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Focusing on the Positive

My mum is in her 80s and has been suffering a few health problems lately. She’s visited the hospital, had some tests done, and with dad currently in a nursing home, she’s also at home alone. So, there’s quite a bit of potential for her to be concerned.

I was up visiting her in Tamworth on the weekend and listened to some of the conversations that well-meaning neighbours were having with mum. This prompted me to reflect on the exchanges that I’ve been having with other members of the family in regards to her circumstances. It struck me that the conversations we often have in these situations tend to focus on the heart of the problem; the latest medical opinion, prevailing symptoms, test results. I noticed this tendency again on Saturday night when I took her to the Country Music Festival. As we were walking into the venue, we ran into another neighbour who’s been really good to mum. She hadn’t seen her in a while and was quick to make inquiries like: “What did the doctor say?” “How are you feeling?” “Had any more of those odd tingles?”

It left me wondering about the difference between taking an appreciative approach - where you actually seek out the things that people are enjoying – and identifying the things they might not be enjoying. It reminded me that perhaps we would all do well to ask some different questions when talking to mum, such as: “What have you done today?” “What’s worked well?” “What have you enjoyed?” Focusing on the successes that people are having in their lives makes a huge difference to how they feel, to the environment in which you’re trying to work, and to their willingness to engage. It’s not dissimilar to the approach we take here at Twyfords.

But it’s an approach that takes some effort. Indeed, it’s very easy to fall back into the way we’ve always done things, often failing to recognise the power that positivity can have when it comes to health, wellbeing and success.

Author: John Dengate

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creating the Perfect Space

One of the things we’ve been talking to clients about recently is the way in which relationships between decision-makers and communities need to evolve.

Typically, when organisations want to engage the public, they’ll simply ask them what they want. In response, they tend to be swamped with a Christmas shopping list full of requests. The organisation subsequently goes away and thinks about what it can actually afford and then dutifully informs the community. It’s all very similar to a parent-child relationship. In contrast, we contend that a more sophisticated, adult-to-adult conversation is far more beneficial; the type of interaction where a cross-section of the community is invited to come to grips with a range of complex issues. It’s about encouraging people to think about these issues and then inviting them to co-create the solution rather than just saying, ‘This is what we want’.

It’s often easier said than done. Indeed, what we regularly see in these situations is an inclination for both parties to defer to the conventional dynamic, with the decision-maker playing the role of parents and the community playing the role of the child. The former tends to be unwilling to create a collaborative space due to a desire to maintain control, while the latter is only too happy to complain, demand, protest, and express dissatisfaction.

However, we find that when people are granted the space in which to conduct an adult-to-adult relationship, the obstructive parent-child paradigm quickly abates and participants start behaving quite differently. It frequently transpires that the community is well able to understand complexities and the constraints on organisations, while organisations are more able to appreciate the ways in which their stakeholders are affected.

So the key message for me is that where complex issues are in play, we really need to make space for sophisticated conversations, inviting participants to step up and for organisations to let go. It is possible, and it’s thrilling when it happens.

Author: Max Hardy

 

 

 

 

 

 

Control of the Self

If I told you it was possible to link chocolate biscuit consumption in early life to collaborative capacity as an adult, you’d probably think I was crazy.

But just hear me out. The other day I found myself thinking about a famous study conducted by American psychologist Walter Mischel over 40 years ago. The experiment, which involved a panel of four-year-old children, was designed to demonstrate the presence of self-control and its enduring effects. In a nutshell, the eager participants were presented with a choice. On one side of their table they had one Oreo biscuit, while on the other side they had two Oreo biscuits. They were told that if they waited 15 minutes they could eat the two Oreos, but if they couldn’t hold out they could ring a bell and immediately eat the one Oreo.

In the decades following, Mischel tracked the progress of both groups and was able to show that the kids who exhibited self-control and resisted the temptation of the quick chocolate fix were more successful in terms of being able to apply better decision-making processes. In later life, they tended to be better thinkers who were much more predisposed to comprehending and responding effectively to complex situations or problems.

