A "difference that makes a difference"

Carrying on..

Sorry, you've got me for at least another year... apologies to anyone who was hoping...

:-)

Discourse and Conversational Trajectories

I've been working with a major engineering company over the last few years trying to help them improve their new product development (NPD) process.

To start with I tried to attune myself to their way of talking and relating.  I tried to capture the ways that guys in the system worked together and understood what was going on.  So I used a research method called Discourse Analysis.  This is a method that treats talk and written texts as the product not just of an individual but as the product of socially acceptable ways of communicating.  To give you an idea about how this works; if you were to look at the way Anglo-Americans talk, you'd see that our talk is very individualistic with a great emphasis on what the individual does.  However, if you were to look at other cultures you'd see that the individual features far less in their talking and families are more important or ancestral spirits or a more social view of being.  These sorts of differences would come across as different discourses in the way people talk.

So, we had done a load of interviews where we got people to talk about particular projects or how they worked with others and I looked at these interviews to see what 'discourses' I could find.  Now here I come to a point where I diverge from other colleagues who are interested in talk in organisations.  I use the term 'conversational trajectory' rather than discourse. The reason I do that is to emphasise that talk is not static but is generative - that is it makes a difference.  So, if we talk in different ways we will create different futures.  Conversations have trajectories, they take us to different places.  Consequently, we can ask whether the conversations we are involved in are taking us to a place we want to go.  Do we like the trajectory of our conversation?

So what were the conversational trajectories I found?  Well there were four that I thought were pretty unhelpful.

• First, there was a strong trajectory of us and them, very nearly us versus them.  In projects where collaboration was important, that wasn't helpful
• Secondly, there was a sequential way of thinking about work "you do your job and then you pass it on". The trouble was that all the jobs were interdependent and doing your job in a particular way might well cause trouble to colleagues
• Thirdly, there was a strong, hierarchical emphasis - decisions got passed up the 'chimney' for someone senior enough to make them.  The trouble with that, apart from being very slow, was that the devil in engineering projects is always in the detail and the senior guys would not know the detail.
• Finally, guys talked about their work as if managing a complex engineering job was simple, all the talk was about disciplines of what people ought to do and when they should do it. There appeared to be little time allocated to what I termed 'judgement calls' the times when there were trade offs to be made and in complex engineering projects there are always trade offs and compromises to be made.

So what could we do to help? Well I designed an "Integrative Workshop" that tried to help these engineers develop new conversational trajectories that were more helpful.  And then with the help of colleagues at the university and in the company we introduced these workshops and gradually improved and refined them. 

Almost immediately the company was reporting significant savings (£millions) and also the departments were reporting improved workflow.  For me, however, the big thing I cherished was that I was a part of a project that was helping engineers and managers do their work better.  we were 'a difference that was making a differnce'! 

Liquid or Relational Church II

Imagine that you and I are asked to improvise a scene in a shop; you are the sales rep and I am the customer.

You see me come in and say "Hello"

Does this help me to improvise? Of course I can say hello back, but if you had said "Hello, welcome to my clothes shop." then that would have been much more helpful, you would have given me some guidance as to what to talk about.

Knowing, now that it's a clothes shop scene, I say "oh I'm just looking around"  again, is that very helpful?  What if I had said "Oh, I'm looking for an outfit for my daughter's wedding."  Now that would have really given you something to work with.  You could talk to me about daughters, weddings, this year's fashions, how expensive every thing is etc. etc.

Do you see how we can say different things that will be more or less helpful to others in going on in relationship with us?  In the same way, in the body of Christ, we can say things that can be helpful to discipleship (learning) or we can say things that are less helpful. 

What might be an unhelpful way of talking?  Well, one way would be to say things that 'complete' a story.  What can someone else add if you offer the final word on any topic?  What else can they contribute? Nothing, you've completed all there is to say!  I would suggest that much of our ways of going on in the gathered church are about completion.  Creeds, lectionaries, sermons (oh, especially sermons) all encourage people to say completion type things; what is true, what is necessary, what is required, what is happening.  Of course all these activities can be done differently, but generally a gathering is led and the structure of it is (more or less) completed by the people up front.

So what do we pew fillers do?  Well, I guess we receive it and act upon it.  I suppose some chemical reaction happens inside us when the preacher's words hit our ears.  Wonderfully, magically we are changed by what we hear so that we can "go and do likewise" err is that your experience?  Let me backtrack a little: I'm not saying that gatherings are irredeemably bad.  Of course good things happen at gatherings; what I am saying, however, is that the tendency at gatherings is for talk to be 'completion' talk, where the final word on God's, my, his or her reality is shared.  I don't think that this is helpful to discipleship.

Are there other ways of relating?  You'll be surprised to find out (given that there are more words below) that the answer is yes.  We can talk in ways that invite response and contribute to the trajectory of our relationship.  Notice here, I wrote contribute rather than complete.

