Asking Good Questions

I just read an interesting post in HBR: The Art of Asking Questions, by Ron Ashkenas. He is talking about the need as a manager to inquire into your team's thinking without stopping their momentum. He also suggests 3 types of questions to ask:    

• about yourself
• about plans
• about the organization

These issues then beg the question: how do you frame questions in order to build your group's intelligence? They also suggest another possibility: could there be a mechanism for regularly asking the group questions, in order to gather important knowledge about how we are doing? In other words, you don't have to only ask questions at the decision point, or when you have concerns about direction (although Ashkenas' point is find out first rather than direct.)

It is worth building in a method for finding out how the emperor's clothes are doing; it is worth knowing how the project and the organization are being perceived by different stakeholder groups. And how those questions are framed can make the difference between interaction and actionable knowledge on the one hand and tepid opinion and further apathy on the other.

Using collaborative solftware allows your group to respond to such periodic assessments, and to help make sense of the combined answers. It allows these results to be developed on a level playing field, where there is no concern for 'who said what' -- just the ideas playing out against each other.

The Value of Feedback

This is basic stuff, but it is so easily overlooked in the everyday life of an organization. What do your customers really think? How are the actions of your leadership team perceived by others? Are we really going to deliver our next product feature on time? Are we on some collision course, and don't know it?
I was just reading about Robert Kaplan's new article in HBR this month: What to Ask the Person in the Mirror. He discusses the increasing importance and difficulty of getting an assessment of how you are doing as a leader (as you rise in a hierarchy), and advocates disciplined self-reflection in seven areas. And the importance of getting accurate feeback from your employees.
I remember a time when I was running a fast-growing company, and how important it was to have real advice from someone within my organization, who was unafraid of telling me how different the perceptions were down in the ranks than my outward-facing, change-driven priorities. She insisted that I spend the time (while I argued I didn't have it) to meet with everyone, explain the context (again!, from my perspective) and listen (to concerns that seemed to me dwarfed by customer requirements and structural shifts.) I needed to have that perspective -- from outside my immediate view. The organization needed to have me balance that feedback with the outer drivers, in order to build an effective change possibility.
We had a structured process for meeting with our key customers as a group on a regular basis, to review developments in our field, talk about areas of concern from their various vertical perspectives (policies, regulations, quality and costs), and also to build a sense of partnership. These were not always easy meetings -- divulging a problem or a special concession to a group of powerful corporate gatekeepers. But they served an important purpose of providing context for changes we needed, as well as helping our customers maintain perspective about their programs as we provided them.
There are many vehicles for getting valuable feedback. 360s, customer assessments, internal scorecards, employee culture surveys, prediction markets, confidence checks on strategy planks. Collaborative software makes these easy to set up -- the key is having the discipline and the will to ask for the information.
Think about your own situation -- how do you get feedback? What information should your organization know, but you don't? Who is going to tell you what you might not want to hear, and how is that going to happen?

Deeper Understanding Leads to Effectiveness

My partner here at GroupMind sent me an interesting article the other day: the author proposes looking at collaboration platforms within organizations in three modes (by "platforms" he is speaking about sets of practices and systems):

• exploration
• experimentation
• execution

It is written by Satish Nambisan for the Stanford Social Innovation Review. He says,

"Collaboration platforms can help dismantle the long-held barriers between government, business and non-profit sectors. They also speed the cross-fertilization of innovative ideas and solutions throughout the sectors."
"To be effective partners in social innovation, organizations need a deeper understanding of these three platforms so that they may develop the necessary skills and resources."

I think Mr. Nambisan has pointed our a valuable framework for thinking about what we are doing with collaboration. You see a lot of "cool" widgets out there -- the real issue is to understand the overall context for initiating collaboration within a department or across the organization. What are the larger goals we are connecting?

By making this framework explicit, the organization gains some clarity for the practices it promotes with its call to collaboration; the designers of the processes get a more specific context for their processes and the sponsors have a clearer expectation for outcomes. The users, of course, can still do whatever they want, but hopefully the fledgling enterprise has focused the efforts of all involved at the very start.

