Reverb Consulting

(photo by advicepig)

Metacognition is thinking about thinking. Reflection, observation, and synthesis are the skills that we use to think about ourselves and about ourselves in any given circumstance or system, like a relationship or an organization.

An important place to start to become “metacognitive” is to start gathering insights through non-judgmental, non-rationalizing observation of one’s actions, behaviors, and beliefs. A good first observing task or actually place to research is to look into one’s own strengths, weaknesses, interests and passions:

What am I good at?
What is hard for me?
What types about things do I always procrastinate in doing?
What areas do I like to learn about?
What do I love to do, places I love to be, things I love to think about?
How would I choose to spend my time if I had absolute freedom?
How do I learn best?
Do I like to learn alone or with people?
Do I like to learn from books, audio, video, or hands-on?
Do I like to know things or do I like to learn things?
Do I like sharing my knowledge?
Do I like using my knowledge as a badge, weapon, or barrier?
What do I know about how people learn and specifically about how I learn?
Do I arrange situations so that they fit me, my strengths, and my learning style?
How do I manage my time?
What do I not know about me that I would like to know?
What have I not considered? (usually this is what really bugs you about other people)

Metacognition is similar to Gardner’s intrapersonal intelligence where one constructs an accurate self-perception and uses it to make decisions. Knowing yourself helps you become more strategic, more effective, and more perceptive and understanding of others. Deep self-knowledge creates the space and acceptance for the fact that others can and will be really different for us.

Knowing oneself well allows each of us to pinpoint those beliefs and skills that are just too small anymore, too limiting. It is by growing these skills and beliefs that we are able to adapt to new challenges, new people, and new directions.

Looking inward is the first best step to creating and leading new outward direction that is sustainable.

red & creamwhite, originally uploaded by miss sophie.

“Sharing knowledge is not about giving people something, or getting
something from them. That is only valid for information sharing. Sharing knowledge occurs when people are genuinely interested in helping one
another develop new capacities for action; it is about creating learning processes.” - Peter Senge

Peter Senge is the director of the Center for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is known as the author of the book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. He is a senior lecturer at the System Dynamics Group at MIT Sloan School of Management and founded the Society for Organizational Learning.

According to Senge “learning organizations are those organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.” He argues that only those organizations that are able to adapt quickly and effectively will be able to excel in their field.

My Voo Doo Doll Donut, originally uploaded by Jamiereverb.

I spent 3 days outside of Portland last week working with some nice folks from schools in Washington and Oregon. After the leadership conference was over, I headed to downtown Portland to look around because I have heard for years how livable Portland is.

Wow! I would consider living there. Of course, I had 3 days of bright sunshine and moderate 70 degree weather. I hear both the high temps and the sunshine are unusual. But, for the days I was there, it was exquisite. I drove to the arts district and toured the Portland Art Museum. They had a nice collection of modern and regional art and an exceptional show of M.C. Escher’s work.

After walking around the arts district which had the greatest looking loft and pied a terre apartments as well as parks full of kids and people enjoying the weather, I set out to find Voo Doo Donut Shop.

Not too far from the arts district is where the Voo Doo Donut Shop is located. Big signs in the area exclaim Keep Portand Weird! And, this area was weird, but I really appreciated that because traveling to see yet another GAP or another Crate and Barrel is just flat boring. The craft beer pubs, fish and chip trailers, and tattoo shops offer much more of a sense of local culture and flavor.

My donut was delicious. With the first bite, I got the cold raspberry filling all over myself. I had to live with the stickiness because there were about 25 people lined up for donuts, extending out the door and onto the sidewalk and I couldn’t break line to get a napkin.

If you make it to Portland, find Voo Doo Donuts. It’s a treat!

Portland (Oregon) International Airport, originally uploaded by flyvancity.

I spent a long evening in the Portland International Airport this week. I had a good chance to walk around, watch people, and pull into a local brew pub and try a couple of the local craft beers.

I didn’t get a picture of it, but I was impressed by PDX’s (Portland’s airport code) vision statement: Predictably. Deliberately. eXtraordinary. As I caught up on my email at one of the free wireless work areas, I stared at this statement of service and came to think how cool and how unifying for the airport to state what they set out to do.

To be predictable, consistent, on time. Travelers like that. The people dropping them off and picking them up like that.

To be deliberate, intentional, focused on giving good service. Again customers like that. Service people like being able to do that and get good feedback in return. By stating our intention, we are more likely to reach our goal.

To be extraordinary, remarkable, delightful, better than the ordinary, expected others. Why would you want to be anything but extraordinary.

I appreciate PDX’s consistency, intention, delightful atmosphere and service.

What might you state as a visionary goal like would be at once focusing and aspirational like PDX?

