Important Book: Creating We, by Judith E. Glaser
Creating We: Change I-Thinking to We-Thinking & Build a Healthy Thriving Organization
Author: Judith E. Glaser
Publisher: Platinum Press, an Imprint of Adams Media
Avon, MA United States
Copyright 2005
ISBN: 1-59337-268-X
Edition: 1st
Pages: 350
http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/intro/bookReviewDetail.cfm?coid=7985
Annotation: More than ever before, we need to understand how to Create We. We are experiencing unprecedented changes in the world. Businesses and our global communities are more challenged than ever before, and it feels like there has been a sudden and profound interruption in business continuity. I call this The Edge.
At the edge-our moments of greatest challenge-we often feel like we are losing control and are unable to see a clear path to success. It is a crossroads we arrive at when we are faced with decisions too difficult to make, when our resources are few, and our old approaches no longer produce results that yield success. Our energy feels depleted, we discover pockets of insecurity, and we are afraid to let others in.
At the edge, we can turn away from others and try to handle the challenges from our own vantage point, or we can turn to others for help. Old-style leadership suggests that a leader should have the answers and direct and guide the organization to solutions. Old-style leaders expect solutions to come from the top of the organization and be given to the employees for implementation.
New-style leadership says that a leader doesn’t have all the answers, and therefore needs to learn how to involve the entire organization in successfully coming up with the strategies for success. I call this new inclusive approach “We-Centric” Leadership.
A central premise of Creating We is that an organization’s ability to get to its next level of greatness is determined by the climate of the culture, which is determined by the quality of the relationships. The quality of relationships is determined by the quality of the conversations. Conversations connect one person to another. When negativity, lack of trust, fear, dictating and focus on the past are the “reality of our conversations” they:
- insidiously eat away at our heart and soul,
- limit our access to new wisdom and knowledge,
- close down our access to our spirit and passion,
- interrupt the catalytic nature of positive relationships, and
- block the serendipity of new encounters.
Setting a positive tone in our conversations enables us to connect with others at deep levels not always visible to the human eye. The more our interactions are trusting, and positive and supportive of courage-taking acts, and the more we live in the present rather than the past, the greater are our chances of tapping the most incredible and powerful energy we have to create the next generation innovation - which is a “we” phenomena.
This reservoir of resources inside of each and every human being, waiting to assist us in achieving our greatest aspirations, is tapped through conversations. Far beyond what our conscious mind can create, when we set the tone, our spirits are activated in the workplace, our sense of the universe and what is possible expands – the impossible becomes possible.
Creating WE goes to the root of the problem, showing how self-centered, unimaginative, non-collaborative “I-centric” work environments cause “territorialism” to form in the workplace, dooming companies to failure.
On the larger socio-political stage, Creating We provides a new way of approaching conflict, collaboration and co-creation that has the power to unlock the code of positive human dynamics – turning fear into optimism and “power-over” into “power-with.”
At the core of transformation are the “connecting words… I. Me. Us. Them. By creating a revolutionary “WE” culture, everyone works toward the same common goals, turning the selfish, self-serving pronouns “they,” “them,” “their,” and “I” into the magical word WE and achieving unparalleled results!
The Origin of Creating WE and its Connection to AI:
While the book has a larger message about the shift from command and control leadership to a “new generative leadership,” much of the book is about creating vital environments where we leave behind judgment, silos, fear and competitiveness, and focus on appreciation, aspiration and innovation (co-creating).
In 1986, I was working with colleagues on the science of conversations. Through our collaborative work, we discovered distinctions about conversations that we had never seen before. Some conversations were at a win/lose level. It was as though people were selling each other or persuading each other, and the strongest voice would win. Yet there were other conversations that took on a completely different tone. We saw these conversations as transformative and generative.
In the generative conversations, it was as though the “I’s” became a “We” and at the end of the conversation there were new innovative ways of doing things that neither had thought of before.
Most fascinating was the presence of a profound and strong level of commitment to turning the ideas into reality – a shared commitment and accountability that drove results without blame, territoriality or victimization.
I called this transformational process The Magic Triangle. This conversational process is explained in chapter 6 of Creating We and it is amazingly like the 4-D process with some differences: the process moves from Persuasion to Discovery - then to Innovation (dream). In discovery there are skills around how to ask different types of questions that release the past, open the heart, and set the stage for “we” to emerge.
In Innovation, there is great skill building in how to have conversations that enable more fluid exchange of emerging ideas in their most primitive stage – and a nurturing process to enable them to grow as a collective idea. The process them moves to a validation of our mutual work and success, and then moves into taking action.
Many of the skills are about how to listen differently, how to ask questions that open the mind and heart - therefore creating new ways of being together.
However I discovered this process cannot exist alone. It needs a context to help people see how to fit it into everyday life, to see how to create environments that are willing to have deep dive conversations. It needs a willingness to let go of old beliefs about what leadership is all about and it needs to live inside of new beliefs where mutual support, rather than self interest are the norm. It needs to enable people to step out of their comfort zones and step into a new type of bold courage with each other.
Most of all, I soon realized Creating We needs a willingness to create and share inspirational stories about how we live and work together – and to use storytelling as a way to shape and craft our culture and our environments – for being with others is where we spend most of our time and we need to be mindful of our role in creating environments for health where we are learning, growing and nourishing each other every day.
Creating We moves from the micro (words and conversations) to the macro (culture and organization) and draws the parallel tracks between these two. Additionally the book references what “healthy” looks like, and draws from my husband’s breakthrough work on new cures for cancer use a peptide that has the power to “reminding the cells how to be normal.” From an AI standpoint it’s “remember when…” with the focus on drawing out our memories of success and building on them.
So you can see how Creating We and AI are mirror images of each other. The book contains a huge number of exercises to help develop interpersonal skills handling delicate situations such as confronting adversaries, giving critical feedback, acting as a peer coach, identifying your “fear habit patterns” and blocking “case building” among our colleagues.
Creating WE also provides incredible stories drawn from large scale projects with companies such as Clairol, Donna Karan International, Revlon and others.