[Ailist] RE: Capturing impact and raising visibility of 'unseen' work

Mon Jan 12 01:41:07 MST 2009

Dear Jane and Roger

Thanks for your comments on Marvin's response to my question: 

"I am working as a Catalyst in a dedicated team of Catalysts in a major
agribusiness.  We are based within one the functions, namely Global
Supply, and typically provide our services to Global Supply, although do
also do ad hoc work for other functions if requested and if capacity
allows. 

We face what could be described as a wicked problem: much of our work is
designed to be unseen, as we are not 'front people', facilitating
workshops in charismatic style, but rather supporting and challenging
global teams to release their potential, and to address business issues
in a positive, different and lateral manner.  We explore visioning,
facilitate the development of strategy, constellate team dynamics,
catalyse new relationships, share feedback on projects, etc.   We also
form 'buddy' relationships with these leaders: supporting and
challenging them in private, providing safe spaces for deep
conversations to explore solutions and appreciate some of the challenges
they face.  (These leaders are very senior managers at a global level.)
The emphasis is always on the teams and their leaders and not on the
catalysts.  The wicked problem ( see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem ) is we are faced with the
management challenge of measuring the impact of our work, and raising
the visibility of the catalyst team.  The management question is: We
have invested significantly in catalysis, how do we measure the impact?
The question asks how we can clearly demonstrate to the rest of the
organisation the value and impact of having dedicated teams of catalysts
within the functions.

We are looking at an appreciative framework for this purpose, including
a full 4D Inquiry later this year, and in the shorter terms, setting up
some dialogue mapping (see
http://www.wiley-vch.de/publish/en/books/bySubjectBA00/bySubSubjectBA11/
0-470-01768-6/?sID=6de4ec6262b15323b6e71478c175dabe ). 

Additionally, I am very interested in hearing thoughts from the Ai
community on this topic."

Given the interesting debate which is beginning to form around Marvin's response, I am still very interested in comments from the Ai community on our 'wicked problem'.  What has emerged in our own discussions is that impact is the lesser of the two elements, visibility being the key.  Once more this has arisen with a piece of work I have personally been invited to do, which will span 8 events spread over 2009, but which in the overall perspective of our functional group with the organisation could be 'unseen' despite the critical nature of the work to the sub-group.  

Looking forward to comments and builds.

Regards

Kate 

Kate Tucker
Global Supply Catalyst
Mobile: +41795581346
Office: +41613237307
Fax: +41 61 323 89 71
WRO. 1007.1.12

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
- Greek Proverb

Dear Marvin and Colleagues: I may have written this before, so mea culpa if
this is a repeat. There's a book in the pipeline on AI Valuation, based on
the idea that AI is a cyclical rather than linear process, so asking the
usual AI questions works: "What are the best things that have happened since
we began this program?", for example, that gives you stories about impact.
If your clients need hard data, there are now computer programs that can
turn the stories (qualitative data) into quantitative data. 

One of our jobs as AI practitioners is to help our clients understand the
fragile nature of data in human systems. If you ask a group of people a set
of questions one morning about human behavior in the system, by the end of
the day, the data set will be different. We socially construct our data and
the messages depend on the situation, the questions, the questioner, and on
and on. I remember back in the Carter administration when I was the OD
person on Sam Browns staff in the Action Agency (Peace Corps, Vista, etc.)
and we inherited a mega expensive computer program to "evaluate" peace corps
activities and volunteers. It was a total "ah-ha" for me, the math major! By
the time the program ran (and it cost mega thousands to collect and collate
the data, computers being what they were way back then) the data was
useless. (I suddenly realized that it didn't really matter how many people
attended a training event unless you really believed that "attending" was
data about the success of the program. We were busy counting such things in
those days. 

In the early 90's during my time at Cambridge, two colleagues and I (all of
us worked with International Development organizations as consultants)
created an AI process to use for "valuations" of development programs. Once
we played around with that idea, we realized that there were other processes
being created that followed the same notion -- such as "asset based
research" and "people-focused assessment using stories", etc. It was during
this time that I came to realize that these new processes were aligned with
the relational nature of African and Asian cultures who were not comfortable
focusing on other people's "mistakes." All of which is to say that this is a
subject close to my heart and, I believe, at the very forefront of this
transformation process that we in the AI community are helping to create in
the world. 

When Barnard and I did that first application of an AI Valuation process in
a corporation at SmithKlineBeecham (there's an article written by us and our
clients about it on the Commons I think or I can find a copy), we had no
idea how it would work in such mega-systems. When we were done, the Exec
team announced that they had never seen such valuable data. What they got,
of course, was what their people loved most about working for them. And the
usual thing happened -- they got more of what they looked for.

I usually say that if your client wants it, you probably should try to do
something. But I also believe that we need to weigh carefully if we are
living into our Social Constructionist values when we reinforce Newtonian
notions about human systems. I suspect we are all on the same page and
struggling together to find ways to cross this great divide without seeming
smug and dichotomous! So I'd love to hear how some of you are handling this
idea of "evaluation" in an AI process.

And HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all. I'm so steeped in this AI stuff that I truly
believe we had to get into this dreadful morass in our country and the world
for people to let our leaders take us into the future. May we all live long
enough to see it!!!   

Hugs, Jane

Jane Magruder Watkins & Ralph Kelly
Appreciative Inquiry Unlimited
An Organization Development Center for Teaching, Consulting and Mentoring

Office & Home
233A Woodmere Drive
Williamsburg, VA 23185
(757) 259-9942

MarshHaven Retreat Center
P.O. Box 541
1702 Wheat Patch Road
Belhaven, NC 27810
(252) 964-3072 

www.appreciativeinquiryunlimited.com

Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination by Jane Magruder
Watkins & Bernard Mohr can be ordered from Amazon.com or JosseyBassWiley

-----Original Message-----
From: ailist-bounces at lists.business.utah.edu
[mailto:ailist-bounces at lists.business.utah.edu] On Behalf Of 'Marvin Faure'
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 10:25 AM
To: ailist at lists.business.utah.edu
Subject: [Ailist] Capturing impact and raising visibility of 'unseen' work

Dear Kate,

In response to your post:

"The management question is: We have invested significantly in catalysis,
how do we measure the impact? The question asks how we can clearly
demonstrate to the rest of the organisation the value and impact of having
dedicated teams of catalysts within the functions.

We are looking at an appreciative framework for this purpose, including a
full 4D Inquiry later this year, and in the shorter terms, setting up
some dialogue mapping. Additionally, I am very interested in hearing
thoughts from the Ai community on this topic."

My thoughts are that it may be helpful to have some quantitative data to
complement the qualitative data you plan to collect through the AI and
dialogue processes. Once organizations start asking OD to "prove" the value
they are adding, there's really no alternative to gathering hard data to
complement the soft. We have found this approach helpful for our clients, on
two distinct levels:

1) Providing quantitative measures of the value provided by development
interventions provides a direct answer to the question "how much value are
we providing?" and should satisfy senior management's request for "hard"
data.

2) Equally importantly, we believe that measuring the value actually
increases it, since it obliges people to think about what they learned and
what they are doing differently (thus encouraging them to do more of it).

We use a proprietary on-line system to measure the value of various OD
interventions including coaching, training, team events and change
management projects for our clients.

We also use the system to measure the value added by internal functions (HR,
IT, Finance...) in support of the organisation's strategic initiatives.

As always, the key to success is as much in the questions asked as in the
overall system design. Doing this right can substantially increase the
profile and reputation of OD/Training and/or HR within the parent
organization.

I'd be happy to explore further if the idea seems interesting - let me know!

Kind regards,

Marvin FAURE
MINDSTORE
Chemin du Canal 5
CH-1260 Nyon
Switzerland
Tél. +41 22 363 9286
Mob. +41 786 826 926	
www.mindstore.ch

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I was interested in many aspects of Jane's response on the subject of
'Capturing impact and raising visibility of 'unseen' work'. As a middle
manager in an industrial and heavily data and process driven environment the
re-frame of thinking required to get people to an Appreciative perspective
often seems insurmountable. Especially in these troubled times when most
business leaders seem to have retreated to their 'tried and tested' ways. 

In order to convince leaders that a valuation is sound it needs to be given
to them in a framework that they and shareholders alike will understand.

I was intrigued by Jane's comment on the fragility of data in human systems.
Even in relation to physical processes there is so much bad data people use
it's untrue.
Most gets used because people are generally not comfortable with or
understand uncertainty. It therefore seems logical that any valuation of an
organization approach needs to be focused on something that has a good
degree of certainty about it.

Many organizations publish 'core values'. Tom Peters defines 'core values'
as those values and approaches that an organization will never change.
Regardless of contextual factors the response to a given situation should be
consistent with the core values. As such questions targeted at testing the
core values should reveal consistent data. Otherwise the organization is not
being consistent with it's core values. Presumably the organization has
already established that these core values bring value to the organization.
Otherwise why have them.

Many organizations will also publish a 'long term goal'. Similarly questions
aimed at how the appreciative approach is helping accelerate progress toward
that long term goal should reveal more consistency (Assuming all those
interviewed know and understand the long term goal!). Again the information
will already be pinned to something that is crystallized as valuable in the
minds of the business leadership.

Safety and Environmental core values are a rich area in this respect
because, more than anything, great performance in either area is soundly
based upon compassion for others. Financially the need for excellence in
these areas is easy to establish. Actually achieving it requires compassion
and compassion is a human, relational concept that sits firmly in the Ai
field. From there I think it is relatively easy to get business leaders to
conceptualize where else compassion benefits the business. If we work
appreciatively and compassionately with each other we learn quickly in a
deeper way how we bring value to the organization. In turn that brings fewer
personnel issues to deal with, higher attendance rates, improved safety and
efficiency, improved speed to market, improved service to customers etc etc
etc.

Sorry that's not a concise route to dealing with the fragility of data but I
think it is a way to present and evaluate Ai in terms that would be
comprehensible and sit comfortable with the average VP or CEO in my
experience. In my mind Ai will be present in all o f the successful
companies in the coming years.

Roger 

------------------------------

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