By Gabriel Shirley
Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto, has written a new book called The
Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage. The concept of "design thinking" has really taken hold as a primary innovation strategy in the last few years. It has been pioneered by companies like IDEO and by experience design professionals in the Web 2.0 space.
Martin contends that design thinking is likely to present challenges to traditional management consulting firms that charge large sums of money for incremental improvements. Design firms, on the other hand, do not limit themselves to thinking based on "proof" or "hard data." They get creative, innovate, try new things, and see how they work in a fast and nimble way. A consulting firm that brings design thinking to its clients would be able to deliver breakthrough results for significantly less money than in the conventional model. Combining the skills of traditional consulting firms with design thinking firms could be the winning combination that provides both innovation and acceptable risk management for larger corporations. See the Fast Company article on this subject.
I have been using design thinking in my consulting practice for a number of years with excellent results. One of the key assumptions about this kind of work is that everyone can contribute to innovation. It's important to listen to "the need beneath the need" and ask everyone involved what they would do if there were no limits or constraints. Inevitably creative ideas arise from the collective "group mind" if they are invited to the party.
Gabriel Shirley is an organizational consultant who works at the convergence of organizational systems, human potential, emergence, and technology. He is the founder of BigMind Media, where he designed the BigMind Catalyst knowledge management platform in the 1990s.
Photo of Brooklyn Bridge by Nancy Daugherty
By Janice Molloy
"What we've got here is a failure to communicate." That iconic line from the 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke nicely summarizes a puzzling fact of life: That two well-intended people, speaking the same language, can come away from a conversation with two different takes on what was discussed. Time and again, both in our 
organizational and personal lives, we experience a lack of understanding that hinders both our effectiveness and the quality of our relationships. (Fortunately, though, these miscues don't usually end in a flurry of gunfire, as in the movie.)
A recent book posits that part of the problem may lie in our inability to parse out the appropriate form of conversation for the situation. In The Four Conversations: Daily Communication That Gets Results (Berrett-Koehler, 2009), Jeffrey Ford and Laurie Ford contend that there are four kinds of productive conversations, each with a different purpose. By using these conversations at the right time and in the right way, we can improve our interactions with others and increase our chances for success.
- Initiative Conversations share new ideas, goals, visions, and futures with people who can participate in implementing and making them real.
- Understanding Conversations build awareness and knowledge of a new or existing idea in a way that helps people see how to participate.
- Performance Conversations are requests and promises that generate specific actions, results, and agreements, and pave the way for accountability.
- Closure Conversations support experiences of accomplishment, satisfaction, and value; strengthen accountability; and give people an honest look at the successes and failures on the way to reaching a goal.
According to the authors, in addition to matching the conversation to the circumstance, speakers need to make sure their conversations are complete. They suggest taking a lesson from journalists, who are trained to ask who, what, when, where, how, and why when investigating a story:
- Who is involved?
- What are we trying to accomplish?
- When do we want to accomplish it?
- Where will the resources come from?
- Why is this accomplishment important?
- How will we get it done?
The Fords encourage analyzing our own patterns to determine which conversations and which elements may be missing. The next step is to practice the ones we find most challenging, whether it's making a direct request of someone, explaining why something is important, expressing appreciation, or strengthening accountability. The good news, according to the authors, is that "Changing our conversations will change more than the way we speak. It will change our listening too, so that we will be more responsive to, and perhaps more responsible for, our human environment."
Having experienced my fair share of communication mishaps, I'm ready to add a few more conversations to my repertoire. What about you?
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
By Janice Molloy
The recent incident between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge, Massachusetts, police sergeant James Crowley has sparked a lively--and sometimes ugly--debate on the state of race relations in the U.S. Even President Obama entered the fray, making an ill-advised comment about the matter and then wisely backtracking. The case illustrates how easily a routine encounter can deteriorate when it involves two people who, because of history and experience, hold vastly different worldviews.
In case you missed it, on July 16, a passerby noticed two men struggling to enter a residence on a leafy street near Harvard University and called 911 to report a possible break-in. It turns out that the men--Professor Gates and his driver--were forcing open a jammed door in the esteemed scholar's home. When Sgt. Crowley arrived to investigate, he asked for Gates's identification to verify that he lived in the house; Gates in turn demanded Crowley's name and badge number. The situation escalated, and the officer ended up arresting Gates for disorderly conduct; the charges were later dropped.
