[Music]
[Applause]
so so far we’ve talked about changing
the way we think about learning we
talked about changing the way we think
of the classroom and then we’ve talked
about changing the way we think about
work so I’d like us to now turn our
attention to change at a different scale
change the way in which we address
complex challenges in our organizations
and our in our communities so to start I
want to tell you about two experiences
that I had early in my career so my
first kind of real job after college was
on a software development project it was
for big organizations who would come
together to develop a software program
that they get all used so for different
organizations for different histories
for different cultures were about 500 of
us working on this project budget of
about one hundred and fifteen million
dollars and four years up so they handed
us figuratively and literally 75,000
pages of functional specifications and
it really was the cookbook they said all
right create this and we’ll all be good
so 75,000 pages that’s a hundred and
fifty reams of paper ream of paper is
what about three inches so picture of 35
feet a functional specification so it
was all spelled out so we set to work on
it got about three and a half years in
and went to integration testing so
that’s where you’ve created parts of it
and all these little pockets and teams
and you put it all together it didn’t
work and they worked on it some more and
they tried to fix it patch it together
and it didn’t work it never worked it
has gone down in history as the largest
software development failure in history
quite a resume builder right my first my
first job luckily I was low enough that
it didn’t really matter so so that was
kind of one experience about how complex
work gets done when you’ve got multiple
organizations multiple agendas working
together right second story it actually
takes place before that so in the
and which I attended as an undergraduate
it was a committee that was experiencing
a lot of distress economic downturn the
industries that had kind of built it up
could moved overseas completely
transformed so all the problems that
went with that over 10 20 years so the
people of that community knew that they
they couldn’t continue on the track that
they were on they had to seek some sort
of change some sort of change in
direction I happened to pick up an odd
job as a flip chart recorder and some of
those community meetings I didn’t think
much of it I just knew that was a better
job than yard work the kind of jobs that
I normally got um but then I left that
community and when I came back about
five years later it was completely
transformed completely transformed so
that was my second experience how in the
world did it did a community with talk
about not for agendas dozens of agendas
business government schools so many
different agendas but they aligned
themselves to create some sort of
sustainable transformational change so
those two early experiences really
shaped my interest and learning how
complex work gets done when multiple
organizations are working together so
that’s what I want to talk to you about
of the rest of my time today and tell
you that one of the lessons that we’ve
learned so to get us started I’m gonna
ask you to go on a bit of a journey with
me okay
so um this is a journey that we will
walk on the same path but what we will
find at the end of it each of us will be
a little bit different because it’s a
trip down memory lane
okay so indulge me here for a minute I’d
like you to take yourself back to a time
or place where you are utterly happy
content safe all those wonderful things
are you there
yeah chances are if you really did that
that’s not the first time you’ve
returned those are the kind of memories
that we come back to time and time again
so let me tell you about one other
person I know and in his particular
journey back to one of those times so
this is my son Oliver he doesn’t look
like that anymore he’s a surly teenager
so if I could picture him with his eyes
rolling when I say something that’s what
the picture would look like now um but
I’ll it was about eight or nine so about
the age he was in this photo and I was
sitting on the couch after a long day
and he sat down beside me he said daddy
you know what I’m thinking about so I
have no clue son what are you thinking
about he said I’m thinking about
Christmas this was July which is the
Saturday we’ve been working outside it
was hot so I couldn’t imagine why
Christmas was on his mind so I asked him
I said Oliver man why are you thinking
