I have been posting a lot recently about how networks work. My new book is all about why and how the Network model will take down all those that organize traditionally. So what to do?
You have a traditional organization. Can you change to become a network and so survive the revolution? I think in most cases the answer is no. But with the right leadership - FROM THE TOP - you can do it. This post is about the context of one organization that had had the right leadership and has made this transition.
TV as we know it is the typical traditional organization. You watch what we think is good when we choose and all you do is watch. Appointment media like that is dying. But The Nine Network of Public Media in St Louis is no longer that kind of station. Yes they still do TV but the choice is massive and you can watch it all on your terms and you can also participate. But this is still nothing.
The Nine Network is much more than a TV station that has taken advantage of the digital realm. It is doing more.
First of all it is becoming the local community convenor to deal with important local issues. It started by helping people tell their own stories such as what they did in the war. The breakthrough project was when Nine took on ther Mortgage Crisis at the outset. It called the meeting of all who could help and created the space to help the community help itself. This was so successful that CPB funded a national program where stations, radio and TV, in the worst hit parts of America became the local facilitator of the community. Now Nine is involved in Education and Healthcare. Many other stations see this role as Connector as their future too. Here is Ideastream in Cleveland - another leader.
Secondly it is putting the public into Public TV. It has a school that teaches the public how to tell stories on video.
Thirdly it is connected to the St Louis Public Radio station. St Louis Public Radio. The two stations are physically linked in adajacent buildings and are building a Commons between them to enhance their role as Connectors of the Community.
Fourthly, 9 hosts the local online newspaper - The Beacon - that is full of journalists who could no longer work for a paper!
These local relationships are not one organization but are a real network. They are separate but together. They share resources. They look after each other.
So what was the context for this change? First of all there was the leadership issue. Jack Galamiche at then KETC was a man who saw what had to be done. Tim Eby, who had been chair of NPR, was the new leader at St Louis Public radio. He had sponosored the project that had all the stations in the NPR system look into the digital future. It is my experience that without the right kind of leadership at the top, traditional organizations have no chance.
The second was having the right kind of context. What would success look like? What could be the goal and so what then was the work to get there.
This was the context that we worked from. I think that any traditional organization can look at these slides and find a goal and so a path for themselves - provided that the leader wanted to do this AND could bring their board along too.
You will see that at the heart of this work is a shift in culture. There is no harder work. You will also see how, if you can agree to make this shift, how you then schedule work to help you make the transition. For we cannot change our culture by an act of will. We can only acquire new habits. We have to work our way into the new.
You are spending your precious weekend on a retreat to discvover your organization's values? You are spending the day meeting about a new product. Your team is meeting to bond. Oh the horror! Most of my memories of such meetings are nightmares. Over cheerful and manipulative facilitators. The demand for action now! The knowledge that the important issues have not been spoken of. The feeling that I have been herded into a decision that was set before the meeting began. The Posing! The Boredom!
When I read Johnnie Moore and Viv McWaters new book on Facilitation, I wished that I could go back in time and share this gem with my then bosses. They might have been able to set more realistic expectations. I wish that we could have selected the facilitators because we knew what was in this book and so avoided the worst of them. I wish I had known this too, so I would not have been such a fool as well.
The book is short, succinct, easy to follow and personal. It is the summation of many years of master work.
He is trying to ski by thinking. He is thinking so hard that he cannot "hear" the hill or his body. He is thinking so much that he might miss a fallen skier or a tree - for he is thinking so hard that he cannot see. His fear also causes him to miss the key risk and control factor. Fearing falling or going too fast, he leans back instead of down the hill.
He is thinking so much that he cannot have a conversation with his own body or with the world that surrounds him.
He is thinking so much that he gets exhausted very quickly because he is fighting himself, the hill and the universe. And just thinking so hard uses up so much energy.
He is not having a "Deep Conversation". He is relying on his rational mind to guide him in a novel and complex situation. This is what most of us do at work and in our personal lives.
