Interactions - Creative Strategies for Business: Creative Strategies for Business

Consulting lessons from a convert to Guinness

I've been hosting two American blogger friends of mine over the past week or so and it's been so interesting to hear about my city second hand and from a new perspective. It's amazing what you take for granted when you live somewhere all the time. I've learned that electric kettles that automatically shut off are a new phenomenon where my friends come from; just because you think you know where you are going doesn't mean there are street signs to assist; non Guinness drinkers, if placed in the right hot house environment can become evangelists for the stuff etc. All joking aside it's affirmed for me the usefulness of having a different view on what we take for granted and most of the time that's what my work involves - turning something upside down or sideways to get a better view and to offer that difference to my cilent. 9 times out of 10 change works because the difference makes sense, and if we can approach that search from a position of curiosity then I believe that anything (including converting to being a Guinness drinker) is possible! Now whether or not that Guinness situation is sustainable change is a topic for another discussion.

On Learning from Challenging Assignments

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Sometimes the worst situations offer the best learning. In a gathering of colleagues recently we shared stories of some challenging consulting assignments. Yes, there were difficult clients and some harrowing stories, but each of my colleagues had reflected on their experiences, learned some lessons and allowed the learning to inform how they are in relationship with clients subsequently.

I extrapolated some of my learning from reflecting on my own practice and from participating in the above discussion and here are some of the questions I ask myself when the going seems tough.

• How am I being “used” here?
• In the service of who’s truth and reality?
• How is what’s happening to me relevant to my client’s dilemma?
• In what way is this situation my client’s experience?
• What have I contributed to the situation?
• What problem did my contribution solve for me?
• What’s useful about my dilemma?

What kinds of questions would help you reflect on your practice?

Just showing up isn't enough - are you present?

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I spent a couple of days last week with a group of highly creative and artistic people assisting them think at a strategic level about their sector. Like many people in the arts they are passionate, committed, enthusiastic and are not afraid of moving between their personal and professional selves in the service of the task. One of the things I noticed from the outset was how long it took some people to “arrive” both physically and psychologically. Some were late for our sessions and others were on time but not on message. I guessed that many mobile phones were on vibrate or silent and not many had been switched off entirely. (As it turned out, I was right).

This was a really experienced group of practitioners who were interested in the dilemma I reflected back to them about being in the room. I wondered what was going on that made it challenging for people to be really connected in the task. We worked through those challenges and emerged at the end of our work with a manifesto of responsibilities each was willing to sign up to in order to work productively in the future. They recognised that there was important information in not turning the phones off and being psychologically “outside the room”.

Physically “showing up” isn’t enough. The key question is – are you present? Being present requires a psychological and spiritual connection to the work that is happening in the moment and to the people with whom you are working. It requires intimacy and connection and it also means dealing with the fear of being connected. Being connected brings responsibilities and commitments and if we’ve left the phone on or are making ourselves available somewhere else it means our sense of commitment is also somewhere else. Agreements about tasks and decisions will then fail to deliver because that bullet pointed list may be a way of avoiding something deeper.

There was a time at the early stages in my consulting career when this kind of dilemma would have bothered me and I would have tried to “fix it”. These days I see it as a rich opportunity to introduce more of the shadow into the room – if people are willing to have their “resistance” seen then it’s a clue that the time may be right to have a look at what’s important about that resistance.. So it’s not only the participants who need to show up, it’s also the consultant or facilitator who needs to pay attention to what’s actually going on in front of them rather than what they think should be going on. In my own case, the less attention I pay to the detail of the discussion and the more I pay to the context and tone of the discussion the better I am able to work between the levels to create a space where everyone can be present. I can’t make them show up but I can wonder out loud about the quality of presence.

We are educating people out of their creativity

We are educating people out of our creativity

In another of the superb TED podcasts Ken Robinson gives a riveting (and very witty) presentation on the value of creativity and how our western education system is teaching us how to use our bodies as glorified transportation systems for our heads. He advocates a shift in the education system that values creativity for its own sake and for its impact on innovation. A timely reminder perhaps of a general election looming in about a week or so? I would be very interested to hear what our public representatives would make of Robinson's thoughts..


What can we learn from challenging assignments?

reflection.jpg

Sometimes the worst situations offer the best learning. In a gathering of colleagues recently we shared stories of some challenging consulting assignments. Yes, there were difficult clients and some harrowing stories, but each of my colleagues had reflected on their experiences, learned some lessons and allowed the learning to inform how they are in relationship with clients subsequently.

