Despite this paradox, Margaret Wheatley, author, teacher, and radical thinker, has pursued the path of storytelling for more than three decades. In her most recent book, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time (Berrett-Koehler, 2005), she richly articulates how the insights of modern science—as well as those from primal wisdom traditions, indigenous tribes, spiritual thought, and poets old and new—can usher in a new era of human and planetary health.

According to Wheatley, these insights are forcing us to question, and hopefully discard, a 300-year-old worldview that still dominates Western culture today. This outdated story emerged during the Industrial Age, when scientific discoveries gave rise to the idea that humankind could gain mastery over physical matter. Soon, the image of the universe as a grand, clocklike machine took hold, as well as the belief that we could engineer human beings, organizations, and life itself to perform however we directed them to.

Over time, the machine image has had a pernicious effect on how we think of ourselves and others. Wheatley explains, “When we conceived of ourselves as machines, we gave up most of what is essential to being human. We created ourselves devoid of spirit, will, passion, compassion, emotions, even intelligence….The imagery is so foreign to what we know and feel to be true about ourselves that it seems strange that we ever adopted this as an accurate description of being human. But we did, and we do.” One consequence of this imagery is that it has led us to believe that our “unpredictable behaviors, our passions, our independence, our creativity, our consciousness . . . are the problem rather than the blessing.”

The mechanistic story not only ignores the deep realities of human existence, says Wheatley, but makes exhausting demands on leaders. If people have no internal capacity for self-creation, self-organization, or self-correction, then leaders must constantly motivate, inspire, and organize them. In short, leaders are responsible for everything.

A New Story

The new story takes the burden off of leaders to run our organizations and puts it back where it belongs—on each of us. It offers a worldview in which creative self-expression and the embracing of systems of relationships are the organizing energies. It looks at humans and the organizations in which they work as living systems— with the capacity to move toward greater complexity and order as needed. And it offers the radical perspective that organization is a process, not a structure.

Explains Wheatley: “Self-organizing systems have what all leaders crave: the capacity to respond continuously to change. In these systems, change is the organizing force, not a problematic intrusion. Structures and solutions are temporary. Resources and people come together to create new initiatives, to respond to new regulations, to shift the organization’s processes. Leaders emerge from the needs of the moment. There are far fewer levels of management. Experimentation is the norm. Local solutions predominate but are kept local, not elevated to models for the whole organization. Involvement and participation constantly deepen. These organizations are experts at the process of change.”

Where can we find models of self-organizing systems? The author points to what happens when disaster strikes. Without planning, people and resources come together in coordinated, purposeful activity; leaders appear based on who is available and who has information; and everything happens quickly and efficiently. The World Wide Web is another example of a self-organizing network that forms around interests, the availability of information, and limitless access to other people. The tower-building termites of Africa and Australia offer a third example. They construct the largest, most intricate structures on earth proportionate to the size of the builders. Their engineering process is simple: They wander aimlessly, bump into each other, and react. By observing what others are doing and coordinating their own activities based on that information, these insects manage to make their arches meet in the middle.

The Role of Leaders

If blueprints and engineers aren’t necessary, what is the role of leaders in the living systems story? It is, Wheatley says, to foster the conditions that support self-organization. To meet that challenge, leaders first need to shift their thinking in three key areas:

Believe in the Goodness of People. Most leaders assume that employees work primarily for a self-serving reason: to make money. In reality, many people strongly desire to contribute to something beyond themselves that benefits others. Leaders who use participative, self-organizing approaches, in which they clearly communicate the organization’s purpose and real values, are amazed by the capacity, energy, creativity, and commitment of their employees to contribute to the enterprise.

Focus on Coherence, not Control. Typically, when an innovative solution emerges in one area, senior management rolls it out to the entire organization. But replication actually destroys local initiative because it denies everyone else’s creativity. Rather, leaders should share these success stories in order to spark people’s imagination and give them insight into what their own areas need. Eventually, tinkering on the local level will result in systemwide coherence.

Support Self-Organizing Responses. People don’t need intricate directions, timelines, plans, and organizational charts; they need information, access to one another, trust, and follow-through. Leaders can help by providing resources, creating connections across the organization, and fostering experimentation. They may not be able to direct employees into excellence, but leaders can engage them enough so that they want to do excellent work.

Part of the reason our organizations are troubled today, Wheatley explains, is that we’ve forgotten what people are capable of. For too long, we’ve forced workers into “roles and job descriptions,” telling them how to behave rather than allowing their creative, contributive, compassionate selves to emerge naturally. This type of reengineering brings out our worst nature and causes both employees and managers to suffer. By valuing human relationships, leaders can go a long way toward creating enduring organizations.

Tapping into Creativity

Another negative effect of the command-and-control mentality is that managers fail to appreciate employees’ personal initiative. People often complain that workers don’t follow instructions, no matter how clearly they’re given. Instead, they revise or tweak them in some way. Wheatley offers an interpretation of what’s going on. This seemingly resistant behavior actually reflects a principle of living systems: that each of us has “the unalienable freedom to create one’s life.” Simply put, people need to be involved in how they get work done, and they will somehow find a way to put their unique signature on any situation.

