1:115) 27-SEP-2003 05:08 Art Kleiner
In #101 Rod asks what I think of G-7, the United Nations, OPEC, etc. I think these organizations embody one of the most difficult political conundrums of our time –- perhaps the most difficult.
Core Groups are as essential to organizations as hearts are to human beings. But they are corrosive to democracy. Thus: How can civilization be governed in such a way that permits organizations and their Core Groups to exist – with all the energy and capability that this implies – without being corrupted by them?  

The G-7, OPEC, World Bank, UN, etc. are maligned precisely because they ARE powerful and viewed as operating on their own agendae, not influenceable by the world at large… and thus dangerous. But these institutions can act as few others can act. Precisely because they are looking out for their own interests (or their Core Groups’ interests), they can build and create.  

They can even create trust; for instance, the International Finance Corporation, a branch of the World Bank, considers its work done in a country when the business climate is sufficiently robust that other investors become interested. How does that happen? Because the IFC’s work produces credible returns on investment – they build trust. No one else could do that – not a government, not a commercial bank. They, in turn, can do it precisely because they are unelected, and they are loyal to their Core Groups.  

Nor are multi-lateral organizations going to go away. If anything, they will become more numerous and powerful. So the question is: How can their Core Groups become better? What kind of relationship should they, could they, will they have with the body politic at large? And, finally, as democracies evolve into their next form, how will they establish themselves as public spheres, making decisions on behalf of everyone, not just Core Groups – with room for organizations to thrive but not dominate?  

You also ask: How functional are most Core Groups? I actually suspect most Core Groups are more functional than we think they are. Like happy families, happy organizations are often unnoticed, while dysfunctional ones provoke all the gossip.  

And what makes a Core Group succeed or fail? You tell me…

1. If a “shadow Core Group” comes to power in an organization, actually becoming influential, is there a danger of that Core Group being corrupted by its own past ideals?  

2. Can we study the history of an organization by studying the history of its Core Groups? (Berkeley historian Neil Fligstein, I believe, has done exactly that.)  

3. Which has more impact on the people of an organization: the Core Group’s direction (its ends) or its values and methods (its means)?  

And then there are Lavinia’s questions in #105, all worth repeating, though I might rephrase them slightly:  

4. What does it take to change the values and methods of a Core Group?  

5. How does one detect a dysfunctional Core Group early enough to prevent it from damaging the organization?  

6.How do I develop in me a perspective from which I can responsibly deal with my own situation when I work with a core group that does not support or serve me? [Great question!]  

7. What are the Core Group dynamics of a healthy organization? What does an organization look like when it is moving toward health?  

Can a Core Group pattern change? Yes, if it is perceived differently.  

To me, any Core Group that succeeds in achieving the “noble purpose” of the organization is healthy. And what is that, you ask? Well, it’s hard to define universally. Just as you might say, any individual who succeeds in achieving his or her “noble life purpose” is healthy. And the “noble life purpose” for one individual might differ dramatically from that of another.  

I don’t THINK this is a circular definition.  

Re #107: I like adaptive/reactive and healthy/unhealthy.
I’m contemplating leading a seminar on this, in which a lot of the seminar would consist of diagnosing the nature of the Core Gorup, based on a variety of methods, all based on the perceptions of the participants, and then asking: What does this diagnosis tell us about the way to intervene?  

I’m thinking about a two-day session, prototyping it in February or so, and then seeing how much interest it generates…  

Re #109: In many organizations, the people are not ready to be open about Core Group dynamics. They’re undiscussable and for good reason. The character and makeup of the board relates to this.  

And in 110-111: Public acknowledgement of the Core Group’s role may NOT be the way to go. Similarly, I wonder about public evaluation of the Core Group. I’m influenced in part by Karen Stephenson, who can establish clear maps of the informal networks of an organization, but who also recognizes that a frozen map of the Core Group is only valid for a moment. The best intervention is not necessarily the most overt intervention. Overt interventions, even well-intended ones, often blow up and make things worse. I was involved in one of those just recently (in fact, I was the prime mover behind it), and it had devastating effect.  

A really good Advisory Board with genuine impact can be a very powerful way of expanding the horizons of the Core Group. Even if the Advisory Board isn’t IN the Core Group, or central to it, their influence ripples out, precisely because employees pay attention whenever they perceive the Core Group paying attention.

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Kip writes:  

One of the assumptions I am hearing (and perhaps my hearing is simply skewed) is that the Core group is motivated to advantage the company. In my own experience, I have found that quite often that is not the case at all.    