I extrapolated some of my learning from reflecting on my own practice and from participating in the above discussion and here are some of the questions I ask myself when the going seems tough.

• How am I being “used” here?
• In the service of who’s truth and reality?
• How is what’s happening to me relevant to my client’s dilemma?
• In what way is this situation my client’s experience?
• What have I contributed to the situation?
• What problem did my contribution solve for me?
• What’s useful about my dilemma?

What kinds of questions would help you reflect on your practice?

The arts and blogging

If you are an artist, arts organisation or work in the creative industries in Ireland and are interested in blogging then sign up for the Poetry Ireland seminar on Tuesday 12 June, 11 - 2pm in Dublin where I'll be running a seminar on the arts and blogging. We'll be looking at why artists and arts organisations should consider blogging and podcasting as tools for production as well as promotion and there will also be time to talk about the basics - like "what's a blog?"; "podcasting??"and "how do I start?". I'll be joined in the endeavour by blogger and podcaster Conn O'Muineachain from Edgecast Media .

Admission is free and you can book by calling 01 4789974 or emailing management@poetryireland.ie. If you're going to be there drop me a mail or leave a comment.

When showing up isn't enough

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I spent a couple of days last week with a group of highly creative and artistic people assisting them think at a strategic level about their sector. Like many people in the arts they are passionate, committed, enthusiastic and are not afraid of moving between their personal and professional selves in the service of the task. One of the things I noticed from the outset was how long it took some people to “arrive” both physically and psychologically. Some were late for our sessions and others were on time but not on message. I guessed that many mobile phones were on vibrate or silent and not many had been switched off entirely. (As it turned out, I was right).

This was a really experienced group of practitioners who were interested in the dilemma I reflected back to them about being in the room. I wondered what was going on that made it challenging for people to be really connected in the task. We worked through those challenges and emerged at the end of our work with a manifesto of responsibilities each was willing to sign up to in order to work productively in the future. They recognised that there was important information in not turning the phones off and being psychologically “outside the room”.

Physically “showing up” isn’t enough. The key question is – are you present? Being present requires a psychological and spiritual connection to the work that is happening in the moment and to the people with whom you are working. It requires intimacy and connection and it also means dealing with the fear of being connected. Being connected brings responsibilities and commitments and if we’ve left the phone on or are making ourselves available somewhere else it means our sense of commitment is also somewhere else. Agreements about tasks and decisions will then fail to deliver because that bullet pointed list may be a way of avoiding something deeper.

There was a time at the early stages in my consulting career when this kind of dilemma would have bothered me and I would have tried to “fix it”. These days I see it as a rich opportunity to introduce more of the shadow into the room – if people are willing to have their “resistance” seen then it’s a clue that the time may be right to have a look at what’s important about that resistance.. So it’s not only the participants who need to show up, it’s also the consultant or facilitator who needs to pay attention to what’s actually going on in front of them rather than what they think should be going on. In my own case, the less attention I pay to the detail of the discussion and the more I pay to the context and tone of the discussion the better I am able to work between the levels to create a space where everyone can be present. I can’t make them show up but I can wonder out loud about the quality of presence.

Emotions at Work

Steve Roesler googled "emotions at work" and came up with a list of topics that confirms something I've always known - that emotion at work is a fearful topic for many people. The assumptions are that

• Emotion happens at home i.e. it's personal
• Being emotional means being out of control
• Emotion is not masculine
• Emotion is negative
• Emotion is extraneous to everything the organisation stands for


The discussion on emotion at work invariably centres around the notion that emotion happens "somewhere else" and that emotion is destructive - nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. Organisations are emotional and emotion generating environments and most of my work concerns working with individuals and groups helping them to understand what systemic intelligence is contained in emotional situations. Very often the emotional person (aka the scapegoat) is voicing a concern on behalf of a system - i.e. they are doing a job in the system that needs to be done..How many people do you know who roll home after a day at the office talking about the activity they did today as distinct from how they felt about the activity. Most "irrational" behaviour in organisations is very often a conscious representation of unconscious emotional issues that are repressed because of the "rules" that suggest that emotion is not welcome...

I'm one of those odd people who believe that we can't decide to be rational-only because let's face it, that's a fairly irrational request...emotion is a vibrant and compelling type of data that can really contribute to learning .. But then again, we have examples of rational only entities - they are called bureaucracies - and the individual equivalents? sociopaths...Allowing emotion a place to breath doesn't mean abandoning reason - it means allowing the whole person in the room and that can only be a good thing in my view.