So we can talk in ways that open up spaces or close them down

we can talk in ways that invite addition or acquiescence

we can talk in ways that intrigue, surprise, point towards or we can talk in ways that finalise

Now, I would suggest that one of these styles of talking (let's call it dialogical talk) will promote a discipleship of exploration, experimentation and the learning of new life whilst the other style of talk (let's call it monological talk) will lead to passivity and acceptance.

I would, furthermore, contend that the very dynamics of larger gatherings will tend to promote monological talk and smaller, informal relational settings will give space for dialogical talk.

It therefore only makes sense to me to up the potential of the body of Christ to meet in ways that promote learning and minimise the number of times we meet in ways that promote passive acquiescence.

and a logical consequence?  Reduce the gathering and explore ways that we can develop mutual, generative conversations.  I.E. cut the church services, cell (or home) groups and look for ways to make ourselves available to each other, look for ways of focusing conversations in such a way so as to contribute to a trajectory that leads to more faithful following of Jesus.

hmm, that's the trouble with half baked blogs, there's always more to say!

Those quizzes that are all the rage...

Well, have you been doing them?  I'm not sure, but I think that I'm a postmodern, emergent, Calvinistic (surely not!), catholic with post-tribulationist tendencies!

OK, so I know that these are only a little random nonsense but they hide behind them a series of assumptions that I consider to be pretty damaging to people and utterly limiting to our potential to learn and change.  So here's a campaign against all these typing psychologies and pseudo psychologies.

The key assumption that lies behind these tests, and the more acceptable ones like Myers-Briggs, is that we are basically fairly stable types.  Furthermore, it is argued that we can appreciate these personality types through 16 (or so) different factors, hence the name 16pf tests.  Not all these tests use Cattel's 16 personality factors but they're pretty ubiquitous.  So, because we're considered pretty stable and because it is taken for granted that we can in some way measure this stability in terms of personality factors, it is therefore argued that we can determine what sort of personality type, learning style etc etc we have.  And we're kinda stuck with what we have.

The second important assumption is that our behaviour is determined by our personality. There is some debate about what determines our personality - nurture or nature - but a personality we have (or so we're told) and that determines how we behave. 

Now, I'm not fully qualified to challenge these assumptions but others have.  If you're seriously into this sort of thing read something by Edward Sampson, Ken Gergen, John Shotter, Vivien Burr (an excellent introduction to social constructionism) or Rome Harre.  (But beware, with the exception of Vivien Burr these guys aren't easy to read.)  So I'll leave the serious challenge to personality to them.

I just want to point out however, that rather than thinking of our actions emerging out of our personality, we can helpfully think of our actions making sense within ongoing, moment-by-moment relations.  My actions are always shaped by what has just happened and anticipate, to some extent, what is going to happen next.  It is as if we are in a constant improvised theatre performance. 

So what Caroline?

Well, to speak of our personality, identity or whatever as fixed ensnares us and enslaves us.  Crucially, Christians believe that we are not the product of our genes or our early childhood environment.  We believe that we are a work-in-progress to perfection in heaven! (some of us a long way off yet!) 

Let me give you an example.  Imagine that you are shy. How will you act? well in a shy way.  What can you do about it? not much, it's your personality! Bit of a shame that!  But let's reframe this conversation a bit.  Instead of considering ourselves as shy, let's consider ourselves as subject to attack by an external force of shyness.  Can we spot the symptoms of an upcoming attack, can we learn any strategies to help us overcome these attacks?  Well, yes we can.  This shyness is no longer a fixed personality trait but a social performance which can be re-scripted.

And that leads us to the most exciting thing for Christians.  I mentioned that our actions can be considered to be improvised in social relations.  And Christians are involved in an ongoing social relation within the body of Christ.  Church is an ongoing relationship.  Now this offers us incredibly exciting possibilities for handling those areas of our lives that we call weaknesses.  You see, if your actions are improvised with me, then my contributions to our conversations can help you change your actions.  Let me give you another example...

perhaps you consider yourself not-too-bright.  I can act towards you in ways that affirm your judgement of yourself. I can speak very slowly and explain very simply etc. etc. On the other hand I can listen to you, let you influence me, I can thank you for the insight you offer me... now, how do you think that you will act following these different responses from me?  Do you think that I might be able to help you improvise a new (intelligent) performance? 

This to me is the most exciting shift in my thinking over the last few years.  If we shift out of our over individualistic ideas of our actions, if we see our actions growing out of social relations, if we see the body of Christ as not just an encouragement to come up for communion, but as the potential for Christlike improvisations, we we see the body of Christ as generative possibilities.. doesn't that fill you with new hope that maybe, just maybe we can help each other towards holiness?

ps of course the most powerfully generative relating we can do will include the Holy Spirit as a co-improviser (but maybe that's stretching the analogy a bit too far!)

Blogs I read

I've been mulling over male and female voices since the glass ceiling conversation started.  and today I noticed something I was running my mouse up and down my list fo favourite blogs when I noticed that I was only visiting the blogs written by women.  "Why?"  I wondered. 