If the Core group is simply concerned to advantage itself, no techniques will change that.    

Perhaps it is as important to understand the real agenda of the core group as its membership.    

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(Back to ArtK)  

There's a certain amount of pain behind this passage. Whether it is intended or not, it's painful to read this. And it's a similar kind of pain to that which prompted me to write Who Really Matters in the first place.  

The extent to which people find the book compelling, I think, depends on the extent to which I've been able to detach a bit from that pain and help expose some of the structures that make it such a recurring phenomenon.  

We expect so damn much from Core Groups because they have so much power... and they don't get the responsibility this entails. They become parasites instead. And as parasites, they inflict enormous pain on people -- just as a parasitic political despot inflicts enormous pain. But now, the pain is coming not just from tyrannical government, but from parasitical corporations and even from non-profits, multilaterals and agencies which were supposed to help.  

How do you convince a despot or a parasite that they can do much better, in the long run, by creating a worthwhile and supportive enterprise? You can't. They won't.  

At the same time, when I think about the organizations I've known -- even the great ones have parasites, but even the crappy ones tend to have well-intentioned people who fall into parasitic behavior out of nothing more than self-indulgence and the sense that this is what they're supposed to do.  

It's as if no one has told them, "You're in the Core Group now." It's as if they've never really thought about what "advantaging themselves" means. Even a parasite would sort of like to leave a legacy behind.  

The pain partly stems from this unfortunate fact of human nature: Parasites are drawn to the top of hierarchies because that's where all the -- well, that's where all the blood is. But at the same time, the pain is at least partly caused by our expectations of people, and of ourselves.  And there's a bit more leverage there.  

Interestingly, if you start with your own "inner Core Group" -- on whose behalf are YOU making decisions -- you may over time discover that you have more power than it seems, even over the parasites. You certainly have more power over yourself.  

The pain, in other words, can be a starting point, rather than a deal-breaker. It's hard to put into words the type of transition that this requires, and you may have already made it, Kip.  I don't claim to have made it myself. But I HAVE seen it in people...  

The question, "On whose behalf do you make decisions?" -- a question which I stumbled into -- seems to offer a lot of leverage, both for the parasites and those who suffer and chafe under them.

It’s a hard lesson to learn, though, because the non-fear ways of motivating people take nuance, subtlety, and grace. These are the things that the for-profit world could learn from non-profits, instead of the other way around.  

______
Rod  

I believe the distinction between fear and anger can be one of the most important communication distinctions of any organization.  In the book I'm working on(The Great Communication Challenge) we go into this.  Here is a brief snippet of the chapter.  

In the world of communications, the difference between “anger” and “fear” may appear miniscule, yet the distinction in the business world - immense. To a personnel manager, telling bad news is not for the weak at heart.  Yet if done properly, it can empower and motivate; done poorly, it can humiliate and demean.  To a marketing manager, sending a press release that informs your competitors they have just been marginalized with a new product you are ready to introduce can sway a marketplace and send paralysis into your competitor’s camp.  If done poorly, you could merely anger them into action, and at a level you had not previously experienced.  And to a customer, anger or fear could encourage them to seek an alternate supplier of products and services quickly.  Such is the difference between “anger” and “fear.”  

In recent years, numerous scientific studies have quantified these distinctions.  In summary, fear tends to lead people to more pessimistic judgments about risk in future events, whereas anger leads to more optimistic judgments.  So for example, the business scandals promulgated by the likes Worldcom, Tyco International and others could result in multiple outcomes.  If the government allowed fear to take hold like during the depression era of the 1930s, people would hoard their money under mattresses and in tin cans in the back yard.  The economy and trust in the stock market would suffer.  Or the government could enable their citizens to become angry, thereby securing a different future.  Anger could become the impetus to implement quick regulatory changes, making the public more optimistic about the probability of a successful change in the system.  It’s unfortunate that many companies, either intentionally or unintentionally, manage by fear...
There’s a saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”  Strong communicators channel their messages in a way to avoid “fear,” and instill anger.  Anger instills a sense of hope and an opportunity for a bright future.  Maybe the saying should state, “When the going gets tough, the tough get angry!”  

For some reason this reminds me of a situation that I have faced in two organizations now regarding the sharing, not of power, but of information---which can be the same thing.  

Here was my problem in two organizations:  In a computer networked environment it is good to have as much information on the server and available to all as possible, so that it is accessible and backed up routinely by whatever mechanism is in place to do that. Agreed?  