The details of what ensued are still under debate; depending on which perspective you hear, it's either a matter of a white police officer racially profiling a black man, or a black man overreacting to a request by a white cop. What is clear is that each man reacted based on his own preconceived mental framework. In an excellent analysis, "What They Saw During the Gates Arrest," Associated Press columnist Jesse Washington summed up the situation: "Crowley asks Gates to prove he lives there. . . . Gates sees a racist. . . . Crowley sees someone who should be grateful, but instead is yelling and falsely accusing him of being a racist. . . . Neither man understood what the other one saw." And each man felt disrespected by the other.
The "ladder of inference," pioneered by business theorist Chris Argyris, illustrates how and why we leap to knee-jerk conclusions in our encounters with others--and gives guidance 
for climbing back down. In a nutshell, from our observations, we unconsciously and instantaneously select data, based on our cultural norms, background, and other factors. We then add meaning, make assumptions, and draw conclusions--often incomplete or erroneous--about why other people are behaving the way they are. Finally, we take action. From our interpretations of the data, our actions make perfect sense to us, but they may not correspond to the other person's "reality." When two emotionally charged perspectives conflict, the situation can easily spin out of control.
When Crowley and Gates meet over beer at the White House this evening, perhaps they will chat about the recent trades by the Red Sox or commiserate about the steamy weather we've had in Massachusetts this week. But I hope they'll also engage in a respectful exchange about the contradictory worldviews that led each to act the way he did. Maybe by calmly listening to one other and stating their own truths, they'll be able to change the filters with they approach the world. And maybe by witnessing this instance of "beer diplomacy," the rest of us will take lessons for looking before we leap up the ladder in our own encounters.
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications and managing editor of The Systems Thinker.
by Sharon Eakes
A profound insight into good listening comes from the deaf. Bruno Kahne, a senior consultant at Airbusiness Academy, was developing a leadership program for Airbus. There he met an executive whose youngest son was born without hearing. Through this connection, Kahne became familiar with the culture of the deaf, their visual, intensely expressive language. He realized that many deaf people have developed communication skills more thoroughly than hearing people, which made them uncommonly effective at getting their point across.
In a radical experiment, he began using deaf people as communication consultants for corporate clients. Some of the simple, but oft-ignored lessons for good listening that came from the deaf are:
- Look people in the eye.
- Don't interrupt.
- Say what you mean, as simply as possible.
- When you don't understand something, ask.
- Stay focused.
Coaching Questions
- How often do you listen as recommended above?
- How do you pay more attention to the other person than to the voices in your own head?
- How do you listen to what is not being said?
- In what spirit do you listen? (To get an answer? To learn? To argue?)
- What can you decide not to listen to? (The news? Gossip? Advertising? Your negative, inner voice?)
- To what person in your life do you feel moved to listen more fully?
Sharon Eakes is a personal and executive coach and chair of the Pegasus Communications board of directors. You can subscribe to her free monthly "mini e-zine," Fresh Views.
by Sharon Eakes
"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said."
--Robert McCloskey
Are you a good listener? To listen well is to still our mind, loosen our perspective, and open our heart. 
When we listen and do something else at the same time, the speaker often feels slighted. When my daughter Lisa was young, she would go to the Sunday movie and come home excited to tell me about it. I'd listen as I cooked or did some other thing, trying to stay interested by asking a question or injecting a comment. She'd say, "I think you're not listening. Maybe stop what you're doing so you can hear better." What I missed was that she was giving me herself--her feelings, her response to things, her view of the world.
Over time, I practiced listening more carefully, being really present. I could remember names and details of people's stories, but I got a great listening lesson in a coaching session with Thomas Leonard. "You're listening too hard. Can you listen more softly?" he asked. I was paying so much attention to the details that I could miss the big picture or the person.
Many years ago, I was about to go on a trip to Israel. My friend Sandra said, "When you get back, come and really tell me about it . . . every little detail. I will listen happily for hours." What an invitation! And I did. I told story after story while she listened. Her listening was an enormous gift to me. She smiled as I left, thanking me genuinely for "a visit to Israel."
Brenda Ueland says, "When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. And if you are a listener, it is the secret of having a good time in society, of comforting people, of doing them good." Deep listening is a win-win for both speaker and listener.
Sharon Eakes is a personal and executive coach and chair of the Pegasus Communications board of directors. You can subscribe to her free monthly "mini e-zine," Fresh Views.
landscape photo: Nancy Daugherty