This brings me back to the subject of collaboration. Being able to exercise self-control is a crucial part of this exercise and constitutes a very important prerequisite for intelligent decision-making. But maybe we’re not seeing enough of it. In last week’s blog, I highlighted the popularity of the quick result at the expense of critical thinking, and concurred that in today’s insatiable, fast-paced world, we’re perhaps rewarding the wrong type of thought processes. Yet employing self-control is a big part of encouraging us to explore the harder options - taking the time, gathering more facts, putting the effort in. It’s actually the only way we can find truly sustainable solutions to complexity.

While leaping to an easy fast result may often be tempting, as adults we need to consider overriding those impulses and exercising more self-control when the situation demands it. Perhaps we should also be thinking of the future, encouraging our children to develop a strong sense of self-control, thus making them better equipped to do the hard mental yards in the years ahead.

Author: Tania Jones

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Haste Less Speed

Ever wondered how and why we end up making the decisions we do?

It’s a subject that I heard Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, discuss in detail during an interview with the BBC over the Christmas break. The author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, it’s Kahneman’s assertion that we’re hardwired to operate in accordance with one of two decision-making systems. The first is a rapid response system based on impulse and intuition, and is one that helps us survive crises situations that demand decisive, rapid reactions. The second system operates in a slower and more deliberative manner. It utilises logic and requires time, effort and focus, and enables us to negotiate more complex tasks.

Interestingly, many of the principles he spoke about in regard to the second model underpin a lot of what we do when we talk about deliberative decision-making, linking strongly with the idea of taking the time and effort to invite stakeholder perspectives with a view to achieving more creative and lasting solutions. The challenge is that in the current economic, political, and business climate, we seem to be favouring the first model, valuing and lionising those who are able to make quick decisions in the flawed belief that this represents effective decision-making and strong leadership.

Contrary to this viewpoint, Kahneman, like us here at Twyfords, believes that quick is often not better, and that more deliberative thinking processes may indeed be better suited to solving complex problems. It highlights the fact that in our increasingly interconnected world, we perhaps need to make a concerted effort to solve problems in a different way, making a conscious decision to look past what our intuitive inner voice tells us and avoid falling into the trap of the quick response.

Taking this all a step further, Kahneman concludes his book by stating that decision-makers will make better choices when they trust their critics to be sophisticated and fair, and when they expect their decision to be judged by how it was made, not only by how it turned out. We couldn’t agree more.

Author: Tania Jones

 

 

 

 

 

Living This Stuff

Having started developing our collaborative governance model back in January, it seems like a good time to reflect upon the extent to which we ourselves have been living the dream.

As we’ve come to realise more and more, actually walking the walk in addition to talking the talk constantly reinforces the power of collaboration and highlights the value of tapping into the perspectives of a diverse range of individuals. It always surprises us. Indeed, when we do what we say, we’ve repeatedly found that we get better, more sustainable solutions that are more likely to stick.

Opportunities to reinforce this revelation are never in short supply. Last week I was in New Zealand doing some work with a small community group. At the outset I asked them to talk about a situation where they’d been pleasantly surprised after having relied on someone previously deemed unreliable, only to find they actually experienced a positive outcome. With one particular group unable to answer the question, we proceeded with our collaborative work, at the conclusion of which someone from that group said, “I can now answer your question, because I was pleasantly surprised at what we got out of this group. I realise now that I can trust this group to come up with better decisions than I might have on my own.”

Upon relating this story to my wife shortly after, she pointed out that I myself had been pleasantly surprised by the outcome. I’d relied on some people in the meeting and they’d delivered. I suddenly understood that I’d role-modeled myself on what I’d been talking about, living the exercise that I’d asked the group to undertake. I achieved the same result that I had assured the group they could achieve.

I realised that what Twyfords seems to do is constantly reflect the collaborative governance principles we’ve created. Sometimes we do it without even realising it. It’s become second nature. It’s this very hypothesis we take into businesses and organisations. If you start to do this well, it becomes automatic and you won’t even know you’re doing it. You will, however, achieve success after success because of the way you act.

Author: John Dengate

 

 

 

 

 

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