about Christmas he said I don’t know but
I think about Christmas a lot do ya
think about Christmas because my brother
and I his brother and I he and his
brother were not are out of school and
you and Mom aren’t working and you know
we’re baking cookies for watching family
movies and there’s a fire in the
fireplace what I think about Christmas I
feel all warm inside
so even eight or nine year olds like to
take trips down memory lane so so why
why and believe me I’m getting to the
point here so when we have these kinds
of memories something magical is at work
in our brains so when we’re experiencing
them live so in those times where we
feel safe and warm and happy part of
what’s going on is we get this happy
cocktail of chemicals that kind of wash
over our brain and it makes us feel
content and safe and even in the
recalling so years later even the
recalling of those memories we still get
a little dose of those four chemicals so
those kinds of trips down memory lane
are different than standard memory so we
have a special word for them we call it
reminiscing right certain other memories
are dissociate
with reminiscing some memories we want
to you know kind of put out of our heads
but reminiscing takes us back to those
places in times that we that we like to
visit so there are people psychologists
mostly who study reminiscing and
Christine batch coat is one of those and
she describes reminiscing like this we
we bring the best of the past and to the
future with us and there are benefits to
reminiscing when we get those doses of
happy chemicals it kind of Shores up our
resolve and it’ll eves our fears of the
present day so we can do better work
today when we occasionally take those
trips down memory lane so I wanted to
establish the foundation of reminiscing
because it helps us understand really
the topic of my talk and that’s a
different word but it’s called
prospection so prospective probably
isn’t as familiar to you as remand I
think it wasn’t to me until I I learned
about it but perspective is like
reminiscing accept perspective is
reminiscing forward okay so it is when
we think of a future event and we attach
emotionally to it the way in which we
attach to those most precious memories
of the past and those same chemicals get
to work so we are actually able to not
only just pre experience this future
event but we were able to pre feel it
and the psychologists tell us that there
are benefits to that too so when you can
attach yourself to this future event
with that kind of emotion you’re much
more likely to make it happen when
barriers come in front of you you figure
out a way around those barriers so
you’re much more a resolved to make that
future event come true and those same
brain chemicals are at work so where I
work it at Purdue is called the agile
strategy lab and we focus on the science
of collaboration and agile approaches to
making the future kind of unfold before
us so when we talk about strategy which
coming up pretty high-level kinds of
stuff whether it’s a community or
whether it’s
an organization but figuring out how you
make strategic change is kind of what we
focus on
so perspective is embedded in a lot of
our work so I want to tell you about an
experiment that we run at the lab from
time to time so we have gathered
together groups in workshops and one of
the things that we do is we ask everyone
so picture you know a workshop with 15
people sometimes as many as what we have
here in this room we bring people
together and we say alright take a few
minutes and we want you to dream of a
trip you would love to take money it’s
no object and be as specific as you can
so we give them a few minutes to to
write that trip down and someone’s trip
might look something like this so this
person says they’re gonna fly to London
they know who they’re going with in this
case they’re going with husband and
they’re gonna learn a little bit more
about their family history and they’d
like to drink it pubs and they would
like to go to one of Gordon Ramsay’s
restaurants so people define a very
specific trip that they would love to
take next thing we do is we ask them to
pair up so two different people have
designed trips right we ask them to pair
up and we say all right now we need you
to work together and create a composite
trip but this trip can only have the
things that both of your first trips
have in common
follow me okay so it’s really kind of
entertaining to see what they come up
with because often their trips are very
different okay so you get this you get
these very you know vague kinds of trips
so we will travel to Europe okay st.
