Transcript strange.nl

Strange| Strategy and Change
Mindfulness
Where and how to start?
Third International HRO workshop
January 9 &10, 2010
Shirine Moerkerken www.shirine.nl
Strange| Strategy and Change
What can you expect
in the next 30 minutes…?
The City of Amsterdam:
Staff rides to provoke a sense of urgency
But first, there are two things on my mind:
2. Where to start?: being mindful as an
interventionist
1. Where to start?: being mindful as
a guest speaker at this conference
Shirine Moerkerken www.shirine.nl
Strange| Strategy and Change
Where to start?
1. Being mindful as a guest speaker at this
conference (in interaction with the audience)
Can experience be transferred to others?
What could be helpful methods in doing that?
• Storytelling
• Introducing language to talk about experience
• Asking questions about your experiences
• Inviting you to experience
•…
Shirine Moerkerken www.shirine.nl
Strange| Strategy and Change
Where to start?
Are you preoccupied with failure…?
Are you reluctant to simplify…?
Do you have sensitivity to operations…?
RIGHT NOW
Can I recognize these principles in your
behavior or in your body language, in the
noises you make, in the way you look at me?
Shirine Moerkerken www.shirine.nl
Strange| Strategy and Change
Where to start?
2. Being mindful as an interventionist
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Strange| Strategy and Change
Imagining failure as an
interventionist…
• I help organizations with what they think is
an answer to their problem
• I miss weak signals in the first
moments of interaction
• I simplify, search for the one true definition
of ‘the’ problem that needs to be solved
• I take over and my client is depending
on me
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Strange| Strategy and Change
Imagining failure as an
interventionist…
The first interactions
This period of defining
This period of negotiating
IS WHERE YOU DO 50% OF THE WORK
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Strange| Strategy and Change
The first moments of interaction
So let’s take a closer look at this 50%
• March 2007: meeting at ‘Kunstwerken’
• September 2008: meeting with the Board of
DITT
• May 2009: meeting at the ‘Alliance’ of
six departments who are taking care
of the Amsterdam public space
Shirine Moerkerken www.shirine.nl
Strange| Strategy and Change
The art of intervening
• These examples illustrate the
presence and lack of mindfulness
• Negotiating with the client
before starting a (change) project:
• What problem is this an answer to?
• Who experiences a sense of urgency?
• Which people and therefore perspectives
are included?
• What cannot be questioned or touched?
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Strange| Strategy and Change
Where to start?
Think of a project you are working on at the
moment
• What problem is your project an answer
to?
• Who experiences a sense of urgency?
• Which people and therefore perspectives
are included?
• What cannot be questioned or touched?
Shirine Moerkerken www.shirine.nl
Strange| Strategy and Change
What can you expect
in the next 20 minutes…?
The City of Amsterdam:
Staff rides to provoke a sense of urgency
Shirine Moerkerken www.shirine.nl
Strange| Strategy and Change
Situation
• Department of Infrastructure
Traffic and Transport (DITT)
in the City of Amsterdam in The
Netherlands
• Assignment: improving the collaboration
between employees working in different
sections in the organization
• The lack of collaboration so far resulted in
critical articles in the papers and in the
decision of an alderman to resign
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Strange| Strategy and Change
Situation
• Large number of
organizations that work
in Amsterdam on infrastructural projects
• Projects are very complex (technological,
social and political)
• The management and workers at DITT
have gotten used to things going wrong,
fixing problems at the last minute
• They shrug when they hear what went
wrong this time. They got numbed in a way
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Strange| Strategy and Change
Proposal at 'Kunstwerken'
Staff Rides …
to provoke a sense of urgency
Shirine Moerkerken www.shirine.nl
Strange| Strategy and Change
Staff Rides
Choice of unexpected events
Preparation by the owner of the event
Three storytellers
Three groups of managers and employees
that are asking blame free questions
• Reconstruction of the timeline
• Looking for dysfunctional patterns
•
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•
•
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Strange| Strategy and Change
The Blame Free Principle
• We postpone our interpretations and
judgments
• We do that by including multiple
perspectives
• And by asking participants to tell their story
in terms of observations
• We do not look for guilty parties that
contributed to the unexpected event
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Strange| Strategy and Change
Postponing your judgment
• Judging enables you to make a decision
• If it is not necessary to make a decision,
you can postpone your judgment
• By postponing your judgment, you can
start observing and renew your
observations and interpretations
concerning a certain event
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Strange| Strategy and Change
Including multiple perspectives
• One observation can be interpreted in
ten different ways
• Ten interpretations can be valued in
hundred different ways
• Connecting the who’s and the what’s
enables you to see multiple perspectives
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Strange| Strategy and Change
Storytelling in observations
• Tell me about the specific moment that you
experienced something you did not expect?
• Where were you at that time, who was
there with you, were you sitting or
standing?
• What did you say, in what way did you
move?
• And then? What happened then?
• And then?
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Strange| Strategy and Change
No one is to blame for
• We assume that patterns of interaction will
make anyone act in the same
way, making the same
mistakes as did the person
in this specific situation
• So it is about changing the
patterns, and the conditions
in which these patterns can excist, not
about changing the person
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Strange| Strategy and Change
Invitation to experience…
I invite you to stand and walk over to
someone
And to practice some blame free
evaluating by asking the other person
about how he or she woke up and got to
the conference this morning
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Strange| Strategy and Change
Method of implementation
Step 0:
Step 1:
Step 2:
Step 3:
Step 4:
Step 5:
First moments of interaction
Preparation with management
Preparation with employees
Preparation of the staff rides with
the ‘owners’
Executing staff rides
Joint analyses and action
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Strange| Strategy and Change
In other words…
A staff ride is not an easy ‘can – use – it –
anywhere – anytime’ intervention
Mindfulness does also apply here
Shirine Moerkerken www.shirine.nl
Strange| Strategy and Change
Difficulties
• Being part of the patterns
of the organization…
• When the sense of
urgency becomes part of
your own system…
• ‘Success’ leading to
becoming a one trick
pony…
• Relationships deepen and
therefore understanding…
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Strange| Strategy and Change
Results
Management and employees:
• learnt how to evaluate their (non-)
collaboration in a blame free manner
• became aware of the dysfunctional patterns
that have become part of the organization’s
culture, habits and processes
• understood how they contribute in
maintaining these dysfunctional patterns
The staff rides evoked a sense of urgency
Shirine Moerkerken www.shirine.nl
Strange| Strategy and Change
Conclusion
• Mindfulness, where to start?
• Staff rides to provoke a sense of urgency
• Mindfulness in the process of using
this tool
Shirine Moerkerken www.shirine.nl
Strange| Strategy and Change
What can you expect the next 10
minutes…?
Shirine Moerkerken www.shirine.nl