This freedom to create also reveals itself in what we notice. “We choose what disturbs us,” Wheatley says., “It’s not the volume or even the frequency of the message that gets our attention. If it’s meaningful to us, we notice it.” In other words, we become engaged when we find shared significance with someone or something. Leaders who want to leverage employees’ creative freedom focus on discovering what’s meaningful to them, not deciding meaning for them. They listen for diversity rather than expect agreement. They invite people to rethink, redesign, and restructure the organization. They stay alert to the change process, what they’re learning, and how their efforts are unfolding and emerging (see “Key Questions to Keep Asking”).

When leaders fail to invest in relationships with their employees, it often reflects their desire to maintain organizational flexibility—that is, the ability to let people go when times get hard. Wheatley condemns this behavior. She says, “There is only one prediction about the future that I feel confident to make. During this period of random and unpredictable change, any organization that distances itself from its employees and refuses to cultivate meaningful relationships with them is destined to fail. Those organizations who will succeed are those that evoke our greatest human capacities—our need to be in good relationships and our desire to contribute to something beyond ourselves.”

Enduring Organizations

Generous and inspiring, Finding Our Way covers so much ground that it can spark any reader’s interest. Building in ways similar to how living systems behave, the book’s essays are filled with profound wisdom and simple advice. From offering new approaches for facilitating knowledge management and supporting pioneering leaders to providing personal tips for starting the day off peacefully, Wheatley reaffirms her dedication to helping leaders fulfill what she believes is their real desire to create enduring organizations.

Using clear and abundant examples, she demonstrates how the timeless principles of developing trust, sharing information, engaging people’s creativity, and investing in relationships can serve as guideposts for finding our way in today’s uncertain times. As we implement these principles, the new story will take root and ignite an explosion of much-needed change.

Kali Saposnick is publications editor at Pegasus Communications.

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The World Café is an innovative approach to large-group dialogue that has been widely adopted around the world. In this process, groups—often numbering in the hundreds of people—participate together in evolving rounds of dialogue at small café- style tables while at the same time remaining part of a single, larger, connected conversation. Participants record key insights in words and pictures on paper tablecloths. Intimate conversations link and build on each other as people move between groups, cross-pollinate ideas, and discover new insights into questions or issues that are important in their life, work, or community. As the network of connections increases, knowledge sharing grows. The collective wisdom of the group becomes more accessible, and innovative possibilities for action emerge.

Sounds simple? It is, and yet there is a depth of living systems theory and experience that underpins the successful operation of Café processes and influences what emerges from their use. This philosophical framework is woven throughout the book and is what distinguishes the World Café from many other conversational approaches.

Beginnings

In an early chapter, co-author David Isaacs relates the story of the origins of the World Café. On a rainy day in January 1995, a group gathered at a home in San Francisco as part of an ongoing session to explore a particular question. To create a welcoming environment, the organizers hurriedly brought out T. V. tables, festooning each with a large sheet of paper, crayons, and a small vase of flowers.

When people arrived, they sat in informal groups around the tables and immediately started talking about the question they had been addressing the day before. As people traveled from table to table to share ideas—something that one of the participants had suggested—Juanita and David noticed a palpable energy in the room that they had never experienced before. Later, they joined with others to reflect on the conditions that led people to engage with each other so spontaneously, naturally, and in such depth in that setting.

In their subsequent research with Café hosts and participants around the world, Juanita and her colleagues have discovered a set of principles that underpin the practice of a successful World Café:

1. Set the Context
2. Create Hospitable Space
3. Explore Questions That Matter
4. Encourage Everyone’s Participation
5. Cross-pollinate and Connect Diverse Perspectives
6. Listen Together for Insights, Patterns, and Deeper Questions
7. Harvest and Share Collective Discoveries.

Much of the book is devoted to exploring the precise meaning and implication of these principles. Each chapter begins with a quotation, an illustration, and a question. These are followed by personal stories of Cafés in action, guidelines, Juanita’s perspectives, and questions for reflection.

For example, “Connecting the Parts and the Whole: The Financial Planning Association” illustrates the spirit reflected in the case studies and describes just one of the creative ways in which groups have started to apply the principles. In this section, Kim Porto and Sean Walters describe an innovation they have invented for harvesting and sharing individual and collective discoveries from the Café process: what they call the Gallery Walk. During a Café, facilitators collect and post emerging questions; participants then walk from question to question, adding their comments and insights on sticky notes. According to Kim and Sean, “One of the aspects we think makes this particular approach to whole-group synthesis so engaging and useful is that people have control over what they contribute . . . each person gets the opportunity (and has the responsibility) to contribute exactly what is most meaningful to him or her, and put it exactly where he or she feels it best fits in the overall synthesis.”

At the Core

This case study extends some of the ideas put forth in the book’s Foreword, written by Margaret Wheatley. Meg says, “The World Café process reawakens our deep species memory of two fundamental beliefs about human life. First, we humans want to talk together about things that matter to us. In fact this is what gives satisfaction and meaning to life. Second, as we talk together, we are able to access a greater wisdom that is found only in the collective.”

