Goodbye Madiba, Hello 2014

 

 

Wednesday December 11, 2013 Nelson Rolhlahla Mandela (Madiba) was the primary leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa that opposed the systematc segregation of black Africans by an all-white minority. He was the leader of a largely peaceful, but sometimes violent, movement to establish equal rights for all South Africans and was imprisoned for 27 years for his activities. He led the transformation toward a democracy for all races in South Africa. Nelson Mandela inspired my participation in the anti-apartheid movement during my college years at the Unversity of Rome. When I first heard of his death I felt a great sadness, as if a mentor had died. But my heart was also filled with great hope and pride for the immense legacy and inspiration this amazing person left for all of us. As we start a new year, I like to send my best wishes to our readers of this blog. Many of you are involved in making a difference in your organizations and communities around the world...This time I want to wish you a little of Mandela's courage, determination and ability to understand the essential and the expendable in the work ahead. I want to do it with this poem "INVICTUS" (Latin for unconquered) by William Ernest Henley. To all people, from all walks of life, as a celebration of Nelson Mandela, as an inspiration to continue to "stay in the game" and as an eloquent reminder of the indomitable spirit that it might very well take to move to the edges of our breakthroughs next year. I wish you a happy 2014! "Out of the night that covers me,  Black as the pit from pole to pole,  I thank whatever gods may be  For my unconquerable soul.  In the fell clutch of circumstance  I have not winced nor cried aloud.  Under the bludgeonings of chance  My head is bloody, but unbowed.  Beyond this place of wrath and tears  Looms but the horror of the shade,  And yet the menace of the years  Finds and shall find me unafraid.  It matters not how strait the gate,  How charged with punishments the scroll,  I am the master of my fate:  I am the captain of my soul."  William Ernest Henley   Download the audio file of this poem at the link below:  https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70371276/Invictus%20-%20The%20Poem.mp3  Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

Adaptive Leadership in Wonderland

Wednesday October 16, 2013 My parents read "Alice in Wonderland" to me when I was 5. To this day I can still remember every single character (my favorite was the Mad Hatter, il cappellaio matto). As I re-read this book to my children and recently received an email from a friend about Alice (thanks, Libby), it became clear to me how the powerful messages of its author apply squarely to the work of leadership and organizational change. Just consider the key four themes of transformation, dramatic size change, language and logic in Lewis Carroll's book. Do you see any similarities between Alice and the current challenges in your work as a leader? Embracing Transformation The character of Alice explores the theme of growth into adulthood. Her adventures speak to transformation and what it requires of us. Alice comes into numerous new situations in which adaptability is absolutely necessary for success. She shows marked progress throughout her adventures; in the beginning, she can barely maintain enough composure to keep herself from crying...Yes: at the beginning of the story she is on her "way down" but by the end of it, she is self-possessed and able to hold her own against the most baffling Wonderland logic. She is not a winner, but she has options. She is no longer unaware of the "rules of the land." Dealing with Dramatic Change Closely connected to the theme of transformation, dramatic size change is another recurring concept. The dramatic changes in size hint at the radical changes the body (and we can apply this to organizations) undergo during adolescence or other times of change. The key, once again, is adaptability. Alice's size changes also bring about a change in perspective, and she sees the world from a very different viewpoint. In the last trial scene, her growth into a giant reflects her interior growth. She becomes a much stronger person, able to speak out against the nonsensical proceedings of the trial. Her perspective taking, like in the work of transforming organizations, hinges on her ability to embrace different points of view—understanding the values, losses, and the implications of change for others. Understanding Language and Communication Linked to this is the theme of language. Lewis Carroll delights in puns and his books are full of games with language, to the reader's delight and Alice's confusion. The games often point out some inconsistency or slipperiness of language. Pointing out the pains and advantages of language, we start seeing language both as a source of joy as well as a source of great consternation. Again adaptability is the way out: in a world where words are both powerful and deceiving, where we constantly battle—like Alice—with the meaning of "being heard," where interpretation is not the same as reality, and where the "work" is sometimes just understanding what is real and what is not. In that world our capacity for inquiry and emotional fortitude becomes our lifesaver. Embracing a "New Logic" Just as baffling is the logic at work in Wonderland. Like in today's world, all creatures can justify their most absurd behavior, and their arguments to justify themselves are often fairly complex. Their strange reasoning is another source of delight for the reader and a challenge for Alice and for us. And yet like Alice we learn in time to understand and decipher the logic even when at first when we do not see any. We learn to be at peace while doing that. Developing our discernment between unusual logic (innovation) and utter nonsense (noise) is part of the game that Alice and Lewis Carroll ask us to do for ourselves and for the world in times of change. Good luck in service of your purpose, regards Adriano Pianesi | www.participactioninc.com

Are you confused about leadership?