However, people who are afraid of losing power by sharing information will often keep their databases, their schedules, their contacts to themselves, thereby making themselves seem indispensible.  There were a lot of rewards to this behaviour.  

I first confronted this tendency with a number of "Thou Shalt's" and "Thou Shalt Not's" from on high.  Didn't work.  

Then I got smart and saw that where there was sharing of information going on, there were rewards for that sharing.  So I realized that the problem that I had to think about was how to make the sharing of information and sharing of tools more rewarding than the hording of information. I got crafty!  

Simple things like alerting the team to a wonderful template developed by X that we were all going to use now, meant that any template that anyone else was hording as a preference just got axed.  Beyond that, putting people in charge of processes and teams on the basis of shared information and treating horded information as invisible promoted a rush to post things on the server that all the "Shalt Not's" had failed to do.  Temporarily we used some inferior templates and information, but the end result was worth it.  We all got access to the superior tools and information in the end and the climate was changed.  

So I think that the same holds true for the despot and parasite, although they might be a long time in the learning.  The questions are the same:  "How do we create conditions in which they gain by sharing decisionmaking and power?  How do we create conditions where they lose by closed doors?"  

I think that this is a Board of Directors challenge and role.  It is not something that I've seen undertaken successfully from below by middle-management.  (Although I've seen it tried!)  

In my former unhealthy organization, an elder statesman of the Board rightly blamed the Board for their own failure to promote the health of the Executive Director and the organization.  He rightly identifier that they should be creating conditions and expectations that included sharing decision-making, listening to expert opinion from the artistic staff.  

I know it's hard to tell the players without a program!

You've raised some really good points. The first to catch me was your reference to PERCEIVED agenda. I was thinking about this while writing some of my earlier comments.  

One way to way effect change is to change your own perceptions. This is, however, a tricky matter. Drawing again from my own experience, I've found that this doesn't mean overlooking, ignoring, or sugar-coating what's going on. The one thing we each can be in charge of is our own agenda. If our agendas are based upon externals, however, there is bound to be difficulty with differing agendas.  

I really like your question "On whose behalf do you make decisions?" because it seems to me to be critical. If, for example, I make decisions based upon what I think will be good for the company, then I am simply substituting my agenda for someone else's. The end result is the same game.  

A mentor many years ago advised me: Do the right thing in the right way toward the right end. I find that this requires extreme alertness and attention to the world around me. When I'm able to focus on this, however, my perception of everything is different - and so is my agenda.

I believe social capital could well be much more important than we currently perceive.
Its customary to list "hard" facts and charateristics in a bottomm line context, as being the most important, IMO simply because they have been the most obvious, the ones that people have been most familiar with.  

I've seen studies that show emotional intelligence is the key part in success.
What does this imply for the rise of core groups to power,
to individuals being made members of core groups, and which core groups are successful and which isnt ?  

One undiscussable here is IMO the old italian accounting system, that values things that can be precisely measured, and metricized. This system is emotionally dumb.
I believe people who want to play the system risk becoming emotionally, while not dumb, then somewhat dumbed-down.  

I'd love to see this further elaborated, perhaps even crafted into a systems archetype :
perhaps "The Embarrasment of Riches" ?

I see the seeds of a dialogue growing here where at the end of the month of just getting to know each other, I can come back to refelct and synthesize possible "sparks that can fly."  

What I mean by a "spark that can fly" is the creation of energy like igniting a candle, where a group of people might form that are open to dealing with the individual discomfort that is part of the process of emergence, that can be somewhat described as(using this as a metaphor only) what happens when good friends or people with strong allegiences to a pattern have the courage to let the pattern break apart and form new thought leadership.  

Something very obvious to my observation here is that Art has given us the gift of a conversation which is more like a dance or a game.  I prefer the word dance to game, personally.  

One of the drawbacks of text based conversation is the intensity and how knowledge sharing can become a game of intelligence that encourages discusssion of competitive intelligence rather than empower the reflective and meditative state that grows emotional intelligence.  

In text based communities, it is often hard for people to appreciate the other types of sensory tools for learning that Howard Gardner outlines so well in his book on 10 styles of learning. Daniel Goleman in his books on Emotional Intelligence provides the story and kinesthetic and sensory passagest that people grow through to form new thought that leads to new patterns of action that are not necessarily grounded in words.  

Emotional intelligence is a foundation for building social capital and alot of my research shows that you cannot talk about this to see it, you have to observe it and let it grwo out of reflection.  