The most important conversation that we need to have is within ourselves. This is the core lesson of having Deeper Conversation. That to have a deeper conversation with others and with the univers, we must be able to have such a conversation inside us. This is the topic of this our last of 4 parts of my 4 part series that synthesizes a longer series of talks I have had with the brilliant Johnnie Moore. (Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3)
It's the classic psych drama. We have got so used to giving our rational mind primacy that we allow it to fill our consciousness with its chatter and worries. Mothers worry about what the book says about their kids. Managers seek control. You wake up in the middle of the night consumed by a fear and if you can surpress it, find another one right behind it. At school this part of our mind is the only part that counts.
Yes the new skier has to "know" the theory of skiing - well maybe not... Adults have a huge problem learning to ski - I did at 40 - but kids know no theory. Their rational mind has not yet taken over. No one told them the theory of walking or language, they just got on with it and did what FELT right.
Kids use their full range of channels. They listen to their body and they feel their way into novelty. They learn to walk and to talk and to stand upright. They learn so much before they go to school!
But we adults, who know better because we have been to school, wait to be told by a higher authority. In this universe, all the other parts of our mind are closed down and the Ego is given precedence.
So how do we get the rest of our mind back. How do we tune into all the channels in our body so that we can feel the hill or our way though a novel and a complex situation? For as all adult ski learners know, we have had this ability whacked out of us at school and at work.
Johnnie reminded me that it's all about habits. We have lost the habits that help us access this power to use our whole mind, so it helps to set up new habits to bring the whole mind back and to put the Ego into his place - a minor character!
Sit as often as you can in a circle. This brings the field into its best quality. Access the Field.
Before you get down to business check in as to how you all are. This might be how you feel - what you are feeling about the task at hand in your body. This type of sharing brings up the common humanity of you all. The leader may be feeling anxious in her stomach about the result. Hearing this, we can all relax more. Any good consultant has such a go around at the beginning of a meeting so that the Field can be awaked. I know to many this may sound very new age - but my question to you is do you want to ski like me or like my son?
Surely no one wants to ski like me? That is what is at stake here. Real results - getting all the wisdom from all the minds into play and in getting more cohesion in the team are what is at stake here.
Beware of "Action" as a demanded result.
You know what has happened here don't you? Trying too hard leads to a failure and then to bad feelings and then a habit of trying too hard and so on. The point of good sex is not the erection but the communication and the shared love. Bringing your rational mind into the bedroom is a disaster. So it is in meetings.
The key result is to have the team both together and open. Then the "Whole Mind of the Team is brought into play. THEN you can start to see your way through the paradoxes that make up any complex situation.
Let me give you 2 examples - one a corporate one that Johhnie and I worked on with NPR and 300 stations and the other a new problem that confronts me and all of us in middle age.
This was the complex problem that we used to have a Deeper Conversation inside NPR where all the senior management, the board and over 200 staff participated along with the leadership of 300 stations. At the outset NO ONE could know the answer. That is the definition of a Complex problem - the answer cannot be predicted rationally it can only emerge as a result of lots of trial and error. What we did was to set up many many meetings where the groups "Played" with this problem - we in effect set up a process of iteration that could enable answers over time to emerge.
The challenge was this - We assumed, now rightly, that in 2009, the web would be ubiquitous. NPR and the Stations were then in 2005 at a high point with their listeners on terrestrial radio but at ground zero with the web. How were they going to grow the web side and not lose the listeners? How was NPR to do this and not lose the stations? What were the stations going to do? For one thing was clear, and that was by 2009, the world would be very different.
To set up the larger field where all could participate - we used "Play". I have found that if you think of complex problems that might involve you losing your current power in role, the job of protecting your status quo is paramount. This is why when we ask the Usual Suspects to think of the future of their field, say health, they act to preserve the status quo. They cannot go beyond this. A rational role based discusion about novelty has to fail. For our ego will force us to lean back and try and protect what we know and our current power.
So we made this exploration into a game. I won't go into the details but to say that to wrestle with complex problems demands that you give up your role. Back to kids again - they learn all the vital lessons of life via play.
The results come through emergence which comes from trial and error. In complex situations you CANNOT know the answer up front. It is impossible. Remembering this is very helpful. No senior NPOR person presumed to know. All were equals in ignorance. This opened up the field. At the end of each session, each group had to put on a play - they had to express what they thought the future would be - and you know they were right - they found it.
