| Leading Change from Within
By Jacqueline Wong
In part a book review
and in part a reflection from her own lenses as an organization observer
and OD consultant, Jacqueline Wong summarizes key ideas from Peter
Block’s book “The Answer to How is Yes!” and echoes his views on the
importance of asking the right questions in organizations. The central
message is about making the personal choice to commit, rather than
waiting and hoping for the next right tool, right process, right
methodology, right timing, or sometimes, for the next right boss to come
along!
Peter Block is an eminent organizational consultant and thought-leader
who has inspired many through his work, and renowned for his authorship
of bestsellers such as Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your
Expertise Used, The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills at
Work, and Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest.
I once heard a parable
being told by senior leader in the civil service in a leadership forum.
You might have heard of it, it’s called “Chicken in Sinai”. The story
has it that a Prime Minister once visited the Sinai desert project – it
was an exciting experiment on how the Sinai desert could be turned into
a place to rear poultry and grow vegetables. The PM commended the host
of the project after visiting the place, saying “This is great, when you
succeed, you can bring the people here”, as in they can then populate
the place and have enough food produce to sustain people. The host,
however, gave answer that surprised the visitor, he said “No Sir, with
all due respect, you are wrong. When we bring the people here, we will
succeed.”
The Sinai project leader
knew something subtle but important: if they had begun by asking the
question “How do we succeed” in the first place, they might never get
there. Instead, they needed to ask “Who will share this vision, care
enough about it, and would choose to do it?”, success will come as a
natural by-product.
Behind any seemingly
impossible pursuit that was eventually realized in history, we would
find a story of faith, goodwill and hard work of the people involved.
However, first of all, it required the willingness to tolerate the
ambiguity of not knowing how it could be done and whether results
would be measurable or predictable in the first place.
“When we bring the
people here, we will succeed.”
How? is the Wrong
Question
“There is a depth in the question “How do I do this?” that is worth
exploring. The question is a defense against the action. It is a leap
past the question of purpose, past the question of intentions, and past
the drama of responsibility. The question “How?” – more than any other
question – looks for the answer outside of us. It is an indirect
expression of our doubts….” “Choosing Freedom, Service, and Adventure,”
Peter Block, Stewardship (p. 234)
The questions we ask
would determine the results we get. Peter Block in his book, “The
Answer to How is Yes” brings to light the importance of getting the
question right in the first place. His premise is that we as members of
a performance oriented culture, have yielded too easily to what is
doable and practical and popular, and in the process, we have sacrificed
the pursuit of what is in our hearts.
We often avoid the question of whether something is worth doing by going
straight to the question “How do we do it?”. He adds that in fact,
when we believe that something is definitely not worth doing, we are
particularly eager to start asking How?
Raised and educated in a
culture that is well known for valuing what is practical and doable, we
know this intimately – first hand. Those of us who are bosses have to
bear part of the blame in perpetuating a culture that values answers
over questions. After all, we all recall a time when we were told by
our bosses “Don’t just tell me what is the problem, give me the
solution!”
This is not to dismiss
the value of pragmatism and of giving priority to what works. Rather it
is a warning that by moving too quickly into the how (ie. What we know
today to be practicable), we might be setting limits on ourselves. We
limit ourselves by not applying our hearts and minds to clarify what
truly matters and staying long enough with what we might not have an
answer to in the first place.
No matter how we phrase
it, the “Big Assumption” behind any “How?” question is the belief that
we can find the right answer, and that it is probably out there
somewhere. What we lack is the one right tool, the one right
methodology. We are mechanics who cannot find the right wrench and it
must be out there somewhere and we’re just not looking hard enough!
The value we place on utility is so strong that our identity, as a
culture, and self-worth as a human being, is fundamentally about
“getting things done”.
“If something has no
immediate utility, if it does not work, we consider that a limitation.
In fact, talk, dreams, reflections, feelings and other aspects of who we
are as humans are considered lost production in many organizations.”
A Chase of the
Latest Fads
As a result, people are
constantly in a frenetic search for the next best initiative, the next
best “tool”, the next best management fad that might just be the
antidote to all our problems. The addiction to the tool, rather than
the purpose, lulls people into what Timothy Gallwey in his book “The
Inner Game of Work” calls a temporary state of “performance momentum” a
tunnel of action and reaction, or a sense of comfort that “we are at
least doing something”.