Hat Tip to Mark for the link

No, no, no, no um ok, yes then...

Boundary setting is a recurring interest and theme here and I was interested to see this post over at The Chief Happiness Officer Just Say No - to that evil company. Alexander Kjerulf shares comments left on another post - can you be happy in an evil business? and they include this one from Michael Clarke which I rather liked:

One incident that’s stuck in my mind was an interview I had 24 years ago for a financial consultancy. The interviewer talked about money, about wealth, about owning yachts.

Then he began to talk about the losers, the [sorry, but I’m quoting] c**** who didn’t recognise money and its importance, that in five years you could walk away, that you could have other people doing the work for you. That the world had two kind of people - people like him and the “stupid c****” who didn’t understand. He went on and on. It was like talking to low-end devil.

Finally, he let me get a word in. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m one of the c****.” And I walked out. One of the more terrifying experiences of my life.

Meanwhile Matt is struggling to say "no" to his email addiction

At an individual level, each of us needs to do the same. I have something of an email habit, clicking "refresh" on my inbox like a rat in a Skinner Box - but I don't have a PDA/Blackberry (which is a bit like a meth addict proudly claiming not to touch heroin). I have decided I need to have one email-free day a week. The computer will stay off*.

We also need to examine the relationships that are mediated through these technologies. Are we driving people crazy with our behaviour? How do we manage ourselves to get the best out of our interactions with others? For some of us, this might be too painful. Best get back to hitting them with emails/txts/IMs I guess - that'll learn 'em.

What does all this boil down to? How we learn to say "no" better.

Perhaps the more interesting question is - how do we learn to say "yes" to what we really want better? Any ideas?

Lessons from the circus

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The Dublin Fringe Festival began on Saturday night and I and my blogger friend Dermod had great seats for La Clique at the Spiegeltent. Dermod has written a lovely review of the evening here but I wanted to throw in my tuppenceworth as well. For a couple of hours on Saturday evening I was enchanted and entertained by a series of fabulous performers (who were joined on the evening by the wonderful Camille O'Sullivan). And as I was sitting there at the front of the tent watching a double jointed man squeeze through a stringless tennis racquet and two "strong men" with unmatchable finesse and showmanship do unspeakably amazing feats I realised I was impressed. I was so very impressed. And I took great comfort in the fact that there wasn't a single person in that audience who could emulate what these performers were doing. There wasn't a moment of envy - just sheer admiration. And it got me thinking about how important it is to be impressed by other people in a way that's healthy and nurturing.

At one point the above mentioned double jointed man balanced precariously on a series of tin cans (4 to be precise) on top of a piano, the top one was the size of a bean tin...he then wrapped his legs around his head and wondered out loud with us that if he could follow his dream and spend his life doing this...what might we aspire to?

Well, tin cans and stringless tennis racquets aside for a moment, he had a point...and it was eloquently made and even more eloquently received by many of the people I knew there that evening. What if following our dream meant being the best we could be? What if waiting for the "right" thing to come along meant we were missing opportunities to be impressive in other areas of our lives? What if we had to learn to be impressive first and the dream might follow...and what if we allowed ourselves to be impressed once in a while without feeling threatened?

All that and more at the circus..and if you plan on going to the circus, using the piano as 12 o'clock, get a seat at 3pm...I can't tell you why but I do promise you'll be impressed.

pic credit

Elevator pitches

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Do you have an elevator pitch about your business? I have tried and failed (repeatedly) to invent one.

I’ve written here previously about Dynamic Participation – the principles that inform how I facilitate and consult and I’ve refined those 10 points into a 3 point plan for working with groups

1 Keep the process in the room
2 Consult with curiosity
3 Respect the resistance

Will that get me to the top floor?

The Interpretation of Murder

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I've just started to read The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld (more about why later in the month) suffice to say it has one of the best opening sections of anything I've read recently.

There is no mystery to happiness.

Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn - or worse, indifference - cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He doesn't look ahead. He lives in the present.

But there's the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning - the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life - a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.

Now that made a lot of sense to me...

The Enterprise Bootcamp

I love the idea of re-introducing scarcity into systems that lack boundaries

If too much choice leads to unhappiness then does scarcity lead to something more productive? I'm inclined to think it might after the past week or so. Mayo County Enterprise Board asked me to design and deliver a series of day long workshops for 16/17 year old students to encourage them to think of entrepreneurship as a career option after school. 50 students attended each of the four workshops we ran over the past 2 weeks and at the end of each day we had 8 new businesses complete with elevator pitches; unique selling positions and costings.