Wednesday September 11, 2013 The word "leadership" is often used in a variety of contexts with different meanings. Adding insult to injury, many of these meanings describe very different things, like skills, specific actions, values or people. That is, often when we use the word leadership when we mean: ·         The top management of organization (as in "Leadership's approval is required to move forward") ·         The skills to communicate a strong vision on a subject so that people will follow (as in "She exercised leadership to make it happen") ·         The courage to take responsibility and step up with passion to do something risky (as in "We need some leadership to deal with this issue") To make matter worse we often hear that "everyone is a leader" (is this really true?), that leaders are born not made, and that a community need to produce "collective leadership" to solve its problmes… I wonder why the word is becoming so confusing and what this confusion means for all of us trying to exercise leadership in our organizational life day after day.... Different Ideas about "Leadership"... From a casual conversation on the subject with friends or in a class of an MBA course, it's easy to verify how people ascribe to different "models" or ideas of what leadership is and what it should be like. Some hold a more traditional idea with one person solidly in charge. Others are more contemporary in their views and see leadership as shared between people. These different models create different expectations of behaviors, values, actions and skills. So different people will call leadership different things based on their existing personal paradigm of what leadership is. They will recognize it when they see it, based on their implicit expectations. Consider the examples of a speech given by the founder of a small company who created, owned and operated for 30 years a successful business, or the buzz in a room where a participative problem-solving session is taking place. It is often difficult for the same person to recognize both as "leadership in action". Person A will fully recognize the founder speech as a great way to exercise leadership, and the group session as nothing more than a nice, different way to meet; person B will see the group session as a powerful expression of collective leadership and the speech as nothing more that the expression of a charismatic individual – not necessarily a leader. Reconciling different "Leadership Ideologies" Those different leadership ideologies can be reconciled using the concepts of direction (overall group mission and goals), alignment (coordination of action within the collective group ) and commitment (willingness of group members to put personal interests secondary to that of collective interest and benefit). The concepts can help us with a more generalized model of leadership that incorporates the traditional leader-follower theories with more modern idea of distributed leadership.  Articulated by Wilfred Drath in his book "The Deep Blue Sea" they offer us a renewed view of leadership where "practicing leadership would no longer necessarily involve leaders, followers, and their shared goals but would instead necessarily involve the production of direction, alignment, and commitment." Paraphrasing Drath, the question to ask to recognize leadership in action is no more "Is what is happening in the room right now matching my way to recognize leadership?" but instead "Is what is happening in the room right now a contribution to creating direction, alignment and commitment?" If the answer to the question is yes - regardless of our idea of leadership or the way direction, alignment and committment are achieved - we might say that leadership is present. So leadership might involve traditional roles and relationships, but alternate processes might also be involved. Some "Food for Thought"... 1. Do you agree with the idea that there can be multiple ways of accomplishing the outcomes associated with leadership? 2. What is your leadership "ideology"? 3. What "leadership in action" you are unable to recognize right now due to your preconceived notions about leadership? 4. What are ways to learn about different "leadership ways"? 5. How do direction, alignment and commitment manifest themselves in complex systems? Good luck in all you do! Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

Can We Slide on the Learning Curve?