Does this work? Each of the many independent sessions came to this conclusion - that the power of choice of what to listen too had to shift to the listener. Now we all know this right? No we only know this as lip service. You have to have wrestled with this and seen the alternatives and felt that this is true to accept it. We all "Know" that we have to lean DOWN the hill to get control - BUT this is not what we do as learners for though we know it to be true - we CAN"T do it - it is too scary and too counter our old reality.
Does this work? Well what media organization is best equipped for dealing with he online world right now? I would say NPR. So what was the result of our work with NPR? It was not the plan that came out of the process. It was that 300 people in NPR had wrestled with the problem and had felt their way into the future, so that when a new leader arrived with the mandate and the attitude to go for it, there was a mass aha! Not the normal resistance that you get when a big change is dropped in the organization from on high.
Meetings that start with a demand for action and results - are often code for a desire to lean up the hill. Let's stay in the rut where I can control what is going on because I feel safe there. When you demand results or action - what do you mean? Most of the time it means a focus on the minutiae - like the skier focusing on thinking his way into the turn - forcing himself to turn rather that letting the hill and his body do it all for him. When we work on the surface we force the whole team into this posture. It is our fear that keeps us from skiing. It is the fear that stops many still in radio and the media from allowing the gravity of the Hill of the New Web to help them get a new control.
The ongoing result that all teams need in complex times is to be so comfortable with each other that they play intuitively like a basketball team on fire. Look at this player - he is not thinking - he KNOWS where the pass will go. We have to really know each other. We have to bring our Whole Mind into play.
If you work on the key result being a well functioning team, THEY will do the heavy work. The real ACTION is to get the team using all their whole mind as individuals and as a team. Like a good skier, there is no time to "Think" on the court. You have to be able to sense what is going on.
So let's extend this a bit and look at an issue that affects us all - our health. My task - to find a question that engages anyone. From a personal point of view.
Here is one for me and for you that I hope illustrates this principle. I am looking at the health costs for PEI. An important question but very abstract and with many people with hard views. So how to use a question to break the logjam? This is my starting question that only invites each of us as people into the realm of the question. I start as Johnnie suggest with a question that gets us to react by feeling it out.
See the red line. That is how men on PEI age and deteriorate. The average age of death is 75. But by 65 the average man is in such bad health as to be helpless and dependent. From this stage more than half his lifetime cost to the health system will be spent. These are real data points.
Now see the black line. This is my goal for my own life. Aging as we know it is not natural. The black line is the natural aging process. In nature aging hits a threshold and then the deterioration stops - if you make 85 and are fit and not demented you will likely stay the same until you die - and that might be 95 - 100 - or 105. You will die - but you wont deteriorate more. There is a ton of evidence and work behind this - just trust on this right now there are books and books to be written and I can only point this out to you in this post.
The research suggests that I and you can push this point of stability back to 55 or 60 - my current age. I can be at choice. I can choose to change nothing and I will get ill and degrade. Or I can choose to change my life and have a good chance that I will die healthy and a contributor. Now I can choose either one - newspapers chose degradation - but it is a choice.
But choosing life is not enough. Knowing where to go is not enough. Like NPR I have to find out how to live differently. I will have to learn how to change the habits of a lifetime. This is hard.
How hard? This involves my giving up modern food. All processed food as a start. All grains and all dairy too. It means that I have instead to eat what people did in our hunter gatherer period. I also have to do many other things to get a better fit with my deep biology. Sleep more. Be outside more. Walk more. Have a mission in life that is bigger than me and so on - I will be posting tons on this later.
So here is the point. I know this. You can know it too. You know that when you ski you must lean down the hill. But knowing and doing are 2 different things. Changing the habits of a lifetime is very very very hard. Doing something that NONE of your peers are doing is as hard. This is the landscape of real change - being out of step with the mainstream - not knowing what to do - being pulled back all the time by your old habits.
Like Beowulf and Grendel - you have to have the energy to kill the old inner you.
But if you have asked the right question, we can wrestle with it. You can feel enough to kill off the old you who will fight to keep you stuck.
Thought is not enough. You must have emotional power that comes from how you feel about a situation. Here is my feeling test about my health that is raised by the Question I posed.