The Enterprise Challenge

I designed the sessions to give the students resources including the services of consultants; some brainstorming exercises to get their creative juices flowing; space; time; there was an award for the members of the winning team and a clear task. Then I added some constraints. Consultants could be booked for a limited number of timed sessions. A lovely lunch was provided but we didn't have an official lunch break. A deadline was imposed for each of the 8 groups to present their pitch to their classmates. The students had to self manage time, resources and constraints.

The Enterprise Challenge

The workshops were variations on similar bootcamp events I've run for business clients and I also structured the days around a set of principles I believe to be true in organisational systems.


• People (particularly teenagers) know much more than we give them credit for

• Real creativity happens when you connect people with their own unique truth and experience

• People are experts about their own experience

• When creativity dries up in the system start looking at who’s managing the process – blocked creativity is rarely located in an individual’s experience it’s always about the message individuals are getting about what constitutes the ‘right’ way of being creative

• Most of what constitutes consulting and facilitating is getting out of the way

• The other bit is learning to listen – which means not thinking about your response to what the person in front of you is saying

• Creativity can only thrive with constraints. Too much of anything is not liberating it's oppressive

• You can only manage at the boundaries - anything else is police work

The Enterprise Challenge

The students came up with fantastic ideas, on time, on task and made creative use of all of the resources we put at their disposal. Claire Wilson documented the days and we were joined by a team of five consultants who worked closely with each of the groups.

If I've learned anything in the past week it's that teenagers know more about strategy than any MBA graduate I've ever met and trusting them to get on with the task is half of the work involved - let's not assume that because someone is 'younger' (in any sense of the word) that there's anything they need to learn from us oldies. These young people blew me away with their ingenuity, positiveness and ability to work with what was in front of them. I'm indebted to a wonderful 17 year old young woman (my niece) who has taught me a lot about respecting the wisdom of younger people - she deserves half the credit for the design of the day and I'm proud and honoured to have a wonderful consultant of this calibre. She has two younger sisters and I'm on standby for the life lessons they'll pass on when the time is right.


Hat tip to Gary for the Merlin Mann post

Cyber System in the Mind part 2

At the New York Regional Meeting of ISPSO on Saturday I shared some thoughts on the Cyber System in the Mind. I'm intrigued as to why there are so few psychodynamic practitioners (particularly those working with organisations) using social media applications to talk about the work. I shared my own experience of being invited to present on this topic (a relatively new one for this organisation) and the levels of anxiety it raised for me. At one stage it looked like the Aer Lingus pilots in Ireland were going to strike and there was a part of me that was almost relieved to have a legitimate excuse to cancel. If I'm honest, I was scared of being attacked, criticised and ridiculed - thinking through my emotional reaction to the invitation (and some subsequent email correspondence) I realised that I was having a similar emotional experience to many of the clients with whom I work. In some cases their fear of an attack on their expertise or artform area etc prevents them from sharing what they know in cyberspace. Sometimes it's easier and safer to talk to ourselves. But while talking to ourselves has its benefits it is also exclusive...I remember the loneliness and isolation of being out for dinner with friends after a week of working with therapy clients and knowing I couldn't share what happened to me in the office that week. I've learned to trust my emotional reaction to situations because it's the only thing I have when I'm working with a client. So thinking through all of the above led me to offer three hypotheses and a paradox to my colleagues yesterday:

There is anxiety about succession in psychoanalysis - the new replacing the old

The cyber system in the mind is not a virtual but a hyper-real place – a place of regression - where incestuous desire is potentially realisable.

The silence of psychoanalytic practitioners in cyber space is a defence against the potential murder/death of psychoanalysis from the oedipal attack of the new.

The paradox this raises is then

Creating & telling stories in cyberspace places us on an equal footing with everyone else – we become ‘ordinary’ potentially divested of authority and status – it’s easier to talk to ourselves

yet

The future of a psychoanalytic approach to organising and organisations may rest in how ‘ordinary’ it becomes

Here is the set of slides I used (minus the case study which was only relevant for members of ISPSO).

I've put up a page containing links to all of the sites I referenced and have also included a few more for background information - you can access that page by clicking HERE.

I couldn't find an appropriate place for Rives on the day but somehow he seems so relevant in hindsight!

