Archives For vision

The Cost of a Missing “Why”

Dwayne Harapnuik —  February 20, 2014 — Leave a comment

golden_circle

When a clear vision, what I will refer to as the “Why”, is missing people easily lose sight of their primary responsibility and get caught up in pushing priorities that may be important but when placed in context of the bigger picture result in a completely different focus. Let me explain…

My priority as an Instructional Development Consultant is to help faculty create the most effective learning environment. Therefore, I look for ways to use technology as a tool to enhance learning and create a more engaging environment. When I run into challenges, obstacles and the day to day bureaucracy of higher education I deal with those challenges or obstacles in such a way that they don’t hinder the faculty from creating significant learning environments and look for ways to ensure that we are still effectively serving our learner.

In contrast, if a person doesn’t have a clear understanding of Why we do what we do then they are left to focus on their own priorities and that usually means getting caught up in the details and minutia of their job. Institutions like BCIT have a FOIPOP policy and generally the purpose of these types of policies are to:

– Ensure compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection and Privacy Act
– Define the roles of employees and contractors in complying with the Act
– Reduce the institutions liability and risk of litigation due to inappropriate handling of information
– Protect the institutions reputation

These are all admirably and necessary purposes and it is good that we have a policy and office which is concerned with these issues. Depending on your Why, something like a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPOP) can be dealt with in two different ways.

First way
Without a bigger Why the people tasked with ensuring that these purposes are upheld make these purposes the top priority and all activities are weighed against these priorities. The best example of this in higher education is the debate of using the cloud, social media and other collaborative and distributed resources which the institution does not control. If a person’s Why is to enforce the policy then free software that is based in the cloud, social media tools and other resources cannot be used because these tools contravene the policy. If people are adamant about using these tools then explicit hoops must be jumped through or the institution will create its own cloud based tools that they can control. The first and most common response is to abstain or restrict for fear of the consequences. Fear becomes the driving force. Fear is the factor that is preventing all of higher education from moving to Google Docs or Office 365 and providing their students access to the most widely used collaborative tool, not to mention saving millions of dollars each year.

Second way
In contrast, if an institution and all members hold that their Why is much bigger than a policy and the top priority is to create the most effective learning environment for its students, when they come up against a policy like FOIPOP the response will not be reactive and based on fear. It will be proactive and creativity will be used to explore how can we use these engaging collaborative tools and still adhere responsibility to FOIPOP. With the right Why, people are automatically looking for ways to use these tools and still satisfy the FOIPOP requirements. More importantly the right Why can motivate people to explore creative solutions like revisiting the legislation to see if the interpretation that is being made is really the best interpretation that will help us to insure that we are creating significant learning environments.

IF everyone in an organization from the housekeeping staff on up to the President all hold the same Why—something like:

We are committed to creating significant learning environments that will help prepare our learners to face an uncertain future and enable them to learn how to learn and ultimately solve problems that don’t even exist.

then FOIPOP and other bureaucratic obstacles are not dealt with reactively in fear but are proactively managed in such a way that they do not hinder the bigger Why.

The change of perspective that a clearly defined and well communicated Why can move an organization from being fearful and reactive to being creative and proactive, assuming an organization has the leadership wisdom to value proactive workers (see my post The Paradox of Being Proactive.

Does your institutions have a clear and well communicated Why? If it doesn’t what can you do about it?

In Innovation , , , , ,
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The Power of Vision – Transformative Scenario Planning

Dwayne Harapnuik —  August 26, 2013 — Leave a comment

In Adam Kahane’s powerful address at RSA he sums up his Transformative Scenario Planning approach as simply:

“Telling stories about what might happen. Not stories about what will happen, not forecasts; not stories about what should happen; not proposals or visions or positions but stories about what MIGHT happen–relevant, challenging plausible clear stories about what might happen. And in this way building new understandings new relationships, new intentions and hence new actions.”

Kahane points out three challenges to this approach which have been transcribed directly from his talk:

“First of all in working in this way we are trying not only to implement an idea or a way forward that we already have but together to discover a way forward. One of the features of complex conflictual problematic situations is there is agreement neither on the solution nor even on the problem. This is above all an emergent process which means it’s not predictable and it’s not controllable and for many people including for me who who like knowing where we’re going and like being in control of where we’re going this feels uncomfortable and difficult and risky.

The second way in which it’s not easy is that it requires us to work not only with our friends and colleagues but also with strangers and opponents. We’re were working on affecting transformations that we are unable to affect alone or just with our people. If you work not just with friends and colleagues but the strangers and opponents you will find yourself in real conflict, deep conflict, and for people like me who like things to be rational and nice this feels deeply uncomfortable and difficult and risky.

