I recently watched the Cirque de Soleil interpretation of the Beatles music called Love.  I have always enjoyed the Beatles’ music but I am by no means an aficionado. I was struck by a quote from The Rolling Stone magazine by Paul McCartney, that was tucked in some the hotel promo literature, about the circumstance in which the album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, was developed.

“The ideas were coming fast and thick. All sorts of new ideas-artistic, political and musical … We had a lot of friends in the music world and in the art world, and there was a big cross-fertilization … It was a great time for experimentation, and it all found its way into our music …” [1]

I did a little digging to find out what was going on in that moment.  The album cover includes face shots of people who had influenced the Beatles … an amazing diversity of people … from Charlie Chaplin to Albert Einstein … from May West to Carl Jung.

The album is considered to be their greatest achievement, breaking new ground in rock music.  Notice what “came together” for the Beatles in that moment: diversity of thought combined with an environment in which that diversity could fuse into a new form. Think about social networks in this larger context … as the combined sources of influence that can be brought to bear on the characteristics of a desired outcome.

The Beatles intuitively extracted from each influence those qualities that could contribute to their work. This lends another dimension to the concept of appreciation … the ability to see what contributes without becoming distracted by what does not. Social networks are not just about who can contribute but also about the qualities, attributes and ideas that they bring to the development of a new form.

I have been following CEO firings lately. One common thread that is clear from reading news accounts (and in the case of Chrysler, conversations with people who watched the workings of the inner circle) … in all cases, the CEOs who failed actually worked hard to diminish the diversity of thought that was offered to them. In some cases they made outright strategic errors, undermined the company and lost their jobs as a result. In others, they simply ended up with bland conservative decisions that slowly eroded the company’s cutting edge … and lost their jobs.

Inspired thinkers always have social networks with great variety, including Thomas Edison whom we often refer to as a great example of a lone inventor. They don’t try to make them into melting pots. In fact they appreciate and invite the diversity of thinking that exists within them.

I would be interested in hearing examples of both the consequences of limiting social networks, and those moments when, because of the presence of a diverse network, old thinking got broken apart to make way for new understanding.

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[1] Paul McCartney, in an interview with The Rolling Stone, on the development of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. From the Inroom Magazine of the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.

The Lean Enterprise Institute recently noted the results of a poll on the biggest problems faced during the implementation of lean initiatives. One of the most frequent answers was: resistance from mid-level managers.

We are all resisters. We stand at the barricades of our thought systems fending off, ignoring and otherwise resisting myriad ideas, products and just plain “stuff” every day. The issue is not whether we resist but what we resist. We resist when we assume that something doesn’t contribute to what we care about, when we fear that we will have to give up something that we want or because we don’t understand something that is being offered.

Since we are all good at resisting, the question is not, “How do we overcome resistance?” but rather, “How do we pull inspired thought to the things that matter to the organization?”

Here are some things to remember.

Stay with Pull

You can persuade, cajole, threaten, bribe (yes I said bribe as in: “I will do this for you if you get on board.”) or you can use force or coercion. You can dictate and enforce … but none of these will create buy-in. They may even send resistance underground and create compliance if that serves the interest of the person who is resisting.

Compliance, although it may look good to the observer, comes at a high price. The price of compliance is that although you may get good enough you will not get the margin of difference … unless you want people to get good at “going along to get along.”

Instead, start by creating pull instead of push. This is the attraction or influence people experience in response to something that matters to them. Gripping sources of pull are those that have compelling values. They are squarely focused on big value to the customer or client and create stretch for the organization; they are inclusive; they rise above differences. Therefore, they pull unity of purpose.

Whether you are engaged in change management or a lean initiative, ratchet up the significance of the initiative as it relates to the success of the company and nest the lean initiative within that context

Use It as an Opportunity to Create the Margin of Difference

Move toward the resistance with appreciation. Respect the fact that we are all resistors of those things that don’t matter to us and listen for what does matter.

Embedded within the static of resistance is often information which, if incorporated, could seed a dramatic shift in the quality of the initiative. Look for and pull the ideas and concepts which, once surfaced, push the boundaries of current thinking. It may take some patience as you listen through resistance. When someone says, “This will never work.” An appreciative response would be “What would have to change in order for it to succeed?” The byproduct of using pull of course is that as soon as people begin to make a valid contribution they begin to own it.

Teach the Tools of Pull

The margin of difference begins with developing mastery at distinguishing between what to resist and what to pull. Train people to notice what they are pulling and help them understand that their experiences reflect what they have pulled. Therefore, the quality of business processes, the nimbleness of social networks, the quality of relationships within those networks, the quality of conversations, the engagement processes and the quality of individual thinking and work processes all reliably reflect and are pulled by individual and collective beliefs, intents and purposes.

So when you are faced with resistance, start with pull. Pull big purpose, pull embedded ideas nested within resistance, and then teach the individual skills that enable people to continuously discern and choose what they will pull.

I would like to hear your thoughts about what creates and drives resistance and how you have dealt with it.