Thus, the essence of this book is the observation that whenever people converse and treat each other well in the course of addressing questions that matter, they are likely to achieve constructive outcomes. If you are familiar with the work of Humberto Maturana, you will not be surprised to learn that the authors reference it in several places. Juanita speaks eloquently about coming to recognize, through Maturana’s work, that Conversation is our human way of creating and sustaining—or transforming —the realities in which we live.” Looking through this lens, she became aware of what key thinkers were saying about what happens when people feel secure and respected for expressing what they think is important. Juanita also came to understand that conversation is at the center of a wide range of fields that are integral to our everyday lives, such as strategy, information technology, conflict resolution, and global affairs.

One of the main components of conversation is listening. The book includes numerous references to how Café processes promote attentive listening—and how this process affects both speaker and hearers. A poignant comment by Lloyd Fell illustrates. When he was present at his first Café, he felt “a tremendous wave of energy …right across the room. It was as if something had suddenly been unleashed by the invitation to speak freely in the more intimate setting of the café tables.” Lloyd also noted his feeling of being heard. “I am never the first to enter into a group conversation, but I found myself listening with interest and beginning to feel that I wanted to join in. After a time I did and the respect with which my words were treated had a warmth and friendliness about it that I have never experienced at a meeting.”

The Café process also highlights the importance of questioning. Questions are the trigger for inclusive, respectful, purposeful, and animated conversing. The book is rife with examples of powerful questions, such as “What could a good school also be?” or Hewlett-Packard’s famous “How can we be the best industrial research lab for (instead of in) the world?” One of the key lessons from the Café is that genuine questions, questions to which we don’t know the answers, release energy in a way that focusing on “problems” or “answers” never could.

Creating Life-Affirming Futures

In addition to providing guidelines for action in our organizations and groups, this book’s most important contribution may lie in the insights it offers on how we may begin to address some of the global issues that have come into our consciousness in recent years. With regard to this big picture, the authors state, “Our deeper intention in a Café conversation is for people to experience themselves being an integral part of a living web/network of relational thinking and of experiencing conversation itself as a co-evolutionary force for accessing co-intelligence on behalf of life-affirming futures and the conscious evolution of social systems.” Could the Café process contribute by helping people everywhere see themselves as being interconnected cells in a complex organism, with all the duties and rights of an individual as well as the concomitant responsibilities for the health of the greater whole?

In his Afterword, Peter Senge shares that the power and potential of the “collective creativity” that arises in World Café conversations is seldom realized in most of our daily conversations—yet! He characterizes the ways in which we currently express our needs as “being too small, too self centered, too disconnected from the desires of others.” But using Café and other dialogue processes to expand our global vision and collectively address bigger questions could create a world engaged in conversations on questions that have real heart and meaning for us all—one conversation at a time. The prospects of such a dream coming to life—through the creation of intentional contexts such as Café conversations and other forms of dialogue—are much enhanced by the availability of this book.

Alan Stewart, Ph. D., refers to himself as a “professional conversationalist”—a facilitator of collaborative conversational processes. His report on a public consultation that he hosted for a local council in Australia has drawn wide interest (www.theworldcafe.com/storyconversing.html). Alan has been a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University. He is now promoting what he calls “Qin Tan Conversation,” or “Pure Talk,” in Hong Kong, where he now resides. For more information, go to www.creativestate.biz.

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This whirlwind journey through almost every aspect of existence might seem daunting at first, but Capra’s readable style links complex revelations from the leading edge of science in a clear and comprehensive framework. Capra begins at the beginning, with an examination of the simplest living system—a bacterial cell. Based on new findings, he defines a cell as “a membrane-bounded, self-generating, organizationally closed metabolic network; . . . it is materially and energetically open, using a constant flow of matter and energy to produce, repair and perpetuate itself; . . . it operates far from equilibrium, where new structures and new forms of order may spontaneously emerge, thus leading to development and evolution.”

His underlying premise is that these traits occur in all living systems: “there is a fundamental unity to life . . . different living systems exhibit similar patterns of organization.” For example, the network is one theme that characterizes all life forms. From this perspective, the author surmises, “a human organization will be a living system only if it is organized as a network or contains smaller networks within its boundaries.” These networks, in turn, must be self-generating: “Each communication creates thoughts and meaning, which give rise to further communications. In this way, the entire network generates itself, producing a common context of meaning, shared knowledge, rules of conduct, a boundary, and a collective identity for its members.” Such “communities of practice,” as organizational theorist Etienne Wenger calls such webs, develop within the formal structure. Yet these informal structures are the ones that support learning, creativity, and change.

“Disturbing” Systems

Ensuring an organization’s “aliveness” has profound implications for how managers behave. As Capra puts it, “A machine can be controlled; a living system, according to the systemic understanding of life, can only be disturbed. In other words, organizations cannot be controlled through direct interventions, but they can be influenced by giving impulses rather than instructions.” For people to respond constructively, the “disturbances” must be meaningful to them; that is, employees need to participate in the planning process rather than be put in the role of passive recipients.

Leadership involves finding the right balance between designed structures—which give the organization stability and emergent ones—which represent the organization’s vitality.