Reform of the American health care system is the center of media attention and political debate in our country today.  President Obama recently proclaimed that the greatest threat to the fiscal health of America is the cost of health care.  The aim of health care reform is to extend medical coverage to all and bring costs under control.   With the premium for my family health insurance plan up 58.8% from two years ago when I last raised my deductible, it is the center of my attention as well. I read that around the White House that a “must read” is Atul Gawande’s recent article in the June 1, 2009 issue of The New Yorker:  The Cost Conundrum, What a Texas town can teach us about health care. Not that every “must read” at the White House is a “must read” at my house, I did take the time to read Gawande’s article.

In hopes that it might lead to some clue as to a solution for our national health care crisis, Gawande traveled to McAllen, Texas in search of an answer to why Medicare expenditures there are twice the national average.  He disproves several suggested explanations including that the quality of health care in McAllen is better.  In fact, he sights research that there is no correlation between money spent and the quality of service received.  He does place blame, however, on the fact that in McAllen there is overuse of medical care.

When Gawande asked leaders in the McAllen medical community to explain the high cost and overuse of medical care in their community, they couldn’t.  While they could defend McAllen reflexively, they really didn’t know the big picture of what was happening in the health care arena.  He realized that it wasn’t their responsibility to understand the big picture.  No one had that responsibility.  Health care costs ultimately arise from the accumulation of individual decisions that doctors make.  In cases in which the science was unclear, some physicians pursued the maximum possible amount of testing and procedures; some pursued the minimum.   Where doctors fall on this continuum, according to Gawande, depends on where they came from. Why?  The culture of money.  Different places have a different dominate culture of money.  The culture of money in the McAllen medical community is one where each patient are treated as a profit center.

There is much incentive for every community in America to be like McAllen, Texas.  Why are they not all this way?  Gawande suggests a answer by highlighting Mayo Clinic and a few other situations where highest quality is coupled with low costs.  The core tenet at Mayo is ‘the needs of the patient come first’.  The needs of the patient come before the convenience or the revenue of the doctor.  Mayo has a collaborative way of practicing medicine.  The aim is to raise quality and to help doctors and staff work together as a team.  Doctors take time to interact listen and discuss.  They collaborate on cases.  At Mayo doctors are not silos.  A side effect of this is that costs are lower.

Gawande opines that a war for the soul of American health care is being waged all over the country and it centers on one question:  is the doctor set up to meet the needs of the patient or to maximize profits?  While he believes that there is not an insurance system that makes the two aims match perfectly, one that does so much to mis-align them as our current system is disastrous.  In America, doctors are paid for quantity not quality.  They are paid as individuals rather than as members of a team working together for patients.  There is no one accountable for the totality of care.

To successfully reform our health care system, someone must take responsibility for the totality of care.  There must be collaboration to increase prevention and the quality of the care.

There are a number of themes that are revealed in Gawande’s article.  These themes can be a lesson for anyone without regard to their specific industry:

Money spent and results obtained do not always correlate.

Choose quality not quantity.

Collaborate; silos can be costly.

Teamwork is powerful.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

I challenge you to read Gawande’s article with an eye to what you can glean that can be applied to your own work.

(photo by Pondst)

The keystone is the crowning piece at the apex of an arch, locking all of the other pieces in place. The weight of all the other structural stones is supported by the keystone. Similarly, the mission statement is the structural glue to all other elements of school culture. The mission statement becomes the deciding criteria, a pivotal lens, for all decisions with one simple question: does this idea, this project, this person support the mission? The mission statement is like the keystone in an arch, the critical element of the organization’s architectural structure.

The mission statement is the solemn promise that you as an organization of people make to your customers, asking for their trust in your collective performance on that promise on a day-to-day, consistent basis throughout your environment. Collective – that means everybody, top to bottom, in the system, making good on the promise, everyday, consistently. Thus, the whole organization needs to become mission-driven: dedicated and focused on fulfilling the promise laid out by the mission statement.

A good mission statement has to be purposeful, meaningful, specific, concise, and clear. A clear message means that it is understood clearly, not that it was just sent clearly. The sender is responsible for the understanding of the message. The mission statement must focus on what you will do without fail for your customers. For a school, that means answering what are you promising to do for your students and their families? For a hospital, that means answering what do you promise to do for each patient and his loved ones? For the U.S. Federal Court Clerks, which I helped craft a vision and mission statement recently, that means answering what to you intend to do to assist and serve the public?

The mission statement is action-oriented. Your promise should have action verbs – develop, instill, create, inspire, support, serve, meet, etc. The regional U.S. Federal Court Clerks make this promise: to serve the public and support the court with a commitment to excellence.

(We promise) To ____________ whom by doing what, how?

That is the basic construction. Your promise might have multiple components. Here is how you know if you have too many: can you recite it easily from memory? Can your teachers? Can your parents? Can your students? This is a must because it is essential that we all know what we come to school to accomplish every day. A good target length is no more than 20 words.