For those considering adding collaboration capacity for a project or a part of an organization, I see this framework as providing a useful guide in thinking through various aspects of the idea:

• tools
• metrics
• involvement of stakeholders
• timeframes
• goals

If you look at several collaboration projects you know about, consider whether applying this framing would have helped to clarify what should have been going on. I believe there is a rich vein to be mined in understanding many social innovation tools through these glasses.

The power of iteration

Doing a recent 2-day engagement with a group, I was struck by the power of repeating a simple process again and again, as an effective learning and expansion method. The group (who were all new to online collaborative work) were in a room together in NYC while I was here in California, talking over a Polycom. We used a very simple input device repeatedly over the course of the day -- a simple brainstorm tool that showed new content arriving automatically, at the top of the list. As the day progressed I added additional features, such as my inputting ideas into an extra column to the right of their list so their refined summary themes showed up as they talked through their collective thinking. Later we used several categories for input, so that if you were simply watching the page the list starting building out in six different categories at the same time. (A complex planning process evolved easily as an extension of their simultaneous talking and writing on the page.)

In a small-group breakout, we had 4 to 5 people work in each one of the categories, refining down a list of issues from 20-30 or so to their top 6 goals. Again, we used the same format, but introduced the concept of moving the items within their category up and down on the list, along with a dotted line; in this way they could easily move their key issues "above the line" while still referring to all the items on their list. By this time, they had seen items move around in previous lists, and were now familiar with how to work these features themselves, and the planning progressed faster, with no drag from trying to figure out the technology, and no need for the whole room to work on each category one-at-a-time.

The two days resulted in the completion of a complex strategy session, through six separate steps, with specific stretch goals set up in six categories, underscored by an overall purpose statement and a set of shared values. We probably doubled our speed of completion of process steps, and we achieved full participation by all members, with a robust diversity of thought, plus we were able to review and understand all the material the group generated across the two days. The technology enabled this, but the strength of the process was the iteration in various levels of complexity of a simple input step which involved everyone, and which taught people new collaborative skills almost as a transparent side-step.

Although I do this all the time, this meeting was one of those "oh yeah!" moments of seeing learning in action, and appreciating the value of simplicity and repetition.

Second Takes: what do we perceive?

Here is an interesting set of pictures, playing with perception.... (from www.neuromarketing.com) . One take away from this is a reminder that it is possible to have differernt people see the same thing in different ways. Seems to me it is also possible for me to look at something again, and then see it differently. How do we build this possibility into our decision and planning processes? How many times do we check for another view (how many strategic planning cycles are affected by first impressions, or the strongly held views of a few key people?)

Find more photos like this on Neuromarketing


Find more photos like this on Neuromarketing

How to make online work successful

The tide is turning -- many more organizations have offered and/or embraced some form of online collaborative activity during the last year. One hears constantly about wikis, blogs, Web 2.0 applications, prediction markets, online data bases and libraries, as well as the old saws of surveys and discussions.

In viewing this proliferation of wonderful technologic opportunity, a major concern comes into focus for us. How are people going to use this new capacity? Perhaps a better way of stating the issue is: What should you do to make online work successful in your work area? Many worthwhile collaboration efforts will prematurely die off from lack of preparation, understanding, and feedback.

I have written quite a bit in the past on the importance of planning backward (also here and here) from a desired outcome, so I won’t wave that flag any further here. Rather, I propose a set of simple behaviors that will help to bring focus to any type of online collaboration.

These can be remembered as the Rule of Two: they are a set of prescriptions that are easy to do, easy to measure, and in our experience will dramatically increase the probability that your online activity will be successful. Taken together, they will turbo-charge your collaboration, assuming of course that a) you have an important issue to work on together, b) you have support from senior management, and c) you invite the right people to the party.