Capra also focuses much attention on another characteristic of living systems— “emergence,” that is, novelty that results from periods of instability. He explains how this principle works in an organization: “The event triggering the process of emergence may be an offhand comment, which may not seem important to the person who made it but is meaningful to some people in a community of practice. Because it is meaningful to them, they choose to be disturbed and disseminate the information rapidly through the organization’s networks.” As the information circulates, people build on it, until the organization can no longer integrate the concept into its existing structure. “At this stage, the system may either break down, or it may break through to a new state of order . . .” The resulting leap forward springs from the collective creativity of those in the organization. Capra concludes that “since the process of emergence is thoroughly nonlinear . . . it cannot be fully analyzed with our conventional, linear ways of reasoning, and hence we tend to experience it with a sense of mystery.”

Leadership, then, involves finding the right balance between designed structures—which give the organization stability—and emergent ones which represent the organization’s vitality. By understanding the different stages of emergence, a leader can actively support the process; for instance, by nurturing communication networks, creating a learning culture, being open and honest, and valuing experimentation. At the same time, “leaders who facilitate emergence use their own power to empower others. The result may be an organization in which both power and the potential for leadership are widely distributed.”

Reshaping the Global Economy

The idea of organizations as living systems is far from new. But Capra’s mission in this book extends well beyond simply applying the latest scientific discoveries to the organizational world—he builds a case for reshaping the global economy to better mirror and sustain natural processes. He cites the dire consequences of the current economic system, which he calls “life-destroying” rather than “life-enhancing”: “social disintegration, a breakdown of democracy, more rapid and extensive deterioration of the environment, the spread of new diseases, and increasing poverty.” The author places much of the blame for this state of affairs on “unfettered capitalism” and the principle that “money-making should always be valued higher than democracy, human rights, environmental protection, or any other value.”

But Capra sees signs that grassroots organizations ranging from feminist groups to the ecology movement are beginning to sway our culture in positive directions. In different ways, these forces for change are making our value system more compatible with the demands of human dignity, ecological sustainability, and life itself than it currently it. Capra might argue that this quest is his—and our—biggest challenge of all.

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Metaphors for Change

American schools are under intense scrutiny and pressure to improve. Superintendents face enormous and unrelenting demands, but also have many opportunities to effect change and benefit kids. The Fieldbook offers superintendents a welcome chance to stop and think, understand their roles as leaders of learning, frame their views, and plan their actions in the face of rising crises. Two sets of metaphors in the book are particularly helpful.

First are the seven “commonplaces,” or stakes in the ground, of school leadership. The authors caution that “you cannot be a fully effective superintendent unless you master them,” so they devote a chapter to each.

• Superintendents must skillfully lead their schools in addressing seemingly intractable problems; this means much more than just managing school operations.
• Superintendents must effectively lead within a governance structure that includes diverse participants from school boards to unions.

Superintendents face enormous and unrelenting demands, but also have many opportunities to effect change and benefit kids.

• They must understand standards and assessments inside and out, period.
• They must move into the sensitive arena of race and class, bringing people and resources together to close achievement gaps.
• They must actively develop competent principals and constantly remind themselves that the most important work in schools happens with kids in the classroom.
• Superintendents must learn to collaborate with other agencies beyond the school walls that also serve kids.
• Finally, superintendents must engage their communities in their schools with an outreach philosophy that is more partnership than public relations.

Each of these items is a huge challenge; none can be ignored. Fortunately, the authors give readers a chance to think about them and learn from the experience and straightforward suggestions of others. They outline the skills that every superintendent must master and at the same time put the demands of the job into perspective.

Another set of metaphors describes school districts. Every organization has an implicit image of itself that has developed over time. These mental models shape how the school district functions, views its responsibilities, and responds to change. The authors describe eight distinct school district metaphors. For example, some school districts function as machines, with traditional hierarchical structures and expectations. Others are emerging learning organizations, with an emphasis on interdependence, collaboration, and adaptation to change.

Readers will recognize their home district in these descriptions, but this is much more than an academic exercise. Superintendents must understand these unspoken images in order to know how issues arise and, more importantly, how to craft solutions that will be accepted and work in their particular context. Each kind of district has its own patterns for dealing with the seven commonplaces of leadership, and each has different expectations for the role of the superintendent. Thus, it behooves the savvy superintendent to understand the playing field.

Learning to Improve Schools

The Fieldbook is a practical reference, designed to be kept handy and consulted as needed. The book’s format makes the new ideas it offers accessible and appealing to different learning styles. Each chapter balances theory and research with first-hand stories and tried-and-true suggestions from superintendents in the field. There are tables and charts for quick review, as well as many pertinent sidebars with references for further information. The authors include cautions about common pitfalls and controversies, along with specific tools and strategies for managing conflict and keeping a personal balance in a difficult job. Each chapter concludes with probing questions for reflective practice.

An early chapter on leadership includes a section on creating a learning organization. Through this process, a district embraces a common language and develops a collective intelligence to create its own future. The Fieldbook briefly describes Senge’s five disciplines of organizational learning—personal mastery, shared vision, mental models, team learning, and systems thinking— as they apply to improving learning in schools. It provides brief descriptions of the tools, ready to use: systems thinking to look beyond events to the patterns, structures, and mental models driving behavior; the “ladder of inference” to surface underlying assumptions; and dialogue to enhance learning conversations. Each concept is illustrated by a story told by a different practitioner.