On books and writing and education

Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize speech is a wonderful and impassioned plea for the importance of education and telling our stories. In her speech she talks about illiteracy and the lack of books in Africa and compares the passion for learning with our comfortable complacency here – which is particularly apt at this time of the year.

The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise ... but the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us – for good and for ill. It is our stories, the storyteller, that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, what we are at our best, when we are our most creative.

That poor girl trudging through the dust, dreaming of an education for her children, do we think that we are better than she is – we, stuffed full of food, our cupboards full of clothes, stifling in our superfluities?

She’s not a fan of the time spent surfing and wonders


How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc?

But of course the irony is, that blogging and social media have become important ways of telling stories – and Lessing’s words will permeate many imaginations by virtue of bloggers picking up and sharing what she has to say. But I take her point – I love books - I love the kinaesthetic experience of holding a document in my hands – and while others herald paperless books – they miss the point. Reading is not a delivery mechanism, it’s an emotional and spiritual experience and that can certainly be enhanced by the digital revolution but not supplanted by it. Unlike Lessing I'm hopeful about the future of literature, and the book, and can only hope that digital and traditional ways of telling stories can continue to co-exist.

And we, the old ones, want to whisper into those innocent ears. "Have you still got your space? Your sole, your own and necessary place where your own voices may speak to you, you alone, where you may dream. Oh, hold onto it, don't let it go." There must be some kind of education.

Befriend your inner saboteur

Happy New Year. Broken any new year resolutions yet? Or maybe you’re the kind that refuses to make them – that way ensuring a 100% satisfaction guaranteed rating at the year’s end. Like so may people I think about resolutions at this time of the year – I sometimes act upon them, but often than not by the end of January I’ve quietly put them away for another 11 months. This year I’ve decided to take a different approach. For the past 6 months I’ve been thinking about change – personal and professional – and spending a lot of that time asking myself what’s useful and productive about not making the changes I say I want to make. What kind of satisfaction (or secondary gain) am I getting out of my stuckness that’s more useful than the imagined newer version? I invariably come up against comfort (with the status quo) and fear (of the unknown) not highly original but pretty real in my case.

I have a couple of major personal change projects for 2008 and instead of writing a ‘to do’ list and an action plan I’ve made a mental list of how I am feeling now and how I want to feel when I’ve achieved those changes. I’ve decided to make the emotional engagement with these resolutions the focus of my attention while also embarking on some practical actions. So often it’s the emotional stuff that derails our best laid plans and in my case I can revert to a comfortable and controlled emotional relationship which inhibits my progress with outward action. So far it’s working –I’m delving into the value of my fear and comfort and discovering all kinds of interesting insights. I’m taking on my inner saboteur and am going to make ‘her’ my closest friend for the next year and I know that by the end of January I won’t be consigning any ‘to do’ list to the back of the drawer for another 11 months.

How are you getting along with your resolutions? And what’s your plan to befriend your inner saboteur?

For a great article on New Year Resolutions head over to Escape from Cubicle Nation where Pam asks ‘what’s perfect about your problem?’

The lost art of letter writing

This lovely Ted Talk from Lakshmi Pratury is a love letter to the lost art of letter writing. She invites us to think about both/and - email and text messages as well as hand written personal notes both of which should be able to sit side by side. It's a timely thought for me. I've noticed that my handwriting is declining in clarity the older I get - while I can rectify my blurry vision with stronger lenses, the only way I can reclaim my penmanship is to take a pen in hand and practice more often. I tend to hand write envelopes even if the contents are business related and the only real notes I've written in the last year are either Birthday/Christmas cards or summaries of meetings I'm involved in that need to be decoded afterwards.. so a thought for the new year will be to create more opportunities for that personal touch. When so much of what I read is about creating better and more personal relationships it seems to me that a handwritten note might just be the most creative technology we have at our fingertips to make that happen.

A Stroke of Insight

So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are -- I am -- the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the "we" inside of me.

Which would you choose? Which do you choose? And when? I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading.

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story of recovery and awareness -- of how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

In confidence

One of the unchallenged tenets of consultancy is the concept of confidentiality. In the course of assignments I am often assumed to hold a confidential space and for many years I accepted this principle as a central hypothesis in my work. While the concept of confidentiality is always discussed in therapeutic relationships, I am finding myself more and more curious about why consulting clients are not as ready to have conversations about this concept in the same way. In more recent times I have also become more interested in the concept of confidentiality and how it is constructed as a mechanism for the distribution of power within organisations.

