Hack:
Practical Trust

By Theodore Taptiklis

July 2, 2010 at 3:20pm

trust

conversation

presence

noticing

practice

Moonshots

Embed the ethos of community and citizenship

Increase trust, reduce fear

Reinvent the means of control

Summary

To reinvent management we have to do just that - reinvent management from its deepest foundations. Practical Trust means abandoning abstractions and theories in favour of down-to-earth, everyday human connection. To work together productively we have to learn to be together first - to have the sense and the humility to recognise our deepest aspirations and purposes in others and vice-versa.

See attached videos: Hello Gary Hamel and Thinking about John Seddon.

Problem

The problem is not simply that we are doing the wrong things in our organisations, or that there are other, better things that we could be doing. It is that our organisational conduct depends on an elaborate set of beliefs that are so deeply buried that we do not recognise them as contestable assumptions, but simply take them for granted. They include for example the idea of the person as an independent, self-determining entity; the organisation as something that can be separated from the people who constitute it; the worth of human activity as largely measurable by disembodied, 'fact-based' analysis; and organisations as susceptible to mastery by heroic, visionary leaders. In other words, we subscribe to a fantasy of hubris and control, and this pervades every aspect of organisational life.

But it is not enough to counter these beliefs with rational argument. To replace existing organisational and behavioural models with new ones is merely to perpetuate the empty intellectualism of present management discourse. Even if people are persuaded by the merits of a new idea (and we are easily excited by new ideas) they will move on to the next new idea in due course, and nothing will really change. It's not a new idea (a 'solution') that we need: it's a new understanding, a new experience, of the practical possibilities of purposeful collaborative action in the workplace.

Solution

Conventional management thinking nearly always follows a pathway from 'problems' to 'solutions' that begins with analysis and is supposed to conclude with decisive action. What is hidden in this approach are its fatal assumptions: that the agency or actor in this process is outside or above the 'problem' and, once the 'facts' are available, will be able to acquire and direct the resources to implement the 'solution'. And the means for doing so are held to be the elusive and mystical powers of 'leadership'.

The pathway to Practical Trust avoids this kind of abstract idealisation. Instead of being concerned with 'problems' and 'solutions', practical trust is about the here and now: what is real and is right in front of us at present. The conversation that takes place is about the details of people's actual experiences, not about opinions or theories. The conversation is recorded, and its 'moments of truth' are extracted and made retrievable for reconsideration using purpose-designed software. As people talk, listen and reflect, they begin to acquire a discipline of presence and paying attention. They recognise themselves in the midst of the concerns and experiences of others; discover details of daIly practices that they had not formerly seen as important; and glimpse new possibilities for fruitful collaboration. Through a process of sustained immersion, people develop 'practical trust' in their colleagues and associates: an unconfused sense of their own and others' capabilities that can be combined in new and original ways.

At the same time, a body of recorded experience is built: a collection of fragments of individual insight that recombine to form a larger picture, offering clarity, coherence and a shared understanding of an entire professional arena. In effect, this is social media with a deeper purpose. Applying technology in this way helps to give Practical Trust reach and scale.

Practical Impact

The practical impact of Practical Trust is felt in the nature and quality of the working relationships that grow and develop among the participants in the initiative. And these relationships need not be confined within a single organisation, but can include others in the wider professional arena whose work is linked with the purposes and outcomes that are sought.

What arises is a kind of relational confidence: an "Aha! So that's what you're about! If you're doing that, and I'm doing this, then together we can do this (new thing)!." Many such eruptions of recognition, occurring spontaneously across a community of practitioners, create entirely new levels of responsiveness and trust in the workplace. Moreover, this is not an intellectual form of trust: a 'willing suspension of disbelief'. Nor is it the kind of trust that entails emotional surrender: a 'letting go' of doubts and uncertainties. Instead, as the description 'practical trust' tries to convey, it is something very down-to-earth, practical, and everyday, that comes out of shared experience and observation. Having recognised an aspect of myself in another person - and vice-versa - I 'know' something about that person that enables me to anticipate their likely responses in a particular situation. And that gives me the confidence to embark on joint action.

First Steps

The simplest and best way for an organisation to test this proposition is to join an existing syndicated research initiative (or to instigate a new one). Conducting an experiment in parallel with other others provides a double benefit. The development of a high-touch practitioner community can be explored within the organisation, and at the same time the organisation's experience with the approach can be compared with and shared with that of other organisations.

The organisational commitment required for the experiment - apart from a genuine spirit of determined enquiry - is half a day on three occasions from a core group of between 15 and 30 practitioners. This proposal is set out in more detail in the attached document, Invitation to Reinvent Management.

Credits

Credits are due to many people for the development and elaboration of Practical Trust and its progenitors. They include my earliest collaborators, Dr Margi Martin, Charles Hett and my wife Jo; my unfaltering supporter David Guillebaud; my inspirational mentor, Patricia Benner; my technology guru Nick Taptiklis; teachers and guides, Professors David Boje, Ralph Stacey, and Hubert Dreyfus; and my distinguished colleagues and collaborators, Professors John Shotter, Patricia Shaw and Jo Tyler. The infelicities and errors are all mine.