Reflective practice is an important foundation to guide the emergence of generative practice.  The shaping of this with graphics recording tools, e..g what has been developed by David Sibbet of Grove Consulting and a much larger community of practice that I am a part of can spark that kind of reflective thinking that can grow into a foundation of generative practice.  Historically based on my studies this kind of practice has a very steep investment.  Graphics recording has been proven to speed up the process support reflection and generation rather than push people to thinking they are not prepared to do or learn how.

My research for the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and Ruth Cox's dissertation work on online community in these kind of practices, told the story of how important a mixture of intimacy that is gained from residential retreats can play well with online journalling to empower group consciousness and individual personal growth.  ITP was the only virtual community of participation that I have supported in my years of being in the MetaNet/Well world where I could observe and see group interaction grow its consciousness online post 10 day retreats and other experiences in nature that empowered wellness and reflective learning.

What sparks people to come together to learn and apply what they learn in practice?  

Within this context, I truly believe that a group can then embrace passages of failure and success to weave a mission and purpose that creates emotionally intelligent glue and a purpose for the group to sustain.

Moi:  John, you sound like you would be very interested in the work of Jack Quarter at OISE/University of Toronto in working on a system of Social Accounting.
http://home.oise.utoronto.ca/~volunteer/whatcounts.html  

I have been involved in this work to some very small extent.  At the current time we are getting some feedback from Canada's leading accounting bodies in order to determine how they will regard this as auditors.  Consensus is needed before advocating it to non-profits and having them have trouble with their audits.  

In the sessions this summer with Financial Managers and Executive Directors from various sectors it was clear that this system of accounting didn't just work best for non-profit but also for private corporations who were trying to establish for their stockholders how their positive initiatives were making an important difference.  It enabled them to show the positive effect of volunteerism, environmental improvements in their companies and also to show the negative impact of downsizing, staff turnover.... in short, to get a more honest appraisal of the real balance sheet.

Just a couple of odds and ends...  

Re #123: I don't believe people can or should "change their perception" of the Core Group. If there is a perception gap, then it's up to the Core Group to change it.  

People can change their perception of their relationship with the organization, and people can also raise the question of the Core Group's intent vs. the Core Group's perceived intent. I suppose that's "Changing" perception, though it seems to me to be more like clarifying it.  

Re #124: One of my favorite experiences in putting together Who Really Matters was writing the chapter called "Doggie Treats: Incentives and Measurements." It's my take on what you call the "old Italian accounting system."  

I think I'll let the book speak for itself on this one, except to repeat one aphorism: "What is perceived to matter gets measured."  

I haven't heard of Jack Quarter. His book title (What Counts) sounds like a natural complement to mine.

John, I like the phrase emotional intelligence (not one I've heard before). I expect I'll do some reading on this.  

Art, your response in re: not changing the core group by changing your own perception surprised me. Elaboration?  

Two simple examples:  

1.If you train a volunteer on computer basics for x weeks, you look in your community for basic computer courses and you add that amount to your value-added statement.  Your company has given that value to the community.  

2. If you downsize by one position, you look at the unemployment statistics for your area and calculate the average amount of time someone will be on unemployment insurance and average benefits paid.  You deduct that amount from the value-added statement because your company has had that negative financial impact on the community.  

Although Jack's work was pioneered for non-profits it is a system which is to the advantage of socially responsible profits also.  

Currently the group working on the social accounting system at OISE is consulting with Accounting profession regulatory bodies.  In order to pave the way for broad adoption of the system it will be necessary for them to accept the criterion for valuing items.  Some are easier than others.  Getting even some on the balance sheet will be good.  Until the Accounting bodies accept this, the use will only be internal because it won't stand up to audit.  Even as a reporting device to insiders and stakeholder groups however, it has some utility, as the accountants and managers among us can probably see.  

OISE is actually a graduate institute of education in association with University of Toronto.  Seems like a strange place for this work to initiate but they also train administrators and have pioneered work on workplace training.  It is in this sphere that these ideas began to percolate.

Social Accounting is an innovation on the one hand and on the other hand not an innovation.  It really is about defining the intention of the core group within a community responsible for the Balance Sheet of the community.  

In my work in Silicon Valley with virtual teams cross corporation, I worked with teams to define their social accounting system.  With the movement of cross sector teams and intersector cooperation, e.g. non profit cooperation with government and corporations, this social method of accounting is going to be popularized I believe.  

My entire thesis from graduate school looks at this kind of cooperation. The thesis itself is as Art would say to academic and filled with citations.  

