Norrie W Silvestro wrote:
"I am putting together a pilot Leadership Toolkit workshop process for
Clinicians and Managers in a healthcare organization to help them to
experiment with a range of ways of improving their planning and problem
solving, teamworking and relationship building, and listening and
supporting skills and dealing with uncertainty."..." the tools need to
focus on helping these individuals deal with issues relating to this
uncertainty, anxiety, conflict and motivation." ..."I'd appreciate your
suggestions ..."
Norrie:
You might be interested in new tools that are being developed
out of a New Science approach, especially as you write about
issues dealing with uncertainty.
Coming from the New Science, except for organizational level
tools, I can suggest three tools you might find useful at the team level:
1) ISM - Interpretive Structural Modeling (for problem solving)
In the words of its developer "ISM is a methodology for structuring
complex issues in combinations of words, digraphs and mathematics where
the mathematics remains "hidden" or transparent to the user group.
It is for working with/supporting a group where structured dialogue can
assist in accessing the full knowledge and experience of the group towards
an emergent solution that will have consensus and generate effective
action.
While the methodology informs us how to deal with all complex issues, it
is specifically designed for those which have significant complexity
beyond the unaided abilities of those involved and of available
facilitators. The signal that this is the case is frequently that an
issue that is considered to be important remains unresolved over time.
ISM is a computer assisted learning process that enables a group to
develop a structure or map of complex relationships between specified
elements in a specific context."
ISM was developed by Michael McMaster. He has used it most successfully
with teams from a number of organizations as part of a process of dialog
on complex issues.
If you want more details I can send you those I have, or you can write to
Michael.
2 ) Fitness Landscapes (FL) (for planning)
This is a process that a team planning strategy can use to examine if it
is adjusting its strategy to the kind of environment it is facing, and to
clarify what kind of environment it should be facing. It is also a
learning experience that assists team members to understand the kind of
issues and dilemmas their system faces in each landscape (environment).
The levels of landscapes differentiated are:
1 . Efficiency,
2 . Effective,
3 . Rugged,
4 . Knowledge,
5 . Sustainable.
The process was developed By Les Shipman (The senior consultant
of Dupont) and myself. Les tried it out in Dupont and I tried it out
with a consulting company and with the military. The basis of the
approach is "Fitness Landscapes" as developed by Stuart Kauffmann
of the Santa Fe Institute.
3) Circular Questioning (for change)
As you are asking also about Change Tools, I suggest you become
interested in Circular Questioning, as developed in Systemic Family
Therapy (especially the Milan School).
I have used Circular Questioning many times when consulting with
teams and have found it a most effective approach to help a team
remove blocks to self-organization.
Uri
--umerry@maaganm.co.il (Dr Uri Merry)
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