There are some terrific blogs out there.  I've been so blessed by the thoughtfulness and insights I've read.  There are guys out there who write beautifully.  But I notice that there are more shades in the women's blogs; somehow I sense that I've started to get to know them as people whereas on the blokes blogs I tend to be spoken at (albeit very well).  Now I'm not saying that one is right and the other wrong, but it seems to me one helps me build a relationship and the other gets me to think but the women manage to do both!

Of course I'm being unfair, but I wonder how it is that you choose wich blogs to read, do you have different blog reading moods?  Do you have blog lists for different days?

Breaking the Glass Ceiling?

Over the last day or so I've been involved in a blog conversation with Maggi and Richard (and many others) over the dominance of the 'emergent' scene by men.  Is there something intrinsic to the nature of emergent 'leaders' that means that they privilege the masculine voice and so re-create the highly masculine hierarchies of traditional churches?

Many reasons have been suggested for the largely male leadership of Emergent Village and co-travellers.  I've stuck in my tuppenny-worth by suggesting that the problem may be more to do with the kind of conversations we've been involved in rather than some latent sexist attitudes in unreformed, theological conservatives.  But in this blog I'm not going to try and work out the whys but I'm going to explore how some of the social poetic (or social constructionist ) ideas that I work with in helping managers with organisational change might help us to re-create leadership that is less restricted to one half of the human race.

When trying to solve problems we tend to attempt to work out what is causing things to go wrong, and so generate some actions that tackle those causes.  I'm pretty unconvinced about this process.  Apart from anything else, I tend to find that assertions as to 'what the problem is' usually says as much about the commentator as about the situation and secondly it usually contains so many assumptions, stereotypes and generalisations to make it worthless (and notice I've just done exactly the same! :-)

So is there another way to improve situations?   Surprisingly (given that there are many words left in this post) I think there is!  OK so let's start with some verbal building blocks:

1. rather than thinking of ourselves as living in the world let's think of ourselves as creating our world in our day to day conversations.  This is not quite so daft as it might seem; just remember the way you have created friendships over the years (or indeed bad relations).
2. now, think of our daily conversations as improvised performances. So, some things we say can make it easy to carry on conversations and some things we say will get in the way.  For example, imagine I ask you to 'perform' a conversation about Tennis ... and then you say to your partner "I can't bear tennis - I refuse even to think about it for a moment!"  Well, you've made it pretty difficult to carry on that conversation! 
3. Next, instead of thinking of leaders as individuals who possess particular attributes focus on leadership as a conversational process by which we explore God's will. 
4. next,  don't bother looking for solutions.  rather what I'm going to suggest a 3 or 4 actions that will generate lines of inquiry into how leadership processes can become shared across genders and across minority groups who don't get much of a mention in leadership.
5. finally, think of jelly babies (no reason for this but I can't think of anything else to write in this list and I've already got point 5 typed in my numbered list.

OK, so here we go.  What I'm going to suggest is a series of conversational gambits that will disrupt the flow of your normal leader type conversations. A key point in this is to get everyone's agreement before embarking on the experiments. When discussing any decision:

• do not allow anyone to explain themselves or their ideas for more than one sentence.  Give someone permission to stop anyone who does so.  (You might want to start this out on smaller issues until you get skilled at this.
• allow only comments that focus on relationships and how this decision might affect them.  Anyone who raises an 'issue' is to be gently silenced.  Again you will need a trusted referee for this exercise.
• Do not allow anyone to say 'but' or contradict a previous speaker.  Instead, for all conversational contributions, look in previous comments, for what you agree with or what you can build upon to construct new practices.
• do not permit any 'structural' solutions to be accepted.

OK, so you think these are crazy?  Maybe, but if you tried them out you would then attend to the new types of conversations you created:

• Who gets to talk now?  Are people who didn't normally say anything starting to speak?  (this may take a little time as folk get used to new ways of going on at meetings)
• How widely spread are the suggestions that are taken up by the group?
• How frustrated do you get?  (take time to wonder what this says about you and your assumptions rather than just putting it all down to 'Bert' or that daft woman Caroline!)
• How different are actions based on relationships than actions based on 'rational' analysis of situations?
• How would you modify my suggested experiments yourself having tried things out and noticed costs and benefits?

One or two bits of advice before you dive headlong into any of the above (huh, who am I kidding, none of you are that daft .. are you?)

1. try any of the above out with people you trust in a context where you don't mind things going wrong.
2. Don't try all the conversational gambits at once - one at a time will be more than enough! :-)
3. remember this is not so much about making good decisions but more about how you can get more people contributing (that's not the same as sounding off!) to those decision.
4. I am not proposing the above as good ways of deciding things but as conversational experiments to highlight how conversational patterns get sedimented in our practice, and so certain people who are good at those conversational patterns get listened to more and so established as Leaders to be followed.
5. If you are mad enough to try this out and if you want to take it further than just a one off play; do contact me and I'll try to help you as much as I can.  And yes, if you're wondering, some of my manager-students have done things not too dissimilar to the above!