Book Review by Dr. Stephen W. Littlejohn

Thought I would share this review that Dr. Littlejohn published last month:
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CMM Solutions Field Guide and companion Workbook for Consultants
By Barnett Pearce, Jesse Sostrin, and Kimberly Pearce (Lulu Press, 2011)

CMM Solutions, a two-part package of tools and practices for consultants, is designed to help practitioners apply the theory of the Coordinated Management of Meaning in their work with clients. Since its inception in the 1970s, CMM has been employed in various social situations and organizational interventions, including, for example, community dialogues, conflict resolution, counseling and psychotherapy, and spiritual practice. As a practical theory, CMM is powerful in helping consultants think about and act into client situations and problems, and practitioners familiar with the theory seem hungry for guidance on how to use the theory in this way. CMM Solutions was written to fill this gap.

The package consists of two booklets. The first, CMM Solutions: Field Guide for Consultants provides an overview of a CMM process that can guide any kind of intervention in which a consultant is presented with a problem or challenge experienced by a dyad, group, organization, or community. This first booklet features a realistic scenario and transcript of an intervention using this method. The second part, entitled CMM Solutions: Workbook for Consultants is a practical guide to CMM tools with templates and directions on how to use and adapt them.

The program features a five-part model for intervention, which the authors call SEAVA—(1) storyboarding, (2) enriching, (3) analyzing, (4) visioning, and (5) acting. SEAVA is described in detail in the first booklet, the Field Guide, and its use is illustrated by an annotated narrative “transcript” of a fictional intervention constructed as a composite from various actual consultations. Each stage of the consultation model features particular aspects of CMM carefully arranged for building awareness of the communication perspective, creating client insight into participants’ patterns of interaction, and consideration of how those patterns might be changed. The method is wholly collaborative in approach and relies heavily on the clients’ own constructions and insights. As such the method is heavy on process and light on judgment and consultant-centered problem solving. The consultant is aided at each stage of SEAVA with a set of tools designed to help build awareness of the communication process, choices made, and levels of meaning and action. These tools and forms are detailed in the Workbook.

CMM Solutions works within the communication perspective, aiming to help clients look at their process of communication, rather than through the process to some other content. Indeed, the fictional consultant, Larry, uses a card to remind himself that “we get what we make, we make it through communication, [and] if we get the pattern of communication right, the best possible things will happen.” CMM Solutions does not require prior familiarity with the theory. Many sources are available for readers who want to know more about the theory itself, several of which are listed in the resources at the end. I personally recommend Barnett Pearce’s book Making Social Worlds: A Communication Perspective (Blackwell, 2007).

For those familiar with the theory, CMM Solutions provides a method of storyboarding as a way of helping participants identify episodes and the punctuation of interactional sequences. A template for the LUUUUTT model can be used to help clients explore their stories, and a “daisy” template can help identify groups and conversations outside the immediate situation that influence or inform what is going on. The participants’ hierarchies of meaning and action can be probed using the hierarchy template, which can also be used in conjunction with a form for analyzing logical force. Tools are also available for uncovering unwanted repetitive patterns, strange loops, and bifurcation points. The practitioner can use any combination of these as part of the SEAVA process, and the Workbook provides guidelines for using and adapting each tool, including suggested time and resources required along with the process steps and examples. The CMM Solutions approach may appear formulaic at first glance, and it does present the method as a pre-formed and sequential model. However, the authors are clear that the model is presented in this way for clarity and completeness, but that experienced consultants will use it in innumerable creative and adaptive ways.

The CMM Solutions Field Guide at 134 pages is available for $35.00, or $19.99 for a downloadable version. The CMM Solutions Workbook at 31 pages is available for $24.95, or $14.99 downloadable. Both are can be purchased from Amazon or Lulu. The Field Guide can be used as a stand-alone, but I do not recommend the Workbook without the Field Guide.

Transforming Barriers - ODP Journal Article

This month's peer reviewed Organization Development Practitioner Journal features my latest article. The culmination of year's of research and practice, the featured article includes a full-length case study using the new RITE Model. Two of this articles critical contributions include: 1) A practical roadmap to navigate the hidden curriculum of work; and 2) A system of transforming everyday organizational barriers into pathways for sustained learning and performance. The RITE Model is effective because it works simultaneously in both of these directions. It resolves barriers while also enhancing the capacity for change. Implementing the RITE Model consistently over time will allow managers to pitch the external consultant and coach your own team to new levels of learning and performance success that impact the bottom line.

