Re-Think to Out-ThinkThe Art of Welcoming Risk
by Eileen McDargh, CSP, CPAE

More Information About the Author: Click Here for the Eileen McDargh, CSP, CPAE Home Page

Organizations and individuals get into untenable places because of "thinking". Such thinking includes rigidity, status quo paralysis, feedback disregard, unwilling ness to open dialogue, and not listening to the body. This thought process results in "rustery" rather than "mastery".

Martin Luther proclaimed "When you rest, you rust." Masters don't rest on their accomplishments. Pablo Casals, the world's finest cellist, was still perfecting his craft well into his 80s. Georgia O'Keefe, well past her middle years, continued to play with elements of light. Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics, one of the finest basketball players of all time, would say, "I've got some things I want to work on." Motorola has made continual learning a corporate value statement, requiring a minimum of 40 hours per year of training for employees at all levels as it continues to push the envelope on innovation and quality.

Implicit in these examples of masterful individuals and organizations is a willingness to rethink what is known so that they can out-think and outperform their competitors and their own past performance. Easy to say. Harder to do.

Consider this: The first books on cus tomer service came out in 1985. As late as 1992, seven years later, J.D. Powers & Associates reported that only 46 percent of customers in the automotive industry thought car dealers were working to satisfy the customers. What took so long?

When you lose your market share, your best employees walk out, your customers go to the competitor, or you have bypass surgery after having missed many vacations, it is not a surprise. The information was there all along, but you resisted dealing with the information available to you.

Mastery Model

I propose the following tool as a model for thinking about thinking. Consider this model a template over which you can superimpose any information.

Quadrant 1: Common knowledge. This is what we (the company, the team, the management group) and they (the other employees, the customers, the vendors) all know about a given topic. If you and I work for the same company, in the same department, we should have a common knowledge about "how we do things around here". The only way to grow in mastery is to challenge common knowledge and to access other quadrants.

Quadrant 2: Inquiry-potential blind spot. There's information that we don't know and other people do know. For example, the Gallup Organization plans to open 21 offices in China. The Chocolate Manufacturers and Washington Apple Commission will be among their first customers. Gallup is charged with answering one question: do Chinese consumers even like chocolate or apples? One would think all companies would ask such critical questions first. Not so. Had Disney asked similar questions prior to building their French Disneyland, the company could have avoided major financial losses.

Quadrant 3: Revelation and risk. In this quadrant, we test what we know and disclose what others would have no way of knowing without our revelation. There is dialogue and discovery in this quadrant as well as risk. For example, Johnson & Johnson knew about the Tylenol poisoning and decided to tell the public. That risk earned them great public favor. On the flip side, consider Intel and the Pentium chip. Intel's decision not to reveal the flaw and their subsequent scrambling to make amends caused significant negative publicity.

Quadrant 4: Creative opportunity. This is the quadrant of unlimited possibility that is accessed only to the extent that we can "open" the other three quadrants.

What Keeps Us Out?

The question now arises: what keeps us from venturing into these other quadrants and therefore expanding the knowledge base and staying on the road to mastery?

1. The Common Knowledge Quadrant.
Experience can be an enemy. Past information filters thinking about the future. Success can keep us from venturing any further. As Daniel Boorstin wisely said, "The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the continents and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge."

"Why" becomes an operative question. Ameritech began saying "why" when they created a financial reporting team made up of CFO, controllers, and accountants. The team roamed around and asked, "Do you really need those financial reports?" They found out that one employee spent five days each month preparing a 25-page report that no one read. The team eliminated six million pages of reports -- a stack four times taller than Ameritech's 41- story headquarters.

Conversely, an organization may need to restore the past. Remember the days of the house call? Think of the companies who now are returning to the practice of going out to the customer. Or consider modern medicine's return to study native medicinal herbs and practices.

Strategy for Quadrant 1:
Define as much as you can about your current situation. Are we looking far enough into the future? What things are we doing today that if we were not already doing, we would not start doing? Ask why? Ask why not? Was anything discarded that shouldn't have been? Was anything discarded which now is relevant?

2. The Inquiry Quadrant
Sometimes, we're more concerned with looking good than being good and so we become masters at what Chris Argyris calls "skilled incompetence". We become very adept at protecting ourselves from the some times painful parts of learning, hesitant to say "I don't know".

Cognitive dissonance throws itself into high gear in this quadrant. Once an idea is planted into a corporate or individual pat tern, any data which contradicts that idea is discounted. Recall President Bush's insistence that there was no recession, despite poll after poll in which the public expressed grave concern.

In many instances, I've seen organizations survey employees and customers and then discount the results. Only 31 percent of 1,500 American managers rate upward communication in their companies as good or excellent, according to a survey conducted by Watson Wyatt Worldwide. Only 19 percent of the managers said they consider information from their workers when making policy. Not acting on employees' suggestions and ideas can be worse than not asking them at all. A willingness to admit to blind spots can have dramatic results.

Strategy for Quadrant 2:
Design a method for getting input from others. Decide whose input matters to the health of the organization. Ask: How can I most effectively respond to this feedback? What needs to be changed based upon this information? What do I/we resist and why?

3. The Revelation and Risk Quadrant
This is an emotional quadrant, filled with fear: fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of loss (jobs, ideas, status). Too often, when this quadrant is accessed, it looks more like ponderous discussions with individuals trumpeting their positions and wisdom. And yet, expanding the revelation and risk quadrant is the only way to test. Not sharing ideas can stifle true growth.

This is the quadrant for dialogue, and dialogue requires a willingness to suspend judgment on ideas, to seek for grains of truth and possibilities.

To overcome fear, an organization must honor truth, give credit where credit is due, and celebrate the learnings which come from well-intended mistakes. There is a pressing need to talk about mistakes, failure, and feelings connected with failure so individuals and groups can learn and move ahead.

Sometimes we don't open this window for fear of losing power. For example, one organization refused to share customer data with its people. Executives said the data might leak to the competitors. But how can employees improve satisfaction if those closest to the customers don't have the information they need to fix it?

Strategy for Quadrant 3: Reward honesty. Make heroes of those who share ideas. Honor people who acknowledge their mistakes. Look for discounting statements and behaviors and flag them as unacceptable.

4. The Creative Opportunity Quadrant
This quadrant is a natural result of the integration of the other three areas. Once organizations and individuals begin accessing data from challengingcommon knowledge, seeking what others know, revealing ideas through dialogue, entirely new systems, products, services, and processes can arise. Today's creative opportunity becomes tomorrow's common knowledge and the road to mastery continues to expand into the future. Work toward what can be. Push out of the envelope.

Strategy for Quadrant 4:
Try anything in which you can fail quickly, get feedback even quicker, and accept the risk without regret. Take the elephant into the basement and the rest will follow. Ask: What's the worst thing that could happen if we take this new creation into reality?

The classic film "The Wizard of Oz" serves as a powerful metaphor in considering this journey toward mastery. The Tin Man had never felt his heart and literally rusted from lack of use; the Lion had never tested his courage; the Scarecrow had never used a brain; and Dorothy had never looked for home.

To improve their individual performance, they had to share what was common knowledge, reveal what they lacked and needed, learn from each other, and create an adventure and an opportunity that none would have done alone. As the Wizard of Oz told Dorothy, "You've had the ability all along."

©Copyright Eileen McDargh - All Rights Reserved.