Systems thinking tools come up again in the chapter on standards and assessment. Readers glimpse the underlying problems in improving student performance through the lens of the “shifting the burden” systems archetype. The “quick fix” of focusing on improving test scores undermines the longer-term goal of sustaining learning improvement. Here, systems thinking tools lend a richness to the discussion and a refreshing new approach to an old problem.

Superintendents who use the Fieldbook as a guide can become effective leaders of learning. Although many of the thornier issues discussed may have a higher profile and greater urgency in large urban districts, there is sound advice and affirmation for forward-thinking leaders everywhere.

Davida Fox-Melanson is the retired superintendent of the Carlisle Public Schools in Carlisle, MA. She is now an education consultant who also supervises interns in school administration certification programs at the university level.

Debra Lyneis served on the school board in Carlisle. She is now at the Creative Learning Exchange, helping teachers develop and publish K-12 curriculum materials using systems thinking and system dynamics, available online at www.clexchange.org.

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Three Planes

Mintzberg sees managing as “influencing action”; that is, helping organizations and units get things done. His model describes three planes that represent where managing takes place: the information plane, the people plane, and the action plane (see “Rules of Managing” on p. 10).

The Information Plane. According to Mintzberg, managers manage information to drive people to take action; they create budgets, set objectives, and so on. He thinks that most managers spent too much time on this plane, at

the expense of the people and action planes. Mintzberg is critical of what he calls “deeming,” where leaders impose targets in the absence of strategy. He states, “Some deeming is fine; management by deeming is not.” I agree with his premise that many leaders get caught in the trap of seeing their jobs as merely declaring or deeming “stretch goals” and then holding the organization accountable for achieving them.

The People Plane. When describing the people plane, Mintzberg states that “People are not driven so much as encouraged, often to ends they favor naturally.” This simple statement has many ramifications. For instance, encouragement may be praising, coaching, or simply truly understanding the circumstances of those you are leading. When Mintzberg states “to the ends they favor naturally,” he implies that managers need to ensure that the goals of the task are in alignment with the goals of the person being lead.

Many leaders get caught in the trap of seeing their jobs as merely declaring or deeming “stretch goals” and then holding the organization accountable for achieving them.

The Action Plane. On the action plane, managers “do on the inside” and “deal on the outside.” Mintzberg describes the “doing on the inside” role as “managing projects proactively and handling disturbances reactively.” For the “dealing on the outside” role, managers must mobilize support and conduct negotiations. According to the author, “Managers who don’t do and deal, and so don’t know what is going on, can become incapable of coming up with sensible decisions and robust strategies.” When leaders make decisions that leave you wondering, “What were they thinking?” it’s often because they are disconnected from the action plane.

10 Useful Points

A lot of management or leadership books focus on one competency or aspect. Managing provides a balance/ blending of many aspects. The book has key points in bold text, which makes it easy for time-constrained readers to quickly scan to items of importance and dive in where they find an interest. Here are 10 points I found particularly useful:

1. Much of a manager’s information is not verbal so much as visceral—seen and felt more than heard.
2. Managers help to bring out people’s natural energy.
3. Managers are gatekeepers and buffers in the flow of influence.

   Mintzberg characterizes five ways in which managers can get this role wrong:

4. Sieves allow external influences to create an environment in which individuals have to respond to a variety of pressures.
6. Dams are the opposite; they block external influences and disconnect the organization from the outside world.
7. Sponges absorb all the pressure and are at risk for burnout.
8. Hoses create a lot of pressure for those who support the organization from the outside.
9. Drips are the opposite; they don’t put enough pressure on outside supporters.
10. The pressures of managing are not temporary but perpetual.
11. Managing is no job to approach with hesitation; it requires too much of the total person.
12. Successful managers are flawed, as we all are. Fortunately, certain flaws are not fatal.
13. Managing contains many inescapable conundrums. (Chapter 5 documents these challenges and is worth the price of the book by itself). The conundrums of managing reminded me of the statement “describe in detail briefly.” Here are two I found particularly appealing:
    • The Action Conundrum. The Ambiguity of Acting describes the difficulty of making decisions in a world where there are a multitude of factors, all of which may be known with varying degrees of certainty. This reality often paralyzes leaders into not acting, while others seem to wait forever for information or data of limited value.
    • The Information Conundrum. The Dilemma of Delegating highlights the difficulty of delegating when information is “personal, oral and often privileged.” It is challenging to delegate when the context required for the task may not be available to the task recipient.
14. Readers of The Systems Thinker will appreciate the question:, “Do I have sufficiently powerful mental models of those things I must understand?” I like the question about mental models, because my experience has been that many leaders have an insufficient picture of the things they need to understand.
15. Effective managers are reflective: They know how to learn from their own experience; they explore numerous options; and they back off when one approach doesn’t work to try another.
16. Measure what you can, but then be sure to judge the rest, too: Don’t be mesmerized by measurement.

Effective managers are reflective: They know how to learn from their own experience; they explore numerous options; and they back off when one approach doesn’t work to try another.

True Managerial Effectiveness

If you are looking for the “three steps to … or the “five essential factors …” or the “eight ways to … ,” this book is not for you. But if you believe that you can always improve your management skills, then you’ll get a lot out of Managing. In particular, the self-study questions for managers in Chapter 6 are a powerful tool to improve your performance as a manager.