continent they had that in common right
they’re going with people that they love
all right we can do that and they’re
gonna drink alcohol so you hear you hear
trips like that all right we taking
another step we say all right this pair
that just designed this dream trip you
pair up with another pair so now we’ve
got groups of four people and we say all
right now it’s your turn the four of you
to design a composite of your composite
and again it can only have in common you
can only have the things that both of
your composite trips have in common so
looks like this yeah we’re gonna leave
home sometimes it’s not even that
because somebody is designed to
staycation and yeah you just so there’s
another step in this exercise that I
haven’t told you about yet so after we
asked people to design that first trip
kind of solo trip all on their own we
also say we would also like you to
define your success criteria tell us
when you come back from vacation how
will you know that it was successful and
describe that in in somewhat general
terms so here’s an example of what this
person said okay so then we asked them
to pair up one last time so this is a
new pair so we say pair up with someone
that you haven’t been paired up with
before and this time we want you to
design a brand new trip one that allows
you both to fulfill your success
criteria okay and so that kind of trip
can look like this so it looks not
anything much like either the two
original trips but it’s a brand new trip
that they’ve developed because of their
success criteria so at each of those
stages we ask them to evaluate their
level of excitement on the trips that
they’re designing so as you might
imagine that that solo trip I mean if
there are no constraints and money’s not
an object and you can design it yourself
you’re gonna give it a high rating I’m
still confused why it’s 9.9 instead of
10 but so really high rating so remember
that that composite of the composite so
where it gets a little bit more vague
well that drops down a lot as you might
expect and then the composite of
composites of the four people design
that trip together they all drops down
even more to a 3.9 but look what happens
for that fourth trip the one that they
design with their joint success criteria
it goes back up almost to the same level
as their original trip so it’s a
different trip but it’s a highly
exciting and satisfying trip so that’s
perspective at work and it’s not just
perspective in one person’s mind it’s a
perspective in this case
to people’s mind so a lot of times when
we think about collaboration we think
about working together we have a
situation where where people have this
image of the future or the outcome that
they want in their minds and we try to
get them to compromise
well perspective is is important and
perspective is something that we’ve
embedded into one of the disciplines
that we teach and we call it strategic
doing so strategic doing has ten rules
and these are rules that we see that are
at work and most successful complex
collaboration and in your bag you’ve got
one of these and you can see all of the
ten rules here but I just want to
concentrate on one of them as we finish
up today so rule seven our rule seven
says we convert strategic opportunities
that we’ve identified together to
strategic outcomes with success
characteristics and metrics so we use
perspectives to drive conversations deep
enough so that if two or more parties
can agree on what success looks like so
what what the trips going to look like
when we when we come back and we say we
know that it’s gonna be successful and
how we can measure it you’re well on
your way to a collaboration that’s going
to be sustainable so if you’ve ever been
involved in strategic planning sometimes
you may have seen a different way to
reach consensus we like to do vision
statements right anyone worked on a
vision statement before so a vision
statements usually get purposefully
vague all right we try to make them so
vague that everyone kind of fits under
this big umbrella so we did another
little bit of research in our lab we
looked across the country and said how
many communities have developed a vision
statement with this phrase something
like we will be a great place to live
work and play
we stopped counting on 160 okay so my
question is this how does that drive
anyone to perspective does that mean the
same thing to everyone my guess is that
you asked 100 people what what this is a
great place to play means and you’ll
probably get a hundred different answers
so when we drive people to have a
discussion about outcomes and how we
would measure them we ask these kinds of
Jennsen what would it look like if we’re
successful how would it feel whose life
would be different and if you can drive
a conversation whether it’s with two
people or whether it’s a large group you
can drive that conversation deep enough
what people are doing is they’re
co-creating that future together and
they will have group prospection and our
research indicates that when you have
group perspective well the group
strengthens their resolve to make that
future happen so to finish up
remember the seventy five thousand pages
of functional specifications there was