Do I want to become feeble at 65? What will this mean to my family? No I don't want that - I would feel as if I betrayed them because I know what I know now - that had the choice and chose pizza over them
Can I afford to be feeble? I worry about my savings and if I will have enough - can I afford to be feeble? I don't have the money and I doubt the state will have it either - I will be fucked if I stay as I am.
How do I feel now? How do I look? How capable am I now? Would I like to feel, look and be better soon? Of course I want to look and feel beter - I have noticed how weak and inflexible I am and wish I was fitter.
I know I am weak of will and that changing all these things will be hard - so what feedback and what support can I tap into to help me? I know I cannot do this on my own? In the few times I have made other major changes, it was the support I had that made all the difference - I know that I am weak!
Are there good tips that I can use to help me? I need reinforcement to get over the early hump - I know that other people's experience will help me
I have a rational argument but my feeling argument has more power over my behaviour - The Rational is the Volts - the Feeling is the Amps. It's the Feedback that encourages us and shows us the path:
I have lost 15 pounds and most importantly my 6 months pregnant belly is nearly flat - this is very reinforcing
I am never hungry - and the signal that I get when I am full kicks in immediately - that helps me not overeat.
When I fall off the wagon and have bread and cheese I feel like shit - not guilty I l feel bloated and sick
I look forward to my walks with the dogs - I want to do it more than they do now - it helps me think and do better work too
My wife is completely onside and my friends who have not seen me in some time comment on how well I am - important people are encouraging me
So I could not have a plan from the question but the question gets at the heart of the matter FOR ME.
We all have to feel our way into change. The mind is not enough. The body has to power us into the new. We have to be able to hear what our body says. We have to be like kids again and play our way into the future.
So what is the biggest lesson of all?
We come back to Johnnie's key lesson. We have to calm the mind so that we can hear the rest of the conversation in our body. Our mind can show the way but the getting there is all bout the rest of us. This goes for teams too. If we can create enough personal trust we can access the Whole Mind of the group. THEN we can win any game set for us.
Your work and mine is to put him in his place - shut him up - so that we can hear the full you and me.
This Fast Company article from 1995 describes how a native American wisdom council gets taken into the corporate world. Interesting stuff. I read it with some anxiety as I fear the real wisdom behind the practice could easily be lost by corporations co-opting the ritual.
So the best bit for me were the principles underlying the process, described at the end. I'll highlight a couple of them. The first is:
Good decisions begin with listening. The Western give-and-take meeting emphasizes talking rather than listening. Businesspeople come into a meeting prepared to give their presentations -- not to listen to the contributions of others. And the debate format encourages people to begin formulating their responses while the other side is speaking, rather than listening and reserving judgment. The first element of a council ceremony, on the other hand, is careful listening.
When I've worked with "no interruption" rules, I'm often amazed at the difference this simple intervention makes. Something special can happen about the way people give attention - a quality that I think is evoked, not taught by "active listening" courses. By stopping interruption, I think we help participants to develop the capacity to suspend judgement and enquire more deeply.
The second principle I wanted to pick up is this:
A slower process yields better decisions. Rather than looking for the fastest answer to a pressing problem, the council process accepts the need for careful, in-depth reflection. With the understanding that implementation is faster, easier, and more successful if it comes after all implications of an issue have been thrashed out, the process doesn't address the question of action until the latter stages of the discussion. "By the time you get around to talking about action," notes Eric Vogt, "the whole council has had a chance to speak and feels engaged in the results."
I've written a lot in the past about the danger of "action theatre" and about the power games that get played out about demanding action. If we force action on a group we risk shallow commitment, passive aggression and end up with little real engagement. Taking time to reflect offers the chance of something more substantial. Chris Corrigan calls it "wise action" which is a succinct way of putting it.
Many of the comments on KETC"s site on Immigration have made the point that we should, have less conversation and have more action items. "Tell us what to do" seems to be the main thrust.
But isn't the "Do" the problem? If I come from one POV and you another then if I tell you what to do - you will tell be to take a hike. No one is listening. We all seem so captured by what we want to say that we cannot hear what some one else is talking.
At KETC we will soon launch a project on "Immigration" in America. The deep question that we will be asking in a year of hosting an online space and making a 4 hour documentary is "What is the experience like for all people and where should we go?"