If you are a high-level leader, consider giving this book to your managers and then scheduling a monthly meeting where the group reviews a single chapter and discusses the important points and take-aways. Doing so might just help create true managerial effectiveness in your organization.

Dr. James T. Brown is president of a project management training company, SEBA Solutions Inc, and of a web-based provider of Professional Development Units (PDUs), OnePdu.com. He is author of The Handbook of Program Management, published by McGraw-Hill. For more information, contact Dr. Brown at jtbrown@sebasolutions.com.

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Denning explains how effective leaders in all business contexts take full advantage of four levels of discourse— narrative, exposition, description, and argumentation—to explain what needs to be accomplished, to describe what the probable consequences will be if appropriate action is (or is not) taken, to trace a sequence of steps or events within a process (e.g., causal relationships), and/or to present a convincing argument (with evidence and/or logic). Through tips and examples, he helps readers to master these and other skills, which have almost unlimited practical applications.

Of special interest to me is what Denning says about the use of language when inspiring people to support efforts to transform an organization. He asserts that “sustained, enthusiastic change doesn’t occur by osmosis or extrasensory perception. If leaders’ inner commitment to change is to have any effect, they have to communicate it to the people they aspire to lead. True, the leaders’ actions will eventually speak louder than words, but in the short run, it’s what leaders say—or don’t say—that has the impact. The right words can have a galvanizing effect, generating enthusiasm, energy, momentum, and more, while the wrong words can undermine the best intentions and kill initiative on the spot, stone dead.”

Developing Fluency

These are among the issues that Howard Gardner addresses in his latest book, Five Minds for the Future (Harvard Business School Press, 2007). Gardner suggests that, to thrive in the world during the eras to come, people need to develop five cognitive abilities. Gardner refers to them as “minds,” but they are really mindsets. The disciplined mind enables us to know how to work steadily over time to improve skill and understanding. The synthesizing mind enables us to take information from disparate sources and make sense of it by understanding and evaluating that information objectively. By building on discipline and synthesis, the creating mind enables us to break new ground. By “recognizing that nowadays one can no longer remain within one’s shell or one’s home territory,” the respectful mind enables us to note and welcome differences between human individuals and between human groups so as to understand them and work effectively with them. Finally, by “proceeding on a level more abstract than the respectful mind,” the ethical mind enables us to reflect on the nature of our work and the needs and desires of the society in which we live.

As Denning would explain, each of these five “minds” or mindsets has a “secret language” of its own. Those who would be leaders must become fluent in one or more of the languages that are most appropriate to the given objective, be it the creation of an entirely new art form or a coalition of healthcare organizations. He examines three key steps of language leadership (i.e., getting the audience’s urgent attention, eliciting desire for a different future, and reinforcing with reasons) before shifting his attention to six elements that enable the language of leadership to achieve its maximum effectiveness. These “key enablers” are articulating a clear and inspiring change idea; committing to the “story” of change; mastering the audience’s own “story”; cultivating narrative intelligence; telling authentically true stories; and finally, deploying the body language of leadership.

The last is vital because, as Denning correctly points out, “without the calm assertiveness of the body language of leadership, the verbal language of leadership will have little effect.” Indeed, although percentages vary from one research study to another, there is no doubt that during face-toface contact, body language and tone of voice determine 85–90 percent of the impact.

In his previous books, Denning skillfully explains all of the elements of an effective business narrative. Now he has broadened his scope to examine how all four levels of discourse (including narrative) can help those whose objective is to explain what needs to be done, to inspire others to become involved, to make the vision vivid and compelling, and finally, to make a convincing argument that will guide and inform collaborate initiatives.

Robert Morris (interllect@mindspring.com) is an independent consultant who is based in Dallas, specializing in high-impact executive development and organizational growth. He coaches individual executives and also works closely with groups of executives. Much of his time is committed to conducting workshops and seminars that focus on knowledge management, process simplification, and performance measurement.

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Entering a joint venture to the mutual benefit of two or more partners seems a natural solution in our global economy, yet numerous studies show that 70 percent of all such alliances fail. In their newly released book, The Strongest Link: Forging a Profitable & Enduring Corporate Alliance (Amacom, 2003), Gene Slowinski and Matthew Sagal assert that most alliances break down because of problems with design and implementation. According to the authors, many shouldn’t have been formed in the first place, but few managers are experienced enough in business development to know when a deal supports the strategic objectives of both firms and when they should stop negotiations.

Instead, executives plan and arrange complex business structures without understanding issues such as sophisticated intellectual property rights, the subtleties of “exclusivity,” the traps of termination provisions, and the nuances of financial models. They focus on the “fun stuff and leave the “deal-killers” until the end, when it’s difficult for both sides to walk away. As a result, negotiators typically craft fatally flawed partnerships, which they then pass off to implementers inexperienced in coordinating and integrating the resources of distinctly different organizations.

How can organizations that walk the slippery slope of alliances join the 30 percent that thrive?

The Alliance Framework

How can organizations that walk the slippery slope of alliances join the 30 percent that thrive? The authors have developed a practical roadmap to creating successful joint ventures, which they call the Alliance Frameworksm.

