Passion killers remain in place, despite their evident destructive impact, because to confront them would require re-engineering fundamental attitudes and beliefs that show up most evidently in relationships. The passion killers either sprout in the first place due to poor relationships (for example being caused by inadequate consultation, collaboration or alignment) or else aren?t challenged openly when in place because of the paltry relationships that prevail.
Some years ago an Hewlett-Packard (HP) safety leader, Bob Veazle, influenced by his experience with the ?network of conversations? approach exemplified by the World Caf?e methodology, launched a series of conversations about safety across various HP units.
The World Cafe? works by setting up multiple rounds of conversations between diverse groups of people with each round of conversation building on the last. In each round, you dialogue with a different group of people. At each dialogue location, a host remains from the last conversation, who updates the new group as to what the conversation has been at that location. Each of the joining members inputs insights and points from their own last round of conversations. Then, collectively, they build on and extend from the distilled inputs that were shared. Multiple rounds occur, each time a different host remains, and the dialogue groups always shift. In short, World Cafe?s is a set of cross-pollinating, iterative conversations on a core topic.
Bob Veazle realised that a network of crucial conversations was an exciting and empowering paradigm by which to conceive of organisations and organisational communication. Accordingly, he envisaged boxes on the organisational chart as ?webs of conversations.? So instead of multiple rounds of dialogue in a conference room, he realised multiple dialogues between functions and leaders and locations could be set up.
As these freer flowing conversations about safety supplanted more rigid safety programs that had been tried and had petered out, an amazing thing happened. Full-time safety leaders became ?conversation hosts? and, whether they knew it or not, relationship-nurturers (because they were enabling vital conversations that bound people together?about possible life and death, injury and health, between those whose everyday behavior could make a decisive impact to each other). Injury and accident rates plummeted, hitting best in the world measures in certain key locations. Even years later, Bob reported, people in HP continued to refer to new challenges by saying ?Why don?t we tackle it like we did safety?? In other words, by having multiple conversations between people who can make a difference, by generating and passing on ideas and insights and experiences, almost like batons, from one community to another within the company?inviting each to add their own piece of experience to enrich the larger whole.
?Handling it like safety? is a plea Carly Fiorina would have done well to tune into, as one of the authors knows personally from having spent some time with HP/Compaq in the Middle East during her reign.
Most interesting about the safety example is that in the after-math of this effort, one of the sites, while still 50% improved over its original safety record, began to slide back. Their Puerto Rico site remained a world leader in terms of safety record continuously for years thereafter.
The difference it seems came down to Puerto Rico continuing to host their own internal safety conversations as a way of life. In the other locations, Bob Veazle?s new approach was treated as a ?program,? and fissures developed as relationships and conversations weren?t maintained.
The moral from the HP example and a multitude of other similar examples is clear: there is a level and quality of conversational and relational leadership required to sustain change and improvement until it becomes truly integrated.
Otherwise we have ?breakthroughs? but they don?t last. This new kind of leadership interaction does two things. Through wide-scale and ongoing engagement, it first liberates the passion to create a new way forward. And secondly, if maintained, it also stokes the passion to sustain the breakthrough.
And this in turn suggests the link between personal maturity and relationships and the business results we are seeking. Perhaps the greatest organisational opportunity we have is to foster the emotional maturity and resulting openness of leaders. Accompanying this are the necessary and far less rare rational apparatus of industry knowledge, the ability to think clearly about facts, and decision-making ability among others. We then become ?fit? for relationships.
Relationships in turn are the alchemy we need for the base metal (our technical proficiency) to become gold (creative, adaptive achievement).
And when we create authentic, thriving relationships, we keep the most tenacious and pernicious passion killers from taking root. As a result, energy, commitment and achievement are all liberated.
Other than heroic journeys of private self-transformation, which while possible, are not a high probability for the majority of us, the major transformational tool we have is authentic communication, anchored in relationships that both nurture and constructively challenge us.
Extracted with permission from Wiley India
Liberating Passion Omar Khan with Paul B Brown
Reprinted by permission of Wiley India; Excerpted from 9788126520428;
Price: 390; Pp 200