A huge challenge for us then is "Voice". What is our position? For the range of opinion is vast, the emotions are high, many see the issue in terms of good versus evil, few look into any of the pragmatic aspects.
It's a minefield!
Jay Rosen has been digging into the traditional perspective taken by the orthodoxy that journalists have to have:
I called him last week for advice and here is what we came to.
First of all we were clear that Immigration is not a simple or even a complicated issue - issues that are knowable and that can be resolved by applying known rules. It's a Complex Issue: Being Complex means that it can only be known via the process of "Emergence" - lots of trial and error leading to patterns not to single solutions.
On Jay's site I made the point that this felt like a Quantum world where only zones of probability could be determined and where the view of the observer would always affect the observed.
Another reader said that this was "Bullshit" - but while the issue of complexity may not be Quantum it does share the reality that there can be no single right answer.
The other point is that there can never not be bias. We all live in a world of a cultural screen. We all screen in or out what does or does not fit. To believe otherwise is to be naive.
So where pragmatically does that leave us at KETC?
It might be this? (Welcome your views for this is just MY opinion)
For patterns to emerge we must have a "Plurality" of opinions/storis and voices. With such a Plurality we have the chance of creating "Emergence" or stable patterns of norms. A kind of Wisdom of Crowds
To do that then our job is to host safely and in a trusted way as many opinions and stories as possible and to encourage a deep but civic debate - as Jay does on his own site
To do that I think that those if us who are the hosts should also disclose who we are and have a diverse group at KETC doing the hosting - so we too represent a broad view. (Jay discloses here - Jeff Jarvis Discloses here)
Johnnie tells us that the answer is simple but difficult. Difficult because the answer demands that we converse in a different way. Yes the simple idea is that we talk to each other differently. The challenge is that to do this we have to give up some hard wired habits.
What we have to give up is using conversation as a duel or a combat where the dominant player wins and all ideas that don't fit are killed as are of course the divergent thinkers. What we need is a conversation that opens up new ideas and that builds community.
The new Autism strategy is out - I have no idea whether it is good or bad but I do know that when confronted with this extremely complex issue, the bureaucrats have consulted 2 parents. Yes 2 only?
In spite of claims to have consulted 800 parents for the Preschool Initiative, they in fact only talked directly with 60.
Again a very complex issue that any wise person would know that they would need to get immersed in to understand deeply.
In contrast KETC (a client of mine and a public TV station in St Louis) is about to launch a major online and TV project on Immigration in the US. Like the Early Years and Autism, Immigration is a very complex issue that is hard to understand without getting immersed. The barrier to understanding are our own views. So, as we began we knew that we knew next to nothing. All we had were our feelings. We had to get beyond our feelings and the preconceptions we had based on our limited knowledge and experience.
So we acknowledged that in reality we knew next to nothing about the topic. Starting as seeing ourselves as being ignorant is surely a healthy way to begin any complex work. We acknowledged that we could only get a sense by literally swimming in the real experience of people who were living the life of a new immigrant.
So for nearly six months before we have gone public, we have focused on discovering directly the immigrant experience in St Louis.
Here is the scale of our pre project consultation so far:
Number of people we've talked to: 846
Number of groups we’ve talked to: 195
Community organizations: 132
Ethnic groups: 63
On average, team members speak with respective groups every two-three weeks depending on the group.
For community conversations there is typically an initial contact followed by a scheduled conversation and then follow-up communication
Communication is regularly maintained via e-mail, calls
In addition we are finding the natural leaders in these groups and are inviting them into to act as special advisors who will also have a role online.
This is a tiny station - the bureaucrats have no excuse. There is so much knowledge out there and a great willingness to help and to make a difference. Why is all of this energy excluded?
The department has advised the Government to change the rules of the game in mid year without talking to any of the people who will have to act on the changes.
Not only that they have given the premier advice which is the centre piece of the action that is simply wrong. Not only wrong but will lead to the situation that our boys face becoming worse!
Let's assume that when government consults that they intend to find out what is going on and how to make it better. This is not always the correct assumption but let's give people the benefit of the doubt.
Remember that the key to getting the best answers is to work very hard at finding the best questions.
