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Things that make you go hmmmm…..

Only recently, driving in Jamaica with my fiancee, she asked me about all the different “Pens” that we have in Jamaica.

You know… Tinson Pen, Faith’s Pen, May Pen, Androus’ Pen, Comma Pen, etc. She asked me what a “pen” is, and I told her that it used to be a place where they would pen up animals for sale. We have lots of them in Jamaica… and nowhere else that I can find.

Then, I was in Bim (Barbados) last week and heard of yet another “Gap”. Now, we have a gap or two here and there in Jamaica (e.g. Hardware Gap near Hollywell), but not as many as they have in B’dos, and we don’t have our Gaps in town, only someplace in the hills. They have the famous St. Lawrence Gap, Pickwick Gap, Alleyne School Gap, Gowdy Gap, South Gap, Carter’s Gap, et al..

It might surprise a Bajan to learn that we, in Jamaica, have only one or two “gaps” that we all know about. They’d probably think that we have a hard time getting around without the assistance of “gaps.”

In Trinidad the other day, my fiancee and I were liming with her father and his wife, and they pointed out a piece of what we in Jamaica call “open land,” but they referred to as “The Savannah.”

Now, this was no Queen’s Park Savannah. It looked like a piece of bush to my untrained eye. They explained that the developer of the area had carefully set aside the land to be a savannah for the neighbourhood — a purposely created piece of green, open space created for the enjoyment of the residents. They used to play cricket and football there, take walks, pick fruits from the trees, and maybe exercise horses while sipping tea and eating crumpets. You could almost hear the crunch of little children’s teeth as they bit into the crumpets (having never actually eaten a crumpet, I can only imagine, but they do sound crunchy).

But all there was left of that grand time was a piece of open land. An enterprising neighbour decided to capture a piece of it and placed her greenhouse on the property, in plain view, without repercussion or resistance.

It made me ask the question… how many Savannahs are there in Trinidad?

Well, it have the Queen’s Park Savannah, Aranguez Savannah, Mausica Savannah, Couva Savannah, Aripo Savannah, Caroni Savannah, and more.

In Jamaica, we only have Savannah-La-Mar – a town in the west of the island. In Barbados, they have the Garrison Savannah which looks huge, until one considers the Savnnah in Trinidad.

Why the difference? Who knows, but it does make me go Hmmmm….

I’ve had the privilege of recently working with some right-brained thinking experts — expert inventors like Scott Hilton-Clarke at Confida.

My first exposure to right-brained techniques came by accident. I read what I think was Tony Buzan’s first book on Mind-Mapping as a teenager, and have used that technique over the years to study for high school exams (CXC and A’levels), write papers, give speeches, brainstorm business opportunities, etc. The technique is useful for depicting the space around a problem or issue or question, and in seeing the space as a whole, and what I’m calling its “vibe.”

As an engineer deeply trained in the use of linear logic to solve problems, this whole approach is difficult to describe, but powerful in its effects. Peter Senge was one of the first to apply the idea of systems thinking to the business arena, and he spoke about the separation of cause and effect in time and space… although systems thinking could be used to fill the gap with essentially linear cause and effect chains of actions.

He pointed to the fact that there is more to organizations than meets the eye… hidden dimensions. And if you could see these dimensions, you could take an action in once place that would produce a result at some other place in space in time, and that others would not be able to see how the result could possibly be produced by taking that action.

Some sales trainers know that having a trainee clean up their desk, their car and their closets can help jump-start sales.

Forgiving an old boyfriend can lead to meeting someone.

Recently, I’ve been using more right-brained techniques to understand wholes, and to read spaces, and “see” and “hear” what they are saying. Of course, it’s not possible to “see’ and “hear” a space literally, but these are the best ways I know to describe what I’m doing when some internal antennae of mine is picking up information from…. a void.

For example, when one is entering a room filled with people, there is a “space.”

When one is in a Carnival band, say Poison, versus another band, say Harts, the “space” is very different.

While I have a relatively “new” antennae, I have found it becoming increasingly reliable, and I’ve been able to say and do things that make no linear sense, but do produce results I want to produce, much in the same way that balancing your checkbook allows an unexpected check to arrive in the mail.

There will be more on this later, to be sure.

Scott (my partner in crime) just came up with an additional insight — that un-confronts are a precursor to issues.