Wednesday August 7, 2013 Have you noticed? In organizations nobody is against learning per se. And no one denies the benefit of training. I have also noticed that the word TRAINING is increasingly synonymous with: • a quintessential technical solution for big problems • a failed technical solution to re-occurring problems Here are a few examples I have collected in the last months from newspapers, the internet and in general public discourse to explain what I mean. Training as the quintessential "technical" solution for big problems Examples of "Training as the silver bullet" for solving big problems. ·         "Better training for teachers" to solve to the nation's failing public schools system ·         "Increased funds for training" to solve high unemployment rates and poor GDP growth ·         "Training" to minimize abuse from caregivers in nursing homes It makes you feel mighty as a trainer, doesn't it? Yet it's interesting how use of the rhetoric of training as the panacea for many problems, hasn't protected training programs to be the first victims of budget cuts and reduced spending. So which one is it? Is training essential or expandable? And of course we are not disputing whether  throwing training at a problem really helps solve it.What if we do? Training as a failed "technical" solution to re-occuring problems Obviously when the use of training doesn't produce the results expected, training is seen as the bad guy. ·         "Poor training" is the cause of failed expensive software implementations across federal agencies ·         "Lack of training of the intervention personnel" is the reason for weak responses to natural disasters ·         "Staff lacking training on the guidelines against torture" is the reason for human rights abuses Do we need a Training Anti-defamation League to respond to these allegations? Or are we facing the difficulty of admitting that training was simply not the right solution in the first place? Maybe the issue was a little bigger than simple lack of knowledge or skills. So What? Unreasonable expectations and lack of accountability or clear definition of the boundaries of training responsibilities can kill the best training work before it even starts. So be careful with training in organizations: it is work highly controversial, highly visible and often not fully understood. As a manager or training provider, what can you do to ensure the success of training? I have three suggestions: • THE PAST Clarify the history of the problem and what has been done in the past to solve it, asking, "Why have past solutions failed to address this problem?" • THE FUTURE Define the issue with all stakeholders, asking them the key question, "What will success look like?" • THE PRESENT Set a meeting for debriefing the training experience and  reflecting on its strengths/weaknesses, asking questions like, "What have we accomplished with this work that was not done before? What is possible now?" Good luck with your training work! Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

 

The contract

Wednesday July 17, 2013 A word from the lead, the followers written by William Ayot : "...And in the end we follow them not because we are paid, not because we might see some advantage, not because of the things they have accomplished, not even because of the dreams they dream but simply because of who they are: the man, the woman, the leader, the boss standing up there when the wave hits the rock, passing out faith and confidence like life jackets, knowing the currents, holding the doubts, imagining the delights and terrors of every landfall: captain, pirate, and parent by turns, the bearer of our countless hopes and expectations. We give them our trust. We give them our effort. What we ask in return is that they stay true." I wish you good luck in fulfilling your aspirations.

What does it mean to learn "how to think"?

Wednesday June 5, 2013 "There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man,all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp." ...the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine,except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hardwired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. ....But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a closemindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up. The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too. Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real. Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self..." By David Foster Wallace

Why is it so Hard to Be Wrong?

Wednesday May 8, 2013 We all know that we make mistakes. And we often repeat the mantra "to err is human." Why, then, do we go about life never thinking that we might be wrong? Well, I tested this concept in one of my classes, and asked my students if they could think about something they were wrong about in the past few years. 85% of my respondents answered yes, pointing out mistakes of inexperience, and of omission. Then I asked "if they could think about something they were wrong about right now.  Aside from a few jokes ("Ask my wife!") a stunning 100% of my students were unable to answer the question. This is how it is to figure out where we err in the present. This opens up a fascinating question: why is our ability to be wrong and to admit it is only valid in the past? What does this say about our fallibility as well as our ability to be right? "Being Wrong" as a Doorway to Understanding It is clear that we like to be right And for a competitive society being wrong spells trouble, social exclusion or simply losing. It is easy to see the difficulties to hold a contrarian approach to being wrong, when our entire society celebrates the victories of visionaries leaders that were never wrong, when the image of failure is often equated to not getting it right. Yet, embracing our ability to be wrong, embracing it as a a founding character of our human experience holds the key to the treasure of expanding our understanding in a new dimension. Holding the healthy doubt that we might not be right, might very well prove the healthier "statement of faith" in the capabilities of the human race. Why? Becasue it would stop any of the easy attribution that we are quick to make when we disagree with someone. It is clear that we like to be right. And for a competitive society, being wrong spells trouble, social exclusion or simply losing. It is easy to see the difficulties in holding a contrarian approach to being wrong when our entire society celebrates the victories of visionary leaders, and the image of failure is often equated with not getting it right. Yet, embracing our ability to be wrong holds the key to the treasure of expanding our understanding of, ironically, success. Holding the healthy doubt that we might not be right, might very well prove the healthier "statement of faith" in the capabilities of the human race. Why? Because  the act of stopping the easy and untested attributions ("he doesn't know what he is talking about!" or "She is not listening to me!") that we are quick to make when we disagree with someone is the necessary condition for learning something in the process and getting a better overall "picture" of the issue being discussed. "Wow! How fascinating...May be I am wrong" We've all done it. When someone disagrees with us we think he doesn't have access to the same information that we do (attribution of ignorance), or that his brain—f he has the information and still disagrees with us— is truly pea-sized (attribution of stupidity). Worse, if he has the information and the intelligence to analyze it, he has an evil plan to take over the world (attribution of evil). But try this instead: next time you are faced with a difference of opinions, stop and think "Wow! How fascinating...maybe I'm wrong." This will open a new awareness that as human beings we see the world as we are, rather than as it is. And with this in mind exploring how different perspectives shed a light on the complexities of everyday organizational and personal life brings us closer to the understanding of ourselves and of our world. Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.

