On this page you’ll find a range of ideas about adaptive learning, conversational capacity, and organizational performance. What do we mean by adaptive learning? It’s the ability to work with others to diagnose complex problems, to identify the most elegant strategies for dealing with them, and to then successfully implement those strategies.
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write,” says Alvin Toffler, “but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” In today’s crazy world, where disruptive change is ever more commonplace, conversational capacity and adaptive learning – the ability to think smarter, faster, and together about tough problems – will increasingly separate the high performers from the rest of the pack.
“Management’s business is building organizations that work,” says Harvard Business School’s Joan Magretta, and conversational capacity is a foundational competence for building teams and organizations that work well – even when the pressure is on.
The majority of full-time workers in the world are either watching the clock or actively opposing their employer. – Gallup
Engagement is widely recognized as an important indicator of organizational health. But what’s missing from the conversation is a significant distinction: engagement is more vital in some circumstances than others, and in the circumstances it is most important it is hardest to generate and sustain. This presents a challenge for leadership.
Diversity is even more important than many people realize. Research shows that more diverse teams outperform less diverse teams, especially in complex, unpredictable, adaptive situations. Diversity, therefore, should be viewed as an asset, as another form of intelligence.
Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress – Mahatma Gandhi
“Life is a series of problems,” observed M. Scott Peck. A more accurate statement was never made. But when it comes to solving them it’s important to realize that not all problems are created equal.
All our difficulties fall somewhere on a spectrum; at one end of this spectrum we find routine problems, and, at the other end, adaptive challenges. A routine problem isn’t considered routine because it happens regularly, but because we have a routine for dealing with it – a protocol, a process, or expert on which we can depend for a reliable fix. A routine problem may be irksome and expensive, but at least we’re in familiar territory and know what to do about it.
Award-winning consultant, advisor, and speaker, Craig Weber explains why conversation is perhaps the most powerful tool we have at our disposal in creating positive relationships and productive teams.
We cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around us, says Jane Goodall. What we do makes a difference. We must only decide what kind of difference we want to make. She’s right. No matter our status or station, we can play a leading role in building healthier work relationships, teams, organizations, and communities. We can take action and have an impact. We can wield great influence. We have more power than we think.
“The problem,” says Weber, “is that nothing lowers conversational capacity more predictably than the presence of authority. So managers at every level of the organization, from frontline supervisors and team leads to CEOs and senior executives, need to be careful about how they wield their authority. A manager who, by their action or inaction, lowers the ability of their people to engage in important issues and challenging situations in an open, balanced, non-defensive way, is by definition managing ineffectively.
“The ability to have constructive, learning-focused dialogue under pressure is critical right now,” says bestselling business author Craig Weber. “In our rapidly changing world, everyone’s scrambling to figure out how to work together in this new context. How do we work together in a virtual environment? How do we provide valuable service to our customers? What does the future hold, and how do we prepare for it?”
“There is no way you can use the word ‘reality’ without quotation marks around it.”
– Joseph Campbell
If you’ve attended my workshop or heard me speak you know I emphatically declare that the first curiosity skill – testing your perspective – is the most significant behavior in the conversational capacity discipline. I spend more time explaining it, and providing examples, than with the other three skills combined. It’s that important.
Here are excerpts from my first two books that explain why:
To build our conversational capacity and use it to facilitate constructive change in our teams, organizations, and communities, we need to do more than just balance candor and courage with curiosity and humility. Another important balance to strike is between serious-mindedness and light-heartedness.
We don’t just rush into important situations with our thought-process half-cocked, making sense or making decisions in a casual, half-assed manner. We respond in a rigorous, serious-minded way. We’re disciplined, deliberate, and careful as we strive to make useful sense of the predicament we’re facing and how to improve it.
If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’
There’s More to the Sweet Spot than Candor and Courage Balanced with Curiosity and Humility.
As I reflect on people who have built their conversational capacity and used it to inspire constructive change in their teams, organizations, and communities, I realize that there’s more to the “sweet spot” than just balancing candor and courage with curiosity and humility. There’s a larger suite of counter-balancing traits by which they strive to operate.
“You have to be fast on your feet and adaptive or else a strategy is useless.”
Charles de Gaulle
The Importance Of Strategy
“Management’s business,” says Joan Magretta, “is building organizations that work.” Central to this task is formulating an effective strategy that aligns everyone around the answers to these three questions:
“What are we up to?”
“What are we up against?”
“What capabilities do we need to deal with it all?”
Our Differences allow us to be fascinated by each other”
– Tom Robbins
Arguing: As Counterproductive As It Is Common
A sure sign that ego has triumphed over effectiveness, arguing creates a major drag on performance in our teams and organizations. Yet we see it all the time: people dismissing the views of others while zealously hawking their own opinions. These fruitless arguments, and all the bickering and bullshit they produce, are a clear signal that conversational capacity is in short supply.
Trust is a matter of huge importance in a healthy team, project, or organization. But when it comes to the issue of trust and its relationship to teamwork, most people get it backwards. They see trust as being necessary for good teamwork – as something that must be in place before a group can work together and communicate well.
“It doesn’t do any good to have a lot of really smart people around the table if you can’t access their smarts”
Effective Teamwork And Conversational Capacity
For twenty years I’ve been conducting workshops, advising organizations, and coaching leaders on the importance of conversational capacity – the ability to engage in open, balanced, nondefensive dialogue about difficult subjects and in challenging circumstances. It’s a pivotal competence. A team robust conversational capacity can address its toughest issues in a responsibly rigorous, nondefensive way. A team with anemic capacity, by contrast, can see its performance derailed by a trivial disagreement.
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