Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Mindfulness Where and how to start? Third International HRO workshop January 9 &10, 2010

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl What can you expect in the next 30 minutes…? The City of Amsterdam: Staff rides to provoke a sense of urgency But first, there are two things on my mind: 2.Where to start?: being mindful as an interventionist 1.Where to start?: being mindful as a guest speaker at this conference

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Where to start? 1. Being mindful as a guest speaker at this conference (in interaction with the audience) Can experience be transferred to others? What could be helpful methods in doing that? Storytelling Introducing language to talk about experience Asking questions about your experiences Inviting you to experience …

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Where to start? Are you preoccupied with failure…? Are you reluctant to simplify…? Do you have sensitivity to operations…? RIGHT NOW Can I recognize these principles in your behavior or in your body language, in the noises you make, in the way you look at me?

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Where to start? 2. Being mindful as an interventionist

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Imagining failure as an interventionist… I help organizations with what they think is an answer to their problem I miss weak signals in the first moments of interaction I simplify, search for the one true definition of ‘the’ problem that needs to be solved I take over and my client is depending on me

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Imagining failure as an interventionist… The first interactions This period of defining This period of negotiating IS WHERE YOU DO 50% OF THE WORK

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl The first moments of interaction So let’s take a closer look at this 50% March 2007: meeting at ‘Kunstwerken’ September 2008: meeting with the Board of DITT May 2009: meeting at the ‘Alliance’ of six departments who are taking care of the Amsterdam public space

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl The art of intervening These examples illustrate the presence and lack of mindfulness Negotiating with the client before starting a (change) project: What problem is this an answer to? Who experiences a sense of urgency? Which people and therefore perspectives are included? What cannot be questioned or touched?

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Where to start? Think of a project you are working on at the moment What problem is your project an answer to? Who experiences a sense of urgency? Which people and therefore perspectives are included? What cannot be questioned or touched?

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl What can you expect in the next 20 minutes…? The City of Amsterdam: Staff rides to provoke a sense of urgency

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Situation Department of Infrastructure Traffic and Transport (DITT) in the City of Amsterdam in The Netherlands Assignment: improving the collaboration between employees working in different sections in the organization The lack of collaboration so far resulted in critical articles in the papers and in the decision of an alderman to resign

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Situation Large number of organizations that work in Amsterdam on infrastructural projects Projects are very complex (technological, social and political) The management and workers at DITT have gotten used to things going wrong, fixing problems at the last minute They shrug when they hear what went wrong this time. They got numbed in a way

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Proposal at 'Kunstwerken' Staff Rides … to provoke a sense of urgency

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Staff Rides Choice of unexpected events Preparation by the owner of the event Three storytellers Three groups of managers and employees that are asking blame free questions Reconstruction of the timeline Looking for dysfunctional patterns

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl We postpone our interpretations and judgments We do that by including multiple perspectives And by asking participants to tell their story in terms of observations We do not look for guilty parties that contributed to the unexpected event The Blame Free Principle

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Judging enables you to make a decision If it is not necessary to make a decision, you can postpone your judgment By postponing your judgment, you can start observing and renew your observations and interpretations concerning a certain event Postponing your judgment

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl One observation can be interpreted in ten different ways Ten interpretations can be valued in hundred different ways Connecting the who’s and the what’s enables you to see multiple perspectives Including multiple perspectives

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Tell me about the specific moment that you experienced something you did not expect? Where were you at that time, who was there with you, were you sitting or standing? What did you say, in what way did you move? And then? What happened then? And then? Storytelling in observations

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl We assume that patterns of interaction will make anyone act in the same way, making the same mistakes as did the person in this specific situation So it is about changing the patterns, and the conditions in which these patterns can excist, not about changing the person No one is to blame for

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl I invite you to stand and walk over to someone And to practice some blame free evaluating by asking the other person about how he or she woke up and got to the conference this morning Invitation to experience…

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Method of implementation Step 0:First moments of interaction Step 1: Preparation with management Step 2:Preparation with employees Step 3: Preparation of the staff rides with the ‘owners’ Step 4:Executing staff rides Step 5:Joint analyses and action

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl A staff ride is not an easy ‘can – use – it – anywhere – anytime’ intervention Mindfulness does also apply here In other words…

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Difficulties Being part of the patterns of the organization… When the sense of urgency becomes part of your own system… ‘Success’ leading to becoming a one trick pony… Relationships deepen and therefore understanding…

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Results Management and employees: learnt how to evaluate their (non-) collaboration in a blame free manner became aware of the dysfunctional patterns that have become part of the organization’s culture, habits and processes understood how they contribute in maintaining these dysfunctional patterns The staff rides evoked a sense of urgency

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl Conclusion Mindfulness, where to start? Staff rides to provoke a sense of urgency Mindfulness in the process of using this tool

Strange | Strategy and Change Shirine Moerkerkenwww.shirine.nl What can you expect the next 10 minutes…?