The key to finding the best questions is to find the best context.The way of finding the best context is to find it as a group. No one of us is smart enough to know how best to work through complex problems.
OK so what does this mean in practice Rob - get real will you! All right, let me put some flesh on these two points with a case study:
At the end of 2005 NPR could see that the business model for public radio was in jeopardy. Until the advent of the web it was simply this. In each community was a local station. It had a protected area and a protected place on the dial. It bought a special product, programs, from central producers such as NPR that could only be heard in their locale on their terms. The stations then went out to their listeners who had no alternative and asked them to contribute because if they did not, they would lose their program.
Everyone in public radio could see that as the web grow more powerful that all the assumptions behind this model would collapse. At some time in the future all the good content would be available any time and any place on the web. The local monopoly on region and dial would be lost and hence the economics.
How might this play out? What time did the system have? Would NPR cut and run and go direct leaving the stations to rot? What could be done?
Fear was rampant. No one trusted NPR. NPR thought it ought to support the stations but did not know in 2005 whether this was only a good intention or a reality. Small stations did not trust large one. Other producers did not trust NPR of other producers.
So what to do? Typically a government consultation process would have gone around the country and heard all the points of view and tried to make sense of it or worse tried to find a compromise. The result would have been that all the fears and local positions would have become entrenched and the system would have splintered. See how this can happen with say beef and hog producers? See how this is happening with Child Care Providers!
Instead a very different process was undertaken. A process whose intent was to bring the system together while it discerned what was true rather than fight over position.
NPR instead designed a process that would enable over 1,000 people in the system from the 300 stations, other producers and over 300 of their own staff to explore the underlying trends that affected them all.
Meeting in small groups all over the US, everyone explored from multiple perspectives all the forces that were confronting them. Then they all worked again to define what might be the 2-3 best ways of getting out of trouble and finding a new way of being. Out of all these meetings, a pattern emerged. Not a compromise, a pattern. Not a consensus but an agreement! Over 1,000 people developed a common view of their world and a common set of principles for how best to then deal with it. They knew that these were right because in separate meetings without prior knowledge, the same patterns kept re-appearing.
How did we do this? We set up a game. People love games and people give up their office persona in games. People learn from games. Games are fun! If you care to know in detail what we did this link will tell you.
This is a process called "emergence". Emergence is when the same pattern appears all the time. It is not based on negotiation but on common experience. It can therefore be trusted. As a result, NPR learned that its best interests were not to cut and to run but to work with the system. Most stations could see that this was no longer a "position" but a fact. Here is a comment in the Pub Radio Trade Magazine the Current made just as the process was ending:
The end of NPR’s New Realities planning project is in sight, which
must come as a relief to the network brass who have crisscrossed the
country for months, talking with hundreds of constituents about the
future of public radio.
Participants say New Realities ranks
among public radio’s most ambitious and inclusive strategic planning
exercises — focused, productive and well-organized.
By the
end of April, NPR will have held six two-day meetings, each with 30 to
60 station leaders and other stakeholders, to consider the future of
media and how NPR and public radio stations will fit into the lives of
listeners. They have often ended up in close agreement about their
mission, says Dana Davis Rehm, NPR’s v.p. of member and station
services and a leader of the New Realities process.
Trust is much better - not perfection - but much better and a schism was avoided. A common language has evolved. Alliances have formed - work is getting done - lessons are being shared.
So from my own experience of facilitating this very large process - what would I do if I was responsible for helping the government do the best job possible for our young children as they look at the Child Care Facilities Act?
Context is everything - you can't start with a solution - you have to discover the system and the forces in play. You cant tell people what this is - they have to have a process that enables them to talk it through so that they "discover it".
You have to find the best questions - best being questions that open up the perspectives not close them down
You have to design for allowing the truth to emerge naturally rather than to force an answer.
Think of what might happen if we approached our challenges in Agriculture this way? Or what about the Child Care Facilities Act?
If we went down this road we could take the fear and the position out of the process and find ways of helping us all.
But as long as we stay on the surface, as long as we pit one interest against another, we will have a mess.