What can we Learn about Leadership from Great Paintings?

Wednesday April 17, 2013 I have always loved art and great paintings in particular, their powerful rendering of a single, frozen moment of life has always fascinated me. It is a powerful and fascinating language. Sometime ago I stumbled on this great quote from the Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco: "Art is knowledge at the service of emotion." I started thinking that this knowledge can be used to facilitate the development of our leadership abilities. If this is true, then we can legitimately ask, "What is the  depiction of leadership in art teaching us about leadership, authority and leaders?" I'm convinced that the answer to this question can enhance our understanding both of individual works of art and of the profoundly human interactions that lie at the core of the leader-follower relationship, and of the difficult work of leadership. So I gave it a try with three great painters: Giulio Romano, Paul Klee and George Caleb Bingham. Giulio Romano "The Battle of the Milvian Bridge" (1524) THE OLD PARADIGM OF "LEADERSHIP" I like this beautiful fresco in one of the rooms that are now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican in Rome. It represents in clear terms a lot of an idea that is still so prevalent in today's organizations: the archetypes of the knight on a horse or the Lone Ranger that fights the bad guys, charging into the future to deliver the promise of unending happiness. Indeed Constantine's victory gave him total control of the Western Roman Empire paving the way for Christianity to become the dominant religion for the Roman Empire and ultimately for Europe. Click here to see "The Battle of the Milvian Bridge" Paul Klee "The Conqueror" (1930) THE OLD PARADIGM OF "LEADERSHIP WORK" In the "The Conqueror" by Paul Klee, a painting of evident parodist intent, the leader is alone, running with a weird, almost solid banner to incite and guide others in the fight. Klee, who was himself a soldier for many years, seems to decompose the image of the traditional leader through lines, circles and other shapes. "The Conqueror" overall carries the strong message of the end of an era, where conquering and leading men in battle, motivating and influencing people to do or to perform, has lost much of its appeal as  leadership work. With Klee, an expressionist and surrealist with a knack for the use of abstractions, we are shown the inadequacy of our idea of leadership work based on the old paradigm and are invited into a space, a blank space - like the one in the canvas - where a new leader-follower relationship might emerge. Click here to see "The Conqueror" George Caleb Bingham "The County Election" (1852) THE NEW PARADIGM OF "COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP" This work pictures collective intelligence in action, the American democratic system in progress. The story takes place in a small Midwestern town in the mid-nineteenth century, when the rituals of voting were still taking shape, particularly in the frontier. George Caleb Bingham - known as "the Missouri artist" for the state where he lived and worked - recognized the responsibilities as well as the rights of citizenship. In "The County Election," he presents a raucous voting party as an enactment of democracy, bringing together a variety of residents in a rural community to make decisions for the common good. I like this image because it pictures the new paradigm of collaborative leadership, of people engaging together in the messy work ahead in order to make progress on the difficult issues of the day. I also like it because it reminds us how leaders "from every seat" can take responsibility for action rather than waiting for the "designated authorities" to act. Click here and scroll down to see "The County Election" Click here for a more in-depth exploration of "Leadership and paintings" based on my current research.

Can Leadership Be Taught?