Based on extensive first-hand experience and research conducted on more than 50 organizations, this six step process, when used by both sides in an alliance negotiation, helps potential partners anticipate and work through common pitfalls in both the planning and execution phases of the venture, thus laying a strong foundation for success (see “The Alliance Framework Process”).

One reason the framework is so powerful is that it takes a systemic approach to effective collaboration. It:

• Advocates the building of a well-balanced team with appropriate expertise and diverse viewpoints.
• Provides an iterative process for integrating the voices of multiple stakeholders, to create shared understanding and alignment for the venture.
• Allows players to look at the interdependent relationship of the pieces in the alliance to determine whether it is linked to the strategy of both partners.
• Calls for leadership to offer prudent support throughout the process.

The Intricacies of Success

The authors’ overarching advice is not to create too many alliances but to master the intricacies of what it takes to make a few very successful. “If alliance creation and management becomes a core competency of multiple firms in the same industry, the power of the entire network will emerge,” they conclude, and the possibilities for new markets and technologies are immeasurable.

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The Pebble and the Avalanche: How Taking Things Apart Creates Revolutions (Berrett-Koehler, 2005) by Moshe Yudkowsky is an interesting, readable book that examines change and develops a theory for the structure that often underlies dramatic revolutionary change. As the title implies, it uses the metaphor of the single pebble, loosened high on a mountain, that causes an avalanche as it moves downhill and picks up mass and momentum. Systems thinkers will recognize this metaphor as a reinforcing process, in which an activity escalates over time. In all systems, at a certain point, a balancing loop will kick in to limit growth and maintain stability. The author’s aim, I believe, is to provide a framework that enables readers to initiate a series of reinforcing loops to create an avalanche of revolutionary change and to disable the limits-to-growth balancing loops that can stop it.

The Concept of Disaggregation

Yudkowsky’s theory rests heavily on the idea that taking things apart (disaggregation) is the lynchpin for unleashing an avalanche of revolutionary change. Personal computers “took apart” large central computers and put the capability into the hands of many. The Internet “took apart” point-to-point messaging and created a structure that put anywhere-to-anywhere communication in the hands of the masses. Both developments dramatically changed how we interact and distributed power that once was highly centralized. Today’s World Wide Web creates an increasing number of stakeholders who may, at the extreme, spend time and money improving the capability and adding functionality “just for the sheer joy of sharing.” In a classic reinforcing process, this enthusiasm draws more people and ideas into the process, further broadening ownership, and so on. Imagine if one entity with total authority owned the Internet where would we be today?

The book goes into a number of examples, most based in technology, in which the ability to see what could be disaggregated led to revolutionary change. For example, wooden clocks were once made by carpenters, one at a time. Standardization didn’t exist; each piece in the end product was unique to a craftsman, and clocks were available only to the wealthy because of the cost. But by disaggregating the parts from the whole so that craftsmen could focus on volume production of pieces that could be easily assembled in a standard way, an industry emerged. Similarly, U. S. telephone services were once totally controlled by AT&T, a large national firm that bundled together all aspects of service. But when AT&T was broken apart (by government action) in multiple ways (companies, lines, exchanges, research, even handsets), the process led to a continuing surge of creativity, competition, cost reduction, simplicity, specialization, and synergy. Both supply and demand increased, creating explosive change to the field and myriad benefits to the world that continue today.

Separating the Parts from the Whole

The book goes on to suggest steps for devising a way to identify infrastructures that can be disaggregated; develop interfaces so that the resulting parts can work together to meet the organization’s needs; gain acceptance for change; evaluate the results; and employ feedback for continuous improvement.

Yudkowsky also offers several examples of what happens when things are forced in the other direction—toward aggregation. He points to the centralization of decision making in the Soviet system as an example of massive failure caused by moving in exactly the wrong direction. He also takes aim at Microsoft’s effort to aggregate web browser functions with their operating system, claiming that it illustrates the negative results of combining features and centralizing ownership in order to extract shortterm profit a strategy that antitrust action rightfully ended. The author believes that initiatives aimed at shortterm control are almost always misguided, because people will ultimately realize the benefits of disaggregation that are being sacrificed.

Yudkowsky’s intent is to give readers a theory they can use to think about needs and then determine how they can break apart a technology or business infrastructure in order to produce an innovative solution. Near the end, he provides a “how-to” structure for such evaluation.

Summing up, this useful book encourages looking at things differently. It focuses on substantive, not incremental, change and shows how revolutions, both technological and cultural, have created the world in which we live. The author challenges us to look forward to creating the future with the deliberateness that comes from understanding the systemic forces at play and using them to best advantage.

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Acompanion to the PBS documentary, “Good News . . . How Hospitals Heal Themselves,” The Nun and the Bureaucrat: How They Found an Unlikely Cure for America’s Sick Hospitals by Louis M. Savary and Clare Crawford-Mason (CCM Productions, 2006) is the story of two large healthcare organizations that adopted systems principles as part of an effort to reduce death and suffering, medication errors and hospital-acquired infections, waste, and expense and to improve quality of care and working conditions for healthcare professionals. Forty hospitals cooperating in the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative (PRHI) and 20 hospitals of the SSM Health Care system in St. Louis applied the management ideas of W. Edwards Deming —who helped the Japanese automotive industry become a world leader in innovation and quality—as they entered a continuous quality improvement effort. The book provides readers with the opportunity to learn about systems thinking and the processes—and difficulties— involved in developing that frame of mind. By offering detailed examples from the hospitals’ experiences, it brings the theoretical description of systems thinking to life.

