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Coaches Corner
LPC Project Coaches share their views on creating lean design and construction projects and lean enterprises.
Tags >> inquiry
I have not been doing lean consulting long enough to have a career's depth of war stories. When faced with some regular questions, I have to pull from the underlying philosophy rather than a real world example. Even in the Lean Construction history, there is not a lot of examples. Peter Block defends this approach in his 2003 book, The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters .
He says that the typical How questions are a defense against action and change. When we ask how much time is it going to take, we avoid asking about our level of commitment. When we ask how much it is going to cost we avoid asking what the price is we are willing to pay.
The book is about the meaningful questions that we should be analyzing. Questions about our desire to create a future together. Questions about personal risk, freedom and responsibility. As I see it, progress won't happen if you study how others did it. Get your philosophy straight first and act on that.
Sometimes I am reluctant to call my boss because he is going to tell me what he thinks of my work. Sometimes, he says, “it sucks”. This is hard to listen to. I start to question my value to the company, the skills I thought I had, my own self-worth. It takes a high degree of presence of mind to say, “tell me more about that” or “what do you mean by that?” in a non-defensive tone of voice.
But here’s the key. If we keep talking, I find out what I can do about it. Change this, learn that, pay more attention to something else. Get a better idea of what is wanted. Instead of feeling powerless and invalidated, I feel determined and energetic. I can say, maybe I am not perfect, but I can still learn, I can still change my behavior, I can still become more effective. Now, I am in a different mood, and I can begin again.
I hate software. I have had too many bad experiences. I find it hard to make it do what I want. There is never a reference manual or a human being available to answer a question. Whenever I have to install new software, I assume that something will go wrong and that my machine will be cratered. When someone asks me to evaluate a new product, I assume it will not work right and make my job harder or impossible.
So, when my colleagues asked me to attend a webinar about a new piece of software that could make it easier to facilitate and document our planning meetings, I approached the event with my usual positive attitude.
When I was in school, I loved being the one who knew the answer. I still get hooked when someone asks me a question. I am so eager to give an answer that I sometimes forget that it's better to leave a person with a question, to put them in the mood of inquiry. I want to be the one who knows. In my Aikido classes, after the instructor demonstrates a technique, we have to choose a partner. We can choose a senior student, who can help us with our learning, or a junior student, someone we can help to learn. It is always a dilemma for me, whether to be in the safe, secure role of the one who knows more, or the uncertain role of the one who wants to learn. We call this beginner's mind We cannot function as adults if we don't know anything. On a daily basis, we need to exercise our skills to be effective in our work. But to be a part of a learning organization, we also need to open ourselves to not knowing. I need to realize that in addition to my areas of expertise, I have my areas of ignorance. In order to learn in these areas, I need to give up my image as the one who knows, the one who always has the answer. Even to move from expertise toward mastery, I need to practice not knowing.
Last week, we talked about cultivating a mood of inquiry and the moods and attitudes that might get in the way of that. What are the moods we can bring to learning that encourage the mood of inquiry? Openness - I am willing to change my interpretation of what is so and what is possible based on my interaction with you. Questioning - It is possible that what I have learned and assumed up until now might be incomplete. There might be an interpretation of of the available facts more powerful than the one which I now hold. Curiosity - I think it will be enjoyable to find out something new.
A mood - something we call a feeling that lasts - has to do with our assessments about the future. We may think of our future in terms of concerns that we want to take care of. We may be optimistic or pessimistic, we may see possibilities opening up or closing down for satisfying our concerns, for getting what we want. To build a learning organization, we need to cultivate a mood of inquiry, an open-minded attitude toward learning. What are some of the enemies of this mood? Cynicism - The future looks bleak, no improvement is possible, and I am sure that nothing you can tell me or teach me will make any difference. So there. Boredom - I don't care about what you care about and you don't care about what I care about, so this conversation is irrelevant.
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