The mission statement is not a description of who you are and what you believe. The mission statement is a promise of what you will do, if given the opportunity.

Here are some examples of promises companies we are all familiar with have made:

Google To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

3M To solve unsolved problems innovatively.

Southwest Airlines To provide the highest quality of customer service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and company spirit.

Marriott Hotel To make people who are away from home feel they are among friends and really
wanted.

When you make a promise, you are expected to work to fulfill it. You have asked the permission of the person to whom you made the promise to trust you to deliver, to perform. The critical action set up by the mission statement, therefore, is performance. A mission-driven environment is one in which everyone is committed to making good each day on the stated promise. The whole culture, it follows, must be set up to encourage and support mission delivery. This is terrific news because the whole culture can be infused with a dynamic sense of purpose and intention.

As other stones extend from the keystone, other elements of the organizational culture are integrated with the mission statement. The core values statement articulates the values that you collectively rely on, hold dear, as a community. The vision statement speaks to your future, articulates what sort of environment you intend to create and what you intend it to look like.

I like to create two additional written statements to the organizational architecture that both derive from the mission statement: your mantra, which is a short phrase that encapsulates how you will fulfill your mission, like Nike’s Just do it. The mantra keeps everyone on track and motivated. I also like to craft a position statement that outlines what you do best that is unique from all other competitors in your industry.

As organizational structure, we are talking about written statements that all fit on one page, all built upon the mission statement, the promise to the customer. These statements give the culture architectural structure and guidance. This type of organizational design is worth every bit of time, money, energy, and intellectual resources to have everyone literally, emotional, and energetically on the same page in performance expectations.

For the money, for the effort, for the long term sustainable results: mission statement and performance. Making a promise and fulfilling it. Telling the story of why that mission for your organization. Painting the picture of what the world will look like as a result of your fulfilling your mission. Telling the stories of how you fulfill your promise in big and small ways with many different customers everyday. And, becoming known in your community for walking your talk, embodying your mission and relishing the integrity and pride that comes with that reality everyday for every member of the organization.

Mission. Promise. Performance.

By the way, a great reputation markets itself. Focus on being your best self as an organization and you will have a myriad of authentic stories to tell of the difference you make in the neighborhood, community, and world.

Shared Understanding is knowing the rules, objectives, and boundaries of the pursuit. It is the rules of the game. It is knowing the spirit and culture and protocol of the game. Shared understanding is a state of being that is derived, not left to accidental and wishful thinking. Shared understanding is about renewal and alignment.

Creating shared understanding is not about doing what we have always done because we are not in the environment that we have always been in. Our context has and will change again and again. Our environment is fluid, unpredictable, dynamic and unavoidable. To reach our destiny, we must traverse the environment as it is, not as we would like it to be. We must be fluid, unpredictable, dynamic, ever present, and watchful. We must always be on the lookout.

The three critical pieces that create shared understanding in an organization are the vision, the mission, and the values. These three structural components must be unique to your organization, well defined and articulated, and authentic. How do you accomplish that? Different organizations accomplish it differently, but the best way is to imagine your way forward. The best way is to use the collective wisdom of your organization to imagine its full potential, its utopia. Imagining your future requires recognizing the demands of the larger context in which your organization operates, assessing the skills, knowledge, and mindset of your organization currently and asking what needs to change now to result in our making this vision a reality.

What are the specifics of imagining? The specifics of imagining are active thinking skills and active emotional reasoning: questioning, observing, pushing, probing, wondering, synthesizing, connecting, realizing, creating. The work of imagining is asking what to do we do? Why is it necessary and important? Does the world need us to do this? How does it change the world? How does the world value what we do? How do we value what we do? Are we sure? Is this exciting? Do others care? Do we care? How can we do it differently and better than anyone else? What do we need to believe in and do in order to make our dream for the future come true?

Once the organization has done the difficult yet necessary and invaluable work of imagining their future, crafting a vision and mission, and articulating their values, everything else - all decisions, actions, words, focus, etc. - derive from these guiding statements of possibility, purpose, and particular project criteria. This development work creates shared understanding because it lays out where we want to do, what we want to do, and how we will do it with integrity, in a way that reflects out fundamental beliefs and values.

These three components become the beacon that guide the way forward.