The final way in which it’s not easy and this is the most fundamental of all is that we’re working here not simply to adapt to un unpredictable world, were working in this way to transform the situation which we find to be unacceptable, unstable, unsustainable. In this way transformative scenario planning takes conventional scenario planning and turns it exactly on its head. And what’s required is exactly the discernment which Reinhold Niebuhr pointed to in this very famous invocation: lord give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. This here is where the real difference between advisers and actors that comes into the story. There’s that joke that in a in a ham omelette what is the difference in the contribution of the chicken and the pig. The chicken is involved and the pig is committed. This is the big difference if you’re trying to affect systemic transformation between being an observer, an advisor, and being an actor. Are you willing to be committed? And for for many people including people like me who are used to standing on the sidelines this is profoundly uncomfortable and difficult and risky. But these days it is exactly this stretching this uncomfortable difficult risky stretching that is needed of us. This is how we can create futures.”

In 2007 Abilene Christian University (ACU) produced and filmed a video called ACU Connected in which they told a story about what might happen if an entire University were to deploy mobile devices and embark on a mobile learning initiative. The video really was just a story about what might happen because when the script for the video was written the iPhone was not yet released and all of the scenarios portrayed were, at that time, just wishful thinking. The ACU Connected video simply presented what might happen, how relationships would develop, and most importantly how a new understanding of learning could be enhanced through mobility. The ACU Connected development team later referred to the video as a video vision cast because the vision that the video created was the primary catalyst for the success of the ACU mobile learning initiative. Faculty, administration and students watched the video and bought into the vision of the future that mobile learning could offer. More importantly faculty, administration and the students created that future.

I had always pointed to the ACU Connected video as the single most important catalyst for the mobile learning initiative at ACU and now with the help of Adam Kahane’s Transformative Scenario Planning approach I can substantiate my hypothesis. Change in higher education is very difficult to foster because of the complex conflictual problematic situations that are central to the academic setting. In addition there is seldom any agreement on whether there even is problem that requires a solution and as a result technological change is often avoided until it has been proven elsewhere.

The story that the ACU Connected told was big and plausible enough that an entire university to buy into. The realization of that vision took several years and is still ongoing but in only four short years there is ubiquitous mobile device usage at ACU and the learning culture of the institution has been positively changed. This does confirm that if we do dream big enough and share those dreams we can create new futures.

So if we really want to bring about change in our organizations we can use video to create and project a plausible and realistic a story of what could be. As Adam Kahane points out “telling stories about what might happen” goes a long way to actually making those stories a reality.

In Change , , , ,
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Video Vision Casting in Transformative Scenario Planning

Dwayne Harapnuik —  June 3, 2013 — Leave a comment

In Adam Kahane’s powerful address at RSA he sums up his Transformative Scenario Planning approach as simply:

“Telling stories about what might happen. Not stories about what will happen, not forecasts; not stories about what should happen; not proposals or visions or positions but stories about what MIGHT happen–relevant, challenging plausible clear stories about what might happen. And in this way building new understandings new relationships, new intentions and hence new actions.”

Kahane points out three challenges to this approach which have been transcribed directly from his talk:

“First of all in working in this way we are trying not only to implement an idea or a way forward that we already have but together to discover a way forward. One of the features of complex conflictual problematic situations is there is agreement neither on the solution nor even on the problem. This is above all an emergent process which means it’s not predictable and it’s not controllable and for many people including for me who who like knowing where we’re going and like being in control of where we’re going this feels uncomfortable and difficult and risky.

The second way in which it’s not easy is that it requires us to work not only with our friends and colleagues but also with strangers and opponents. We’re were working on affecting transformations that we are unable to affect alone or just with our people. If you work not just with friends and colleagues but the strangers and opponents you will find yourself in real conflict, deep conflict, and for people like me who like things to be rational and nice this feels deeply uncomfortable and difficult and risky.

The final way in which it’s not easy and this is the most fundamental of all is that we’re working here not simply to adapt to unpredictable world, were working in this way to transform the situation which we find to be unacceptable, unstable, unsustainable. In this way transformative scenario planning takes conventional scenario planning and turns it exactly on its head. And what’s required is exactly the discernment which Reinhold Niebuhr pointed to in this very famous invocation: lord give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. This here is where the real difference between advisers and actors that comes into the story. There’s that joke that in a in a ham omelette what is the difference in the contribution of the chicken and the pig. The chicken is involved and the pig is committed. This is the big difference if you’re trying to affect systemic transformation between being an observer, an advisor, and being an actor. Are you willing to be committed? And for for many people including people like me who are used to standing on the sidelines this is profoundly uncomfortable and difficult and risky. But these days it is exactly this stretching this uncomfortable difficult risky stretching that is needed of us. This is how we can create futures.”