The Path to Systems Thinking

The healthcare industry’s problems, the authors maintain, are not external—government regulations, insurance restrictions, competition from other providers—but internal—duplication of work effort, quick fixes to apparent problems, and miscommunications within organizations. To design truly sustainable solutions, the institutions realized that they needed to make the patient the focal point; the development of systems thinking then became much more feasible. As the authors point out, “Anyone familiar with systems thinking or Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s principles of quality management will know that the only thing that can turn a collection of people and machines into a true system, that is, make them a whole greater than the sum of their parts, is a shared purpose.”

The organizations started by recognizing that they are systems and that, as such, employees need to act collaboratively: to understand and behave in ways that reflect the interconnectedness of their institution. With the systems understanding and the focus on patients, the hospitals laid the foundation for their improvements. One of the more critical issues they identified was that of blame. Fault finding is inconsistent with a culture centered on quality; rather, efforts were redirected to problem finding. Organizational learning can occur only when problems are acknowledged, not when fingers are pointed.

The use of a “learning line” at PRHI, in which units experiment with others in the system to create improvements, also exemplifies organizational learning. This process operates on the understanding that adoption of a singular model across different areas may not work but that sharing ideas may lead to brainstorms for new ways of operating. Likewise, both institutions went outside their own organizational—and industry— boundaries to learn best practices. PRHI looked at automaker Toyota to help understand process improvement.

As systems thinking became more common in the organizations, practitioners described the phenomenon of seeing things from various perspectives. There was a transition toward focusing on the core purpose—serving the patient, finding connections rather than differences, looking for problems rather than hiding them, and thinking long term rather than seeking immediate solutions. The use of data and the sharing of that data between units was another change.

The Path of Improvement

The final section of the book discusses “The Path of Improvement” and provides specific steps taken. One of the keys to long-range, big-picture thought processes is root-cause analysis. The use of such tools allowed these organizations to understand issues systematically and to avoid the inefficiencies of “quick fixes.” Other quality improvement approaches are discussed, including the issue of employee empowerment. When the hospitals adopted processes that encouraged workers to raise issues and participate in creating solutions, problems were resolved much quicker.

These organizations are not presented as being perfect. The book describes the tension between the physicians’ perspective and that of the administrators. The physicians, like the patients, had at times been forgotten or lost in the operations (pun intended). Systems thinking, and the use of Baldrige quality criteria, required that the organization seek to understand internal as well as external stakeholders.

Systems thinking is often categorized as either overly simplistic or very complex, with multiple loops on loops. The anecdotes provided in this book bring with them an inspiration and a sense of encouragement for those who believe in systems thinking as critical to organizational success and improvement. The vivid examples make it a more palatable piece than many that deal only with the theory behind systems thinking, though that theory is well presented. Finally, as a boost to your own brainstorming for improvement, this book will provide many ideas that can be adapted to any setting.

Ed Cunliff (ecunliff@cox.net), Ph. D., currently serves as AVP for Academic Affairs at the University of Central Oklahoma. He has more than 30 years of experience in innovative organizational development. Ed has worked in social services, healthcare, and higher education and has served in a consultative role with dozens of organizations.

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What the author and his colleagues found may not surprise readers steeped in the principles of systems thinking: Instead of being the result of a quick fix, miracle cure, or charismatic leader, each of these remarkable success stories stemmed from a longterm institutional commitment to a set of sound principles. The author calls this phenomenon the triumph of the “Flywheel” over the “Doom Loop.”

A flywheel is a heavy metal disk mounted on an axle that helps a machine maintain a regular speed. It takes a lot of effort to get a flywheel going, but once it’s past the “breakthrough” point, its momentum is hard to stop. Collins uses the metaphor of the flywheel to describe what happens when a company goes from good to great. As management commits to disciplined thought and action, the company begins to improve its processes and results. When employees, investors, and customers see these accomplishments, they become enthusiastic about the organization’s possibilities. They reinforce the organization’s commitment to discipline, which leads to even higher levels of performance.

In contrast, executives in companies that weren’t as successful continually sought to find a program or innovation that would let them jump right to the breakthrough stage. As they continually changed course to pursue the latest fad or hire a hot new CEO, the organization’s momentum faltered. To counter the disappointing results, the company would react by implementing yet another strategy to try to generate success. Collins terms this pattern of declining fortunes the “Doom Loop.”

Good to Great details many instances of how companies in even the most challenging industries have launched and sustained a cycle of greatness. By understanding the dynamics of lasting success, we take the first steps toward ensuring that our own organizations reach their full potential rather than wallowing in mediocrity.

—Janice Molloy

Causal loop diagrams don’t need to be complex to offer insights—hone your skills by drawing the reinforcing loops described in this article. Also consider the following: Every reinforcing process is ultimately constrained by a balancing process. What balancing processes might cause the momentum of the “Flywheel” to falter? Good to Great is also chock full of other possible loops—send us your favorite!

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