1. Plan with two people. Provide a specific action to work on, which you have vetted with at least one other knowledgeable stakeholder. (Don’t break trail on your own – get another viewpoint.)
2. Work on two or less items at a time. (Don’t dilute the work focus.)
3. Assign two people to be gardeners for each item which is active. (Build in ownership, support and responsiveness, and spread it around.)
4. Ask members to check on an active item every two days. (Make sure issues are being digested and updated.)
5. Hold review meetings every two weeks. (Follow up, make decisions, and hold people accountable.)
6. Conduct an audit every two months, evaluating the objectives vs. the results. (Build in reality testing and course correction.)

 Of course, many principles apply to creating success online. But you can’t go wrong using these above. Here is a list of additional team management basics.

·        Set a clear goal.

·        Make sure you have a mandate.

·        Involve the right people.

·        Maintain a focus on the key issue.

·        Over communicate. (Group email, subscriptions, conference calls, personal updates.)

·        Give people a clear reason to do the work together.

·        Gardeners are members who will do the “care and feeding” for the page. They facilitate the work by answering questions, clarifying people’s input, reminding folks of important new content and deadlines, acknowledging participation, stimulating other points of view, and summarizing.

·        Review meetings are a way to draw action and accountability into remote work. Most people manage by deadlines, and making decisions based on the online input keeps it real. You also get a feel for the other members of the group by having a real-time meeting.

Here is a more detailed discussion of our Rule of Two list:

Provide a specific action to work on, which you have vetted with at least one other knowledgeable stakeholder.

A common mistake is setting up a discussion area without providing a specific action. People need to know what they are expected to do when they come to the online work area. If you are setting up a spread sheet or task list or library, be clear why others need to participate, and what they are supposed to do. A simple description of the team’s charter and objective, along with a set of process steps will create sufficient orientation.

Two heads are better than one in deciding on the task for your online space. Initiating an online project benefits from planning and critique. Make sure you have checked your idea against someone with good understanding of the issues, and make sure you have an issue worthy of involving other people. And it helps to have support from higher-ups, especially in motivating other stakeholders to participate.

Work on no more than two items at a time.

Especially with online, remote work, it is important to maintain a focus on one thing at a time. So if you have a task list and a discussion that is there to clarify the issues with those tasks, fine.  But if you have three discussions for different aspects of your task, you will lose people. They don’t have time or attention – especially online on their own – to get oriented to several things.

Keep it simple. You want everyone’s energy focused on what is most important. If you have additional background material, name it as that and link to it, but don’t expect many to spend any time on it. Start with one clear, simple task, and work to build success into that. A sense of momentum will provide further motivation and learning for your group to feel good about doing more work in virtual space.

Over time, you may well end up with several tasks which the team could participate in, but each one of those needs to start as a primary task, with clear communication, and clear ownership. The long tail will take care of itself; and your gardeners should call a halt when appropriate.

Assign two people to be gardeners for each item.

You need active editor/facilitators. And if there are two of them, they can provide dialogue and energy for each other, thus supporting the work. It makes a great deal of difference to have an “owner” that people can turn to, for queries, for conflict resolution, for updates. As you build up more active items, spread the roles around so that more members of the group are involved in this function. It lightens the load and creates more participation.

The term “gardener” describes the role of care-and-feeding and weeding. This is one of being both an evangelist and a monitor, both a responder and a summarizer. Someone who keeps close tabs on the project, stimulates input by others, keeps up communication and actively moves the project from stage to stage.

Ask members to check on an active item every two days.

A key issue with online work is keeping it fresh, and not letting people forget about the space because out of sight, out of mind.  Get everyone to subscribe to the active page, either through RSS or notification, but don’t count on that. Get a commitment from everyone that they will review what is there regularly, and respond or update as appropriate. The gardeners can help much by sending emails with provocative comments or quick snippets of new issues, including a link back to the site.

Periodic notes from a senior manager asking what s/he can do to clear up any roadblocks can also help to increase traffic and momentum. When people know that their project is being watched by someone with clout, they will be more motivated to participate, and to finish their piece of the task.

Hold review meetings every two weeks.

These should be short, and concentrate on making decisions. A secondary function is to check that roles or tasks are assigned to the right person. People should have done their own summaries and background reading, and the meeting should not deviate into the area of catch up. This requires discipline by the leader – “go read the posts” rather than explaining the issue to a straggler.

