The approach taken
here assumes that the challenge of the times may be associated more with
how they are understood rather than what they are understood to be -- more with how they
condition, and are determined by, thinking and less with the effects they appear individually to
produce.
Three Questions
that Guide:
1. How am I part
of the solution and how does it help me understand the nature of the problem
faced?
2. How am I part
of the problem and how does it help me understand the nature of the solution
required?
3. How do I miss
the point entirely and how does it help me understand myself?
10 Hazzards
that Temper:
1. You identify
with your system. It cost you blood to build it, and if it is attacked, it is your
blood that is being shed.
2. You cannot tolerate tentativeness, suspension of judgment, or anything that does not fit the
system.
3. You cannot apprehend anyone else's system unless it supports yours.
4. You believe that other systems are based on selected data.
5. Commitment to systems other than your own is fanaticism.
6. You come to believe that your system entitles you to proprietorship of the entities within it.
7. Since humor involves incongruity, and your system explains all seeming incongruities, you
lose your sense of humor.
8. You lose you humility.
9. You accept all those points - insofar as they apply to builders of other systems.
10. So do 1. (P.S. I hope I believe in the cult of fallibility)
12 Roles that
Remind:
1. We are less
rewarded for our involvement in a meeting when we assume that our role has
been more central to its processes than when we are able to question its value to other
participants.
2. We degrade and
pollute the meeting environment more when we assume that any negative
impacts of our initiatives on other participants are of little consequence than when we have
doubts concerning the ability of the meeting to deal with them.
3. We exhibit a
greater degree of ignorance in a meeting when we assume the adequacy of the
knowledge we demonstrate than when we question its validity from the perspectives of other
participants.
4. Our contributions
are less nourishing and enlivening to other participants when we assume
that they are naturally fruitful than when we question their fruitfulness to others.
5. We contribute
more to the mismanagement of a meeting when we assume that our favoured
procedures are the most useful to other participants than when we have doubts concerning their
efficacy for others.
6. We are less
productive in a meeting when we assume we are responding productively to
other contributions than when we have doubts concerning the contribution of our efforts to the
productivity of other initiatives.
7. We are more
threatening to other participants when we assume that our role is not
experienced as intimidating and discriminating by some than when we question how others may
be threatened by our actions in the meeting.
8. We bring more
malaise to a meeting when we assume that we are paragons of well-being
than when we have doubts concerning our degree of health in the eyes of others.
9. We are more
exploitative in a meeting when we assume that our initiatives do not impoverish
the experience of other participants than when we question this possibility.
10. We make more
inappropriate contributions to a meeting when we assume that they are
naturally appropriate than when we have doubts concerning their degree of appropriateness to
other participants.
11. The representation
of reality that we endeavour to communicate to other participants is
experienced as more incoherent when we assume that it offers unique integrative advantages
than when we question whether this may be the case for others.
12. We are more
effective in turning cultural and religious celebrations into meaningless rituals
when we assume that they are not experienced as such by some than when we question why
this may indeed be the case.
1. McKinsey Research