I am about to go into high gear again with research for the materials that I gathered to shape into a book.  

Thanks to Art's book and some guidance from others out of the Sloan Management School  Women's community and some personal friends, I am going to be launching a new research project on Women in Leadership. Unlike other studies that have been done, I am not going to limit the research of the study to soley focus on the women leader.  

When and how I identify a women leader for the study, I am going to request that I interview members external and internal to this women's core group.  One other qualifier will be that if the women works outside of the Fortune 2000 or traditional business structure, e.g. a bank, I will want to study what it was that occurred within the traditional structure for this women interms of her personal productivity and what was it that created her through her leadership as an attractor to translate her path to a non traditional social entreprenuerial venture.  Note that I have described the term "social entreprenuerial venture," in so doing I am implying that this women and her core group(s) do focus on social capital and the building of equity that measures and supports the development of social capital.  In so doing, I am guiding this project to examine the sparking of healthy core group(s) and how they are stepping stones to mindful social networks of sustainability.  

For those of you interested in recommending or guiding me to this type of networking and research, please be aware that in conducting this research, I will be providing private reports to the networks more valuable than accounting audits that can help launch or affirm a core group dialogue and I see these reports as ways to set up learning community evaluation frameworks that can provide a leadership team a framework from which to evaluate and lead.  For organizations interested in this form of evaluation, the environments for such can adapt to benefits of this process by workign with people like Art and other members of my network on core group dialogue that becomes a container for leadership development and systems thinking application.  

Anyone can contact me regarding this process at lavinia.weissman@workecology.com or call me at 617.461.0500  

If you are interested in this framework and thinking please I will also be happy to add you to my monthly WorkEcology email news list. The news letter is called Paying Attention to  Give Attention.  

I have truly enjoyed this conversation.  Kip, the dance you speak to that exist here is not limited to a female skill set and Sally Heligsen, Carol Gilligan and Deborah Tannen, who are the recognized researchers of women's ways in communication and networking repeatedly point out that receptivity to this kind of dance often viewed very female is a success path for women. I maintain that men can engage in this dance as well as women, when they are organized for conversation and dialogue in what Art would call a healthy core group of excellence.  

In rereading Bill Isaac's book on Dialogue, Otto Scharmers work and much more, I am reminded the tools that empower this kind of a dance have grown out of years of Spiritual History and theology by men like Buddha, Krishnamuti, Baal Shem Tov and many more.  

Perhaps in contemporary society our addictive structures of domination may appear gender based when the fundamental issue as I wrote as contributing editor  in Chapter 8 on Female Diversity of Transculatural Leadership, authored by Simons, that fundamentally no matter if it business or social interaction, society has failed to adopt its structures to support the rapid entrance of women into the work place and the chaos we now see impacting children, elders, everyone's health and more is a opportunity to organize for new learning and healthier impact.

And he's onto something in saying that if we can't show it on the balance sheet, even though people may say it counts, it doesn't count because you can't measure it and if you can't measure it, who do you trust to evaluate it?  But there's no reason not to be able to show social value on the balance sheet.

The greatest exercise I had to do in grad school was tallying up $21M in costs post a big mistake on a real estate venture for lawsuits and the hire of 2 public affairs people to clean up a non profit mess.  

I never had so much fun doing a case analysis like this.  

I am on the final day of a trip visiting my daughter in Florida.  Unfortunately its raining cats and dogs, so I have only been able to sit on the beach once......and I am getting quite a bit of work done, so ART please make sure you look for an email from me by Thursday am.  

I have some more development work I have done around the Core Group Dialogue conversation and some interesting results already in email.  

I want to thank everyone here for their participation and all the wonderful engagement of shared learning.   It was special to bring here new friends with many of my old virtual acquaintances.  Linda thanks for joining up.  I know Robin Lunt from http://www.grove.com/ was lurking here as well.  Kip it was great to meet you here and Rodney.  

Sending virtual chocolats to all my dear virtual buds of years and years of hanging (Lars, John, Carol and Denham).

Thanks Art and all the rest of you for a very interesting and enjoyable conference.

"Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.  The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.  Free societies enable the future by limiting the power of the past.  Ours is a less and less free society."  

I hope it is a nugget of light.  

P.S. Anyone for a reunion tour?

Thank you.  

Yours, ArtK

Stay tuned next month, for Peter Wallman and Rachel Flower on their new book The Wisdom of Passion: Mapping Your Way to Vitality, Fulfilment, and Success. Read more: http://www.thewisdomofpassion.com/