Documents

InvitationToReinventManagement.doc

Images

Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDHJ8xluJOQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi5ago3zfgk

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July 17, 2010 at 5:48am

Theodore Taptiklis

Dear Mireille,

There's lots to consider in your very thoughtful response, and it's hard to know where to start. Maybe, as well as communicating here, we could have a Skype conversation about this?

I think your suggestion for contributor-driven collaboration is an inspiring one. But it's also a real challenge. Bringing 'gurus' together can be like herding cats.

Thank you for reminding me about Cynthia Kurtz, with whom I used to be close. The post of hers that you directed me to brings out, I think, the enormous difficulties in conversations about abstract ideas and explanatory 'models'. So - following William James - I have tended to try to avoid them wherever possible. Instead what is great is to share real, detailed, concrete, personal experiences...not to try to explain, but to offer a glimpse of something authentic and honest that encourages others to do the same, so that a bigger picture 'emerges' spontaneously from these "aha!" moments. This means not talking at people, but talking with them; not talking 'about' something, as though we were above and beyond it, but talking from the midst of our own experiences and difficulties. This is a kind of conversation that has us saying "Yes, and - " instead of "Yes, but - " to each other.

So, if a group of MIXers could come together and talk in this way - if we could leave our egos and our theories and explanations at the door, and simply offer accounts of moments in organisational life that have struck us as moving or significant - then just maybe we could start to make a much larger sense together than any of can do by ourselves. Who knows where that might lead?

July 20, 2010 at 11:09am

Mireille Jansma

Hello Theodore,

What a surprise that you know Cynthia Kurtz. I had no idea. I just recently discovered her & her work on complexity.

Personally I am not a guru at all, and most people here are not either I think. Also, the idea of herding guru's is quite strange to me. I mean why would people even want to be guru's? To be important, to earn more money? And why would people want to 'herd' them (as if one can one herd singularities)? I may be naive, but the MIX as I understand it is not about being self important or about promoting egos or about guru's. It is about changing the way the work is done & organised, and about open conversations to make this happen.

I do like what you write but have some reservations. For one, I think you are wrong if you think that models or contexts don't matter and that honest and open conversation is enough to reach mutual understanding. Every one of us, including we, talks within or from a frame of reference – if alone personal history and background. So the idea that there exists something like a 'naked' (true, honest, whatever) conversation is flawed. Secondly, your own stance illustrates this quite directly. You say you want a “Yes, and...” conversation. But what you actually do, is a “yes, but...”. ;)

I would very much like to continue this conversation at Skype. Hoever my computer crashed recently and I have some trouble in getting Skype up again.

Best, Mireille

July 20, 2010 at 8:23am

Theodore Taptiklis

Mireille,

Thanks for great feedback. You've inspired me to try to re-connect with Cynthia.

My reference to gurus only arises because your suggestion about trying to bring people together to synthesise the best from several approaches - a great idea - reminds me that the tradition in management has been far from this. Conventionally, innovators in the organisational arena (commonly - and unfortunately - called 'gurus') articulate their own approaches, and then build an independent coterie of acolytes and clients. This has been mainstream practice for some time. And it stands, it seems to me that Gary Hamel's MIX does not necessarily challenge this tradition: it will take an extra effort from people like
yourself to make a real breakthrough here. And I'd like to help you with this.

My writing may also have misled you. I don't believe in a 'naked' conversation in quite the way you put it: each of us brings all of ourselves, including all of our past history, to every encounter. That's the reality...that's what we have to deal with: our whole selves...and my experience is that the more of each other's whole selves we glimpse or recognise, the more likely it is that we can find particular opportunities to work usefully together. And I've found that these glimpses tend to come more easily from detailed accounts of real experiences than from exchanges about abstract ideas and theories...

I plead guilty to some "Yes, but" here. But I'm trying to give a big "Yes, and" to your suggestions and proposals. I hope we can continue.

Cheers, Theodore

July 26, 2010 at 7:38am

Evan Leonard

Interesting coversation Theodore and Mirelle. I'll have to look up some of your references. Also, I would be very much for a mechanism for building a larger picture of how the various "hacks" relate, so as to show how they complement and work together, rather than compete for the "best" idea.

Theodore, my experience of "guru herding" unfortunately is similar to yours. With every attachement is the fear of loss, and sadly for us humans when we achieve a certain degree of recognition for our ideas many of us become fearful of losing that recognition. This fear I've found drives often absurd behavior.

July 26, 2010 at 5:25am

Theodore Taptiklis

Geoffrey,

You make some hard-to-ignore points. Without down-to-earth engagement and whole-hearted participation by the framers of the MIX, this risks being a conversation going nowhere.