As a society I see an ongoing struggle between what is useful in terms of confidentiality and what is sacrificed as a result of it. The discourse here in Ireland surrounding the Catholic Church and the various tribunals etc – have all contributed to new interpretations of what confidentiality means and constructs. In each of these situations, power and confidentiality appear to sit side by side.

So I’ve been developing a series of hypotheses about confidentiality and consulting

1. The first is that my role as consultant is often defined by the confidentiality I offer – as though I “own” the concept and bring it “to” my clients. My credibility in the organisation can be defined by the way in which I manage and navigate the concept i.e. I retain sole responsibility for it.

2. The second is that the stories that are revealed “in confidence” are perceived to contain the “truth” of the organisation – those stories revealed openly as part of the lived experience of clients are merely one level of engagement.

3. The third is that those who reveal the most “dramatic” stories in a confidential setting can be perceived to be the most “honest” members of an organisation and maintain a powerful position as a result of their ability to “say it as it is”.

As a consultant I am often invited to hear the stories, be influenced by them and synthesise the meaning into something more objective and less personal. In many cases this may result in little sense of ownership and participation on the part of those interviewed in conversations concerning the co-constructed nature of challenges and more importantly the co-constructed nature of moving forward. This places the consultant in a powerful position within organisations, particularly as we continue to live in a culture that values information as currency.

So in recent times I have opened up this whole issue of confidentiality as part of the contracting phase with clients and begun to question what confidentiality means and how I am being used as a container for the client’s secrets. I have also begun to reframe the conversation about confidentiality by asking these kinds of questions:

• What are the limits of confidentiality?
• What would a ‘safe enough’ environment look like?
• How can we jointly create a safe enough space in which we can tell the stories that need to be told and heard in order to move forward?
• How is power distributed in this organisation and how does confidentiality contribute to that?
• How can we begin to distribute empowerment in this organisation?

Tracking and discussing the shifts in the power relationships with clients is a way of holding power ‘for them’ as distinct from ‘instead of them’. It may be necessary for me to hear and hold confidential content while at the same time exploring what confidentiality means for this client and how each of us are being made and re-made in each others’ presence. I now welcome a richer conversation about confidentiality – one that addresses content and context and hopefully one that challenges a few ‘taken for granted’ stories about the power of secret keeping.

Email - knowing its place

If E-mail is e-mail then instant messaging is e-whispering or epassinganoteatthebackoftheclass

Check out Matt Moore's simple and very sophisticated presentation on email and where it fits in the landscape of web 2.0 in Peak Email - A Fairy Story.

home is where the heart is

Sometimes being in a familiar place can be an unfamiliar experience. I’ve been in New York for the past ten days and the place should technically look and feel the same as it always does. But it doesn’t. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m a regular visitor to the city now (at least twice a year) or maybe it’s that I’m taking it for granted – but I think it’s probably the people and relationships I am building here that makes the difference. I’ve always felt that I make more sense to myself in this city. The grass is always greener I know, but there’s a constellation of people, places and feelings that are evoked in me when I’m here that’s unlike anywhere else I’ve travelled. New York is the city that never disappoints – and technically it should. I know the city very well, the ride from the airport should be passé – but the Manhattan skyline takes my breath away every time, each time anew, each time a renewed beginning.

I’m thinking about this in terms of organisations and what would make going to work a renewing experience every day. With so much energy going into staff retention; work/life balance and work related satisfaction I wonder is it as simple as the relationships we build while we’re there? Work is a social place and organisations are networks of human systems. If, like me, you’re driven by curiosity and a need for conversation then the quality of those relationships make or break an environment. I can’t imagine not having my imagination fed through my work. I can’t imagine not having my heart stimulated by relationships.

I know I’ll look back on this trip and see it as pivotal in the relationship I’m having with myself – I look in the mirror each morning and see a difference - the difference is down to the people I know here. If the old cliché that home is where the heart is, is true then the fact that I’m feeling at home here and within myself has to do with that heart connection. I wonder how many of us can say the same of our work lives?

5.75 questions

Check out this short film from Box of Crayons called The 5.75 questions you've been avoiding.

1 What's going well for you?

2 What are you trying to ignore?

3 What's boring you?

4 How do you want to be remembered?

5 Who do you love?

I particularly liked this observation:

Comfort is just boredom with good PR


Hat tip: Chief Happiness Officer