As a somewhat futile
attempt to change old habits, I once had a colleague with a sign on his
desk that said “Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There!.”
“If we could agree that for six months we would not ask How?, something
in our lives, our institutions, and our culture might shift for the
better. It would force us to engage in conversations about why we do
what we do, as individuals and as institutions. It would create the
space for longer discussions about purpose, about what is worth doing.
It would refocus our attention on deciding what is the right question,
rather than what is the right answer.”
When you ask people why are they are pursuing the latest initiative, you
would often hear that the goal is to get the award, to meet a target, to
achieve zero statistical errors…or worse still – because “they” want it
done. Yet at the core of it, when we catch people in the right places,
right times and safe environment where they will not be jeered by their
peers for sticking out, they would tell you that they are doing
everything in service of the success and survival of future generations,
to create a better organization, to serve, to defend the country.
When our intrinsic desires get suppressed long enough, winning becomes
more important than knowing why we were in the game in the first place.
Externally imposed targets (and rewards) eventually replace the innate
desires of people in institutions to create, contribute and add value.
“Each time we try to act
on an answer to the question How?, we will fail because, first, the
question wasn’t the right question, and second, the answer usually is a
product of someone else’s experience or past experiences, not our own.
It is difficult to act our another person’s answers, regardless of the
amount of goodwill with which it is offered.”
What Matters Most?
If asking “How” is not getting us the result we desire, perhaps it is
time to start asking some different questions. “Yes!” questions are
questions that helps us get to the core of our purpose, and brings us
closer to the possibility of more meaningful and sustainable change.
The alternative to asking “How?” is saying “Yes!”. Appended here is a
series of How? Questions transformed into Yes! Questions adapted from
the book and I added a couple more:
The How? Questions:
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The Yes! Questions: |
How do you do it?
|
What refusal have I been postponing?
- Do I know how to say “No” to what is not core
instead of saying yes to everything and going straight into action
|
How long will it take?
|
What commitment am I willing to make?
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How much does it cost?
|
What is the price I am willing to pay?
|
How do you get those people to Change?
|
What is my contribution to the problem I am
concerned with?
- Rather than seeing the “enemy is out there”, how
might I be contributing to it in some ways, or even colluding with
it silently by not surfacing my concerns?
|
How do we measure it?
|
What is the crossroad at which I find myself in my
life/ work?”
- We pursue what matters independently of how well we
can measure it. The crossroad question makes us pause to reconsider
What Matters Most to us. Many things, especially vision, new
ventures, even reality, cannot be “proven” in the beginning before
we begin our journey in exploring and experimenting. It would have
been futile trying to demonstrate that the world is round at the
time of Aristotle.
|
How have other people done it successfully?
|
What do we want to create together?
|
How to attract the right people to join our
organization?
|
What would make this an organization that is truly
worthy of people’s commitment?
|
Adapted from Chapter
2, Yes is the right question, Page 27 – 39.
Let’s Get Real
The only when people can
reach out to speak to each other about what really matters that real
change can happen. In workshops, we often get this question from
well-meaning participants – “how do we transfer this back in the “Real
World”? We sometimes return the question by asking “How many of you
feel you have been more real here in the workshop than you are
back at work?”.
On the average, seven
out of ten would feel they are much more prepared to surface their
innermost thoughts, concerns and discuss the “undiscussables” in the
workshops. Think about the loss this must translate to for the
organization! What impact do we have, as leaders, on whether people
perceive it as safe (or not safe) to share what they believe are most
important?
“The challenge is not that we do not know what matters to us; it is that
sustaining our actions becomes unbearably burdensome….Often we become
clearer about what matters to us when we are in a protected learning or
spiritual environment: a retreat, a sanctuary, a vacation conversation,
a workshop, or a coaching experience. In a moment of clear thinking
and feeling about what matters to us, we are determined to act on our
insight. However, once we get back to work, the temptation of
expediency, speed and what’s practical takes precedence.”
Reclaiming the
Desire to Do what is Purposeful
Peter’s book calls our
attention to the tradeoffs we’ve made in the name of practicality and
expediency, and offers a way for us to redirect our way of life to be
motivated by not what works, but by things that truly matter. He
advocated for the reclaiming of three qualities - idealism, intimacy,
depth and engagement.