A distant third function is to check that people have done what they said they would do. But knowing that this is implied will do wonders toward motivating everyone to doing their part. (See Ken Ketch’s related article on Green is for Go.)

Conduct an audit of the objectives vs. the results every two months.

This function helps to keep the team honest. And it is a great way to include the customer or the sponsor of the work. It may be that the sum of the work is the discovery that this isn’t the right thing to be doing --- this sort of review and correction needs a formal accounting. When everyone knows this is built into the process, then we are working toward milestones.

Customer input in such a review can add helpful direction, and it helps to build a real sense of partnership. It is often a source of additional resources as well.

There is no particular magic to the number Two. Its significance here is as an easy mnemonic. There are two things I could say about it, however. It is a very simple number. And it connotes that collaboration is an issue between individuals, not a lone heroic pursuit (including the planning for setting up collaboration.)

----

Here are some related comments, from a post by Emile Servan-Schreiber in a Google group (PMCluster), related to success in setting up prediction market participation.

** Incentives: participation will be driven by three factors, we call them the three R's: Rewards (of the material kind), Recognition (within a community of co-workers), Relevance (of the topics being traded). If any one of those elements is lacking, you have to boost the other two to make up for it.

** Introducing the idea: The more top-level senior-exec buy-in you can secure, the better. That is tightly related to the "Recognition" factor. Traders must feel that the company cares about their performance and that they'll get recognized by the powers that be if they take the markets seriously, as part of their job.

** Serious vs. fun tradeoff: That's tightly related to the "Relevance" factor. Traders have to care, personally, about the topics being traded. The ideal is when there is no distinction between serious and fun. If you're going to ask "serious" questions, make sure they are the ones that people really care about, i.e., the important questions, the ones that cut to the bone of the company. And if you're going to add some "fun" questions, make sure that they are related to the job, otherwise your market will just look like a game you should not spend your time on during work hours.

 

Swarm Theory

Collective intelligence plays out in the insect and animal worlds, and is described by swarm theory. How bees make a decision on moving to a new home, how ants determine who will do what jobs on a given day, how caribou deploy to move the herd away from a predator wolf -- in all these situations there is no leader or command center, yet the actions of each individual contribute to the survival and effectiveness of the group.
It is the collection and coordination of individual data and action, and interactions through a series of simple rules that give a group its intelligence. See the article by Peter Miller in National Geographic. And there are parallels to our work with collaboration.

Miller ties swarm theory to the use of collaboration for group intelligence, noting that collective processes in which brainstorm-and-voting or prediction markets are used result in accurate election predictions and effective search strategies (Google's ranking.) The wisdom of the group is wider and faster than just a group of "experts" (when the process is set up well.) He quotes Thomas Malone of MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence: "It's now possible for huge numbers of people to think together in ways we never imagined a few decades ago," says Malone. "No single person knows everything that's needed to deal with problems we face as a society, such as health care or climate change, but collectively we know far more than we've been able to tap so far."
"A honeybee never sees the big picture any more than you or I do," says Thomas Seeley, the bee expert. "None of us knows what society as a whole needs, but we look around and say, oh, they need someone to volunteer at school, or mow the church lawn, or help in a political campaign."

Collaboration in 2012

It seems to us that the last year has brought forth a higher level of recognition across most businesses that it is both possible and necessary to engage in more collaboration at work. Painting with a broad brush, this recognition shows up as:   

• more adoption and awareness of collaboration tools, especially social networking
• willingness to connect people through technology, rather than just have face meetings
• understanding the possibilities embedded in web-based planning and shared notes

