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Session on Design: Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Featuring Bernard J. Mohr and Adrian McLean
Watch
a video clip from the Session on Design (Real)
During the Design phase, we outline the actions and shifts in the social fabric of our workplaces that will make the realization of our dreams a certainty! This is the time for creating new forms, containers, practices, and strategies that bring for the vitality of our common dream.
During this session, participants engage in sector-/industry-based design activities to maximize the take-home relevance of the conference. Bernard J. Mohr and Adrian McLean ask:
- What "extraordinary" aspects of our organizations can we build on?
- What breakthroughs in our conversations, thinking, and actions can create new meanings and possibilities in our workplace?
- What other innovations make the creation of an extraordinary organization simple, elegant, and inevitable?
Jane Magruder Watkins introduces Adrian and Bernard. Bernard is Jane's "partner in writing."
Bernard started working with AI in the early 1990s and specializes in strong Design, turning the Dream into "substantial, everyday reality." He sees Design as another set of conversations. Architect William McDonnough says, "Designing renders visible our hopes and dreams, it is the first signal of human intentions." After asking participants to come up with their own sense of what Design means to them, Bernard offers a definition:
"...to invent, to conceive, to innovate…organizational conditions that powerfully facilitate…transformational shifts…in the human, social and economic domains of the enterprise."
"…to adapt our organization's structural, cultural and linguistic architecture in order to support the viability of our dreams."
Great designing, Bernard continues:
- Weaves the fabric of shared understanding (co-construction of our future)
- Reconciles apparent contradictions through innovation (thereby meeting the needs of all three Ps: People, Planet, and Profits)
- Indicates sustainability - providing frameworks to support and guide the emergence of the dream
Images can constrain or liberate our imaginations. If we only think about hierarchies and/or command and control as the only way to design our organizations, we are constraining ourselves.
He asks:
- What new forms of human organizing (roles, measures, processes) will make our dreams inevitable?
- In what ways might new language and behavior invite others to see/think about the world in ways that embody our dream?
- What kind of relationships would most support the flourishing of the human spirit in our organizations?
Bernard invites us to look at three different opportunities (domains or arenas) as we Design:
Formal organization, key relationships/partnerships (internal and external) and culture/conversation.
Some examples of formal organization include: Ways we move, assign and develop people; The tasks we give people; Recruitment/retention strategies; Who makes what decisions; Rewards/recognition practices; Physical layout; Our goals and measures; Our tools and equipment; Our evaluation processes; Mechanisms we use within to stay linked; How people are grouped together; Processes for understanding the business context and setting priorities. Bernard then gives an example of a Provocative Proposition (or Design Statement) focused on performance appraisal.
Some examples of key relationships/partnerships (internal and external) include: External suppliers/organization relationship; Employee/management relationship; Client/provider relationship; and Relations with regulatory agencies. He gives an example of a Provocative Proposition focused on the IT-line relationship.
Adrian then talks about culture and conversation and gives examples: Conversations we hold; Assumptions we carry; Stories we live and tell; Language we use; Our behavioral messages; and Embedded invitations.
He starts with a quote from anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973): "Man is an animal suspended in webs of signification he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs." Adrian then talks a bit about "webs" as one definition of an organization's culture. He also gives an example of a CEO and the behavioral messages he was sending to the organization. One example: the CEO spent three hours every Monday morning at the Receptionist Desk, giving the message about customer service. He did this for ten years! The CEO also abolished reserved parking for everyone, including himself, except for disabled people. Adrian also gave several other examples of how people create important meaning from what might seem like small behaviors, especially from the formal leaders, including whether or not the CEO shows up for a particular meeting.
Adrian says that our organizations are continuously woven tapestries (or webs) of conversation and meaning; that our thinking and behavior is simultaneously shaping and shaped by this tapestry; we are all weavers, working with many threads, making sense with others--all a part of Design!
He calls this the "practice of living design and asks us, what are the messages and invitations:
- in our behavior?
- in our conversations?
- in our language, and metaphors?
- in our presences and our absences?
- in our actions and inactions?
- in the form and nature of our systems and processes?
- in our settings and ceremonies?
In other words, what is it that we want to amplify?
Adrian then gives an example of a Provocative Proposition that focuses on values.
Bernard leads participants through a Design exercise, or design principles, or mini-visions, operationalized. Using pre-printed flip charts, listing the Formal Organization, Key Relationships/Partnerships, and Culture and Conversations opportunities, he invites small groups (seated by domains) to add any opportunities they can think of.
He then invites them to choose one high leverage/high passion item from the map and write a one-page design statement or provocative proposition for it, describing how this aspect of an extraordinary organization is functioning in everyday, organizational life. He asks them to write it in present tense, as if it were already happening all or more of the time (rather than just in exceptional moments) and in full, graphic detail--a word picture--in a way that represents a stretch from what exists.
Adrian then asks the small groups to create a metaphor, a graphic symbol of the proposition, capturing the essence of it in a picture, a single image. Participants then display their provocative propositions and their images. One person remains behind to "receive visitors" while others take a Gallery Walk, looking for "treasures of innovation", taking a few notes for themselves. After the Gallery Walk, a number of participants report out the treasures they discovered.
Bernard J. Mohr, president of the Synapse Group, Inc., has 25 years of experience in helping clients with collaborative, whole system change. In addition to writing four books and numerous articles, he developed North American's first advanced workshop and field practicum in Appreciative Inquiry. A founding partner of AI Consulting, senior member of the NTL Institute and member of the advisory board at the Taos Institute, Bernard completed his studies at the University of Waterloo, University of Toronto, and Columbia University.
Adrian McLean is a director of McLean and George, Ltd., specializing in facilitating long-term organizational and cultural change. Adrian lectured at Bath University for many years I n organizational change and development. He has many publications in the field of OD and cultural change. His current book in preparation is titled Changing Agendas. Adrian is an associate of Ashridge Management College, a fellow of Roffey Park Management College, and a founding partner of AIC.
To view or order the DVD of this session click here.
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