Here is what we did in detail - as you read this - imagine your issue being dealt with like this
The Guardian leads to day with an important editorial - It asks whether all the consultation about many issues is valid. Will the process end up with a report gathering dust? Will they deepen the divides on key issues - will they exhaust everyone to no purpose?
It's encouraging when governments consult voters on the major issues of
the day, presumably to take the pulse on the direction they should take
when it comes to forming policy.
But can there be too much of a good thing?
As we speak, government is in the process of getting public input on
several subjects. There are commissions, panels and committees looking
into nitrates in the water system, child-care facilities legislation,
disability services, Sunday shopping, heritage policy and regulations
governing cosmetic pesticides, just to name a few.
While it's laudable that Islanders have been given the opportunity to
express their concerns, the question is, what will come of all this
public consultation? At the end of the day, will government be able to
produce coherent action on these fronts? Or are these reports destined
to end up on government shelves somewhere?
What does not work and what does work? This is what I would like to talk abut in a few posts.
Let's start in this post with what does not work and then in Part II I will offer some suggestions about what does work.
But first - what do we mean by "work". What is then outcome of a good consultation? I think that the root cause for failure is that most fail to even start with an outcome in mind.
Bad process would look like this:
Shall we ban pesticides or keep them? Why is this a bad process? Because what it does is simply set up two sides who can never agree. The real outcome that is inevitable politically for this type of process is to do nothing. This by the way may be the desired outcome - if so then we have all been taken for a ride
What can we do to ensure that First Nations People do better? This is a bad process because you will end up with a 1,000 item list and with all advocates competing between each other - the First Nations Community will splinter further and the report can never be acted on because there will never be agreement on what are the 2-3 best options. The outcome also here will be no action. Again this may be the desired outcome. If so, again, the public has been hoodwinked.
Let's ensure quality in daycare by limiting spaces. This is a bad process because when neither assumption about what is the problem or the solution may be valid it assumes both. The desired outcome here is that the changes can be made and the appearance of consultation has been given. Again the public has been abused.
Process with the wrong context or the wrong question can go no where. Let's look at our beef and hog farmers as a case study.
The current context is that prices are too low. The assumption is that with luck and a prayer they may go up in the future. Another is that if only we could find another market, we might be ok.
But that is not the right context and not the right question.
The real question to ask is "Why are prices low?' If we ask that question we start to see the real problem.
The real problem is that our current distribution system is over concentrated in favour of the 2 buyers who buy from suppliers all over the world.
If you don't look for the system - you cannot find even the starting point for complex problems.
Once you see the "system" you can start to see a direction to help the industry. The direction is find ways of giving the seller more power.
So a better process for all those involved in our hog and beef industry is to look at what they are really up against rather than merely providing a process to reinforce their natural fears and helplessness.
So before I end this post and later go onto talking about what I have learned works, I would like those in politics who may read this to ask themselves - what is your objective in all these consultations? Do you really want to find a better way?
If you want to find a better way - then here is an example of a better way to find real answers and to unite people around them.
I have found that it is best to begin with a small group whose job it is to find a starting place - who will set in motion the initial conditions or the small snowball that will accumulate insight over time and become a snowman.
You will find in the Follow On what this Starting Point looked like for public radio - as you see this example think - Disabilities, Children, Agriculture - what would your starting point look like?
Define the who and what of your systm and how it works - what is the business model or say in social tertms what is the outcome and what is the nature of the process that is meant to deliver on the outcome - what are daycares meant to do? What is the outcome that we all need for agriculture on PEI?
Then see what the key trends are - what is the actual reality - in agriculture the ROI is going down, debt is accumulating as margins get squeezed all the time. There are fewer kids than ever before, their & social educational outcomes are in decline.
Then do your best to find the crux of the problem/opportunity - in agriculture it is the power imbalance in distribution - for kids the opportunity is before they get to school
Then determine how best to engage the community so that their overall wisdom can produce more clarity, trust and energy.
What's wrong with this skier? 
Sit as often as you can in a circle. This brings the field into its best quality. 
You know what has happened here don't you? Trying too hard leads to a failure and then to bad feelings and then a habit of trying too hard and so on. The point of good sex is not the erection but the communication and the shared love. Bringing your rational mind into the bedroom is a disaster. So it is in meetings.
The
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