In 2007 Abilene Christian University (ACU) produced and filmed a video called ACU Connected (select #3 Standard Def for the fastest download and quality balance) in which they told a story about what might happen if an entire University were to deploy mobile devices and embark on a mobile learning initiative. The video really was just a story about what might happen because when the script for the video was written the iPhone was not yet released and all of the scenarios portrayed were, at that time, just wishful thinking. The ACU Connected video simply presented what might happen, how relationships would develop, and most importantly how a new understanding of learning could be enhanced through mobility. The ACU Connected development team later referred to the video as a video vision cast because the vision that the video created was the primary catalyst for the success of the ACU mobile learning initiative. Faculty, administration and students watched the video and bought into the vision of the future that mobile learning could offer. More importantly faculty, administration and the students created that future.

I had always pointed to the ACU Connected video as the single most important catalyst for the mobile learning initiative at ACU and now with the help of Adam Kahane’s Transformative Scenario Planning approach I can substantiate my hypothesis. Change in higher education is very difficult to foster because of the complex conflictual problematic situations that are central to the academic setting. In addition there is seldom any agreement on whether there even is problem that requires a solution and as a result technological change is often avoided until it has been proven elsewhere.

The story that the ACU Connected told was big and plausible enough that an entire university to buy into. The realization of that vision took several years and is still ongoing but in only four short years there is ubiquitous mobile device usage at ACU and the learning culture of the institution has been positively changed. This does confirm that if we do dream big enough and share those dreams we can create new futures.

So if we really want to bring about change in our organizations we can use video to create and project a plausible and realistic a story of what could be. As Adam Kahane points out “telling stories about what might happen” goes a long way to actually making those stories a reality.

In Change , , , , , ,
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Culture Trumps Vision

Dwayne Harapnuik —  October 11, 2012 — Leave a comment

“Toxic culture is like carbon monoxide: you don’t see or smell it but you wake up dead! Senior pastors do a lot of good things, but they fail to understand the impact of the existing organizational culture on their new, exciting vision for the church. It is like changing the engine on a sports car to make it faster, but it’s spinning its wheels in the mud. Or to use a different metaphor, they try to transplant a heart into a patient whose body rejected the foreign organ. No matter how perfect the new heart is, the patient had no chance at all unless the body accepted it.

Culture — not vision or strategy — is the most powerful factor in any organization. It determines the receptivity of staff and volunteers to new ideas, unleashes or dampens creativity, builds or erodes enthusiasm, and creates a sense of pride or deep discouragement about working or being involved there.”

Sam Chand author of Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code: Seven Keys to Unleashing Vision and Inspiration (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series) points out that culture not only trumps vision but once you understand that it is the most powerful factor in an organization that new shinny vision will not be realized until steps are taken to bring about cultural change.

To get at the heart of where your organization culture is at Chand recommends examining the answers to the following questions:

http://cl.publicaster.com/SocialMedia.aspx?pubids=8365%7C326%7C7&digest=wXBoVOSSDDd8%2FT9GWFliCQ&sysid=1&1=1QA&2=CLK

The Pastors Coach – Culture Trumps Vision, By: Dr. Sam Chand via kwout

Chand also recommends forming an informal group to examine these and related questions. Identifying just how toxic your organization culture is a crucial first step, but you will still need to create the circumstances that will bring about the changes needed to move your organization culture to a better place. Unfortunately, this takes time and if an organization’s competitive advantage is its small size and ability to respond to new opportunities then a toxic culture will neutralize this competitive advantage. Furthermore, a toxic resistance to change may mean that it is too late for this particular organization. Seth Godin the author of Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us encourages leaders to recognize when it is too late and it is time to move on.

This can be a very tough pill to swallow for the people within the organization, but we all know it is often much more cost effective to build from scratch than it is to renovate. We are seeing the demise of many organizations across many industries so before we blame the economy, market, government or other external factors perhaps we need to take a closer look at the organization itself and, in particular, its culture.

The solution to this problem is to not let the culture get to the point where it is toxic. This requires balance of compassion, character, strength of conviction and sound leadership skills. Unfortunately, as Edwin H. Friedman points out in his book A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, there is a severe shortage of character and nerve in our society. In a rapidly changing world that is being projected forward by one disruptive innovation after another the difference between an organization surviving or thriving may be this strength of leadership and the ability to foster the circumstances that contribute to a strong, vibrant culture that motivates people to collaborate, serve and be and do their very best. What type of culture do you have in your organization and what are you doing about it?

In Change , , ,
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Start with Why

Dwayne Harapnuik —  October 19, 2011 — 2 Comments

I have to thank my colleague from Concordia, Bob Thompson, for sending a link to Sinek’s Tedx Talk from 2009. Sinek has an informative website www.startwithwhy.com that provides links to additional videos, his book and to useful free information about the Golden Circle and Sinek’s principles. You will also find a link to Sinek’s blog Re:Focus and an wonderful post about Left-Siders who are the very small minority of people who see the world differently and who may be the visionaries that we will need to lead us into a better future.

In Video - Wednesday Watchlist , ,
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