Some of this new thinking seems to be a result of exposure to Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and Google Docs, whether from friends, children or colleagues. More of this new willingness is the result of a need to maintain connections across stakeholder groups in the face of reduced travel budgets. There is also growing awareness of the positive result possibilities in sharing information through organized crowd-sourcing.
We see what amounts to a perfect storm of conditions that are leading to a sea change in proactive thinking by business leaders. Budget constraints, information overload, dispersed teams, connecting to external experts or stakeholders, multi-step processes, digesting collected data, referring back to previous decisions, encouraging input from various points of view.... all these trends drive team leaders toward the use of online collaborative tools. Such tools provide an interactive platform, an archive of previous work from various constituents, an always-available resource, an opportunity to engage in iterative planning, a minimum of paper notes, a chance to build in transparency for more stakeholders.
Let's consider some current stories in the press. The Iowa Electronic Elections Market predicted the outcome of the last presidential election with more accuracy than did the polls or the pundits. Companies are having to develop workplace policies on friending bosses on Facebook. It is now possible to announce a contest for a logo design, offer $300 and receive 40 diverse, professional entries from graphic designers all over the world, to which you give reactions and don't-likes by comparing different treatments, and within the week, you can choose a refined version from your designated finalists. There are simple systems to have a large audience vote their preferred options among your presented choices, using text messages from their cellphones, and display the immediate results on your powerpoint presentation. Three teams can work separately on a design template, review each others' presentations, evaluate their shared 'must-dos' and 'stop-doings', prioritize these and then develop the dependencies for the top issues, all in one day.
Employees participating in the GE’s “Imagination Market” trade or buy “ideas” based on how closely they believe an idea is aligned to the business objectives, how an idea compares to other alternatives, and if the idea is operationally feasible. Most often, these ideas represent new technology or new product ideas.
Looking out into the new year, we can make a number of 'predictions' for business processes related to collaboration:

• Managers will be more skillfull at holding short check-in meetings. Most of the work will have been done and updated online, so the meetings will be for review and go/no-go decisions. This will alleviate a lot of meeting paralysis and boredom.
• Meeting tools will become more interactive, so that the audience is drawn further into dialogue and participation -- both with the presenter and with each other.
• Teams will become more facile with keeping notes online, even during conference calls. This lets everyone append comments and corrections, and there is one record immediately available.
• Quick surveys -- for checking confidence and clarity on initiatives -- will be commonly used, in order to clearly identify the state of the team on contemplated product, policy and strategy changes.
• Many more people will learn to write an idea once, online (rather than making notes on paper, transferring these to a Word documnet, and finally publishing the idea out to colleagues.) More employees will be (comfortably) members of various online sites which enable them to interact, gather information and connect to others with similar research interests.
• There will be more connection to customers and outside vendors, as workers become more comfortable with collaboration sites. Communication and inclusion are key issues for effective work, and online interaction sites make this much more available to everyday people across the organization.

Aviv Shahar has a good piece on his blog about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of team meetings. He stresses two points that I entirely agree with: the importance of framing the conversation, and the requirement of connecting the different conversations that take place as "work."

The issue here is which conversation are we having? Are we addressing what went wrong last week, or are we assessing what should our strategy be in the middle market for the next year? Aviv gives the example of five highly intelligent managers meeting to collaborate, but somehow their collective IQ goes way down rather than being multiplied.

As consultants and managers, we are familiar with the dysfunctions that occur in such a situation. Not listening, making assumptions and inferences, personal agendas, rat holes. One key to results in collaborating is to clearly frame the context and the purpose of the discussion. And then to break that work into several parts, and not conflate them. Aviv talks about effectively differentiating between diagnostic, prescriptive and explorative conversations.

In our work, what helps this is having a clear focal question (or series of these) worked out ahead of time. Focus the collective power in the room toward a specific and relevant issue. If there are several, take them one at a time; then stop and let the team reflect and digest, making sure that the various key points are appreciated (rather than being attacked.) Get the ideas to play out against each other, not the players.

There is a rhythm to this work that can be "surfed" by the facilitator. Gather diverging ideas, then converge on the key issues. Amplify the consequences and dependencies if certain paths would be followed. Once several possibilities are prioritized, clarify the trade-offs involved, from different perspectives (market, organizational capability, customer reaction, etc.) Get other points of view and integrate these into your  deliberations. Define your steps, and check that you have agreement as you go along.

Conversations can be difficult; and they can be connected; and they can be productive.