I get a blizzard of emails every day, most of which go into my Spam folder or Delete folder before I even see them. I have no idea how many more are caught and deleted by my mail server before they even get to me. But of those that actually get to my Inbox, I often observe the creative ways in which people from all over the world try to find the keys to our individual volition … a hundred seventy one billion per day according to Michael Specter [1] . They use everything from news events, freebees, sexual aids, easy money, companionship, and good health, all playing on hopes, fears and inadequacies in an almost limitless list of attempts to trigger something that matters to us.

For spammers, push is cheap. They can push out millions of emails and make a profit with only a few responses per million. But the levers of pull belong to each of us. We choose which emails to click open based on what matters to us.

Spam reminds us that push is an incredibly inefficient way to try to foster inspired thought. We have all been in meetings in which people tell, sell, lobby, persuade and in other ways compete over the merits of their ideas. But no amount of charisma, control, force, intimidation, dictatorship or, of course, spamming will succeed in creating inspired thought. Control and force create an underground of the very contrarian ideas that could, if surfaced, expand the boundaries of thought.

We cannot push social networks, quality relationships, effective conversations, engagement processes and individual habits on others. These elements, which must be in place in order to create inspired thought, are always a product of a pull partnership. If we don’t both want it, it isn’t going to happen. That is a hard lesson to learn in personal relationships but it applies in organizations as well. In fact, it applies to virtually anything that matters to us.

Inspired thinking is always a product of something that matters to both of us.

This is why appreciative inquiry is so effective. If we join another person in appreciating their best instincts or ideas and it rings true for them, we set in motion all five of the basic dynamics that determine the margin of difference. Our focus pulls the people (our social networks), the qualities of relationships (our social capital), the language through which we interact, our engagement processes (thanks Rob) and individual processes. Appreciation enables people to enlarge the boundaries of the way they understand their strengths and translate that quality into day-to-day reality.

Appreciation is Steve Sunderland listening to people trying to reach across the chasms of racial alienation in Cincinnati. It is Harry Bury being present and being kidnapped during the rage that accompanied the closing of Israeli settlements. It is June Wolcott listening to those who want less proscribed environmental processes and Ken Rutchey who searches for ways to enable scientists to reach across organizational boundaries to create inspired thinking for the protection of the Everglades

For Tom, it is watching for and transparently appreciating those moments when his fellow executives reach for common ground instead of competing over the validity of their ideas. For John, who knows that the very survival of the company he is guiding depends on the margin of difference, it is reaching into each of the people he has installed as executives and flicking the switches of mutual appreciation for the contributions of the others.

We can’t push our way into the margin of difference. We are all effective “spaminators”. But we can pull. And every time we do pull, we also potentially pull information that is outside the boundaries of our current thought. Nested within what we pulled is a surprise … often in the form of disconfirmation of something in our current thought form … if (and this is a very big “IF”) we can recognize it. And what we do with that surprise determines the margin of difference.

Inspired thought always results in a new system of thought … a new understanding. It always results in a new form. It accompanies something that matters to us, but it is usually unexpected.

As always, I invite your observation and stories, about ways in which you have experienced the way appreciation has pulled you or others into inspired thought.

[1] Michael Specter, Damn Spam, The Losing Battle in the Junk Mail War, The New Yorker, August 6, 2007, P36.

We all know what happens when people start poking around in our thinking processes … especially if they are tinkering with ideas that we hold dear.  We also know what happens when we see the holes in the ideas of someone else and try to bang down the doors of their “limited thinking.”  This happens with Ann and me with stunning regularity.  I write something that I think is elegant -- if not profound -- and then she reads it … then come the questions …"what about this?" … "what about that?" … or her observation … "that doesn’t ring true for me."  Often, by some strange alchemy, a window opens.  I see my ideas in a new light and the boundaries shift.  Voila … new understanding!

I like the word inspired.  It describes shifts in thought to a larger more inclusive understanding because it speaks to both the experiential and intellectual qualities of the shift.  They range from life-shifting eureka events to simple solutions to problems.  But always, they combine energy and understanding.

The more profound the shift, the greater the energy kick that accompanies it.  Often, the beliefs, intents and purposes that I hold to be the most sacrosanct are those that hold the greatest potential explosion of wonder and excitement when their boundaries are shifted to incorporate new information.

Inspiration never results from winning and losing because what distinguishes inspired thought is that rather than resulting from the dominance of one set of ideas over another, it is a new combination that is pulled from everyone in the interchange.  The source of pull is a more inclusive desired outcome.  How pull operates to attract this self-organizing process is the subject of future blogs.  At this point, I simply want to observe that although winning and losing may have its place in the world of thought, it is rarely a successful strategy for creating new understanding.  Time and energy invested in defending the boundaries prevents the resolution of disparate ideas … at any level of human interchange.

This and future blogs are intended to enlarge the boundaries of thought in the book and to credit those who help to make it happen.  I would like to hear from you about moments when you have seen the boundaries of thought shift to include more information and as a result create larger, more inclusive understanding … a shift either subtle or seismic.  What were the conditions that caused it?  What was it like energetically?  And any other thoughts triggered by this and future blogs and ensuing interchanges.