Here is an excerpt from the Introduction:

Whether their position of influence is internal or external, Organization Development practitioners are tasked with resolving a wide range of issues that threaten individual, team, and organizational success. Sometimes these issues are referred to as gaps or obstacles, or they can be alluded to in more creative terms like breakdowns, and blind spots. Whatever form they come in, collectively I call these impediments to the quality and outcome of work barriers to workplace learning and performance .

When left unresolved, barriers can take a considerable toll on the workplace at three fundamental levels, including:

• 1st Order Impacts on Workers may cause individuals to lose focus, disengage from their work and the greater organization, avoid or disabuse priorities, exhaust motivation, cause physical and psychological discomfort through stress, and reduce accuracy and quality of performance;

• 2nd Order Impacts on Work Teams can debilitate patterns of communication, prevent effective decision-making, reduce collaboration, erode morale, distract from priorities, and undermine the collective potential of team members to positively impact the organization; and

• 3rd Order Impacts on the Workplace will divert values, disrupt effective structures of interaction, reduce overall productivity, increase absenteeism, presenteeism and turnover, adversely impact the strategic implementation of goals, and more.

Considering these summary examples of the compounding affects of unresolved barriers, the mandate to comprehensively address barriers across the organizational spectrum is considerable. One of the strengths of the Organization Development field is the diversity of practice traditions that contribute an array of processes and interventions that can identify barriers such as these.

Successfully identifying barriers, however, is only one part of a larger process of resolving them. As the nature of work continues to evolve, Organization Development practitioners increasingly intervene in unstructured circumstances that require dynamic tools and resources to quickly and effectively assist clients in the full resolution of their organizational issues.

The purpose of this article is to provide a detailed description and case example of the RITE Model, a unique system of transforming individual and team barriers into pathways for sustained learning and performance. The remainder of this introduction summarizes two key concepts that form the foundation of the model.

Why Focus on the Negative

A client recently asked me about my Breaking Barriers brand and related programs that, in his words, "focus on the negative." After learning about several strength-based management strategies, including techniques like Appreciative Inquiry, he was right to recognize the frame of barriers. I appreciated his question and here’s how I responded and ultimately why I think it matters:

The reason for the focus on barriers is because they offer the most efficient path toward constructive improvement. This is based upon an inherent assumption that identifying and potentially reducing barriers may directly or indirectly improve the probability of successful workplace learning and performance. The primary foundation of this assumption comes from Kurt Lewin’s Force Field Analysis. In Force Field
Analysis, one can either: 1) reduce the strength of the forces opposing a desired change (e.g. barriers); or 2) increase the enhancing forces that drive change so that both opposing forces are brought into balance. In other words, it is believed that for an individual, team or organization that wishes to improve upon learning and performance, the successful identification and reduction of barriers is a key factor that enables movement toward the desired change to take effect.

Perhaps what is most powerful about the focus on transforming barriers is that it works in both of these directions simultaneously. While a concerted effort is made to reduce the strength of the barrier (opposing force), the capacity to build learning and performance capacity is also enhanced.

The Burnout Pattern

Recently I worked with a very successful manager who was on the verge of burnout. He was experiencing a really uncomfortable pattern that seemed to lead him back to the inevitable conclusion that something had to give. After exploring the issues and circumstances, I helped him develop a visual image of the pattern – calling it the “Good Intentions” Pattern. After exploring the variables, the image was helpful to show how he kept ending up in the same place:


If you can’t see the image well, here are the four loops in the pattern:
- You develop lots of energy and excitement for accomplishing your priorities and goals…
- You put forth some effort, although you’re energy and resources are not very directed or consistent…
- You experience mixed results, the initial enthusiasm for the goals wanes and then frustration and negative self-talk set in…and then
- You lose focus and become distracted from your priorities and must spend time trying to rebuild your energy and excitement toward the goal.

After assessing the pattern and spending a few weeks noticing where it showed up, we worked together on identifying the trigger and then replaced that with a new commitment. In this instance, a negative trigger that reinforced the burnout pattern was the mixed results and frustration he experienced with a particularly challenging project. He decided to make a commitment to positively explore that frustration and to use it as a teachable moment and inspiration to re-focus on "what he could influence." This turned out to be a sufficient course correction to get him out of the burnout pattern. He reported that, although it wasn't easy, it opened up new ways of thinking about other difficult aspects of his working life.