no person going on because that was done
by the leadership they pushed it to the
rest of us there are more reasons why
that project failed but I think that
that’s one of them in the community that
I talked about where we saw remarkable
transformation what was much more of a
of a blank slate I mean I was literally
in front of blank flipchart paper
so people were pre feeling pre thinking
pre experiencing what the next iteration
of that community might be so our last
kind of lesson to be learned here is
that as leaders we are tempted to have a
vision and get everyone to line up
behind us so that they can support our
vision well that’s not a very
sustainable way to get collaborations
moving yes you have your vision of the
future but they have their vision but
they have their vision as well so what
we need to do is we align those visions
by asking those kinds of questions what
will it look like how will it feel how
will life be different so the road
toward change a changed future for
communities and organizations is a wide
one and we can kind of walk side-by-side
and we can figure out together what that
future looks like we can figure out
together what that future is going to
feel like and we can have better futures
together thank you
[Applause] [Music]
[Applause]
so so far we’ve talked about changing
the way we think about learning we
talked about changing the way we think
of the classroom and then we’ve talked
about changing the way we think about
work so I’d like us to now turn our
attention to change at a different scale
change the way in which we address
complex challenges in our organizations
and our in our communities so to start I
want to tell you about two experiences
that I had early in my career so my
first kind of real job after college was
on a software development project it was
for big organizations who would come
together to develop a software program
that they get all used so for different
organizations for different histories
for different cultures were about 500 of
us working on this project budget of
about one hundred and fifteen million
dollars and four years up so they handed
us figuratively and literally 75,000
pages of functional specifications and
it really was the cookbook they said all
right create this and we’ll all be good
so 75,000 pages that’s a hundred and
fifty reams of paper ream of paper is
what about three inches so picture of 35
feet a functional specification so it
was all spelled out so we set to work on
it got about three and a half years in
and went to integration testing so
that’s where you’ve created parts of it
and all these little pockets and teams
and you put it all together it didn’t
work and they worked on it some more and
they tried to fix it patch it together
and it didn’t work it never worked it
has gone down in history as the largest
software development failure in history
quite a resume builder right my first my
first job luckily I was low enough that
it didn’t really matter so so that was
kind of one experience about how complex
work gets done when you’ve got multiple
organizations multiple agendas working
together right second story it actually
takes place before that so in the
and which I attended as an undergraduate
it was a committee that was experiencing
a lot of distress economic downturn the
industries that had kind of built it up
could moved overseas completely
transformed so all the problems that
went with that over 10 20 years so the
people of that community knew that they
they couldn’t continue on the track that
they were on they had to seek some sort
of change some sort of change in
direction I happened to pick up an odd
job as a flip chart recorder and some of
those community meetings I didn’t think
much of it I just knew that was a better
job than yard work the kind of jobs that
I normally got um but then I left that
community and when I came back about
five years later it was completely
transformed completely transformed so
that was my second experience how in the
world did it did a community with talk
about not for agendas dozens of agendas
business government schools so many
different agendas but they aligned
themselves to create some sort of
sustainable transformational change so
those two early experiences really
shaped my interest and learning how
complex work gets done when multiple
organizations are working together so
that’s what I want to talk to you about
of the rest of my time today and tell
you that one of the lessons that we’ve
learned so to get us started I’m gonna
ask you to go on a bit of a journey with
me okay
so um this is a journey that we will
walk on the same path but what we will
find at the end of it each of us will be
a little bit different because it’s a
trip down memory lane
okay so indulge me here for a minute I’d
like you to take yourself back to a time
or place where you are utterly happy
content safe all those wonderful things
are you there
yeah chances are if you really did that
that’s not the first time you’ve
returned those are the kind of memories
that we come back to time and time again
so let me tell you about one other
person I know and in his particular
journey back to one of those times so
this is my son Oliver he doesn’t look
