Learning

“Encounters between people who are very different from each other but prepared to trust and cooperate are where the interesting stuff happens.”

Lynda Gratton

One of the most useful and thought-provoking ideas I have come across recently is the idea of what I call boundary jumping. In a recent book Lynda Gratton refers to “jumping across worlds”. In Debra Ancona and Henrik Bresman’s book X Teams they suggest that highly successful teams “manage across boundaries” and focus at least as much attention on external activities as they do on internal team dynamics. Recently I also undertook accreditation in Cognitive Edge methodologies during the course of which we dug quite deeply into the dynamics of what happens at the boundaries between the simple, complicated, complex and chaotic in organisational life.

Lynda Gratton is based at the London Business School and has been researching and writing about individuals, teams and organisations relationship to work for over thirty years. In her most recent book, entitled Glow: How You Can Radiate Energy, Innovation and Success she tries to describe the most significant characteristics of the people she and her fellow researchers have encountered when they have been investigating highly successful teams. Most of the book, frankly, seems to me to be a bit of an exercise in stating the obvious and runs the risk of being taken as a readymade recipe for success.  In the section on “jumping across worlds” however she uses a simple illustration to make what I think is an important point. She says:

“… when your work is complex – as it often is – then cultivating diverse networks trumps staying close to your own group who are similar to you.”

She illustrates this by suggesting that in any given situation each of us will bring our own set of heuristics or rules of thumb. That is our own unique perspectives, ways of seeing and interpreting, of generating solutions or ways forward and of anticipating what we think will happen next. Gratton argues that the number seven here is significant as there is evidence to suggest that this number plus or minus two is about the limit of the number of ideas, heuristics etc that people can effectively hold in head and use. So my heuristics, as we begin a conversation in which we seek to work out what actions to take next, might be:

A B C D E F G

On the other hand yours might be:

C D E F G H I

When you and I come together in this conversation to negotiate what we will do and//or account to each for what we are doing and generally work out how to “go on” together in a certain direction or towards a certain end, we will have five shared heuristics and each of us will bring two unique heuristics (at least for this situation). I’ll bring A and B and you will bring H and I. The simple point of course is that the more perspectives or possibilities we have to work with the better. The fine print, of course needs to say that, at some point, if there isn’t enough similarity, it’s going to be very hard for us to work together. The question naturally arises, then:

What do we do when we do this – when we collaboratively negotiate and account to each other about joint action?

Recent research and thinking in a range of fields: ethnomethodology, conversational analysis, and social constructionism suggest some possibilities.

1. As we communicate for a purpose we both value and “take” turns to speak. This isn’t always sweetness and light, however. Often we need to compete for a turn and are forced to “construct” and negotiate rights and obligations in this process. We make turns for ourselves by asking questions, seeking advice, clarifying issues, expressing opinions and so on.
2. As we take our “turns” in communication we naturally have expectations of each other. Significant among these expectations is the anticipation that as the communication goes back and forth the responses will bear some relation to and association with what was said previously. We also expect others to display a level of competence and reasonableness in their communication. Ultimately we hold each other morally accountable for our actions. This is as true of our communicative action as it is of any other. If we can find no relationship between what we said and the response from another then effectively there is no meaning in the exchange.
3. Some of the structure that we can recognise in communicative action seems to be a product of the patterns of categorising, segmenting and sequencing that emerge in and through the process itself. We categorise people and their rights to involvement in the conversation, we sequence the flow of conversation around a particular topic based on what are termed “adjacent pairs” – question and answer, request and response, invitation and acceptance and complaint and response. Much of this patterning of categorisation, sequencing and segmentation opens up questions of the power dynamics of particular conversations.
4. In communicative interaction we also use what might be termed “rhetorical devices”, as another way of responding to each other and linking our practical activities. So we might use “directive” or “instructive” forms of expression to advocate for a particular way of going on together. These “rhetorical device” articulate our noticing of and draw the other person’s attention to, aspects of their speaking and make reference to their context. We agree or disagree, we sympathise or fail to do so and so on, through not only the content but also the form of our speaking.

So, what is practical in all of this?

Three things I suspect:

1. Firstly the simple reminder that we all, most of the time, come to everyday communicative interactions each with a more or less varied set of operating heuristics and that there are advantages (that can be amplified) and disadvantages (that can be damped) to this.
2. Secondly the recognition that the way in which we engage in communicative interaction is so much a part of what we do (our practice as people working in organisations) that we are largely unaware of it. But it is something we can be more attentive to.
3. Thirdly, as a starting point we can be more attentive to particular aspects of our communicative action:
   • How we take turns in particular conversational settings.
   • What we anticipate as appropriate responses and what we do when that doesn’t happen.
   • How our conversations are sequenced.
   • How we categorise people in particular settings and how that patterns the sequencing and segmenting of conversations.
   • How we make use of particular rhetorical devices and what impact that has.

It seems highly likely that just by paying attention and noticing we will change what we do and how we do it and, of course, that could have a ripple effect.

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