More on this later…

OK, it’s now later. A company I was talking with seems to have an executive team that is riddled with un-confronts.

Their corporate culture is a very polite and civil one, which is another way of saying that they don’t go out of their way to cause confrontation with each other. That’s another way of saying that they do whatever they can to not create a fuss, or an upset, and do their best to avoid getting involved in any way in anything that might “get out of hand.”

The result is like a married couple in which the husband and wife have learned not to talk about the things that might be upsetting. The short-term result is that there is no conflict.

The long term result is disastrous (this I know from first-hand experience! LOL) Important issues go unaddressed, which just means that they go underground as little seeds only to emerge later as scary, evil plants that consume the life around them. Yikes.

Anyway, these un-confronts have filled up the space between people on this executive team. This can be appreciated as more of an image, or a mental picture held only in the mind’s eye. Not a literal picture…. but something that is seen only from the right side of the brain.

Looking to fix certain problems in the organization takes seeing the situation with the right side of the brain, or in other words looking for and seeing the space between people in the company. Certainly, changing something like company culture or engaging in activities like team-building can be facilitated by seeing the space of the company.

One of the things to see is the space created by un-confronts.

Un-confronts don’t lend themselves much to left-brained techniques like adding up the number of them, putting them in priority order, assigning them a time slot in your schedule for resolution, etc. One can always do these things…. but they don’t make much of a difference.

Instead, we must look at the entire space, and tune into it’s “vibe” so to speak and act accordingly. In the case of this executive team, there are huge significant issues … yet. But there are un-confronts, which, as Scott says, are just the precursor to real issues.

I’ve been working with these executives to convert the un-confronts into opportunities — which is what good consulting is all about. Sometimes I facilitate a conversation, and at other times I consult with managers and coach them in how to be effective in conducting successful confrontations.

I was in a meeting recently with someone who had the accountability of driving sales in a non-profit. After the meeting was done I was truck by the fact that the salesperson had no goals.

He did not have goals that were set by his boss or anyone else… only 3 years goals. He was not working against a specific short-term target, and was not operating like someone whose job depended on producing results.

In fact, as I sit here typing I realize that I don’t know if the person is a volunteer or an employee, and whether or not they are paid by commission. Usually, I can tell by the level of attention whether someone is paid on commission, and in this case I think that they were not, due to the lack of accountability I felt in the meeting.

The space was “loose,” and seemed filled with what I’m now calling “un-confronts.” No-one in the organization was confronting the fact that the results were paltry, and that there was no plan in place to hit any particular target.

Unless there is some lucky strike, this operation is driving it’s own demise.

“Un-confronts” are critical confrontations that are being avoided, either consciously or unconsciously by an organization. They remain in this state either because the people in the organization lack either the skill or the will (or both) to convert the un-confronts into successful outcomes.

As a consultant, part of what I do skillfully is to turn the light on un-confronts, and assist people in converting them. The underlying assumption here (which often goes unstated) is that the people who work in the jobs are the most informed and know exactly what needs to be done, if they could only have the conversations to get them done.

As an outsider, I am often given the power to bring up these conversations, and if I have the trust of the participants, I can facilitate the conversation that they are unable to have without my being there.

This happens on projects, in workshops, in training, in consulting — they are always at work in the full range of interventions that my firm engages in.

Some of the indicators of un-confronts are:-

• specific justifications as to why the confrontation needs to be avoided — “I can never say THAT to them”
• bringing up prior failures as a reason for not trying again — “If you had the experience I had, you would never try again either.”
• a denial that anyone could possibly be successful — “The only thing that will work is them leaving.”
• an unwillingness to look at developing the necessary skill or will to be successful — “There is no way I could be successful — I hear what you are saying, but what if I fail again?”

Each of the interventions that we design are about creating opportunities to have these conversations successfully, by offering the following:

• creating the right kind of will (their attitudes and ways of being gets changed in courses that produce a personal shift or change)
• developing the necessary skill (courses that use video-taped feedback and introduce cutting-edge principles)
• creating an environment with sufficient positive consequences (by changing reward and pay structures, public awards, promotion criteria, policies)
• introducing shared communication software (to enable data sharing that vastly improves the content of the data that project team-members share)

Creating this space of accountability takes courage, and is not for every employee (by their own choice). It is, however, for every company that wants to be successful. This is absolutely unavoidable for long-term success.