Behind what you say, I think there is a bigger question. Maybe brand "Management" is now such damaged goods - as Gary Hamel acknowledges in his introduction - that the new start that is needed can't come from a place like this. Perhaps reinventing "Management" is too much like trying to breathe life into a corpse. And maybe the answer to the underlying question - How are people going to work together most productively in the future? - will have nothing to do with management or organisation as these are presently understood. In which case we need to find a way to conduct a different conversation.

July 26, 2010 at 1:23am

Geoffrey Morton-Haworth

Hi Ted/Mereille/Evan

What’s with all this hostility towards gurus? Don’t you want your “breakthrough ideas for reinventing management” cherry picked, and reduced to sound bites and sugar hits? Don’t you realize that even the best ideas have to be dumbed way down if low-IQ folks such as managers are ever to understand them?

The first moonshot is about leadership. Are you trying to imply that cooperation might be more constructive than competition and that the underwhelming content of MIX (here is a radical idea: if you want people to trust you, you have to trust them) shows its leadership may have got this crowdsourcing stuff a bit wrong? Tom Malone’s collective intelligence genome, where are you?

The second moonshot is about trust. Are you suggesting that maybe we shouldn’t trust a massive fishing expedition like the MIX just because its instigators make their living from regurgitating others’ ideas?

The third moonshot seeks to blur the line between work and play. Are you hinting that this may be just a little disingenuous? I read recently of the Director of one leading consulting firm who was “now so senior she could get home by 7 p.m” (having left home before 7 a.m.) So what’s the matter with you? Why do you need a home life?

No, surely, you need lots of recognition. Don’t you want to bathe in the reflected glory of the McKinsey Quarterly and Gary Hamel’s blog? Don’t you have a favorite charity that could use a thousand dollars better than you could? Why should you be embarrassed to put their obligatory certificate on your wall? Aren’t you just lusting for a T-shirt “cool enough to wear clubbing”?

Are you saying that such feeble stuff is about the best we ought to expect from wannabe trendsetters of management fad and fashion who brazenly patronize their clients, and likewise now seek to infantilize you?

Or are you complaining that the MIX is so one-way? I am sure if I look hard enough I will find somewhere where Gary Hamel, John Mackey, Leighton Read, Tom Malone, Raj Sisodia, Terri Kelly, Bill George, Joanna Barsh, Vineet Nayar and Lenny Mendonca have added their builds, comments or questions to a contributor’s input.

Shame on the both of you :-)

Geoffrey

July 17, 2010 at 4:48am

Mireille Jansma

Theodore,

I just watched your video "Thinking about John Seddon” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi5ago3zfgk) and I very much like your proposal to work together and distill the best from a number of approaches.

The contest- and rating aspect has bothered me for some time. Partly because it is easy and tempting to start 'gaming' to gain visibility - like by involving one's networks to get one's ratings up, which improves visibility, which hightens the chance of getting new ratings, etc. But especially because this way the contributions are seen in isolation; as competing with one another rather than as - potentially - enriching, strengthening or complementing each other. Also, I am sure there is no 'one best' solution to the complex issues we face within and outside our organisations, although some approaches obviously are richer and more potent than others.

Two MIX contributions I am particularly fond of - except my own :) - are those by John Seddon and Phil LeNir. I admire their work very much and have introduced both of them to The MIX. Their work is totally different, yet now it seems as if they are competing because of their positions on the ranking list...

So what do you think should happen to make this into more of a joint effort and less competitive? Perhaps we, contributors, should start to really read all contributions and map them and evaluate them? Independently of one another, to prevent group think, and not heeding our own interests? That would be a lot of work and quite hard... Or should people who rate contributions be invited to explain what they like about a contribution and how they see relations with other (or their own) contributions & moonshots, like you did with John Seddon? Or perhaps we could help to better connect people who work on the same kinds of issues? Perhaps we could ask for ideas about joint follow up projects, with proposals by (say) at least 3 different MIX contributors, so people have a reason to start working together, expand their networks, take credit together, really learn from one another?

Wouldn't that be an idea for a prize? To not reward individual contributions, but reward (ideas for) follow-up collaborative experiments & initiatives?

Again, I am just thinking aloud... Would very much like to hear your ideas!

Thanks & best regards,

Mireille

P.S. I didn't know your work but do like your hack a lot and will read up further! And so nice that you reference Ralph Stacey. I am very interested in complexity thinking, but only discovered him two months ago. Do you agree that the work of Seddon is within the simple & complicated domains? Where would you position your work on practical trust?

July 17, 2010 at 5:28am

Mireille Jansma

P.P.S. Just realized: according to this paper by Brenda J. Zimmerman on Ralph Stacey (http://www.plexusinstitute.org/edgeware/archive/think/main_aides3.html) both you and Seddon would be addressing the complex domain, if alone for being 'far from agreement'. I was just thinking with Dave Snowden's Cynefin framework in mind... Stacey is really a discovery for me as he adds a social aspect. Another wonderful thinker on complexity is Cynthia Kurtz by the way: http://www.storycoloredglasses.com/2010/06/confluence.html. Complexity thinkers can add so very much to our understanding of the issues we face and the way we can (and cannot) deal with them!