When I was a child my father had an 8 track player in his car.  He didn’t choose to have it; it was just in the car that he bought.  I liked to listen to vinyl records and thought the idea of music of your choice while you drove was a pretty good idea.  My dad bought me a stereo with turntable to play my records and it included an 8 track player.  Again, I don’t think that my dad choose that 8 track player; it just came with the stereo.  Before long my older brother came home from college and he had added a cassette player in his car.  When he showed me his new toy, he explained that he had come to the conclusion that the cassette format offered a better technology than the 8 track format.  He predicted that the 8 track format would become obsolete; it would cease to be relevant.  I immediately took issue with his conclusion.  I had no factual evidence to rebut his claim.  I had never even considered the question before.  But as a young child with an undeveloped mind, I was adamantly opposed to his conclusion.  Why?  Because I owned an 8 track player.  I was on the ‘8 track team’ and I was loyal to my team.  This automatic defensive reaction, concluding without any conscious thought, is something that I consider to be human nature.  I see this reaction all the time now even in well educated adults.  Some people just have an automatic aversion to anything new.  They have that mindless automatic reaction without any investigation.  They never even ask a question.

My brother considered the choice between more relevant music players available at the time and made a decision.  He asked the question, “What is the best available format?” His answer was right at that point in time.  When he asks that same question today, there is a different answer.  The question remains the same but the answer has changed. Not only has the 8 track lost it’s relevance, so has the cassette.  Today my brother has an iPod.  In this analysis of decision making and its factors, I see another valuable lesson.  I encounter plenty of folks that seem to have the attitude that once they get “the” right answer, they can check that off and move on. They never considered questioning again.  They never “re-consider”.  Consider your acquaintances that still have the same hairstyle that they sported in their early twenties.

Be mindful of the fact that there is a question to be asked.
Be accepting that you may not know the answer.
Be willing to ask the question.
Determine the answer appropriate to this moment in time.
Consider the answer relevant only for right now because answers change.
Ask the question again.

Stay relevant

Here is what the 'relevance expert' suggested for our Mom on Mother's Day

“He won’t share with me.” Human nature. We see it in young kids all the time. And, we see it in adults all the time. It is impossible to create a cohesive team if members of that team are not willing to share. Some people might not share because they are unskilled at sharing. That is workable. But unwillingness is not tenable and will keep the leadership team bound in various uncomfortable, ineffective, and time-wasting ways. Unwillingness is nuclear waste: toxic, dangerous, and highly destructive.

Here is how the reasoning flows: Does any member of your team display an unwillingness to be open-minded and learning new ideas, habits, ways of thinking?

If yes, is this unwillingness overt or covert? If a team member’s unwillingness is overt, you are lucky. Cause and effect reasoning is pretty easy to apply to overtly counter-productive behavioral and emotional ways. If a team member’s unwillingness is covert, be careful because the covert, passive aggressive actions - inspiring and manipulating the back channel conversations, feeding the grapevine, talking a happy game in the meeting and not following through - are manifestations of power. Power is little Johnny who gives his younger brother the toy to play with, but decides to give him a punch along with it while Mom is not looking. Little Johnny’s and Little Susie’s who do not like to share grow up and come to work.

People create a community of shared leadership by being intentional about creating a community of sharing. They intend to share the responsibility of leadership, the process of leadership, the learning of leadership, the actions of leadership, the reach of leadership. The team has to mutually commit to figuring out what our team means by “shared” - what it looks like on a day to day basis, what we understand it to mean, how it defines our thoughts and actions, how we create systems to reinforce what we want to happen in our relationships.

The process to convert a patriarchal view of leadership that is grounded in position on the organizational chart has many stages. The best place to begin is to start with the realization and intention that a team that shares the responsibility for the future of the organization will be able to accomplish and maintain more than one single individual. The first step: intention.

The second step is a question: Who’s “in”?

Who’s “in” is important. The people that are “in” need to be courageous. They need to risk the discomfort of being vulnerable and intimate with their team members. They need to be curious and open-minded, willing to learn as they go, sometimes in a public way. They need be willing to be wrong and to fail because learning anything new includes replacing old ideas with new, more useful ones. They must learn to reflect because only through reflecting on our own thoughts, skills, and mistakes do we learn.

Being “in” requires a lot, mostly commitment, passion for the cause, faith in the journey, and trust in your team members because they will be your fellow travelers.

Are you “in”? Know what that means, what it entails. And, know that if you are not “in”, you are in the way.

Leadership is a combination of mindset, behaviors, skills, and a cause. Leadership, thus, is more like an attitude than it is a position. Anyone, regardless of their position in the organization can exert leadership. To me, leadership is kin to “voice” because this deep calling bolstered by skills and behaviors motivates everything you do. Every action reflects, speaks, “gives voice” to the cause and its urgency.

Leadership can be shared when many people unite their strengths, perspectives, skills, and passions toward the same cause. Shared leadership, thus, propels a mission or a vision. It is in the uniting of our unique skills and interests and strengths that we bring full force to the cause.

Shared leadership is a collective undertaking to accomplish a shared vision. Shared leadership requires teamwork but it is deeper because each individual is intentionally working to exert leadership which includes improving his or herself in effective ways so that one’s participation and contribution are at their fullest potential.