like that anymore he’s a surly teenager
so if I could picture him with his eyes
rolling when I say something that’s what
the picture would look like now um but
I’ll it was about eight or nine so about
the age he was in this photo and I was
sitting on the couch after a long day
and he sat down beside me he said daddy
you know what I’m thinking about so I
have no clue son what are you thinking
about he said I’m thinking about
Christmas this was July which is the
Saturday we’ve been working outside it
was hot so I couldn’t imagine why
Christmas was on his mind so I asked him
I said Oliver man why are you thinking
about Christmas he said I don’t know but
I think about Christmas a lot do ya
think about Christmas because my brother
and I his brother and I he and his
brother were not are out of school and
you and Mom aren’t working and you know
we’re baking cookies for watching family
movies and there’s a fire in the
fireplace what I think about Christmas I
feel all warm inside
so even eight or nine year olds like to
take trips down memory lane so so why
why and believe me I’m getting to the
point here so when we have these kinds
of memories something magical is at work
in our brains so when we’re experiencing
them live so in those times where we
feel safe and warm and happy part of
what’s going on is we get this happy
cocktail of chemicals that kind of wash
over our brain and it makes us feel
content and safe and even in the
recalling so years later even the
recalling of those memories we still get
a little dose of those four chemicals so
those kinds of trips down memory lane
are different than standard memory so we
have a special word for them we call it
reminiscing right certain other memories
are dissociate
with reminiscing some memories we want
to you know kind of put out of our heads
but reminiscing takes us back to those
places in times that we that we like to
visit so there are people psychologists
mostly who study reminiscing and
Christine batch coat is one of those and
she describes reminiscing like this we
we bring the best of the past and to the
future with us and there are benefits to
reminiscing when we get those doses of
happy chemicals it kind of Shores up our
resolve and it’ll eves our fears of the
present day so we can do better work
today when we occasionally take those
trips down memory lane so I wanted to
establish the foundation of reminiscing
because it helps us understand really
the topic of my talk and that’s a
different word but it’s called
prospection so prospective probably
isn’t as familiar to you as remand I
think it wasn’t to me until I I learned
about it but perspective is like
reminiscing accept perspective is
reminiscing forward okay so it is when
we think of a future event and we attach
emotionally to it the way in which we
attach to those most precious memories
of the past and those same chemicals get
to work so we are actually able to not
only just pre experience this future
event but we were able to pre feel it
and the psychologists tell us that there
are benefits to that too so when you can
attach yourself to this future event
with that kind of emotion you’re much
more likely to make it happen when
barriers come in front of you you figure
out a way around those barriers so
you’re much more a resolved to make that
future event come true and those same
brain chemicals are at work so where I
work it at Purdue is called the agile
strategy lab and we focus on the science
of collaboration and agile approaches to
making the future kind of unfold before
us so when we talk about strategy which
coming up pretty high-level kinds of
stuff whether it’s a community or
whether it’s
an organization but figuring out how you
make strategic change is kind of what we
focus on
so perspective is embedded in a lot of
our work so I want to tell you about an
experiment that we run at the lab from
time to time so we have gathered
together groups in workshops and one of
the things that we do is we ask everyone
so picture you know a workshop with 15
people sometimes as many as what we have
here in this room we bring people
together and we say alright take a few
minutes and we want you to dream of a
trip you would love to take money it’s
no object and be as specific as you can
so we give them a few minutes to to
write that trip down and someone’s trip
might look something like this so this
person says they’re gonna fly to London
they know who they’re going with in this
case they’re going with husband and
they’re gonna learn a little bit more
about their family history and they’d
like to drink it pubs and they would
like to go to one of Gordon Ramsay’s
restaurants so people define a very
specific trip that they would love to
take next thing we do is we ask them to
pair up so two different people have
designed trips right we ask them to pair
up and we say all right now we need you
to work together and create a composite
trip but this trip can only have the
things that both of your first trips
have in common
follow me okay so it’s really kind of
entertaining to see what they come up
with because often their trips are very
different okay so you get this you get
these very you know vague kinds of trips
so we will travel to Europe okay st.