Fixation with what works
has relegated idealism to a cold room. Yet we know that “nothing much
happens without a dream. Though it takes more than a dream to make it
happen, but the dream must be there first.” (Greenleaf, The Servant
Leader)
There is also very
little room for intimacy, depth and engagement in modern organizations.
Electronic communication has been used conveniently as an escape route
for us to avoid intimacy and engagement with others. In exchange for the
promise of greater efficiency and time, we succumbed to the great
benefits technology has offered us, but subconsciously, we’ve also
traded off our most primal means of connecting with people. Nowadays it
is not uncommon for cubical mates to communicate to each other across
the wall via email or text phone messages!
Intimacy means reaching
out to others in the most fundamental way, not because of the position
they hold and what we need from them, but for their true worth.
After awhile, colleagues
are people we perform day-to-day trans-actions with, sometimes we even
forget that they have families, children, identities beyond the title
given to them by the institution.
One of the best
illustrations of these qualities in action comes from an example that
was cited by Robert Quinn in his book Deep
Change,
“I remember one
executive with a large company that had never downsized. Suddenly, the
company announced the need for such a reduction. This man was asked to
inform number of people, his close associates and friends, that they no
longer had jobs. This painful task was barely completed when it was
announced that another downsizing was necessary, and the process was
repeated. This was followed by a third reduction. The psychological
impact was overwhelming, and the surviving staff members were nearly
immobilized. This man described his own terror when we went home at
night, looked at his children, and wondered what it would mean if he
could not pay for their education or if he could not maintain his home.
He wondered about his own market value. He had started out as an
engineer, but now he was a manager – a specialist in the bureaucratic
culture of his own particular company. Ina world where many mid-level
people were eliminated, he feared he was useless. He felt betrayed and
angry. He, like his colleagues, could now barely function at work. As
a result, the company’s performance fell, accelerating the entire
vicious cycle.
After months of
gut-wrenching agony, this man could take no more. He began to ask
himself who he really was and what he really value. He talked to his
wife about these issues. Did he have an identity separate from the
organization? Could they live on half his income if he switched jobs?
He was surprised and delighted to discover that the answer to both
questions was yes.
Answering these
questions had a freeing effect. He felt personally empowered. He
stopped worrying about the dangers of change and how he was being seen
by the organization. He began to ask himself what was needed in the
present. He saw his immobilized colleagues and realized that he needed
to do something to empower them. He designed a new role for himself.
He carefully selected people and invited them into meetings and asked
them what they wanted the company to look like in ten years.
Initially they were
startled by his question, but gradually they joined in the process of
designing the company’s future. His sense of empowerment spread to
others. Gradually, things began to improve.
In reflecting on the
entire experience, the man told me he had a n entirely new outlook on
the concept of leadership. He talked about a paradox. He claimed
that although he now acted much more independently, he cared more about
the organisation and was therefore twice as valuable.
This man had
successfully negotiated the process of deep change. Because he was more
internally driven, he was able to take part in the creation of his
external world. He was no longer an externally determined response to
his environment. He became more empowered and empowering. He was more
capable of leader under conditions of continuous change. He was a more
organic employee.”
Deep Change –
Discovering the Leader Within, Robert Quinn (Pg 7)
To bring deep change,
people have to “suffer” the risks. And to bring about deep change in
others, people have to reinvent themselves. Real change can only happen
if we are prepared, to be the change we want to see in others,
not just be doing it, but by being it.
Final Words
Finally, I would like to
leave you with a poem that had inspired me in watching change activists
move mountains in organizations – they seemed to all share in one
common belief that deep change starts from within. I hope you’ll find
this a source of inspiration too. Enjoy the journey.
A PERSPECTIVE
ON CHANGE
When
I was young and free
and my imagination had no limits,
I dreamed of changing the world.
As I grew older and wiser,
I discovered the world would not change,
so I shortened my sights somewhat
and decided to change only my country.
But it, too, seemed immovable.
As I grew into my twilight years,
in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing
only my family, those closest to me,
but alas, they would have none of it.
And now as I lie on my deathbed,
I suddenly realize: If I had only changed my self first,
then by example I would have changed my family.
From their inspiration and encouragement,
I would then have been able to better my country,
and who knows, I may have even
changed the world.
Anonymous -
These words were written on the tomb of an Anglican Bishop in the Crypts
of the Westminister Abbey
Jacqueline Wong, Sequoia Consulting
…creating organizations that are worthy of people’s commitment
jacq@sequoia.com.sg |
