Maybe it’s time to rethink the venue of choice for social transformation
I believe that we can make the most progress towards equality, inclusion, and bi-directional respect when we create situations where diversity is measurably productive; when we can repeatedly and regularly see the value of diversity at work in the course of typical team engagements at work.
The workplace is already organized for teamwork, for rewards for productive collaboration, and for circumstances that provide consistent and readily visible demonstrations of the efficacy of working together. The one thing that needs some “tweaking” is the goals and ground rules.
After working as an innovation, strategy, and team productivity consultant for more than thirty years, I have discerned a pattern and a process for getting diverse teams to simultaneously meld and produce highly creative and highly productive outcomes. There are principles from that learning that can be applied to turbo-charging the Robbers Cave effect and applying it to a day-to-day work process for improving cross-diversity relations, bringing out the best in each individual, and improving both the workplace and the productivity. I have come to appreciate that the most effective route to equity and inclusion is to show how diversity can improve productivity. My version of the process is called Thinking Together Out Loud Together.
The workplace principles that have proven the case:
* People who think together out loud focus on the developing ideas more than on where the ideas come from.
* They begin to participate in the development of each other’s thinking rather than judging each other’s thinking.
* They begin to see how their thinking converges into better thinking.
* Higher order solutions become the byproduct of better goals and better processes.
* Shoot for a higher goal. Cooperation and Collaboration are mechanical solutions to teamwork. Escalate the goal and construct the process to deliver Collegiality. By its very nature, Collegiality is all about inclusion because collegiality is based on mutual respect for each other as a contributor as well as for the contribution that can be made.
* Collegiality taps into and unleashes the most under-utilized resource that each individual brings to the team – their collective native intelligence. Collective native intelligence is the sum total of what makes us individuals and what makes us diverse. It represents the totality of our individual dispositions, experiences, culture, talents, achievements, failures… and so on. Multiply that by the collective native intelligence of the group and that manifests the collective native intelligence of the group. Moreover, it expands the opportunities for the team to connect across an exponentially expanded number of commonalities.
* Each meeting of the collegially connected team needs to drive for a meaningful, recognizable, quantifiable outcome in the meeting. This “small” achievement cements both the work and the bonds.
* The power of Thinking Together Out Loud Together in this way is unmatched in its ability to leave each participant with an improved sense of self worth along with respect for others on the team.
In the end, it will take more than one approach to significantly reduce prejudices that divide us and to increase and improve the positive connections that bind us. Some legislation will always likely be needed. Education will always continue to be essential to the process. Communications will also always part of the process.
Having said that, I believe that the things we do “inside out” by bringing out the best each of us have to bring to the table will always arrive at better results, with fewer potential unintended negative consequences. It will always prove to be less productive to convince people against their will, their nature, and their collective native intelligence.
John Krubski is the author of relevant books:
Breaking Genius – for Teams and Organizations: How you can use Thinking Whole to achieve repeatable moments of genius, on demand, for your team, your organization, and your self
(Itlcinsights October 28, 2019)
Cracking The America Code: A Plan For Getting US Back on Track
(Buoy Point Media August 1, 2012)