Thursday March 28, 2013 Carl Rogers once said, "I realize that I have lost interest in being a teacher. . . . I am only interested in being a learner, preferably learning things that matter." Leadership is something that matters to me as an educator and as a leadership practitioner. But can leadership be taught? Have you ever been taught emotional intelligence by an instructor that uses PowerPoint slides? When I started teaching leadership, I vividly remember facing the challenge on how to make my content match my way of teaching. When teaching leadership, this call to congruence—how what I am teaching is demonstrated in how I teach it—was the major headache of my work. It forced me to explore a fateful inquiry that led to a powerful discovery: for the congruent educator teaching leadership needs to be in itself an act of ... leadership. So when asked to design a leadership course, I decided that, rather than teaching or preaching, I would rely on evoking, naming, reminding, recognizing, questioning, acknowledging, and affirming. I stopped asking "How can I teach?" and instead started asking "What if leadership is already in the room, and my work is to give it the space and freedom to manifest itself?" I discovered a methodology called "Case-in-point", straight from the Adaptive Leadership framework developed by Ron Heifetz, Marty Linsky and others at the Harvard Kennedy School and started experimenting with it... Teaching Hands-on Leadership Using The "Case-in-point" Method With this approach, In front of our eyes, the group dynamics of the class provide powerful material for reflection in real time, helping participants in a day class, leadership retreat, or university course to develop their ability to innovate and adapt to changing circumstances in their organizations. Case-in-point has allowed me to learn and practice leadership experientially in a way that is aligned with my purpose as an educator. And in teaching leadership using Case-in-point I can use in its practice all I learned from other frameworks. In fact: ·         As an Action Learning Coach (a process to learn and take action to solve a tough problem) I use the capacity to leverage the power of great questions in order to learn in real-time as individuals, as a team, and as an organization. ·         As a World Café Host (a methodology that allows large groups to deepen their inquiry through important questions in a setting that promotes informal conversations and authenticity) I bring into it the artistry of hosting conversations that matter. ·         As an Open Space Technology Convener (a meeting process rooted in participants' passion and responsibility in which attendees create their own meeting agenda and run the meeting in real time) my Case-in-point practice is informed by the trust that groups know how to self-organize for the greater good and by the power of systems to naturally exhibit the distributed leadership that makes change happen. I continue to find that Case-in-point provides me with the best  way to teach leadership experientially and encourage you to explore its power. Read more about "Case-in-point" in my article published on March 2013 in THE SYSTEM THINKER

What do you do when ... you don't know what to do?

Wednesday February 20, 2013 Some call it being lost. Others call it a chance to be resourceful. For many, it is not a good place to be. I've come to believe that is an important component of the improvisational art of leadership work. So here is a reflection (in the form of a poem) that I hope will benefit those of us that like to be always in control. When You Get Lost Tell me what you do when you get lost Tell me Tell me what you feel How things look to you What happens in your head What you say to yourself Tell me Can you see anything when you get lost Can you hear what's about you Do you perceive life at all Tell me Tell me what scares you most when you get lost Can you draw from deep inside What you use to hold you up Do you move yourself differently Tell me Tell me what you do to reach that special calm Can you direct a prayer When do you know to wait When do you know to risk Tell me Tell me what you do when you get lost Tell me Then tell me How you know When you not lost no more Tell me -Carol Prejean Zippert

Power of the Past: My Story as a Leadership Educator

Wednesday January 9, 2013 INTEGRAL LEADERSHIP REVIEW - Particles magazine - Published with permission   I grew up and was educated in Rome, Italy. Here are a few flashbacks about my life as a learner in the Italian school system: ■ Elementary School, 1972: Maestra Arena would consider any question from the class as a personal insult and refuse to answer. ■ 12th grade, 1977: Signor Pumo would simply not acknowledge our presence in the class as we walked in and would make fun of the students with low grades. ■ High School, 1986: Signora Bondi would lecture for hours, then she would draw a name from a little box, bingo-like, to select the student that would have to parrot back what she had said. Alas! The Italian didactic style – being more theoretical and less interactive than that of the U.S. system – conditioned my thinking about teaching and learning at an early age. These experiences provided a powerful paradoxical teaching experience that has guided my life as a leadership educator across the Atlantic. (link: clik here) Adriano Pianesi | ParticipAction Consulting, Inc.