continent they had that in common right
they’re going with people that they love
all right we can do that and they’re
gonna drink alcohol so you hear you hear
trips like that all right we taking
another step we say all right this pair
that just designed this dream trip you
pair up with another pair so now we’ve
got groups of four people and we say all
right now it’s your turn the four of you
to design a composite of your composite
and again it can only have in common you
can only have the things that both of
your composite trips have in common so
looks like this yeah we’re gonna leave
home sometimes it’s not even that
because somebody is designed to
staycation and yeah you just so there’s
another step in this exercise that I
haven’t told you about yet so after we
asked people to design that first trip
kind of solo trip all on their own we
also say we would also like you to
define your success criteria tell us
when you come back from vacation how
will you know that it was successful and
describe that in in somewhat general
terms so here’s an example of what this
person said okay so then we asked them
to pair up one last time so this is a
new pair so we say pair up with someone
that you haven’t been paired up with
before and this time we want you to
design a brand new trip one that allows
you both to fulfill your success
criteria okay and so that kind of trip
can look like this so it looks not
anything much like either the two
original trips but it’s a brand new trip
that they’ve developed because of their
success criteria so at each of those
stages we ask them to evaluate their
level of excitement on the trips that
they’re designing so as you might
imagine that that solo trip I mean if
there are no constraints and money’s not
an object and you can design it yourself
you’re gonna give it a high rating I’m
still confused why it’s 9.9 instead of
10 but so really high rating so remember
that that composite of the composite so
where it gets a little bit more vague
well that drops down a lot as you might
expect and then the composite of
composites of the four people design
that trip together they all drops down
even more to a 3.9 but look what happens
for that fourth trip the one that they
design with their joint success criteria
it goes back up almost to the same level
as their original trip so it’s a
different trip but it’s a highly
exciting and satisfying trip so that’s
perspective at work and it’s not just
perspective in one person’s mind it’s a
perspective in this case
to people’s mind so a lot of times when
we think about collaboration we think
about working together we have a
situation where where people have this
image of the future or the outcome that
they want in their minds and we try to
get them to compromise
well perspective is is important and
perspective is something that we’ve
embedded into one of the disciplines
that we teach and we call it strategic
doing so strategic doing has ten rules
and these are rules that we see that are
at work and most successful complex
collaboration and in your bag you’ve got
one of these and you can see all of the
ten rules here but I just want to
concentrate on one of them as we finish
up today so rule seven our rule seven
says we convert strategic opportunities
that we’ve identified together to
strategic outcomes with success
characteristics and metrics so we use
perspectives to drive conversations deep
enough so that if two or more parties
can agree on what success looks like so
what what the trips going to look like
when we when we come back and we say we
know that it’s gonna be successful and
how we can measure it you’re well on
your way to a collaboration that’s going
to be sustainable so if you’ve ever been
involved in strategic planning sometimes
you may have seen a different way to
reach consensus we like to do vision
statements right anyone worked on a
vision statement before so a vision
statements usually get purposefully
vague all right we try to make them so
vague that everyone kind of fits under
this big umbrella so we did another
little bit of research in our lab we
looked across the country and said how
many communities have developed a vision
statement with this phrase something
like we will be a great place to live
work and play
we stopped counting on 160 okay so my
question is this how does that drive
anyone to perspective does that mean the
same thing to everyone my guess is that
you asked 100 people what what this is a
great place to play means and you’ll
probably get a hundred different answers
so when we drive people to have a
discussion about outcomes and how we
would measure them we ask these kinds of
Jennsen what would it look like if we’re
successful how would it feel whose life
would be different and if you can drive
a conversation whether it’s with two
people or whether it’s a large group you
can drive that conversation deep enough
what people are doing is they’re
co-creating that future together and
they will have group prospection and our
research indicates that when you have
group perspective well the group
strengthens their resolve to make that
future happen so to finish up
remember the seventy five thousand pages
of functional specifications there was
no person going on because that was done
by the leadership they pushed it to the
rest of us there are more reasons why
that project failed but I think that
that’s one of them in the community that
I talked about where we saw remarkable
transformation what was much more of a
of a blank slate I mean I was literally
in front of blank flipchart paper
so people were pre feeling pre thinking
pre experiencing what the next iteration
of that community might be so our last
kind of lesson to be learned here is
that as leaders we are tempted to have a
vision and get everyone to line up
behind us so that they can support our
vision well that’s not a very
sustainable way to get collaborations
moving yes you have your vision of the
future but they have their vision but
they have their vision as well so what
we need to do is we align those visions
by asking those kinds of questions what
will it look like how will it feel how
will life be different so the road
toward change a changed future for
communities and organizations is a wide
one and we can kind of walk side-by-side
and we can figure out together what that
future looks like we can figure out
together what that future is going to
feel like and we can have better futures
together thank you
[Applause] [Music]
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