the kitchen window served as a pass-through, the kitchen sink was under the window. It was easier to have the cooking oil there rather than walk across the kitchen to get it (she also had bad knees.)

Her spices were close to the stove, where she cooked, with the pots because she could reach them there. When my brother remodeled the kitchen, he made the upper cabinets too high. She’s 4’10″.

The sugar, flour, eggs, baking items — well, she didn’t use them that often. And when she did, she baked huge batches of stuff, which meant she needed more room than what was in her kitchen, so she had another room set up for that.

The organization of her kitchen increased her efficiency. That was her mental model.

It was not one I shared.

Learning mental models

When I first moved down to the United States of America, I had a job as a writer. I was to help people learn about information technology at a University. At that time, the SysAdmin folks dictated how we thought about things. I was new, I followed along. The documentation we wrote was organized according to categories: accounts, email software, SSH, FTP, and other stuff. It was mostly useless. Why?

People did not think in those SysAdmin categories. We let the inmates run the asylum. I realized how useless it was after I left that position, then tried to access my email and change my password. I looked in the book that I had written to remember how to do this. I couldn’t find the information under email. I searched and searched and finally called the Help Desk in frustration. The information was under the Accounts section — but who would have ever thought of that?

We never bothered to learn the mental models of our learners. Not even at the most basic level. How did they organize their thinking about “that stuff they do online”?

But wait…we can’t figure out what everyone is thinking!

True, you cannot figure out the mental models of every single individual. No one is asking that. But we can figure out patterns. First question — is about functionality or categories? Do they really need to know how a domain is organized in order to do their work? Yes, it might help them in the long run, but realistically, that’s not the goal of most people. They just want to get their work done. Help them do that. Where are your learners currently at and where do they or you want them to go?

Shared understandings

Sometimes we have to create common or shared understandings. And individual mental models may get in the way. So what do we do — assuming we are talking about adults?

• Treat people as adults
  • They have survived in the world so far using the mental models they have been using, don’t demean their understanding of the world. Work to understand it. Break it down.
• Set a common, agreed upon goal — a destination.
  • Unless you can agree upon why things need to change (the marketplace has changed, more than one person needs to use this kitchen, there’s been a merger) you will not get people on your side.
• Propose a new mental model
  • How will this effect people in their work?
  • What specific behaviors will have to change? Why?
• Talk about people’s fears and uncertainties
  • Create a safe environment to discuss fear and uncertainty
  • Allow people to vent
• Experiment and play with new behaviors
  • Make the learning playful but serious (experiential learning)
  • Engage people in finding resolutions to the change
  • Disrupt existing behaviors – have learners reflect on why they did what they did
• Make a plan to make it happen (action plan)
• Follow-up (metrics)

I realize these are large bullet points and the struggle is still “how”. It’s hard work to figure out where your learners are currently at and how to change. The specific context matters. Doing the research and analysis matters. Figuring out how to measure the impact of changing mental models matters — what’s the business outcome and how do you measure it?

If I were to ever spend a significant amount of time in my mother’s kitchen, I would start with a conversation that would go something like this: “if we’re going to work together in this space, mom, it would help to make some changes on where you keep things.” I would not, ever again, stomp in there and simply start changing things. She would rightly be furious and resistant.

Imagine the emotional impact on the learners.

Then take it one step at a time.

If you’re all alone in this it helps to brainstorm with friends and colleagues. FYI – I’m always willing to play.

Frans de Waal studies empathy in monkeys — thus this book is biased towards the positive aspects of empathy. He tells stories and anecdotes about animal studies and he also tells, most of which are based on his research or related research. He generalizes some things to humans. He challenges the notion that human society is ONLY competitive, war-like and selfish.

There are 3 key things I got from this book:

• A definition and description of empathy
  • state-matching emotional contagion – innermost/foundational is matching the state of the other – this is done by emotional contagions. It is thought that mirror neurons, mimicry and body mapping/reading all play roles in state-matching (my interpretation)
  • concern for others consolation behavior - 2nd layer is ability to express concern and try to console the other — such as a young child or monkey trying to console a mother who is crying
  • perspective taking targeted helping – this last layer is about the ability to understand what the other needs. Being able to help the other in a specific, targeted way implies the ability to understand their need from their point of view.
• Animal research into fairness and how it links to communal survival
  • The main reason humans seek fairness is to prevent negative reactions upon rejoining the group (think about the CEOs who flew in private jet planes to receive bailouts). We may however, relax our rules about fairness when it comes to a close relation.
  • If you don’t act in a fair manner, others will take note and repay you in kind when you are in need (yes, monkeys do this too!)
  • however, there are way to kill prosocial behavior:
    • pair the monkey with a stranger
    • put the partner who you should be acting fairly towards, out of sight, and selfish behavior emerges
    • others must see the outcome.
• Change in empathetic behavior depends on kinship or group ties
  • As noted in examples above
  • This is not fully explored — I would like to know more about how we promote identification and/or kinship between groups. This dehumanization is the cause of many wars, no?

Though a bit long-winded at times (needs a good edit IMHO!) – this book is worth the effort to read. It’s not scannable, you actually have to read the stories and anecdotes to get the most out of it. Frans de Waal does extrapolate somewhat freely to human behavior, either explicitly or implicitly. The underlying assumption is that we are very similar in base behavior to monkeys, apes, dolphins and elephants — and that might be hard for some people to take.

Some additional quotes I liked:

• Security is the first and foremost reason for social life (20)
• Is war an aggressive drive or driven by power and profit? (25)
• Discussion of body mapping within species and between species (53)
• Plutarch – “if you live with a cripple, you will learn to limp.”
• Mirror neurons – the firing of brain cells when doing and action, and to a similar extent when *watching* another do an action (79)
• lack of distinction between monkey see and monkey do, erasing the line between self and other
• Oscar the cat – who would stay with a dying person at an old folks home — and he always knew when someone was going to die, even before the nurses did!
• Self-protective altruism – helping another shields self from adverse reactions (75)
• petting relieves stress in the monkey/human that is petting or being petted
• identification is a basic pre-condition for empathy (80)
• Do emotions arise from the body (body first theory – “i run, therefore I am scared”) (81)
• Or do emotions in others raise awareness in ourselves (emotions first theory) – leads to emotional contagion concept (monkeys run from those that have experienced a negative emotion like fear from rattlesnake)
• body posture wins out over facial expression in judging emotional states
• but faces still matter – people can’t relate to those with immobilized faces
• self-absorption kills empathy – you have to distangle yourself from the other to pinpoint actual source of feelings –> leads to perspective taking and targeted helping
• VEN cells – go deep in to the brain (are like neurons) and are thought to connect disparate parts of brain (138)
• true cradle of cooperation is the community (182)
• thus human fairness goes hand in hand with communal survival (187)
• inequity aversion (187)
• empathy is understanding another; sympathy is taking action
• Theory of the mind – understanding the state of the other (98)
• 3 ideals of the French Revolution – liberty (US has this bias); equality (Europe has this bias); fraternity (forgotten?)
• the tendency towards social hierarchy/competitiveness undercuts empathy/cooperation – as emphasized in institutions such as in the military and church (political bias)
• cruelty also rests on perspective taking (knowing what will hurt the other the most)
• we often operated in enlightened self-interest
• one cannot expect trust in a society with huge income disparities, insecurities, disenfranchised underclass